A former Royal Navy captain has changed course and is creating a taste of Japan in Manchester
It’s a rum do, but a former Royal Navy captain has launched a new career with a drink that promises a taste of Japan.
Steph Buttery was on deployment in the Far East in 2018 when she first tried the drink that would change her life.
It was a time of heightened tensions as President Trump was meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore and Steph was part of the HMS Albion crew who spent four months in the Far East.
‘One evening I was in a karaoke bar in Sesibo drinking whisky high balls and I wanted something different,’ Steph said. ‘I asked the man next to me what he was drinking. It was a chuhai, so I ordered one of those. It was a lemon sour and it was amazing.
‘They come in different flavours and strengths and work so well in cocktails. A few days later I was getting the train to Nagasaki and there was a row of drinks machines selling that drink in a can. It’s huge in Japan but when I got home I couldn’t find it and I couldn’t import it easily.’
So, she set about making her own.
‘The alcoholic drink market is saturated but the soft drink market has been largely unchanged for years; there’s cola, lemonade, orangeade and not much else, so I decided to make a sour fruit soft drink,’ said Steph.
‘I had about £10,000 in savings and I gave a designer about half of it to create brand and identity. I had some made and took them round bars in the Northern Quarter saying ‘If I made more of this, would you buy it?’ and a lot of people said yes.’
Steph then contacted flavour houses around the country to see if they would be interested in manufacturing her Chu-lo drink, but was turned down by every one, until one in Lancashire said yes.
‘They took a chance on me and I wouldn’t be doing this now without them. I got the drinks canned and got a pop up on Deansgate where I asked people what they thought – shall I make more, or go back to my job? – from a sample of 1000 people only two said they didn’t like it. The biggest compliment was from people who had been to Japan who said it was just like what they’d tasted there.
‘I was still doing my job 9-5 and was doing this part time from 5-9. I got a £20,000 start up loan and launched properly in November 2019. A month later I went to the International Drinks Expo and won a design innovation award for the cool looking can. ‘I was talking to Yo Sushi, Wagamama and Wasabi and then Covid hit and all our markets closed down. That could have been the death of the business.’
It says a lot about Steph, who was a finalist in this year’s EVAs and who appeared on Gordon Ramsay’s Future Food Stars, that the business not only survived, but thrived.
She gave her remaining stock to restaurant chain Wasabi to distribute as part of their efforts to provide food and drink to NHS workers and during the pandemic, Steph was a part of the military operation to ensure the NHS had sufficient PPE. ‘The supermarkets ran out of toilet roll, but the NHS didn’t run out of PPE – it was close, but it didn’t happen – and that was a great achievement.’
When the hospitality industry started to re-open, Steph bit the bullet and re-launched the business. Chu-lo is now stocked in a number of Oriental restaurants and outlets including Game and HMV as part of her efforts to target the gaming industry.
‘Coca Cola throw money at beating the little guys but because I have a good product, things are still going well. The business is growing well and I think the sky is the limit. Our story is very similar to that of Red Bull and they are now one of the biggest drinks companies in the world,’ Steph said.
‘The big companies have the majority of the market but I just need to keep chipping away at them and we could be unstoppable. The UK is great, but it is a very small percentage of the world – the opportunities out there are humungous, but whatever happens, Manchester will remain our base.’
