Simone Musgrave — Entrepreneur, Business Owner, Gin Aficionado

it is yet another edition of what's involved special guest today and somebody I've been looking forward to speaking to because I want to know all about them her name is Simone Musgrave now when I first heard Musgrave I thought I'm sure I've seen that somewhere before and upon further inspection Simone you are the founder and CEO of Musgrave crafted spirits that's correct yes I am I'm everything yeah that's fantastic the thing that caught my attention immediately of course was was the gin because I am a big fan of gin and and I am I'm sort of very loyal to to to particular brands so we weren't going to that now but I definitely now need to find a little bit more about Musgrave but first and foremost before we get there will you tell me a little bit about Simone who is Simone where do you come from and how on earth did you get into crafted spirits yes so I I grew up in Pretoria my parents hail from Zimbabwe my father grew up in Tanzania and they sort of ended up strangely in Pretoria where I spent most of my childhood and I guess sort of fast forward to my my career I got involved in the FMCG industry and so spent you know sort of 14 years of my career developing products I was head of innovation for food Corp RCL foods and really worked across beautiful brands and powerful brands from a trends analyst point of view all the way through to launching products on the shelf I also started how I got into that industry as I started a baby food business as all good young mothers do I had my first child at 26 my second at 28 quite interested in their diets and health and started a baby food business called Yum Nums which sort of launched me into that product manufacturing food retail sort of space and so it was it was always a passion although I studied linguistics and closer so one wonders why did I end up in food but I think you know if I can think back to my childhood it was always about food and about products and beautiful things and I think that's sort of the the journey that I followed which has led me into Musgrove so man I wanted to ask you though but you know just in terms of that journey yeah I get the baby food but what made you decide yeah I can do this I can go out and sell alcohol products I mean which one did you start with so it was an interesting time I had spent sort of 13 years in corporate I'd survived three acquisitions from the lifestyle group to food Corp to RCL foods and the chicken guys decided the Innovation Center the in Cape Town that I'd set up was no longer a huge focus for them and I was facing retrenchment so being a single mom and you know needing that salary I thought holy crap I better start looking for something else to do and was really reluctant to go back into the corporate world and into into this sort of FMCG space I think I'd felt like I'd done my time of course I'd had huge value in terms of retail relationships understanding the supply chain product brand so I felt well let me dabble and see what comes up I spent a lot of time going on journeys around the world part of my job was to eat and drink around the world and come back with trends and ideas so you know it was a rubbish job but someone had to do it and so on my one trip to London I was with in fact I was with Woolworths we were on a sandwich trip and I started to see this craft this word craft and I was starting to investigate from a trend point of view what did craft mean you know it was sort of going into fast food even and onto alcohol and I picked up on this gin trend and being a gin and tonic lover and having grown up in Zimbabwe and and that sort of sundown a moment in the bush it really resonated with me so I went on a gin and tonic tour of the east side of London and we had a lot of gin that night and a couple of pies thrown in and just started to think well I really loved this occasion and this this experience and I love the stories but the British botanicals and product didn't really resonate with me it wasn't my story so I came back and facing retrenchments I thought well let me just do this and I knew how to put products together I had the surname with such a rich story behind it of our family's adventures in Africa and thought well let me do something on the side I was a little bit bored with chicken and peanut butter and mayonnaise development and it just seemed a lot sexier so I started to it certainly is sexy I mean you know peanut butter gin you know it's not a hard decision I don't think for for most people to make exactly and so it just was in in some ways a sideline to keep me entertained while I was waiting to hear when I would be pushed out and I you know product development is really about not you don't have to know everything about that product it's about doing your research putting the right people around you and saying this is the vision so I found Roger Jorgensen who for me is just such a guru around gin and really was the one of the first guys out there doing amazing amazing developments with with craft alcohol and started to check to him saying you know this is my story I want to find botanicals from Africa that in the countries my grandfather adventure to and create this African gin famous wasn't really my story and we started to put a botanical set together and brand I understood it was my own name so it was an easy brief found the right agency to develop a pretty label but I knew how to cut my teeth with a classic gin before I launched into what I always wanted to do was pink and within six months I had bought a thousand bottles from France got some labels we'd made a batch of gin and the distillery that I approached had just started I never wanted my own distillery I'm not a distiller more of a brand a person so within six months we'd got this product I then walked the streets of gin in my handbag and and sold it in and it was really very very quick it was at the right time 2015 was the start of the gin trend in South Africa and it was still very much in its infancy and and the rest is history so I hadn't actually got retrenched a year later I still wasn't retrenched and I had launched pink my bosses knew what I was doing that I think they thought shame bless her let her do this because we know we're gonna boot her art and eventually I begged them I begged them to let me go and and then eventually about six months after I launched pink I went full-time into my script it's a it's a stunning story and I mean you if you look for example even at the website it has this sense of old-world charm and sophistication and elegance is that what you were going for absolutely I think everything that I wanted to bring to a brand was a femininity and a powerful woman energy to that but with that comes this heritage story and the story is really of my grandfather who arrived in Africa in 1947 my father was nine months old they'd won a ship for three months you know those days that was the gap year and he had decided to move out of carpentry into being a missionary and Africa he could have chosen India we could have chosen Africa and he chose Africa and so he spent 30 years in the bush missioning my grandmother was the nurse and they built clinics and schools in very very remote areas so I always say that to go at 19 years old from Plymouth to have to Dar es Salaam essentially is where they landed into Kenya was was terrifying and that was the ultimate bravery and then the sort of pink story is that really my my bravery is a and trouble female entrepreneur in South Africa forging my way as a single parent and and so this the story of heritage and bravery and power female power is really the essence of the brand the DNA of the brand but we have we've really learned a lot over the five years and we started with this brand idea and how it's evolved and how the consumers told us how they see it so it's been a super interesting journey and the evolving of the brand wonderful stuff it is what's involved my special guest we're talking Musgrave the craft spirits craft drinks Musgrave spirits comm is the place to go and we have the founder and CEO Simone Musgrave chatting to us when we come back though I want to talk a little bit more about about jinns because a jinn is not just a jinn I mean you you get stuff that tastes like pain stripper and then as you move up and you get the different qualities of jinn now just from what I can see the Musgrave is one of those top top quality jinns when we come back can we talk a little bit about what goes into making a jinn absolutely fantastic stuff it is what's involved my special guest is Simone Musgrave when we come back finding out how we make jinn about and we're back it is what's involved special guest with me is Simone Musgrave she is the founder and CEO of Musgrave spirits Simone quick one what goes into by the way let me just get your name correct it's Musgrave crafted spirits I don't want to get into trouble for that what goes into making jinn so jinn is I always said in my easiest way to explain it is flavored vodka so essentially you start off with a base spirit now this can be a spirit made from grain it could be a spirit made from grape or from cane and there's different interpretations of that and I'm not sure that it makes a whole lot of difference but it adds to a story we've chosen to go canes spirit it's a high quality cane spirit obviously it's flavorless and that is your base and so all jinns will start with a base and the only thing that makes a jinn is juniper so you that's the you could have a hundred percent juniper jinn after that you can start to add really whatever you like and there's some jinns and I would say one of the one of the ones I love is monkey 47 and that's got 47 different botanicals from German forests so it's really a playful space and it's one of those spirits and I think this is why it's become such a trend because there's so much story in every different jinn now one can make that badly as well the under distilling of it could make it really rough and and quite harsh they can be limited the people can use flavors so there's very little legislation around this as well but essentially what you want to do is the distillers craft lies in when they cut that spirit so it goes into the the the pot still it's distilled the first but that comes out is a bit smelly and pongy because it's almost been stewed and the very last but is similar it's that middle piece that is the the gem and your distillers craft is really in knowing when to cut that and then the balance of the botanicals the balance of sweet and bitter and sour those are all things that add to a good jinn but essentially it is quite a skilled operation and I think what's happened is a lot of jinns have sort of taken the shortcuts and that's when you get the rough and you can almost taste it it's almost hard in your mouth obviously pure alcohol is hard on your mouth anyway but you can certainly taste a non-balanced jinn so what I wanted to do was create a jinn that was memorable that when you open that that cork you took that cork out you you smelt it and you knew immediately it was Musgrave I think the winners in this game are Hendrix Hendrix really achieved that and it was certainly my inspiration is they open you open that button you take a sip you know it's a Hendrix and I think Musgrave has achieved that as well so for me it's very important that it's memorable and that it really the story we tell you can taste and I think people can taste those those spicy African notes in it and we always say we the jinn of the spice route which is lovely I mean I've read that story and then it's you know the taste of it says you that the the spicy notes and African botanicals echo the taste of exploration and it is I mean just looking at it it's a throwback to two older days when when you know as you said you know you could sit down in the afternoon in the middle of the bush and enjoy a nice jinn and tonic what is the difference between the pink one and and the other one what is your is it Musgrave 11 is is your your sort of flagship one correct correct that was our original one yeah yeah so the Musgrave original is 11 botanicals that are collected in in terms of my grandfather's journey and the top botanicals that you taste are cardamom cardamom represents the time my grandfather spent in Zanzibar he was one of the first Christian missionaries to speak to the imams of Zanzibar and for me that just that spice island and cardamom is the perfume of spice the other botanical is a is a African ginger now one can get that all over Africa and it is a traditional ingredient usually actually used by traditional healers for stomach health it's also a symbol of peace and power in the closer tradition and we get that from Ghana and it's grown by local communities in Ghana and it's almost this ginger root but with a vanilla banana note to it and it's used all over we can get it in the KZN but we find our best sauce in Ghana we then also use us a pepper called grains of paradise which is harvested in the rainforests in Ghana so it's got this beautiful spicy gingery note to it and what we do with the pink is we just tone that down all the spices are just gently turned but in fact it has all of those 11 botanicals in the pink we then add rosehip which is the bud of the rose that has these beautiful oils often used in cosmetics it adds some tannin and some perfume and then at the end we add a rosewater flavor to it which is a natural 100% natural rosewater and for me it's just the excitement of the perfume with the spice that has really captured people so I always say they brother and sister they got the same DNA but we add some femininity to the pink I don't know you know having a having a look in chatting to you know I kind of wish I'd started this interview off with it with a gin and tonic you know and it's never it's never too early it's got to be you know past 12 somewhere in the world do you find that that guys generally look at the pink chin and go I'm not so sure because I have to admit there is a part of me that enjoys a good pink chin that's been an interesting one of course the the packaging of Musgrave with the roses on the box is such a beautiful sort of perfume feel to it and of course women resonate highly with it but what was so interesting to me is that we have not seen the resistance to pink gin from from men in South Africa and globally in fact there this pink has a different connotation that it's changed it's not it's not a feminine color it's actually a color of power and beauty and and I think the taste of Musgrave is not flowery and too sweet and too pretty it's actually quite a substantial gin so initially there may be this resistance around this is a lady's drink but in fact we've seen at least 50% of our consumers are men and we see that feedback and on our social media and in our purchase so it's been a very interesting journey to see how color is such an important factor in this gin category there's a man at this stage do you still are you still sort of having a separate distillery that makes the product for you or have you got your own distillery now no we contract distill I've never wanted the the factory having had factories and worked in factories I don't want the overhead and the responsibility and really I'm a brand developer and and product lover so I choose the experts find the best place to have it made and that's really my model we bottle contract bottle and another place and and you know now over this corona time it was a huge advantage because I had no overheads to panic about you well I was gonna ask you about that because I think that's affected a whole bunch of people but before we get on to that though you don't just do the gyms though because that's initially what I thought okay this is I need to speak to someone about the gym because as a and you said this and I and I this is what I respect I mean this this powerful woman single mom you still have to do all the mom stuff and now you're running a business in the alcohol world which is traditionally not something that women get into and now you've decided that gin isn't enough what's next yes it is a it's a very male world and I guess I had my my tough boots on coming out of FMCG which is quite similarly male but I think for me it's always been about the product and the beautiful product and I was looking at what do I do next to be honest there's too many gins and in the category there's over 400 gins out there now I think there'll be a clean out after this time but it was just too cluttered now to go to a retailer with another gym it's not gonna work and the consumer is feeling this gym fatigue so what what next and I didn't resonate with vodka I didn't resonate with some of the other spirits and I was sort of mulling this over and we were approached by a big brandy producer to say you know the brandy categories very tired the brands are doer they're not being they haven't really appealed to our young audience and our female audience we would like a young innovative brand to sort of do something with brandy and I was like that brandy I mean I don't even know I don't drink it I don't really know anything about it but we went on a journey with Distel and they showed us the beauty of one of their brands called Fun Rains and you know they're from three-year-old to 21 year old brandy sitting in these beautiful casks and suddenly the lights went on for me that this is such a truly African product we are brands of African brandies the most awarded brandy in the world above any cognac and it started to fit with our heritage story the flavors were absolutely beautiful and I thought hell woman can drink brandy too so we went on this journey and I wanted to bring obviously does a risky category the brandy categories losing a million liters a year and it's in serious trouble and the on impact of that is the farmers are not producing high quality wine spirit to make brandy so I thought oh well I'm not scared of a challenge let's tackle this and what I needed to do was make sure that we disrupt my scrape disrupted the gym category by launching pink we disrupted how packaging is seen and I wanted to do the same so we worked with the Distel Fun Rains team to pull together a blend of some of their beautiful products and then I wanted to bring this African flavor into the category so having had our families businesses run in Zambia we had a lot of access to African ingredients and one of them was this beautiful Zambian black honey it is a it's a honey that's produced by the bees only in winter in one forest in the National Park local communities collect this honey bring it to Central Point which is certified organic and it's savory and Marmite and quite liquid so I said to the Fun Rains team I said can we put this in I want to put this in the brandy and they looked at me as if I'd gone completely mad but it's ended up we've developed a category and you know I say it's a genre of brandy called copper my scrape copper it's almost the bourbon of brandy and it brings flavor we don't talk about age because we feel the young consumer doesn't really know what VSO P is and all these technical terms it's not relevant it's a French designation it's not relevant to us and we brought the vanilla wine is a young fresh light in color to almost fight against this fear of dark spirits which exists and then the black honey is much more serious but also this beautiful smooth honey sort of flavor and we're saying drink it differently don't drink it with coke and see where you go so it's been really fascinating I'm sorry I have to laugh about us South Africans and our brandy and cokes it is what's involved we have the founder and CEO of Musgrave chatting to us Simone Musgrave and we're chatting now about the brandy that they're making and when we come back I want to talk a little bit more about it because it looks and sounds absolutely amazing more from Simone when we come back it is what's involved we are now back with Simone I this this should have been one of those interviews that were in studio Simone and we should have had a sampling in studio you know there was at a time I heard when when sort of everybody was jumping on the gin bandwagon and you could you could get all sorts of gins all over the place there were very few good gins in my opinion and a lot of mediocre gins but then as you said the market became a bit saturated and people started to go no okay so what's next and I heard at a stage that next was going to be rum craft rum and yet you've gone the brandy route in this this black honey Musgrave copper sons absolutely phenomenal because this is something you don't slam coke into it I mean this is a couple of blocks of ice maybe this is a sipping drink it's it's pot still then and that's also something that's very important I think some of the finest brandies are in fact pot still they're my correct yes that's correct and so there's this perception a bad sort of perception of brandy as the bar fight drink and you know that the lower end brandy's are 30% brandy blended with 70% wine spirit so essentially they're not pure brandy yet those are the ones that give the category a bad reputation the pot still brandy's are highly crafted I always say something that sits in a cask for 10 years in a dark room you've got to respect that whereas gin we can make in 16 hours but this this is something really beautiful about the crafting of a pot still brandy which is so pure and it really you know it's wine spirit that gains flavor over time listen I'm sitting here and I'm in all because this there's just so many things that that we haven't got to yet just the fact that you've done this and that you've managed to create this over the last few years and you seem very I don't know very calm and matter-of-fact I would be doing triple somersaults and flick-flacks at the moment because so you've got you've got the gin you've got the copper brandy what else are we looking at so I'm not going to go into the rum space because I haven't seen the numbers although it's been a lot of talk I have seen that the numbers are small there's there's there's something about drum that makes your skin smell and so there's a resistance around drinking that although the Bacardi's you know the white drum is a different space I'm definitely not going that route my my passion has always been around format so we launched our mini which is a 50 mil and we launched it quite you know minis everyone's had you can look behind the counter and you see these little minis but I couldn't understand who was drinking them and for what reason anyway I call it an incidental accident because essentially I thought I want to put a sexy little pink money and a mass grave original money and you can travel with it you know go to your friends take a few with you to a bride gift it and and so I thought well let's just do it so the bottle that we chose was intended to look like a little bottle of perfume and my goodness it just flew it's now ten percent of our turnover and it's really being something the consumer totally understood the retailers took time they didn't believe me that it would work but instantly the Instagram community labeled it the handbag gin and formats and it's been literally been that people are in their bags a bunch of flowers a slab of chocolate and a little mini and your valentines is a show when so for me formats are interesting because before you launch something else make a big one a small one a bucket and a and a medium one and give you know so at home you're gonna have your big bottle the minis you're gonna take with you and our next one which is launching next week and people may think I'm mad but to launch it over this time but essentially we were meant to launch it in March it's a 200 bill and our job is going to be to reinvent the halfjack to be something sexy not brown paper bagged and it's the festival younger sort of place to enter Musgrove so it's your festival little bottle it's bottle service for two people and for me that is really an interesting space is formats and I guess after this it's a one liter pink which would make the most sense so before we rush into any new with the brandy we still got lots of work to do on and invest in is to launch a format that appeal that gives people different ways to use Musgrove I just love and I'm actually looking at the website now and I've I've been drilling over the website for a while now but you've got the the swings already it's the 200 mil ones there are really some images are on the website there are people able to buy those from the website yet yes in fact our shop is live with those the pre-order is only on our shop but it'll start filtering into the retailers from next week and we super excited about it I think it's going to be a 199 pickup so you know in this time where everyone's a bit stretched financially it's still a way to treat yourself with the Musgrove and it's a bit more than a 50 mil so you know it's four double shots and and it's cute and and funky so I want to bring in that that opportunity to be part of Musgrove no matter what your price point is and exciting as next week yeah and I think a great one of the great things that you guys have done here is you've got something called the Musgrove swigs family so you get to taste that that range of products it's the brandy and the gin 650 Rand for four 200 more bottles I think that's that's very reasonable and then you get to choose what your favorite is so my before we before we start wrapping up and we say goodbye and thanks for chatting to us what I did want to ask you though is in terms of your brandies have you seen those gang because I've noticed there's been this quiet little move we mentioned that everybody's talking about the rum but there's been this this quiet move towards these more specialized brandies have you found that as well yes and I think there's been a lot of work done by the brandy foundation to bring the the reputation of brandy back it helps to have this conversation in the media it's bars and restaurants are getting ecologist to get involved in cocktail making and so it's been a it's been a lot of concerted hard work in the industry to to bring the spirit back and it's critical to our agriculture so I think what people forget is that behind this this brandy which is the second biggest category in South Africa bigger than gin is is this industry that needs support and it's a local support so I do see that coming and you know as a brand we need a lot more money to really push hard but what I've always said is bottle by bottle reputation by reputation and that's how I built the gyms and that's how we are building the brandies and Musgrave copper has suddenly just and maybe winter has helped is suddenly just taking all for us now the interesting thing and when we come back as we're gonna wrap up I want to have a bit of a chat about this is that you now have expanded them quite a lot internationally we'll talk about that when we come back it is what's involved special guest is Simone Musgrave founder CEO the do it all person of Musgrave crafted spirits when we come back what's had a bit more to her and we're back it is what's involved and my special guest Simone Musgrave the more I talked to you Simone the more I wish that I'd been sitting here with that with that drink but now talk to me about about you know you've done all of this stuff and again we seem to and I quite hopefully we seem to have glossed over the single mom doing this I mean it's it's come out beautifully what is what is the secret day I think it's a passion for product you know if I speak to young entrepreneurs or women who want to go into business and and some of the barriers that exist if you have a passion for the product and for your for what you do it's really easy so every day I wake up and do something I don't always get it right sometimes it's flipping hard and you fight some battles but if you just wake up every day and do something you you bound to get it right I certainly I'm not an alcohol expert a brand expert but I do have a passion for for for beautiful things and and that really is what drives me I want to be a role model to my two daughters and two women in South Africa to say that there's no industry that's untouchable but you've got to wake up in the morning and do something and and I think that's always been my secret and I certainly felt that during lockdown you know two months of not being able to do was like being in prison for me and so I ended up doing a huge amount around my house you know just so that I would wake up and do something and I think that's all I've done is every day do something to push my scrape forward well I think you've done a fantastic job and I must compliment you as well your website is absolutely beautiful I love the idea that we can go in there and shop and it's not just you know you've got other bits and pieces on there and I think it's well worth checking out the website once again that address is a mass grave spirits.com mass grave spirits.com and check it out there we talked briefly about your international exposure now someone tell me a little bit about that where are you now being where's your part being sold now so we are selling to about 18 countries and what's been so interesting about that is I haven't approached one of them we had in about two years ago two and a half years ago now we had a little bit of a lucky win in that CNN did a seven the inside Africa sort of splurge on us and which was about a 20 minute show which obviously appears four times a day seven days of the week and with that it just opened up the world and we are in almost all African countries up to Nigeria we are in pockets of Europe Europe's quite hard it's quite cluttered with gins but we are doing really well Switzerland and Germany we are in New York Florida San Francisco and LA and again a tough market the US but we've survived there for two years and doing nicely and and then we scattered little pockets of Taiwan Japan and really just the crazy kind of expansion so it peaks at different seasons which is great as well so we're in its winter here we find the uptake in Europe and in summer in on the gym especially we haven't managed to export brandy yet but we've only really had brandy for a year and so that's been a really interesting journey it's tough because that you know you you can't support that much with the exchange rate but our importers are also passionate small business owners and have really driven our brand so 20% of ourselves is now export I think that's absolutely fantastic I always love hearing about South African companies and hearing how they're doing and doing well it gives people some inspiration and Simone two things before I let you go first thing what is one thing about Simone that most people don't I mean obviously you're on about people know who you are they know you as a CEO what is something that people don't know about you I think I look from the outside so successful and confident which I am confident but the every single day I fear fear the failure and maybe is that's what I need to drive me but I sometimes look and think what are you all on about it's just a little business that I run every day and and I think that you know that fear failure sits deep within me and and maybe a dozen every entrepreneur but from the outside one often doesn't know that yeah no I agree with you thank you for sharing that in conclusion Simone what is next what is next for Musgrave crafted spirits well to be honest we we now need to scale the hard thing about scaling a small business is the production the procurement and and the in South Africa the national distribution instead of using small little businesses to get your product to the right places there's only there's a limit that that that allows and so I guess you know who would like to to acquire Musgrave would be a great a great opportunity you know in Barash moved from that from small business to per no record recently it is the obvious trajectory and am I ready I probably am so in order to take this business to the next level I probably need a big player to come in and say well let's partner and it's kind of scary because it's my third child but realistically that's probably where we had it yeah it's always a tough decision with something like that I mean that's your baby you've raised it and and you'd have this you know this this great affinity and affection for it and then you know the corporate guys come in and suddenly it becomes more about the numbers but and my name's on the bottle so it is a it's an emotional one but I do want to I always said to myself when I was growing up I went one day I'm gonna do something great and I think Musgrave could be my great but it needs to be greater now I absolutely believe it can it can be and you know I'm now sort of again I'm kicking myself it's it's now a Friday so I can't even rush out and go and get myself some Musgrave and I'm definitely wanting to try that that brandy as well because that black honey sun's absolutely fantastic but hey Monday's around the corner so we'll be able to do it then Simone thank you so much for taking the time out having a chat to us people can order online and that happens all the time the online shop is open it's Musgrave Musgrave spirits.com so my that's the best place for anybody to get hold of you via the website yes there's a email address that will comes directly to my inbox and our shop is live we listing all kinds of interesting things swigs are ready to go so please get in touch oh and a quick one just for those of you are G and T fans we've got a very nice elderflower syrup that's available as well and it works fantastically with absolutely with the with both of them in fact really I hadn't thought about I hadn't thought about elderflower with a Pinkton but certainly with with your your your other gin I would definitely do give me not again a bit of elderflower in there so mine thank you have yourself a lovely weekend and I look forward to hearing from you and and hearing that the business is going from strength to - Fantastic, thank you, thank you, have a great weekend.