Hacien Tequila: 'We went to Mexico during lockdown to create our tequila - now business is booming'
During lockdown two friends from Leeds travelled to Mexico to create their own premium tequila. Now they have just launched three more flavours and business has boomed. Catherine Scott reports.
Say tequila to most people and they will recall blurrily end of the night shots, with salt and a bite of lime –and most likely a hangover thrown in.
Well two friends from Leeds are dong their bit to change that perception of the Mexican spirit.
Friends Seb Francis and Jordan Myers, wanted to create a premium drinks brand together.
“My background is the technology/education space and I’ve run a company called Titus for the last 12 years so I am used to running business but nothing to do with food or drink,” says Seb.
“Jordan and I had a desire to build a premium alcoholic brand together.
"We didn’t know exactly which spirit we wanted to develop, but we knew we wanted something premium that we could drink when we were out and about.”
Their initial idea was for a ‘Ready To Drink’ shooter, but then around six years ago they hit on the idea of tequila and in particular flavoured tequila.
“Hardly anyone was touching flavoured tequilas,” says Jordan.
“We also both felt that tequila was pretty stigmatised – a shot of not-great quality spirit you’d have with salt and a bite of lemon at the end of the evening or else, more recently, in a Margarita.
"It’s a bit misplaced and people just didn’t know other ways to drink it. We liked the idea of going into a challenging space and changing perceptions.”
While Seb was a tequila drinker, Jordan definitely wasn’t and took some convincing.
“He couldn't stand the stuff.
“But what is nice now is that we will both now drink tequila, but drink as it should be drunk, either sip it on the rocks or in a cocktail or even with a mixer.”
Having decided on tequila they then had to find a distiller to make it – and it has to be in made in the state of Jelisco in Mexico to be allowed to call it tequila.
“It has the same denomination of origin and provenance as Champagne, where it has to be produced and bottled in a particular area.
“It was the middle of Covid – I was living in Dubai and Jordan was living in Leeds and whilst everyone else was in lockdown we decided to up and get off to Mexico.
“We’d done a lot of research and had narrowed down the distillers we wanted to work with and we wanted it to be a private label, so we could be there throughout the process to develop the liquid, the profile, the bottle. Everything from start to finish.
"We didn’t want it to be the same as what someone else had done, we wanted it to be our own and we found an amazing partner just outside the town of Tequila.”
Everything is made and bottled in Mexico and then shipped to the UK although the friends have big plans to break into the international market next year.
Made using 100 per cent blue agave, Hacien is naturally sweeter and smoother than most tequilas, making it a versatile tipple.
“All of the raw materials and the sugar that are used have to be from blue Webber agave – so there are no added cane sugars or chemicals – that is what we mean when we talk about premium.
"We wanted it as natural and clean as possible,” says Seb.
“People say its premium because it’s in a shiny bottle, but to us premium is what is inside the bottle.”
Hacien’s signature Pineapple Blanco (recommended to be drunk with ginger ale) infuses sweet and aromatic pineapple with 100 per cent agave tequila for a smooth and fruity finish.
“Years ago Jordan and I were in London having some drinks. I’d been drinking a shot of tequila with a shot of pineapple and I got Jordan to try it and asked him what he thought,” says Seb.
“After that point we would continue to drink pineapple and tequila and so it made sense for that to be our first flavour. We then did market testing.
"Pineapple was trending at the time so we jumped on that hype but its been our best seller ever since.”
They also initially made Tequila Añejo Cristalino barrel-aged and filtered with charcoal to remove its colour, while the classic Tequila Blanco offers the clean and aromatic taste of Jalisco’s finest blue agave.
Having invested a lot of their own money to create the tequila, they came back to Leeds to raise more money from local angel investors plus friends and family to take it to the next step of distribution to wholesale and venues.
“We thought the hard part was going to be creating the product, but the hard part actually started once the product was ready,” says Seb.
But they eventually launched Hacien in 2022 – still a challenging time for hospitality as a lot of venues hadn’t survived Covid.
But lockdown had seen people drinking premium drinks at home which was of benefit to the friends.
“Because people had been drinking at home they had gone through the process of premiumisation and thinking more about what they were drinking rather than how much,” says Seb.
“That switch helped us. The battering the bars had taken was tougher. We had to learn how the venues worked – it’s been a learning curve and we are still learning.”
They are now in more than 300 bars and venues across the country, and are also in places like Harvey Nichols, Fortnum and Mason and online.
“It has been a very good year for growth,” says Seb. And in the last few months they have released three more flavours; lemon and lime (mix with grapefruit soda), summer berries (mix with tonic), and coffee (neat or on ice) and Seb says there will be more flavours added in the future as well as a possibility of moving in the ‘Ready to Drink’ marketplace.
In their bid to expand their market they haven also sponsored a number of high-profile events including an event at the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix.
“We want to build on the foundations we’ve got.
"We have seen quite a lot of brands come and go and we want to continue to push hard, build the range and look internationally although we will always be a Yorkshire company with international aspirations.
"We are excited, it’s been a tough journey but looking back now you realise how much you’ve achieved in three years.”