WellBeing in conversation with you!

 

Transcript:

LAUREN:
I’m okay, I Okay, I am here today talking with Clinton, founder, professional bartender of creative empire. Pineapple jam. Thank you so much for chatting to me today, Clinton.

CLINTON:
Thanks, Lauren, you too. Appreciate your time.

LAUREN:
And we are here today to talk about mocktails. So I’ve just said that you’ve got this creative cocktail company, obviously mocktails. Talk to me about how that that works that works together.

CLINTON:
Well, I mean, every base of a good cocktail is generally non alcoholic ingredients. So you know, you can be as creative as you want to be with that, but you’re also limited for what’s out there. So over a course of time, we from before COVID, during COVID, and after COVID lock downs, we’ve created our own range of original and natural cocktail mixes. Basically, coming off the back of the demand for virtual class DIY boxes, we wanted to send stuff that was unique, because there’s obviously a lot of competitors out there. So we started making.

The first thing I made was it was a rose and vanilla cocktail mix, which mix with gin and cranberry juice. And that makes my Ruby Rose martini, which is a cocktail that won the national competition in South Africa with also named after my first daughter, Ruby. So that was the first thing we made because that was a very stable product to send in the post, and a very nice recipe that people can appreciate. And it came with a bit of story which made our virtual classes a little bit more engaging. And then obviously, the stuff has grown more but we sitting with a unique and original cocktail mix range that is so versatile, it can work on its own with soda, shaken with juice, mixed with other juices if you like to create that extra boom of of sweet and sour in the drink. But also you add your favorite alcohol to that. And you can shake it with gin or rum or tequila as a martini. Or you can add it with a spirit and soft drink like soda water as a long, fresh mocktail. So, coming out of COVID, we started back with our live events, we started doing this because one, it’s it’s much cleverer to have pre batched off on events because it’s less to carry around. And what we found with this plus all of our ingredients is that people are amazed when they see the bar.

And then they’re super excited when that tastes the recipes, and obviously served with a bit of personality. That’s how I built my business. So the event industry is booming. Customers are coming back to us because now they want to have kids parties for their kids, because we can do mocktails that look like cocktails, we can be as fancy as we want, but still adhere to anybody’s cultural or dietary requirements. So it’s very exciting. And there’s a lot of potential coming out of this. For sure.

LAUREN:
Fantastic. And I love what you said that there are so many possibilities from each bottle. So from each bottle, you could make multiple mocktails multiple cocktails, it’s like really exciting . And so is it just the two products, they’re in the rage or…

CLINTON:
no. So we’ve actually got three that I’ve got on the table . Sorry, there we go. We did three labels to test the waters. So this is our new branding, the previous branding, I’ll just grab. So this is our previous brand new or some of the other products that we do so reduce standard garnishes and Dr Dre to go on issues. But that’s the design that I did during COVID To have a good looking label a little bit of originality and creativity. But we’re hitting the commercial market now. So we need to have labels that are amazing and these are pretty amazing. So we’ve had a lot of support and help with the design of these. We’ve currently got 24 liquid products in the pharmaceutical company being tested at the moment.

LAUREN:
Exciting!

CLINTON:
so we are going to have a premium a hero and an earthy range in the cocktail mix products. Then we’re going to have a premium and hero range just with the syrups because these are all based with gourmet syrups mixed with either coffee or citrus or fresh juices, creating that original recipe I suppose but with these as well we’re going to have multiple different types of espresso mix. So this is a salted caramel espresso mix. Salted caramel syrup, cultured coffee only. Then we’ve got a roasted and spiced pineapple cocktail mix which is obviously the syrup mix of the lemon juice. We’re going to be turning all the pineapple varieties with a lime juice last that can The instant daiquiri Margarita and Mojito mixes and then we’ve got a rose and vanilla syrup mixed with lime juice, which is the base of my Ruby Rose Martini. Again, my legacy cocktail. From this range we are we’ve also got a passion fruit and vanilla mix lychee and lavender mix. Very nice because we’re actually getting the lychee juice from South Africa. Strangely enough, because there’s no fresh lychee juice in this country. And then because we’re based on pineapples and pineapples is that is the symbol of our business, but also the symbol of hospitality. We’ve come up with two more pineapple varieties. So we’ve got a pineapple and jalapeno, a smoked pineapple and cardamom. And then we’ve got a random mix, which is a mango and habanero. So with the I think that’s 8 or 9 Fruity cocktail mixes.

These are the premium ranges the hero range will be just a simple syrup mix with a simple citrus juice. So if you wanted to have chili moderators, we’ve got a chili and lime mix that we will have coming out after these bad boys are out of the market. And then in terms of the espresso mix, the first three that we’ll bring out will be cinnamon, vanilla, salted caramel, and then we can add a chili and a cardamom mix as well because cardamom and coffee is fantastic. Chilean coffees fantastic. There’s a lot of varieties in these. So that’s just the cocktail mix range and then we have so the fascinating thing about the syrups that we make is with the roasted spice pineapple we actually roast the pineapple pieces, mix it with spices, make a syrup over a period of time. Once we remove the pulp from the syrup the syrups ready to be mixed with citrus juice. But the pulp itself is just magnificent because it’s cooked, it’s binded. With flavor, there’s so much love and taste in there alone. Then what we do is we then infuse that into vodka, which then creates a whole new product called the cocktail mist, or a cocktail fragrance.

Now we can add theater and aromas directly on top of a drink line, the glass sprayed over someone’s head spread over the drink as a theatrical garnish. The lemon and orange mist because it’s skins infused in vodka are the best sanitizers for bar counters for kitchen tables. So we could use it in all different applications. So now I’m thinking, Wow, there’s so many things coming out of all of this. This is where the cocktail club is going to come back in. But the cocktail mists are alcoholic based, we do have a variety, which is non alcoholic. So we’ve got a couple of different ranges coming out of these these products, but to be able to reuse used ingredients in a sustainable manner and make something else. I think that’s pretty cool. Actually.

LAUREN:
I think that is fantastic. I love the sustainability element of it. But also, as you said, I mean, the the theater of it all and the fact that so much of taste does revolve around smell. So I think it’s really such a clever application of the past. Thank you for being us. That’s excellent. And so obviously, you know, as you mentioned, you do have the mocktails sort of all the bases are the potential mocktail there. Why is it that you think mocktails are becoming so important in 2023.

CLINTON:
I think everyone’s had a lot of alcohol during COVID. So now they are going to be looking after myself, which is fair, but there’s still cultures, dietary requirements and people that don’t like alcohol. You know, I’ve met people that are allergic to vodka, to gin, to tequila to lemons, lime, orange, grapefruit, there’s all sorts of allergies out there. And to be fair, the more processed food artificial flavored and colored food people consume, the more allergies and intolerances will grow. So you look at countries which have a big, fast food industry like America, Australia, even England is a lot of intolerances, a lot of dietary requirements in these countries. And I believe that’s because of the preservatives and artificial stuff people are putting in and calling it natural flavored, which is incredible, because I would say 60% of all gins you can buy on the shelf today are naturally flavored vodkas. Yes, it’s craft gin. So there’s a lot of bollocks going on in the back end or the industry. So we wanted to create something that works. You know, we made something that I know would work and we tried a few other things. And when we tried this on our events, the versatility is just absolutely fantastic because you can you can make drinks for everybody, every kind of human being will get something tasty and fresh and natural.

So it doesn’t limit what we do it actually expands what we can do so I’m very happy to feed my children, certain quantities of these every month or or whatever, but mix 20 mils of this with 100 mils of soda water, Ice you can add mint you can add whatever you want inside you make your own drink, it can be as exciting as a cocktail. People think cocktails are exciting because they’ve got alcohol in it, but it’s not true. There’s food you eat that doesn’t have alcohol in, we’re still exciting. So why can’t it be with drinks? You know, so to be able to make drinks for everybody and feel comfortable about that, for me, from a natural perspective, it’s fantastic.

LAUREN:
Excellent! And obviously, with the increase in, you know, that awareness of reducing alcohol intake or as you said, you know, different dietary requirements, or simply just by choice, whatever the case may be, when people then are moving towards mocktails, are you seeing people leaning towards certain certain flavors or certain types of drink?

CLINTON:
That’s a good question. I mean, again, we’ve got something unique and original, so we know what people are enjoying, from our perspective. I don’t know about the rest of the world what they’re doing in terms of mocktails. But every time we do an event or a wedding, we explain to people we’ve got mocktails they’re like, aka cool, we say pineapplem, rose, passionfruit they go passionfruit straightaway, they love it, they come back, and then we try to push them on to the other flavors just give you a bit of variety. But, you know, passionfruit mocktail, sounds delicious. But what about a spicy roasted pineapple mocktail Some people don’t like pineapple don’t like spices fine. That’s why having a variety of different different recipes will give everybody an opportunity to have an exciting cocktail and walk away from the bar feeling, you know, special or feeling rewarded because they’re in the right place at the right time.

LAUREN:
Isn’t that interesting? And I wonder if part of that too, is because when you’re just pitching three flavors like that, if people think well, pineapple juice or a pineapple drink isn’t something that I could ever make at home. So it’s a good introduction, perhaps, to the idea to try.

CLINTON:
Yeah, that’s what we’ve got to be clever about the words we use as well. Because if we say I’ve got a pineapple mocktail, I mean, what does that mean? They’re gonna think it’s pineapple juice and lemonade, like, the last 10 bars there they’ve been to. So you’ve got to say like, we’ve got a spice and roasted pineapple cocktail mix made by us non alcoholic mixed with soda. Fantastic. And they’re like cool!

LAUREN:
Look if you pitchd that to me, I would say where do I sign?

CLINTON:
you know, we’ve got to have that sense of service and attentive understanding for for people as well. And it’s just super cool when when like, we did a wedding on Saturday in Flinders, down in the coast, it was 37 degrees. Tiki Bar setup was fantastic. All this… what’s it called boho furniture under the trees, several kids there and the parents came to the bar and said, Can we have to lemonade, and I was like, no! I’m gonna make you guys something that’s gonna revolutionize your lives. And I made the two passionfruit mocktails for the kids.

And they were like, What is this, and there must have drank like eight of these during the course of the day and the passion fruit cocktail mix, you know, 30 mils serve, you’re looking at about four mils of sugar. So we’ve just done them a massive favor, really, because they’re gonna drink lemonade all day. And obviously, the clients buy their own products, and they buy the cheapest lemonade or whatever. It’s still lemonade and still fake flavors, fake sugar, a lot of it’s got Xylitol as well. So yeah, fantastic.

LAUREN:
I think that’s fantastic. And so if I was looking to make my own mocktails at home, what sort of ingredients should I have on hand? Obviously, some of your fantastic products.

CLINTON:
First and foremost. Yes. Look, soda water. The three main mixes that we use on events is pineapple juice, cranberry juice, soda water. If clients want us to serve coke and lemonade that’s up to them depending on the package as well, because the premium packages, they looking for that theatrical element that we can bring to the table. And we don’t ever serve coke eliminate on our premium packages. Funnily enough, the standard packages are more for the private clients. And yeah, they’ll provide us with ginger ale,coke, lemonade, but I would say 60 70% of the events don’t provide us with that stuff because we tell them the recipes we serving are fantastic. So we can do any any spirit with any cocktail mix any cocktail mix with any kind of mixer as a soft drink or mocktail. And generally they don’t supply other soft drinks because they know that we’re capable of doing that as well. Yeah..

LAUREN:
I like it. So you would say at home, a few bottles of what you’ve got there some soda, some cranberry or pineapple juice. What would you recommend? I mean, I feel like one trap that people often fall into with mocktails or some of perhaps a bit of a stigma that you hear about mocktails is it’s just going to be really really sweet. Yeah. Obviously having a base product such as yours can help move us away from that but when we’re adding mixers, what suggestions would you have?

CLINTON:
Look at any of the fruity mixes with soda water is amazing. So I wouldn’t step away from soda water. If you’re going to be mixing these with lemonade. You’re just doubling the sugar content. Even though these are fairly low in sugar. They’re all different because these two it’s 50%, sugar syrup, and 50% citrus juice. So in this sugar syrup you’re looking at probably 60% of that is sugar. 40% is water. So really, they’re they’re low in all or low in sugar, then, you know, a can of lemonade you know a can of lemonade has like five teaspoons of sugar in each can. Yeah. So So soda water would be the best mix. And you can sit and drink from all night long. Obviously, if you’re putting vodka or gin inside these mixes with the soda, even better, because you’re keeping hydrated with the soda water. And it’s just a very nice clean drink. You don’t feel bloated, you don’t have a massive hangover the next day because of high sugar content. And you actually remember the bartenders and which is a good thing for networking.

LAUREN:
Yeah, absolutely. And again, like looking at these mocktails at home angle, if I was going to make myself a mocktail at home, would you recommend I use special glassware or just chuck it in any old thing?

CLINTON:
Look, there’s I wouldn’t say there’s two types of people in the world. you know those that use whatever and those that go that little bit step further. But look, I mean, I’m a collector of turn my collection into business. I’ve got a massive variety, which I’ll show you guys anyway at the end of the session. The fancier the glassware, the more exciting life is going to be, you know, if you’ve got stuff that you pick up from up shops, absolutely. If you see an op shop and you drive past it, don’t do that stop, buy something from the op shop, you’re putting something back into the community, but you also collecting glassware which is fantastic. So you don’t want to use a tea cup with you want to make two cocktails in one tea cup is not going to work. You need a variety of small to large glasses, Punchbowl, containers of some sort.

So you can do bigger bigger recipes for for big amounts of guests as well. But yeah, I mean, the fancier the glass, the fancier the garnish, it’s fantastic. And as you can buy dehydrated garnishes anyway, you know, we’ve got a whole range of stuff, that once the new website is live, hopefully by you know, May this year, everything will be ready to rock rolling, or it’ll be ready before May anyway. But you know, we want to make sure that people can come to us for everything they need on a non alcoholic and a cocktail basis, which is incredible, because then we can start showing people how to make better drinks at home. Also how to recognize money mentality drinks, instead of love mentality drinks, as well, because you’ll know that certain things are not actually true. natural flavors on a label doesn’t mean they’re using real passion fruit means that they’re using a real passionfruit flavor from a syringe. But according to the labeling laws, natural flavors is what you know, artificial flavoring is called on labels, which is quite sad. Yeah…

LAUREN:
absolutely. And I’m excited to go on this tour of the warehouse with you. But before we do, could you give me an example of if I was to, so choosing any mocktail that I could create with one of your products there? Give me an example of what the ingredients specifically for that one would be. And then what would I garnish it with? Just speaking of garnishes?

CLINTON:
Excellent. So again, we’ve got a whole range of dehydrated garnishes, which is one of my like, first ranges, we’re doing standard garnishes. So we’ve we’ve got rose petals, coffee beans, and baby marshmallows. Okay. The baby marshmallow is just incredible. Because if you’ve got a creme brulee gun, and you can roast a marshmallow on top of it of Espresso Martini. I mean, we’ve just added $5 On top of on top of the cocktail, but that fits and that love that people are going to watch it’s fantastic. So with with a full range of stuff, we’ll have a dehydrated extended and a premium garnish range. That premium is just because it’s been made by me and a chef instead of by my production team. And it’s just more creative stuff. But just to show you kind of a simple recipe. Bear with me one second I was going to grab a gloss do something..

so I’ll just do something really simple to show you how simple it can actually be. So I’m gonna put in 45 mils in a highball glass that’s a longer glass in a couple of ice cubes. Obviously the shape of the glass the shape of the ice always works better if they if they work in place, but this is just very Simple, handheld kind of recipe for sparkling water

grab yourself a bar spoon. Really quick, up and down churn which is one of the steering methods. And then that’s it. Here we have a very, very tasty mocktail and in terms of a garnish, dehydrated fruit on top. And then hopefully soon we can add a little bit of our cocktail mist. And now I’ve got a $20, mocktail, right here And something I’ll be happy to serve even to my biggest enemy, not that i have any

LAUREN:
I certainly wish I was there with you. So I could try some that look really, really fun. That’s awsome! all right So let’s go on this warehouse tour. Are you going to show us around?

CLINTON:
Sure. Before I do, everything you’re going to see inside this warehouse is what I’ve accumulated in a 25 year bartending career. I’ve been through a couple of different collections in my life. I’ve always been passionate about my work as a private bartender, and I’ve always had that sense of creativity. So I’ve created a lot of stuff. But throughout a 25 year career traveled to 18 countries have done over 150 cocktail and flair bartending competitions. I’ve had an incredible career. So everything I’ve done, I’ve collected you know events where I travel overseas, or buy local stuff from India or Czech Republic or Greece or wherever I’ve been. And this warehouse is full of little bits of stuff that I’ve found online, picked up myself, swapped cocktail masterclasses for all sorts of things. So there’s been a lot of bartering, and missioning around a lot of shops because all the all the back furniture that completes my cocktail school, it’s all secondhand furniture as well. So I’ve been kind of as as smart as I could be. So we’ve done a lot of shuffling around the space. But I’ll take you back. I’ll show you what it looks like here first. So that’s a Moroccan wardrobe, which is something I bought secondhand from a Turkish furniture shop. What I did was actually turned the doors of the wardrobe into odd pieces using epoxy resin. So I’ve got orange and cinnamon door, over here ive got the lemon and Rosemary.

LAUREN:
I love that combination of your you know, sustainability interest with the with the garnishes. I think that’s so clever.

CLINTON:
Yeah, well, that was my first project during the first lockdown of 2020, you know, so and then we can start on the side. So that’s basically where I’ve got little bits and pieces, fancy glassware. Then you go on to wine cellar at the back with another display of stuff. All the furniture is obviously stuff I’ve acquired in this country. But all the little bits and pieces come from the variety of areas. These two shelves here, we’re going to be redoing shortly and adding more stuff to it. All my miniature collection is at the top there. So that’s alot of stories behind that, specialty shakers, cocktail shaker Collection. These two shelves currently are the shelves that hold all the equipment for the live master classes over here. So we could do up to 30 people at a time, all shaking and stiring and swizzling together. And then that shelf is going to be redone as well. That’s an experimental shelf, all sorts of stuff on the top. And then it runs all the way down to their, and we’re starting to fill that back wall as well. So we’ve separated a lounge area in the back.

And then we’re going to have obviously more shelves put there and there to then have a full bar pretty much but the one thing that’s pretty cool about the warehouse is that we’ve got an indoor basketball hoop. And now we’re starting to get everybody who does a class here to sign the wall. So this will be the only wall that’s open, but the furniture will run all the way around and create a very unique space all the mobile bars we use for events fill up the space to create a pretty cool environment. You got talent bar, we’ve got a marble bar that opens up this bar used for events in Gucci in Melbourne and Sydney last year. And the marble that’s inside the top of this ball matches the floor of Gucci as the same Italian marble of the floor of the Gucci store. That was just a bit of a lucky twang, I suppose. And then it just goes down here. We’ve obviously got liquors infused vodka shelf, liquors and ports and sherries, spirits ranging from our favorite tequila, rum, whiskey, gin, and vodka at the bottom. A shelf of some specialty equipment and our range of garnishes that we use on the classes. Yeah, that’s that one there. And then this shelf is obviously starting with all the glassware. So we’ve got our stemmed cocktail glassware, Tiki mugs over there.

Sorry, that’s, that’s in a way, but that’ll move. And then this is where the other four shelves will eventually be with glassware. So each class, every drink, everybody makes they choose their own glassware off the shelf. very theatrical with a cocktail classes. And obviously, if you know, somebody’s making their own drink, they still make the same drink as everyone else does. I just don’t put alcohol there but more soda water. So yeah, that’s, that’s the space. And then just yeah, we’ve got a couple of other trophy cabinet, little tidbits, a little hanging shelf of old strainers a library with magazines and, you know, media that I’ve been involved in newspapers, magazines, all that. So it’s, it’s a museum of my career, and also the first and only walking cocktail school in Australian history.

LAUREN:
That is so exciting. Thank you so much for taking us on that tour and showing us all that stuff. That’s really interesting.

CLINTON:
Yeah, it’s, it’s a great story. And with all of this, the best place to work when the products you know, I’m sitting with such an incredible range of of things that I can do within my business. So we’re looking forward to Systemising everything so that I can I step out and focus on my mobile cocktail trailer, and do some festivals and enjoy that side of the bar tending world a little bit as well.

LAUREN:
Awesome. Well, is there anything else that you think that the Eatwell readers should know about pineapple jam right now?

CLINTON:
Look, all I can say is that, in the future, we’re going to have a very exciting online subscription. We’ve got a new website coming out. Now, obviously, we’re in lots of labels to do. Once we start to promote the business officially, for the first time, we are going to be focusing on making better cocktails of home. And hopefully one day we’ll have a film crew following me to people’s homes where I’ll be the ingredient hijacker and steal stuff off a barbecue and show them how to make cocktails with everyday flavors that they’re using anyway. So at some point, we’ll love to see them, you know, you at home, but we will be working on a very cool online subscription, where it’ll be extremely interactive, and we’ll show you how to make and drink better at home. Whether it’s mocktails or cocktails.

LAUREN:
That is so exciting. Well get jump on board to the pineapple Jam website, everybody. I’m sure that they will be able to put a little hyperlink under the screen as I’m saying this. But if not, it will certainly be in the comments underneath this video. Thank you so so much.