Like many, Natasha Durling turned to drink during lockdown. The difference being she was not seeking a salve, but a solution. The Irish-born, London-based founder and CEO of Total Management Group – an event, travel, and creative agency with offices in the UK and New York – found herself suddenly grounded by the pandemic with little prospects of business picking up. 

Eager to stay busy, and in an effort to give back to those on the frontline, Durling and her husband Jack, a former professional rugby player, made premixed cocktails for friends. In the process, they raised funds for the NHS Charities Together – and also uncovered a niche in the drinks market.  

Lockdown Liquor & Co was founded alongside their respective day jobs. Four short months later the business was valued at £4 million. Three years on, they now employ 25 full-time staff, are stocked in 800 outlets, and do over 2,000 weddings a year. In their latest round of funding last December, the company was valued at £15 million. 

“We never aspired to have a second business,” said Durling. “We love making cocktails and drinks, so we found ourselves in lockdown and thought what a faff – you spend 15 minutes making a margarita. Wouldn’t it be great if you had a premium-level mix and all you had to do was shake the bottle?

“We started as a charity initiative to friends and family and said, ‘Look we’re going to pre-batch cocktails and we’ll drop them round to you, pay us what you will’. All of a sudden, we started getting 400-500 orders a week. We were up till all hours squeezing limes or whatever, but it made us think there was a real gap here.”

While the ready-to-drink (RTD) market was growing pre Covid, it has experienced unprecedented growth since. Globally, the RTD cocktails market size was valued at USD782.8 million in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.4 per cent from 2022 to 2030. 

“What was missing was a drink that tasted like a mixologist had made it, with a low sugar content and premium liquor,” said Durling. “We did not come from a liquor background, so we came at this from a business perspective, wondering if there was a direct-to-consumer opportunity here. We set the business up and went ahead with licensing, etc. We also thought, is there another opportunity to bring it directly to hospitality and is there a gap there also within the market?”

During added: “There are a lot of competitors coming into play, a lot following, but I’m okay with that because a competitive category is a better category for us because the concept has been proven. Ultimately, I’d be concerned if we were the only ones doing it. I quite like there’s more competitors coming to play. I think it’s important.” 

Encouragement and expansion

Durling sought advice from industry leaders including Jim Clerkin, former Executive VP & COO of Moët Hennessy Global, whose early encouragement and support inspired the couple to expand their vision for the brand. 

“That was a lightbulb moment for me. He’s been in the industry for 40 years and believed we could change the category. I realised if we didn’t invest heavily in our own equipment, we were going to have a supply chain issue later on when things started opening up. It was a big play, but we got our own production facility and our own production bottling line made. It took eight months and cost hundreds of thousands. People questioned if we should test the market more, but I knew that when things opened up there was going to be a real need for this,” Durling said.

“We couldn’t be reliant on third parties, we needed to own everything. We now have a 9,000 sq. ft production unit and can make 3,000 bottles an hour. We do all our labelling, there’s nothing we don’t do ourselves. It’s all through our team and we control it. That’s our USP, we don’t rely on anyone else. It was definitely a risk, but it paid off for us.” 

Teaming up with C&C Group, the largest distributor and drinks wholesaler to the hospitality industry in the UK and Ireland, helped Lockdown Liquor distribute across the UK. They’re now in a selection of prestigious outlets including Daylesford Organic, Anthropologie, as well as a diverse selection of customers in the on-trade from national restaurant groups, five-star hotels (Claridges and The Berkeley, amongst others), members clubs, theatres to private aviation. 

Working with Côte Brasserie saw their products in 90 restaurants across the UK. “They wanted eight different cocktail offerings on their menus, all with a French twist, and we were able to create special blends just for them. Having that flexibility was easier for us to win those customers over, because they were like if we could create what was already on their menu for less than they were able to create it or for a bigger margin, then there’s no downside,” she said. 

Durling’s main business, Total Management, meant she had access to a lot of corporates big hitters, such as Spotify, Facebook, Twitter, NARS, ASOS, and Virgin. “They came to us looking to do gifting, marketing or just keeping in contact with their suppliers, or clients. We suddenly got a large amount of eyes on the brand. Ordinarily, you’d spend huge amounts on marketing but these collaborations provided us with growth revenue. They wanted to send out something unique and we were doing customisation, and it created a real talking point. So suddenly we came from nowhere and were across Instagram and our marketing level grew in a very organic way but through paid revenue that gave us a marketing platform,” Durling said.

Challenges and opportunities

Brexit has added its own tests. “It’s definitely challenging to ship into Ireland,” said Durling. “There are routes around and we’re working with the C&C Group to bring our vision to Ireland. But we’re also seeing price increases – glass has gone up 20 per cent, the supply chain has taken a bashing, so if we didn’t have our business experience that would have been really problematic for us.

“If we didn’t have the foresight to build in our price structure 12 months ahead, based on inflation, and what we knew was coming, that could have been detrimental as to whether we survived. So, we were lucky in terms of getting ahead of that, but there were supply chain increases – energy supply increases with the hospitality marketplace. We had to be a little bit more mindful of the fact you can’t just zip up your prices anymore, there are pinch points at every part of the supply chain so we had to use a lot of business sense to structure out our modelling and go through the challenges that every business is seeing with the supply changes.”

Requests from the US market have made Durling consider expanding a number of times, but for now, she has decided to concentrate on the UK. “I didn’t want to take my eye off the ball by going into multiple territories because you end up doing nothing right, so for me, there’s a big, big piece of the pie in the UK and I want to focus on that. What we do around the corner, who knows. In terms of growth strategy, we are growing fast – 83 per cent and 98 per cent in our second and third year, so we are definitely heading in the right direction. Our strategy remains the same to grow and scale,” she said. 

Having done three raises to date, the couple are now considering their next move. “I’m very happy with what we’ve achieved, but I do feel we have a lot more to do, whether we do that with a partner and maybe expand into different territories together, maybe. It’s a hard question to answer. Do I think we’ll be snapped up in the coming years? I imagine so, but it all has to make sense. Having said that, I don’t have ambitions to keep it forever. We are building with plans to sell.”

Back at the ranch

In the meantime, Total Management, which employs 50, “jumped back to life” when lockdown ended. “We have some very exciting plans coming up that I’m super excited about but at this moment in time, I can do both. If I’m not hanging out with my kids, I’m working. But I don’t mind that, I love work. I’m all for it,” she said. 

The couple’s professional dynamic has already been well tested as they’ve been working together since 2008 when Jack was injured playing rugby. “He came into Total Management Group and built two departments but in terms of Lockdown Liquor, we bring very different things to the table. Jack’s attention to detail is incredible. He’s a creative visionary. I’m more longer-term strategy, financial, business-minded, building out a model, working with our finance team, understanding the bigger longer opportunities. He’s very hands-on, but it works well and we also brought in a very heavy-hitting team to help us,” Durling said.

“Hiring well” is how Durling balances the requirements of both businesses. “I’m very happy to hire in very talented people and learn from them. That, to me, is key as a founder to have the ability to know it’s better if you’re not the smartest person in the room. Some people are egotistical but I want to surround myself with people who can educate me and bring a new layer of experience to the table. My main sales director was at Moët Hennessy for 18 years and also Mirabeau for three so we’re coming at this with experience. That also comes at a cost. We’ve gone all in, but it was important for us to do that. 

“A lot of people who set up businesses overthink their business, and overthinking it stops you from doing it because you talk yourself out of it. It’s definitely challenging and you need to have a steady hand. Personally, I want to be successful and I put myself under pressure, but equally, it comes with a lot of risk and challenge and if you don’t have a steady hand and the stomach for it, it can be very hard. 

“Being a founder of a business can be very isolating because you drive your team forward and you’re all on the same page, but, ultimately, the buck stops with you. I have a huge sense of responsibility to my investors. I want to make sure that we deliver our plans, that the business drives as much as I said it would. You have to make sure you have this otherwise it can end badly, so you have to have the stomach for that.”