A Dublin Pop-Up Story

Background

Pop-Up shops came into being in the late 1990’s, it was pioneered by Vacant, a L.A based company that specialise in the pop-up experience. The idea was simple bring your product closer to your target market, if you sold surfing apparel then it would make business sense to have your pop-up near where people surf.

It’s popularity spread and Ireland has not been immune. For a brand it’s a great way to exercise continued awareness with your consumer base. For a new business it’s a safe way to test your business idea without committing to a long term lease. We sat down with two Irish entrepreneurs who are using a pop-up to test their product, they explained to us why they picked this approach and how they are hoping it will help them reshape the event scene in Ireland.

Michael Reddy and Pieter Reid are founders of Native Blenders. In both their careers to date they have always worked in the food and drink industry in various guises from a cocktail maker to a bartender at festival. Most recently they worked together at Teeling’s Whiskey where they helped launch the whiskey in new markets and bring on new accounts. It was during that time that the idea started to take form, ‘we noticed that bars wanted to sell better spirits but they didn’t have the tools for it.’ They also started making batch cocktails for Taste of Dublin, it was then that they joined the dots and realised that they could sell batch made cocktails to bars and festivals.

Pop-up events work for a brand

They both believe that the pop-up format works for them, they host a weekly event where they get to test the batch made cocktails on attendees. They are very aware that they are exploiting the opportunity to get feedback from a focus group, ‘we’re doing a soft touch promotion approach as we are aware that we want people to chose us instead of being forced to do so. We prefer to give the impression of discovery instead of informing, at the end of the day Dublin whispers!‘ Eventbrite’s back-end ticketing platform is a great tool for getting further feedback from attendees as you can create and send a survey.

The challenges

‘We want to localise all the ingredients so that we can make a slow drink movement, the challenge that comes with that is getting people behind the philosophy! We want people to stop rushing their drinks and enjoy the complex flavours of a cocktail.’ They are also spending a lot of time developing food to pair with the cocktails so that the attendee has a more memorable experience. ‘We’re challenging the way people think!’

Dublin needs more pop-ups

‘Everyone with a great idea should be encouraged to give it a try. There can never be enough creativity.’ As mentioned earlier it’s a great way to test a new concept cheaply. ‘Pop-ups create trends, Abrakebabra are now doing pulled pork and that’s a direct influence of a pop-up trend.’

Future trends

They believe that cocktail dinner events will be the next thing to happen, ‘dinner cocktails are a new way to drink cocktails, instead of a cocktail to pair with your dinner you will do it in reverse.’ They also see the continued localisation of drinks at events so for example if you find yourself at event out West you might sample a ‘Wild Atlantic Way cocktail with seaweed textures.’ If you would like to read more about how you can use Eventbrite for your next pop-up event then continue reading here about San Francisco based chef Melissa King.