If there’s one thing Black Pineapple founder Frankie Walker can’t stand, it's going to an event where the drinks are lacklustre.

The cocktail connoisseur has been in the drinks and hospitality business for 25 years, in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, including a 12-year stint as a brand ambassador at Lion.

He says he saw his fair share of dismal drinks offerings at the many corporate events he went to and there was always one thing that struck him: the bigger the event, the worse the drinks offerings seemed to be.

“It became really apparent to me when I went to events that the food was always great, the venues were awesome and they had great music – but the drinks just really sucked,” he says.

Walker’s pet peeve was the inspiration to kickstart cocktail specialist company Black Pineapple in 2016, a side hustle that turned into a full-time gig in 2018. 

Trade cocktails

Everything was looking bright for the company, with 400% growth by the time 2020 rolled around. But when the pandemic hit, the business sank to zero revenue in the first 10 days of NZ’s first lockdown.

With a quarter of a million dollars' worth of work down the drain, Black Pineapple drilled into the e-commerce side of the business, and Walker says it ended up saving them – twice.

“The reality of the situation is people don't actually stop drinking, no matter what's going on,” Walker says. “What changes is where you get it from and what you're looking for.”

He saved the business by targeting individual customers, packaging cocktails into gift boxes and “flinging them around the country”. When Auckland went into its longest lockdown in 2021, sales jumped by 1000% overnight.

It also gave him the idea – which the company launched last week – to release Black Pineapple Trade Cocktails, ready for the upcoming summer and Christmas events season.

The trade cocktails come in five-litre batches, in food-service-grade containers, and are delivered to venues, bars and restaurants. Staff are trained to make sure the cocktails are served correctly.

“We think trade cocktails are going to be super-important for us,” Walker says. “This year is really about trying to nurture the events part of the business back to life and start navigating out of covid.”

He says putting together the list of 15 trade cocktails Black Pineapple supplies was like putting together a menu.

“You need a good balance of different spirits and different flavour profiles,” he says. 

“There’s a whole bunch of full-strength cocktails, some lower-strength cocktails and some non-alcoholic ones, which are really important.”

Spark Arena was the company's first trade cocktail customer last week and it's in talks with other large venue hosts around Auckland and a key hotel group. 

Hospitality is a “tricky” business at the best of times, says Walker, but he’s seen first-hand how tough the past two-and-a-half years have been for the sector.

“We really feel what's happening,” he says. “I would say there's a lot of people under a huge amount of pressure.

“Even if you've got a friendly landlord, fixed costs don't go away,” he said. “I suspect that there's a huge amount of debt."

‘Optimistically cautious’

Walker says covid was a learning curve that forced him to look at where his business was weak. 

"We thought we were really strong and we very quickly learnt how vulnerable we were. Now I'm kind of addicted to looking for where we’re not completely sustainable – because I really want to sleep at night.”

He says the past two years have been a “wild adventure”. Black Pineapple is much stronger now, but Walker wouldn't wish the journey on anybody.

“I'm always looking for what else we can do, what other products and services can we provide that would really enable us to be completely sustainable,” he says. “I’m optimistically cautious.”