Getting things kicked off

One of the first things we did was get incorporated. Probably didn’t need to but felt like a step in the right direction and something tangible to get things kicked off. We initially incorporated as Wombat Brewing Limited but soon discovered a lot of the ginger beers we liked most weren’t actually brewed; they’re largely vodka based pre-mixed ready-to-drinks (RTDs). So, within a couple of weeks we changed our legal name to Wombat Drinks Limited, with the intention to trade as Wombat.

We achieved pretty good results from our early experimentation in the lab (on the kitchen worktop). A big Amazon haul and a lot of research on ingredients allowed us to develop a base-line recipe, however we knew it wasn’t quite right. We were buying flavours from retailers online, expensive juices you couldn’t buy in bulk, and the soda stream was creating more mess than carbonation. So, attention turned to getting a food scientist on board to take our kitchen pipedream to a reality.

From the outset, we wanted our cans and product to embody the core values of our brand – bold, straight-talking, and thinking outside the RTD category norms. The majority of seltzer/RTDs are in the tall, minimalist and sleek cans, often at 250ml. Naturally then, we decided we’d run with big, chunky 330ml beer cans, in-your-face colourways and recognisable brand assets.

Sketches on notepads and renders on Canva’s AI tool formed the basis of initial design ideas of what our branding and cans could look like, but our graphic designer – Ed – took these to the next level. We spent the next few months running different iterations of cans (and merch) until we found the right direction.

Now recipe and brand development were well and truly underway, next up was finding a co-manufacturer.