Last year, Adelle Sylvester decided to leave her job as a teacher and pursued her passion in building her own start-up business in selling cocktails. What was supposed to be a pop up bar became a bottled cocktail company due to the Covid-19 lockdown. Inside FMCG sat down with the founder of Dilly Delly on putting up her own liquor business and adding grazing boxes to its product range. Inside FMCG: Tell us the process of creating the cocktail drinks. Adelle Sylvester: All of our cocktails are cr
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Last year, Adelle Sylvester decided to leave her job as a teacher and pursued her passion in building her own start-up business in selling cocktails. What was supposed to be a pop up bar became a bottled cocktail company due to the Covid-19 lockdown.Inside FMCG sat down with the founder of Dilly Delly on putting up her own liquor business and adding grazing boxes to its product range.Inside FMCG: Tell us the process of creating the cocktail drinks.Adelle Sylvester: All of our cocktails are created fresh on the day they are delivered to our customers. When creating the recipes, I was fortunate to have some contacts in the industry who were more valuable than gold. Seeing as I was untrained in mixology it was great to have help. Our bottles contain two cocktail serves and range from 2-4 standard drinks per bottle, so the hardest part was balancing the flavours and making them as close to 200mls as possible. Inside FMCG: How do you design the grazing boxes?AS: We collaborate with another business to offer grazing boards to our customers. Jamie from I’m Plattered creates incredible grazing boards so she was our go-to.Dilly Delly’s bottled cocktails product range.Inside FMCG: Where do you source out ingredients for your products?AS: I love to shop locally so my fruit comes from the Marino Brothers who are exceptional in everything they do and sell. At the moment I source my alcohol from a wholesaler but I’m looking to find the balance between locally-sourced and financially viable alcohol. Just like any start-up company we have to be aware of our costs and cash flow. Inside FMCG: What are your best selling products?AS: We have three that sell equally well. They are the Cosmopolitan, Gin Daisy and The Espresso Martini. The Cosmopolitan has sparkles in it and it always attracts a lot of positive attention, the Gin Daisy is just absolutely divine and The Espresso Martini is a classic that everyone knows and loves.Dilly Delly adapted to the Covid-19 lockdown by switching to selling bottled cocktails.Inside FMCG: How did covid-19 affect the business?AS: Covid-19 has affected Dilly Delly in a few ways. Firstly, It changed our whole business focus from events to bottled cocktails. Secondly, lockdown number 2 increased our sales and lastly, now everything is opened up, we’re noticing the reasons why people are using our cocktail delivery service is changing: we’ve seen an increase in purchases for gifting and special events and a decline in purchases for personal use. Due to the money invested into having our cocktails bottled, we were unable to open back up as an events business and are entering that market slowly with our Plentiful picnics in collaboration with I’m Plattered.Inside FMCG: Do you have plans to take Dilly Delly abroad?AS: I would absolutely love to! However, things get tricky with liquor licensing and I would love to conquer the Australian market first. I know that we have a lot of visitors to the Dilly Delly website from America so when we are ready, that’s where I’ll start. Inside FMCG: Any new products your company is launching this year?AS: Yes! Absolutely! We will be launching limited-edition cocktails throughout the year for specific events. We will also release a virgin (non-alcoholic) cocktail range so that no one misses out!
