At Bar Convent London, Sam Thackeray, CEO of Zoo Drinks and former Managing Director of Enotria and CEO of Amber Beverage UK, navigates the UK’s complex on-trade distribution. He shares 25 years of hard-won wholesale and distribution expertise. Sam explores the harsh realities of the UK on-trade, explaining why wholesalers have a “stranglehold” on distribution and how placement deals are often won on route-to-market logistics rather than pure brand strength.
Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands launching and scaling in the U.S. market.
Sam Thackeray’s Presentation Transcript
Sam Thackeray (00:03) I woke up this morning having a bit of an existential crisis, and I had prepared a rather lengthy analog speech, but don’t worry—I’ve changed my mind on it. I suppose I was thinking, “Why am I here?” or “Am I really here right now?” It’s quite heavy for a Monday morning, but the actual reason I’m here is Fortaleza Tequila. Billy, the sixth-generation producer, is sitting right here at the front. It’s one of the greatest agaves on the planet, and they are the ones who introduced me to Park Street. So, that’s the very simple answer.
Sam Thackeray (00:28) A more creative way of thinking about why I’m here involves what I want to talk about today: building brands the right way through integrity, key relationships, and thought leadership.
Sam Thackeray (00:58) We can use that approach to conserve and nurture independent brands, allowing them to thrive. I think we are at a very unique turning point, particularly in the UK, where the industry faces significant challenges. A lot of people are having a very difficult time. Hospitality, in particular, is really struggling, and retail footfall is down. I don’t want to go on a political rant, but every single thing the government seems to do comes at the expense of our industry. Because it’s such a tough landscape, it is more important than ever that we do our best to uphold and protect independent brands in the face of these wider socioeconomic pressures.
Sam Thackeray (01:28) That is what I am here to talk to you about. I really wanted to give everyone a shot of Tequila—I thought that would be a great way to start—but I’m afraid I’m not allowed to. You’re going to have to go and find some alcohol for yourselves afterward! But if you do want to check out Fortaleza, they are over at Cantina Mexico, where there is loads of cool agave on display. Please go check them out later.
Sam Thackeray (01:58) The three core areas I’m going to focus on are specific to my own background. Unbelievably, I have been in this industry for 25 years—though I know I look a lot younger! I started out very much as a wine specialist in the wholesale sector. I was a shareholder at Bibendum, which many of you may know, then worked at Matthew Clark, and later served as the Managing Director at Inotria. More recently, I was the CEO at Amber Beverage Group, focusing heavily on spirits distribution.
Sam Thackeray (02:26) So, I’ve essentially changed sides from wine to spirits. I moved into spirits because I thought there was a lot more money in it; sadly, that never really turned out to be the case! However, it has given me a highly valuable insight into all the channels and operational areas within the UK market. That transition from wholesaling to distribution gives you a fascinating perspective on what makes people tick. The point of today is to discuss how you can maximize opportunities and truly grow alongside your distributor in the UK. Hopefully, you’ll find it useful.
Sam Thackeray (02:56) The UK itself is a bit of a contradiction: it’s an absolute nightmare, but it’s also a fantastic market at the same time. As you can see on my pie chart—and I do love a good pie chart—about 60% of the market is completely dominated by the top six global spirits conglomerates.
Sam Thackeray (03:25) The UK is a highly influential market, but because these massive multinational players dominate the landscape, they operate in a fundamentally different way than independent brands. They have completely different unit economics, massive above-the-line marketing spend, instant brand recognition, and a very different way of engaging with retail.
Sam Thackeray (03:53) I suspect the Managing Director of Smirnoff isn’t in the room today, and there’s probably not a lot I could teach him anyway. My assumption for today is that we are talking about independent brands trying to scale up from a relatively small baseline in the UK, and how that process can best work with your distributor.
Sam Thackeray (04:22) The UK market presents a distinct challenge because the business is loosely cut into two main sectors: the off-trade (retailers) and the on-trade (bars and restaurants). The real challenge in the UK is that wholesalers hold a massive stranglehold on physical distribution and the logistics of getting to market.
Sam Thackeray (04:49) Essentially, what I mean by that is that deals and contracts are often dictated by how you get a product from A to B, rather than the actual strength of the brand itself. A lot of brand owners don’t like to hear that, but the reality is simple: if you are not stocked by a specific wholesaler, and a bar wants to buy your product but is tied to that wholesaler, you cannot sell to them. Wholesalers hold the reins very tightly when it comes to distribution and accessing on-trade markets. I will talk about how to circumnavigate this, but it is the core of how the UK infrastructure has grown. If a wholesaler doesn’t list you, your chances of getting into those bars and restaurants are incredibly slim.
Sam Thackeray (05:45) It gets trickier because you also face a lot of gatekeepers along the way. You genuinely need to build fundamental relationships up and down the chain—with the bars, the restaurants, and the wholesalers themselves.
Sam Thackeray (05:55) It is very easy to burn through a lot of cash in the UK trying to win share of voice. There are countless brands competing for the limelight, and your return on investment can easily plummet. What I want to do is offer three strategies to maximize your market activity.
Your distributor will almost certainly have a very rigid value chain in place regarding what the product should sell for, what discounts apply, and how various players in the chain take their margins.
Sam Thackeray (06:24) What you must be prepared for is your distributor asking you for extra funding. You will likely have an agreed-upon A&P (Advertising and Promotion) budget set aside, but if you want to make a real impact, expect your distributor to ask for more investment—especially in today’s landscape. The more desirable a commercial tender is, the more competitive the process becomes. Right now, we are seeing an unprecedented number of hospitality businesses go bust.
Sam Thackeray (06:54) This creates a real dichotomy. On one side, cash-strapped hospitality businesses are drawn to the massive conglomerates that can offer lucrative upfront listing fees. On the other side, end consumers are looking for novelty, story, theater, and product integrity. It’s a complex mix of what the consumer wants versus what is commercially viable for a struggling bar or restaurant owner. Because of this, you can’t just rely on a pretty bottle and a good story. Your distributor needs to be able to put a highly competitive commercial offer on the table.
Sam Thackeray (07:22) The best brands I’ve worked with use a very clear framework. In its simplest form, it’s a calculation: “We will hit X amount of cases per year, and the brand will support that with Y amount of investment.”
Sam Thackeray (07:51) It is vital to establish what is important to your brand at the very top of the pyramid and determine how you want to be perceived. For instance, your strategy might be to place just one case a month into a top 50 boutique bar in the UK, using that as a high-profile “lighthouse account” to activate marketing around.
Sam Thackeray (08:16) Conversely, you might want a listing in Tesco, which requires a completely different commercial model and set of metrics. You need to think about these things well in advance. Tenders can be incredibly slow and tedious, but they can also move at lightning speed with sudden decision-making. You must factor extra investment into this market because the sheer volume of competition is overwhelming. It does bring rewards, but you almost have to commercially over-invest initially to gain the right traction.
Sam Thackeray (08:43) That support doesn’t always have to be cold hard cash or listing fees. Distillery trips are absolutely loved by the trade—especially if they are in exotic locations like the Isle of Wight! It can also take the form of PR synergies, activation resources, or shared brand assets. However, you must ensure your distributor provides you with specific data, such as volume forecasts, SKU breakdowns, and site counts.
Sam Thackeray (09:10) The biggest element for me is wholesaler engagement. As I touched on earlier, a lot of brands completely fall short here, especially in the on-trade. Your wholesalers are an active extension of your sales team and your distributor’s sales team. What many people fail to understand is how to actually work with them.
Sam Thackeray (09:41) If you look at London, for example, you have major wholesalers like Dawn Davies at Speciality Brands, Vanessa Wright at Inotria, Kilesh at Champers, and Guy Dalton at Venus. You have to persuade them to list your product in the first place, but you must remember that once you’re on the list, you are just one product among thousands of others.
Sam Thackeray (10:06) When I was the Managing Director at Inotria, we had something like 620 different gins on our portfolio. Portfolio sizes are decreasing now as wholesalers face immense pressure to bring stock levels down, but you are still a needle in a haystack. How do you stand out?
Sam Thackeray (10:29) You have to actively engage the wholesaler’s team. You can’t just stop at the buying department; you have to get to know the sales directors and the frontline sales reps. You have to woo them and spend time with them. This means taking them out for drinks and building informal relationships. In return, you will get fantastic, unfiltered feedback regarding which customers they are working with and how the trade is reacting to your product. Brand owners rarely do this well; they heavily underestimate the time and resources required.
What a wholesaler wants is relatively straightforward: they look for creative thinking around activation and commercial engagement.
Sam Thackeray (10:59) There is the traditional “by the book” approach—setting up joint business ventures, paying for brochure advertisements, and participating in their trade shows and events. It’s a classic “scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” scenario. But you can also build deep brand advocacy directly with the telesales teams and digital coordinators. People massively underestimate the impact of telesales buy-in. Engaging your wholesalers is critical.
Sam Thackeray (11:27) Now, I mentioned earlier that there is a way to circumnavigate traditional wholesalers and their control over the market: the digital channel. The UK is a fascinating e-commerce market. Today, roughly 30% of all retail is online, and for alcohol specifically, digital sales account for an impressive 20% of the market. What makes this interesting is that we are seeing more bars, restaurants, and hotels bypass their traditional wholesaler contracts entirely to buy stock directly from digital channels like Amazon.
Sam Thackeray (11:57) This ties back to the commercial flexibility I was talking about. Amazon allows trade customers to buy high-value products as single bottles rather than forcing them to hit rigid minimum order quantities or full-case requirements. If you want to leverage this, you need a distributor that can provide top-tier digital assets, optimized landing pages, and clean SKU data for platforms like Amazon.
Sam Thackeray (12:24) You can no longer rely on a traditional distributor whose only strategy is having sales reps pounding the pavement, walking into bars, and talking to bartenders. The market has evolved significantly. You also need to factor in the operational costs: Amazon’s trading terms sit around 8% to 10% these days, and that cost is going to come out of either your brand budget or your distributor’s margin.
Sam Thackeray (12:53) If you are missing a digital strategy, you are completely missing how the UK market is transforming. You have to be on Amazon because they are the market leader, delivering products the next day in perfect condition. This level of digital trade integration doesn’t really exist in other European countries yet.
Sam Thackeray (13:21) The final piece of the puzzle is brand-owner due diligence. This is just basic common sense. You need to deeply interrogate your distributor’s existing sales channels and their specific relationships. Not all distributors are created equal. Many of them do not understand the complexities of the wholesaler environment, and a surprising number don’t understand e-commerce either.
Sam Thackeray (13:49) Some distributors might be incredibly strong in grocery retail and hold great relationships with supermarket buyers. However, grocery listings can change overnight. If a retail buyer moves on, you need to establish a relationship with the new buyer immediately. Just because a distributor had a listing last year doesn’t mean those relationships are relevant two weeks later. You have to get under the skin of your distributor and audit their active connections.
Sam Thackeray (14:19) The best-case scenario is when a distributor already sells existing products to a target account; it is infinitely easier to piggyback a new SKU onto an existing delivery than it is to open a brand-new account from scratch.
You need to know exactly who the decision-makers are. I am currently setting up an omnichannel distributor called Xantrix, launching next month, where I’ll be able to announce our brand portfolio.
Sam Thackeray (14:48) As a distributor, you might have a rock-solid relationship with John Vine, the spirits buyer at Waitrose, or the brilliantly named Dawn Champagne at Tesco—who is the buyer there and arguably one of the most influential people in the UK drinks industry. But if that same distributor doesn’t know anyone at Asda, you have a massive blind spot. You must understand where your brand’s consumption occasion sits and align that with the specific commercial footprint of your distributor. A lot of brand owners are unhappy with their current performance simply because they didn’t align their core objectives with the actual skill set of their distributor. No one can do everything perfectly.
Sam Thackeray (15:46) Ultimately, the goal for me is to defend the ethos and quality of an independent portfolio. We desperately need to protect and conserve independent brands in this market; they are absolutely integral to the future success and diversity of the hospitality sector. The way you achieve that is through strong omnichannel execution. You must have a footprint in the on-trade, and you must have a robust digital strategy backed by a team that understands how to convert sales online.
Sam Thackeray (16:13) Ideally, you can then leverage that momentum to build scale and enter major retail. But the core element—and probably the reason we all entered this industry, and why I’ve stayed for 25 years—is relationships. As a distributor, you need transparent, trusting relationships with your brand suppliers. Your team must also maintain outstanding relationships with both the end retail customers and the wholesale network.
Sam Thackeray (16:43) The uncomfortable commercial truth that independent brand owners often don’t want to hear is that raw “brand power” is only truly relevant at a massive scale. When you are an independent player, the gatekeepers, the wholesalers, and individual commercial relationships have an outsized impact on your success. That’s a harsh reality that sleek brand marketing and logo design can’t bypass. If you execute a smart omnichannel strategy, build deep supply relationships, and tap into consumer curiosity, your brand will be a success in the UK.
That is it from me. Thank you very much for listening.