Page 8 - Food&Drink magazine April 2022

✷ RISING STAR
Clean skins, fresh palate
What started with a conversation over a drink turned into an online bottle shop that celebrates female beer, wine, and spirit producers from around the world. Sip’er founders Jenny Cheng and Bree Nicholls tell their story.
IT’S not surprising Sip’er began when and how it did. We were chatting with Chrissy Flanagan, the founder of Sausage Queen Brewing in Sydney’s Inner West, over some sausages and beer. She was talking about other beers she stocked, and the conversation shifted to women in the industry.
It was a topic that kept coming up, so out of curiosity we started looking up different alcohol labels we loved, the producers and stories behind them.
The idea for Sip’er grew from there quite naturally and quickly. We found a lot of amazing alcohol brands headed up by women and realised how infrequently these women were being spoken about in the consumer-facing alcohol space.
The alcohol industry has historically been a very male
dominated one. We wanted to address that in a fun and approachable way that reflected our tone of voice.
CLEAN SKINS
Usually when starting your own business, you leverage your skills and experience in an industry. We didn’t tick any of those boxes for starting an alcohol business beyond being self-proclaimed “adventurous drinkers”. We decided to leverage that into a platform where the language was the same for a consumer who also didn’t come from a background making or curating alcohol.
Our initial nervousness about how the industry might respond to us evaporated pretty quickly. Once we started reaching out to companies the response was overwhelming. We were fielding emails and calls from producers and distributors congratulating us and sharing our existence through their networks.
We started with a small hit list of wines, beers, and spirits that had their own style and story.
Every time we reached out to one producer, they would suggest another. It became an exciting evolution of brands supporting brands.
We now have more than 40 different labels on the platform, all of them Australian (except the tequila). There are fan favourite wine brands like Brave New Wine by Yoko & Andries, The Other Right by Alex & Galit, and Allevare by Alysha & Lucy.
Beers including cans from Mountain Culture by Harriet & DJ, and Two Metre Tall by Jane & Ashley are very popular, as are some spirit labels like Applewood Distillery made by Laura & Brendan.
We want Sip’er to be a site people can come to and feel comfortable enough to find something for themselves; whether they like classic or natural style wines, sour beers or whisky, that also encourages them to try something new.
“ We didn’t tick any of those boxes for starting an alcohol business beyond being self-proclaimed “adventurous drinkers”.”
8 | Food&Drink business | April 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au