It is often said that the most innovative ideas are borne out of frustration with the status quo, which is exactly how Nuba Cocktails was conceived by Leeds based entrepreneur Victoria Novis.
Victoria, who showed signs of her entrepreneurial future when she was voted the most likely in her school year to be a successful entrepreneur, began hatching her plans to launch the UK’s first single serve RTD cocktail after many frustrating experiences whilst out socialising.
Victoria explains “as a woman who doesn’t drink beer or cider, the only options left when out in bars and clubs are usually an uninspiring range of wine and spirits. Furthermore, the number of outlets which actually offer cocktails is very limiting outside of London, and when you find a bar that does serve cocktails, there are long queues (due to the length of preparation time), poor product consistency between bars (depending on the training and skill of the bartenders), and a huge fluctuation in prices with some cocktails becoming prohibitively expensive.”
When Victoria undertook further research she found that, not only was her own experience a common occurrence across the UK, but that many of the problems she encountered could easily be overcome by creating a quality, authentic tasting Ready-To-Drink cocktail brand. If Victoria could recreate the authentic taste of classic cocktails in a single serve, ready to drink format, not only would it make the product more accessible to any outlet with a fridge or access to ice, but it would also guarantee product consistency with no skilled staff required.
When it was also discovered that both cocktails and the RTD market were two of the largest growth areas within the drinks industry, Victoria wasted no time, as her entrepreneurial flair took hold, and she spent months with an award winning mixologist to develop and deliver a range of RTD cocktails using premium spirits and natural juices which offered an authentic taste, whilst using no preservatives, additive or artificial sweeteners, and brought the high alcohol content of cocktails down to just 7%, so that cocktails could be enjoyed responsibly for longer (throughout an evening).
What Victoria has created, in Nuba, is a UK based RTD cocktail brand which provides consistently authentic tasting cocktails accessible to resellers across the country, with no skilled staff required, at an affordable price for the consumer.
Victoria explains “stocking Nuba is the fastest and cheapest way of incorporating cocktails into any establishment. There are no staff training costs, no queues building up while cocktails are being prepared, no wastage of fresh ingredients and no issues with consistency across bartenders. All these benefits for the same end product, it’s an obvious choice! If however, you don’t want to lose the theatre of creating a cocktail you can simply shake the product in a cocktail shaker with ice before straining and pouring into the appropriate glass.”
Nuba Cocktails took nearly a year to fine tune the recipes of its Cosmopolitan, Mai Tai and Mojito range to ensure they tasted as close to the fresh versions as possible. So far, Victoria has been overwhelmed with positive feedback on the superior taste enthusing that “many bartenders claimed they wouldn’t be able to taste the difference between their own cocktails and Nuba Cocktails.”
The brand has already won awards, being named the “Best Inflight Food and Beverage Product of the Year” and also being named Restaurant Magazine’s “Product of the Month”. It may be that Victoria’s classmates were right after all….
