Street Tequila: How a family lockdown project became the UK’s latest alcohol brand

What they kick-started as a purely theoretical father-daughter project to learn about the basics of business and branding steadily transformed into something much bigger and very real – the creation of Street Tequila, a small-batch tequila brand with an unexpected origin and an authentic brand story.

“The idea was simply to give my daughter something to focus on,” Dudley explains. “I wanted to teach her about brands and business, two worlds I know a little about. We decided to center it around a product, something really tangible.” At a time when everything had been turned upside down by Covid-19, a family project seemed like the perfect way to inject some positivity into their daily lives.

The decision to focus on tequila wasn’t random. With a strong influence from Ryan Reynolds’s successful promotion of Aviation Gin, the pair felt a pull towards something similar. They recognized that gin was already a pretty saturated market, as were vodka and craft beer. Tequila, on the other hand, was making waves in the US but had yet to really gain any traction in the UK and that was showing no real signs of actually changing. “Tequila was all over the news in the States but was still under the radar here in the UK. That contrarian spirit and going against the popular trend has always been in my DNA, so we thought, let’s go where others aren’t.”

Initial brainstorming sessions took place around the family dining table during those long, distant lockdown days. Every weekend, the Dudleys would come together to discuss a different aspect of the potential product: the name, branding, values and the type of product they wanted to create. The name ‘Street’ quickly stuck, inspired by the gatherings people were having outside their homes during lockdown. “People were meeting in the street, keeping six feet apart, but actually connecting with neighbors they might never have spoken to before. We wanted a name that captured that sense of community, that sense of people coming together.”

The creation of the Street Tequila liquid was far from a straightforward journey. The process involved researching and then trying to connect with distilleries in Mexico, dealing with a fragmented supply chain, the Mexican government rejecting the original labels and navigating a myriad of other logistical challenges – all from thousands of miles away from the product itself.

Tequila, much like Champagne, can only be made in a specific region of Mexico. “We found our way to a family-run distillery in Mexico and they were hugely helpful. I got through to the youngest generation of the family. It was refreshing to have that personal connection, something that feels rarer in today’s business world and felt right for the brand.”

The bottles, corks and labels each proved to have their individual challenges. “We naively assumed that the distillery would have bottles, but it turns out everything had to be sourced separately. It was mind-bogglingly complex, but that’s part of what made it all so rewarding. With a major glass shortage globally as a result of the pandemic, it took us about eight months just to finalize the bottle supplier.” Eventually, having found another family-run business, they went with a screen-printed design, giving the bottle a quality feel to go with what they had made sure was a quality liquid.

Even after they had a product, the challenges just kept on coming. Shipping the bottles from Mexico was an epic journey in itself. “We tracked the boat all the way from Mexico, past Miami, across the Atlantic, until it finally docked in London. My dad even got his binoculars out to spot it passing through the Thames Estuary. That was another nice family moment.”

With a few thousand bottles now finally in hand, they are entering the next phase – marketing and distribution. “We’re putting it out at £34 a bottle in line with the quality product, but not positioned as premium. It’s a small batch, nurtured product with a lot of thought put into every element.” The marketing strategy is as grassroots and “happy amateur” as the product development, the Dudley family tapping into their networks and social media but, importantly, maintaining the community and ‘friend of a friend’ spirit that has got them this far.

“We’re literally making it up as we go along, but that’s the point,” Dudley admits with a grin. His children and wife have all taken active roles; his youngest son is helping with social content, his daughter with the research and establishing the brand and his oldest son has been involved in building and tweaking the website. “It has been an amazing experience for the whole family. We’ve learned so much, and that’s valuable in itself. And boy, is there still a lot more to learn.”

There’s something undeniably personal about Street Tequila. The brand is not just a business venture; it’s a family story born out of a desire to create something meaningful during a time of global uncertainty. Dudley reflects on the project with a sense of pride: “The hope is that, when someone thinks of tequila, there’s an outside chance they think of Street. I want it to be a brand with substance – something that has value and a story.”

Dudley is always on the lookout for partners and collaborators, experts and novices, or anyone who’s interested in the Street Tequila journey. And if you are stuck for a slightly different Christmas present...