Summary
Chris catches up with Emma from Fling Premium Cocktails and how her and her husband Ben started making these premium cocktails that come in a can. Including NZ’s first canned espresso martini.
Great tasting products with no artificial flavours. Listen to the full interview below.
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** This transcript was generated by an AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you have questions about any of the information found here, please reach out to us.
Chris [00:00:21]:
All right, so here we are at Fling premium cocktails. And I’m with Emma. Emma and Ben. Ben’s off in the background swigging some of the merchandise. I guess that’s testing. I don’t know.
Chris [00:00:35]:
He’s looking happy. Anyway, that’s the main thing. So tell me a little bit about Fling.
Emma [00:00:39]:
So we started Fling three years ago, and we had a bit of a love for cocktails and decided after having kids, we didn’t have time to make them anymore. So we started with a mojito and a margarita in a can and then expanded to have and espresso martini, a passion fruit martini. And then yes, started our cocktail range with our mixers last year.
Speaker C [00:00:56]:
Cool.
Chris [00:00:56]:
So these are nonalcoholic mixes?
Emma [00:00:59]:
Yeah, the mixes are non alcoholic, so you can add your own spirit to the more equally non alcoholic by adding water. And then we’ve also got the candor range, which are just one alcoholic drink per serve. Per can.
Chris [00:01:10]:
Oh, nice. Okay. All right, so where’s Fling at the moment?
Emma [00:01:15]:
We actually just moved from Hawke’s Bay back to Auckland. So we’ve started in Hawke’s Bay three years ago and just moved to north of Auckland in Walkworth with these. So, yeah, it’s been pretty cool to send them all around the country, north and south.
Chris [00:01:27]:
And if you’re listening to this, where would they go to buy a Fling?
Emma [00:01:32]:
We have an online store which is Flingcocktails.co.nz. And if you hop on there, you can also find liquor stores across the country. If you pop in your Postcode it’ll, tell your local liquor store.
Speaker C [00:01:41]:
Cool.
Chris [00:01:41]:
So tell me the story about developing this. I’m imagining a lot of testing.
Emma [00:01:48]:
Yeah, absolutely. We actually it was far too many trips to Hawaii. Sat on a beach drinking cocktails, and then we came back and decided we wanted to be a part of the cocktail movement in New Zealand. So there’s a lot of vodka sodas on the market, but not a lot of canned cocktails. So we kind of wanted to we watched overseas and we wanted to bring it to New Zealand. So we’re the first company in New Zealand to Canada. Espresso martini. So use all real fresh fruit juices in it. Nothing artificial. So kind of steering clearer. The vodka soda market with all flavors. So it’s been quite an educational process for us to teach that you can actually have real fruit juices and a real cocktail in a can that’s just a crack away.
Chris [00:02:22]:
All right, I might have to have a taste of one of these. Try the espresso martini.
Emma [00:02:26]:
Actually, this is a nitro cocktail, so if you give the can a really good shake before you crack it open.
Chris [00:02:30]:
All right. Okay. So I’m going to test this out. Oh, damn. That’s good. That’s really good. Oh, that’s alcoholic one too.
Emma [00:02:43]:
The Espresso Martin is definitely the most popular can cocktail we do, and we actually sell that into bars now. And the set, they just shake hands and sell it as if it’s one of their own cocktails.
Chris [00:02:52]:
Nice. So that was what I was going to ask was distribution wise, how far have you got with that?
Emma [00:02:59]:
It’s a family run business. It’s me and my husband. So we do it in between two small children and so we actually go liquor store to liquor store at the moment, going around getting it in stores. So we’ve made it into we’ve got six South Island stores now, which is quite cool. And then yeah, all across the North Island. So French to enter that this year.
Speaker C [00:03:13]:
Cool.
Chris [00:03:15]:
So we’ve got espresso martini, passion fruit martini, classic margarita, and classic mojito. And have you got plans for new ones? Are you coming up with that all the time or is that sort of you’re just sticking with the base?
Emma [00:03:29]:
Yeah, we definitely we’re always working on new cocktails in the background, so I think we’ll probably see a few more added to the mixer range. So the mixers we’ve got the rosebudge, the margarita and the espresso, but the plan is to probably have six of those by the end of the year and maybe a non alcoholic can.
Chris [00:03:42]:
Yeah, now that sounds good. I got to say, think that cocktails were much bigger thing when I was young, right? So in the 80s there was a lot more cocktails, but that might just be because I was young at that time and I cared about that sort of thing.
Emma [00:03:59]:
Yeah, I think it’s just been quite a change in everyone kind of went to beer and then vodka soda and now like gin’s on the way back up and cocktails are becoming trendy. We do a lot of events where we have cocktails on tap and people are always like, oh, guys don’t drink cocktails. And I was like, guys drink cocktails. I think it’s pretty awesome to see everyone just enjoying them and guys holding pink cocktails, which they originally embarrassed about and now just own it. So it’s quite cool.
Chris [00:04:20]:
Do you remember the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail?
Emma [00:04:23]:
I don’t.
Chris [00:04:24]:
Yeah, I’m really old, so that’s cool. But that made it really cool for guys who drank cocktails and pulled women. That was the idea at the time. But yeah, no, that’s cool. What else should I have asked that I didn’t ask?
Emma [00:04:39]:
I’m not sure. You think you’ve probably pretty much covered it all, but yeah, give it a go.
Chris [00:04:44]:
Okay. You can be found in field days at the pantry. In the pantry, that’s what it’s called. I was going to say what is this thing called that’s cool. All right, I’ve got a random question for you. Do you listen to podcast at all? Podcast? Yes. Give us a couple of recommendations of your favorite podcast.
Emma [00:05:06]:
Oh, favorite podcast. Actually, there’s one. I’m a real bit of an ecommerce nerd since having an ecommerce store, so I quite listen into the Zyber podcast. That’s probably my favorite one.
Chris [00:05:15]:
Okay. And another sort of fun one.
Emma [00:05:19]:
I can’t think what they’re called now. There’s a social Media Girls, and it’s gone straight from my head, but they’re quite fun to listen to and have yarns and just talk about social media. It’s quite cool. To the journey for me.
Chris [00:05:28]:
Yeah, I know what you mean. I listen to some all the time and then somebody goes, what’s it called? I’m like, I’d have to look at my phone.
Speaker C [00:05:37]:
All good.
Chris [00:05:37]:
Okay. Well, thanks for emma. Really appreciate that. We’ll let you know about when this comes on.
Speaker C [00:05:42]:
Cool.
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