Our New Arrival of the Week is a gin on a mission to support the UK hospitality industry.
The hospitality industry was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. It brought financial and employment instability. It forced venues to close and put many more at risk of doing so soon. Many within the industry have rallied to try to ensure that bars, restaurants and more have as bright a future as possible, with charities appealing for donations and multiple initiatives launched to mitigate the damage.
The latest fundraiser to emerge comes from Tom Lord, a hospitality consultant and industry veteran of over 10 years who you may know from his work with Sheffield’s excellent FirePit Rocks. Not content with the level of government support, Lord ensured he was an active social media presence during the crisis, giving out any useful information and advice he had. But, feeling he needed to make a more significant contribution, he then put together a plan to launch the gin that we’re casting a spotlight on today. “Hospitality Gin was born out of my love for the hospitality industry,” he explains. “We’ve had a really tough run through the pandemic, and I wanted to find a way to give back and support where I could. My answer was to start Hospitality Gin!”
Say hello to Tom Lord!
Our latest arrival to MoM Towers is called Hospitality Gin, a delightfully simple name that immediately communicates to the consumer what this bottling is all about: supporting the UK hospitality industry and its employees. For each bottle purchased, 100% of profits (about £4-6) will go to hospitality charities such as the brand’s partners, The Drinks Trust and Hospitality Action, who have donated over £750,000 in hardship grants to hospitality workers and helped support workers in this industry with their mental and physical wellbeing. Lord chose these partners due to their ability to get “our donations to those who need it the most effectively,” and says that “the plan is to set up a dedicated Hospitality Gin Fund which we can use to support some of the great initiatives that are out there at the moment”.
To get the project off the ground, Lord launched a now closed crowdfunding campaign and also partnered with the wonderful folks at Cooper King Distillery in North Yorkshire, who run their distillery on 100% green energy and donate a minimum of 1% of all of their sales to an environmental charity, the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust. Pretty perfect bedfellows, if you ask me. Together Lord and Cooper King created a London dry gin made with botanicals including locally grown lavender, fresh honey from the distillery’s own beehives, lemongrass, and juniper which was distilled in in the brand’s state-of-the-art glass vacuum stills, which ensure the distillation temperatures are tailored to suit each individual botanical, creating fresh, full flavours. “In the bottle is a straight-talking punchy dry gin, full of bold flavours but still balanced,” says Lord. “It holds it’s own beautifully in cocktails, but if I’m honest, I think its perfect in a no-nonsense G&T”.
Hospitality Gin: a great gin supporting a great cause
Drinks brands with a charitable initiative built-in are not uncommon nowadays and it’s easy to see why. An approach like this enables the consumer to purchase delicious booze and support a meaningful cause at the same time. People are not simply being asked to donate money, instead, they’re invited to invest in a tangible product that they could potentially recommend to their friends, raising awareness. Brands like Elephant Gin or Gorilla Spirits have demonstrated that this method works and its contributions have made a real difference to its chosen causes.
“We’re a gin with purpose. We aren’t another product trying to cash in on the latest craze, we believe that what we’re doing is important, and we stand with the hospitality industry through these truly extraordinary times,” Lord says. Which is a very fair assessment. It’s also a gin with a profile: delicately sweet, refreshing and lovely in a G&T (pop a sprig of rosemary in there as a garnish and you’re set). We’d recommend you give it a go because it’s a tasty gin supporting a fantastic cause. What’s not to like? Even if you’re not a fan of gin yourself, you can always buy a bottle for a friend who does and you’ll still get all the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing you’ve helped someone in need.
You can purchase Hospitality Gin from MoM Towers, right here.
