Fever-Tree CEO Tim Warrillow says clean and green will swamp all food and liquor

Simon Evans
March 29, 2016
The Age
Corporate types and sophisticated hipsters have lifted Australian sales by 77 per cent for the world’s biggest premium mixer company Fever-Tree.
And chief executive Tim Warrillow is now pushing the brand of upmarket tonic and soda waters further into the mainstream.
Fever-Tree listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2014 and produced annual sales of £59.3 million ($110 million) in calendar 2015 as demand for its all-natural products combined with the smart marketing pitch that there’s no point spending up on a high-quality gin or whisky if the mixer being used is a commercial product full of artificial flavours and preservatives.
Sales climbed 63 per cent in Australia in calendar 2015 and Mr Warrillow said they were up 77 per cent so far in the first three months of trading compared with last year.
Sugar low
Mr Warrillow predicted there would be an even faster shift towards all-natural products and an anti-sugar backlash right across the food and liquor sector.
“There’s no question it’s a long-term trend,” he said.
“We will see it move faster right across the food and drinks industry.”
The British government has announced a levy on drinks with a high sugar content that will raise about $1 billion annually.
Mr Warrillow, who founded Fever-Tree in 2005 with business partner Charles Rolls, said the patterns of growth in Australia since the company’s products first appeared in bars and liquor retailers in 2012 had been very similar to Britain.
More affluent drinkers viewed it as “an affordable luxury” which complemented the taste of higher quality gin and other spirits.
Spirits makers encourage the shift to higher-quality mixers because it enhances the taste of their own products in a glass where tonic water or ginger ale made up more than three quarters of the overall drink.
Talks with Woolworths
About 45 per cent of Fever-Tree sales in Australia are through liquor retailers, with 55 per cent through bars, hotels and restaurants. He won’t comment on the actual level of sales but says growth has been ahead of plans.
Mr Warrillow said Fever-Tree was in talks with Woolworths about extending the brand into the retailer’s supermarkets; it is already in Woolworths liquor chains of Dan Murphy’s and BWS.
In the longer-term, Fever-Tree will also seek spaces on the shelves of the liquor store chains owned by rival Coles. The product is already being sold in some independent supermarkets like Foodland in South Australia as Mr Warrillow and his team try and strike the right balance between the prestige market and higher sales volumes from acceptance as a mainstream product.
He said even in softer economic conditions the brand had thrived because it was viewed as a small and affordable luxury. Mr Warrillow cited the experience in Spain after the global financial crisis where the jobless rate soared past 26 per cent, but sales of Fever-Tree rose strongly.
The company is named after the slang name for the cinchona tree in Africa where quinine, a core ingredient of tonic water is sourced from the bark. Locals termed it the “Fever Tree” because of quinine’s anti-malarial properties. The company still sources quinine from trees on the border of Rwanda and the Congo.