Page 5 - Chase Case Study

"When they bought it, they had a contract with us to keep

supplying them, but then they found they could get them
cheaper elsewhere."

Furthermore, they forced Chase to rebrand his fledgling

distillery, which was a “bit of a bugger”, he says, but also a
blessing in disguise: “You don’t want a premium drink

associated with snacks.”

Origins

"When I was working on Tyrrells, we had

tonnes of rejected small potatoes we

couldn't use, so I was looking for something
to use them for, and I thought of vodka"

Initially, Chase knew nothing about vodka

— “Before I would have said vodka’s

vodka, but now I know different”

In 2004 whilst travelling in the USA, looking for packaging
equipment for the chips, Chase stumbled on a small

distillery making potato vodka and thought this would be a

great operation for his rejected potatoes. Returning home,

he thought about it, researched the market and found it to
be full of a lot of ‘twee’ marketing stories or large corporate

companies. So, he thought there would be a market if he

could make a quality product and sell it with the provenance
and pedigree.