In our final episode, Kit & Matt talk about the impact community has on their business and the worry of authenticity in supermarkets.
Transcript
Hi, I'm Kit.
And I'm Matt.
We're brothers, mead makers, and small business owners on a mission to showcase the value of authentic food and drink producers.
Today, we're far from home — all the way over in Somerset — seeing what the discerning visitors at Bath Christmas Market think of a tot of mead.
Hello, you're welcome to try some as well.
Yeah.
Oh, amazing. Yeah, that's us, yeah.
We're the same people.
Oh, thank you very much.
Yeah, good to see you.
It's amazing — you can go all the way to Bath and meet someone who lives in the next village along.
Big day?
Yeah. So over the market so far, I've done 6,000 tasters.
Not just today, though.
Not just today, no. That would be a very, very long day.
That’d be a big day.
Yeah.
The flashing mead sign is working well.
It is, yeah.
And there's been a huge amount more interest, actually.
Mead is entering the public consciousness much more now.
So I think, rather than us having to explain what it is...
Yeah.
I've met people today who've tried it before — who know what it is, know all about it.
It's really good.
It's really good.
We're in front of thousands of people —
I think there's going to be like half a million visitors to Bath Market.
So this is a wonderful way of making mead mainstream.
Yeah, that's great.
And actually, if our aim is to bring mead to as many people as we possibly can — we're in the best place.
Anyone that runs a small food and drink business will know it's knackering doing the markets,
but it's also rewarding to meet the people who'll be enjoying the mead that we've put so much time and effort into making.
Yeah.
And it definitely feels like we've come a long way since we started brewing in our garage to share with our mates.
You went to Australia, you came back and you had 20 beehives?
Yeah — no, 10 I think.
Yeah, 10 when I came back.
And then we were brewing a little bit with that.
We were bottle conditioning a hopped mead and we wanted to make a honey beer.
And we only had 300 litres.
Yeah, 300 litres. So what was that, 900 bottles?
Yep. All hand labelled.
We couldn't afford to brew the next batch until we'd sold all of that batch.
That's true.
So then, we sold that entire batch, and then people had to wait four months — or three months — for the next one.
Yeah, and then sold all that one, and did two more batches.
And then literally, it started from there.
Yeah.
I remember early conversations as well — like, if it goes wrong on the small scale,
you know, that's sad.
But if it goes wrong on the scale that we're now brewing in,
that would be devastating and game-changing.
And it's not just our jobs now.
We've got two employees full-time, and we've got a few other people here.
Paying other people’s mortgages, which is terrifying.
That's hard. That's a real responsibility.
Yeah, barely paying our own.
But it's not all doom and gloom!
We do get to have fun occasionally.
Yeah — this wouldn’t be a very uplifting story if it was all mortgage chat.
So, once a month, we put on a live band and a food truck in the meadery.
We used to open every Friday, but we're fairly rural where we are now so it wasn't that busy.
So we thought — we'll condense it into one Saturday a month.
And usually in the summer we do a beekeeping course in the morning,
a mead-making course midday,
and then we have our event.
So we have about 120 people down in here — many of which haven't tried mead before.
So you’ve got a real mix of people who come every month,
and then people who are just curious.
So it's really good fun.
It's lovely seeing everyone come together to enjoy the fruits of a local community business.
Yes — and our particular community certainly takes all types.
Border Morris is the simplest Morris dancing to do.
Border Morris is the purest.
The purest, the best in the West.
It's quite subversive, as well.
Dancing with attitude, I suppose.
It is the punk side of Morris.
We can do a dance called "Tinners Rabbit".
Have you got Tinners? Do you know where Tinners is on that?
We've got the music!
Can I have my stick out the car?
That’s why we use hazel.
And that’s it — hazelnut.
Evenings like this really bring home to us how important it is to provide authentic experiences for people to enjoy.
It could be an evening like this, or a gig, or something —
but it’s also something you can provide through food and drink.
And that might sound obvious,
but authenticity in the food and drink world is increasingly difficult to find.
Counterfeiting is a big problem — particularly for honey.
The problem of counterfeit honey is so bad,
the 2024 World Beekeeping Awards actually cancelled their prize for honey
because they couldn’t be sure of the authenticity of the entries.
Which is mad!
It sure is — though it's not the only thing that’s mad around here.
It’s the wrong song.
That's the wrong song.
That's not right. Take two.
[Folk music playing]
[Cheering]
Running a business with someone you’re mildly fond of has been quite fun.
Who's that?
I don’t know.
Harrison.
Harrison’s a good guy, yeah.
It’s been good.
Yeah, it’s been good to run a business.
I quite enjoy running a business with you.
Yeah, I quite enjoy—
I mean, I used to quite enjoy... I worked as a building labourer for a while,
and I used to quite enjoy, at the end of the day —
You’ve not a very good wall that I’ve built — I didn’t last very long —
but I’ve built something, and there’s a thing you’ve built.
And we can look around here every day and go:
“This is a thing we've built.”
You’re right. But it’s a bit like the beehive itself.
Once you have a surplus of bees, they’ll be able to make a surplus of honey.
But for ages and ages, they just make enough to keep themselves ticking over.
If you double the amount of bees in a hive, you’ll triple the amount of honey —
because there’ll be that extra level of profit, if that makes sense.
Everything comes back to bees, doesn’t it.
Oh, it should do.
Everything does come back to bees.
This is something we’ve seen all year, just—
...There we go, that’s fine.
That’s just them saying,
“Thanks for helping.”
That’s all from us for now.
Thanks so much for joining us.
We hope you’ve enjoyed seeing behind the scenes of what we do.
Watch this space for some more mead-tastic content,
as we, the weather and the bees get ready for the summer.
Bye for now.
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