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“We are coffee-obsessed in Australia,” Tom Baker, co-founding father of Mr Black Cool Brew Espresso Liqueur, tells Entrepreneur. “It’s like a religion. It’s a point of national identity.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Mr Black Cool Brew Espresso Liqueur. Tom Baker.
After World War II, Italians immigrated to the nation and brought espresso machines and European cafe tradition with them. The Australian espresso scene flourished to such an extent that Baker says his high college even had a barista.
Folks in Australia also admire to drink, Baker says.
Baker wanted to start a trade that would carry the nation’s passions for espresso and spirits together, so he asked the distiller Philip Moore to be part of him in the undertaking. The co-founders launched a campaign on Australian crowdfunding space Pozible in 2013 and decided they’d make a real waddle of it if their espresso liqueur equipped 200 objects—which it did.
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“It’s a coffee liqueur that actually tastes like coffee, not like sickly sweet fake things.”
According to Baker, Mr Black’s quality taste objects it apart from competitors on the market. “It’s a coffee liqueur that actually tastes like coffee,” he explains, “not like sickly sweet fake things you’re probably imagining when someone says Kahlua or Tia Maria or those other brands.”
Although Baker acknowledges that these astronomical-name brands are fairly popular, he says they salvage no longer accomplish what Mr Black does: approximate “the cup of coffee you’d pay $8 for at the coffee shop.”
To achieve that flavor profile, Mr Black sources special-grade, single-foundation espresso, two-thirds of which comes from Colombia. The company sources the relaxation from Ethiopia and Kenya. Every day, Mr Black’s Australian facility roasts 1,000 pounds of espresso, Baker says.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Mr Black Cool Brew Espresso Liqueur
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In 2015, Diageo Funding Corporation became a minority investor in Mr Black via its accelerator program, Distill Ventures. That and subsequent investments allowed Mr Black to salvage its roastery and brewery and enter the U.S. market.
Diageo acquired Mr Black for an undisclosed amount in September 2022. By then, the brand was the leading top rate-priced espresso liqueur by volume in the U.S. and was available in 22 countries.
“Americans love cold brew. [So] it was a good signal to American drinkers.”
Naturally, Mr Black’s road to success wasn’t always soft. The pandemic proved certainly one of the most significant challenges, Baker says. The Original York Instances published an article about the brand on March 19, 2020, and “as you could probably imagine, that’s not what people were talking about on the 19th of March 2020.”
Mr Black had also spent considerable time and cash establishing itself in the bar scene, where it saw most of its volume in 2019. So, the brand had to pivot; it ragged social media to connect with cocktail and espresso enthusiasts and encourage them to salvage pleasure from the product in the consolation of their personal homes.
The payoff was astronomical — and continues. It be been seven years since Mr Black’s U.S. launch, and over the past year, the multimillion-dollar brand, which is available in all 50 states, has doubled its trade here — and valid equipped its 100,000th 9-liter case.
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Baker attributes part of Mr Black’s popularity in the U.S. to its take a look at-and-learn approach. According to the entrepreneur, Australians drink espresso hot no matter how warm the weather is, whereas of us in the U.S. recurrently take their caffeine chilly.
“Americans love cold brew,” Baker explains. “It was a good signal to American drinkers like, ‘Oh, cool. You’re a new product. You’re not like my dad’s coffee liqueur.'”
“Everyone loves to get out and have a party and drink a few espresso martinis.”
Americans also care for the espresso martini. The drink, which was developed in London by bartender Dick Bradsell in the 1980s, rose to fame in the 1990s, peaking in popularity at the terminate of the decade. After a decline, it made a comeback: Last year, the espresso martini rose five spots in the top ranking of U.S. cocktails, according to CGA by NielsenIQ’s cocktail sales tracker.
Baker says that Mr Black was “the driving force” in the espresso martini’s resurgence, noting that the brand has taught tens of thousands of bartenders how to make the drink and that he and his team “have personally probably drunk more espresso martinis in the U.S. than most other people.”
Mr Black has even brought its Espresso Martini Fest, which premiered in Australia in 2017, to the U.S. for the past three years. This year’s festival, which has enlisted 250 bars nationwide to showcase “their creativity through an array of espresso martini variations,” will race from September 19 to September 29. “It’s great,” Baker says. “Everyone loves to get out and have a party and drink a few espresso martinis.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Mr Black Cool Brew Espresso Liqueur
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Nonetheless, as remarkable as Baker appreciates the mutually beneficial relationship between Mr Black and the espresso martini, he takes yell with the assumption that his brand handiest has as many fans as it does because of the caffeinated cocktail. “It’s easy to attribute our success to this drink,” Baker says, “but it’s more interesting to ask, ‘Why are we winning?'”
The answer to that ask, according to Baker, is unassuming and goes back to the very starting of Mr Black’s story: Quality remains his espresso liqueur’s differentiating factor.
“We probably could have saved millions of dollars and a few years had I just spent another three months thinking about that.”
Additionally, as elated as Baker is by the brand’s success to date, he says Mr Black has handiest scratched the surface. “I’m not shy in terms of my ambition for the brand,” he says. “We want to be No. 1 [in the world].”
To other cocktail enthusiasts who aspire to start their personal spirits brands, Baker has some advice that may well save them a lot of time — and cash.
First, realize that the playbook is totally different these days, so going via the motions and making an attempt to replicate another brand’s success to a tee gained’t salvage you the outcomes you are after, Baker says. He suggests drilling down on who your customers are — and how to support them coming back.
“[I wish we’d] spent a little more time upfront thinking about how we were actually going to recruit drinkers into our brand,” Baker explains. “What will we be better at than every other liquor company? How am I going to get into [customers’] repertoire? I think we probably could have saved millions of dollars and a few years had I just spent another three months thinking about that before we started Mr Black.”
