2021. The Recap

As we look back on another whirlwind of a year, we realised there’s been a whole lot of great stuff that’s happened along the way, and since we launched over 18 months ago. Here are some of our highlights from an action packed year:

Shiny new look for our seltzers

We realised at some point that our initial designs all looked…well a bit samey. So in August we released our brand new can designs. To our knowledge our drinks are the only UK seltzers that use real fruit juices for flavour (rather than anything artificial), which gives them a great colour when poured out – so we wanted to bring a bit of this colour to our new designs too, as well as helping them stand out a bit more from each other.

Got any other suggestions we could use? Drop them into the comments section below, and we’ll see what we can do.

We finally met you all!

With much of 2020 spent indoors, it was great to finally get out there this year and meet so many of our fans at various trade shows and festivals. We brought along our new draft hard seltzers to our shows, meaning we had the perfect cold serve for hot Summer days. It was a full-on season, and we managed to keep busy nearly every weekend this Summer.

Among others, we rubbed shoulders with the Foodies at Casual Dining 2021, served our seltzers to the hipsters at London Craft Beer Festival, and even gave away 30 x cases of our hard seltzers to one lucky winner at Taste of London.

Seltzers in pints?

After getting so much positive feedback from serving our seltzers by the pint across the Summer, we decided to roll this format out to the wider market. In August we released our drinks in keg format, becoming the first UK seltzer brand to do so. We now work with a number of great on-trade accounts who serve up Long Shot on ice as a lower-calorie alternative to a fruit cider or lager. Interested in trying some out at your venue or private event? Drop us a line at info@longshotdrinks.co.uk and we’ll see what we can do.

Award Winning Hard Seltzer

A bumper year on the medal front for our fruity seltzers – starting with a Great Taste Award for our Raspberry & Blackcurrant hard seltzer as well as being announced as a finalist in the Great British Food Awards.

The highlights however had to be winning the title of ‘Worlds Best Hard Seltzer’ at the World Premix Awards in April, and then later winning Gold in the ‘Ready-to-Drink’ awards with the Spirits Masters.

We also managed to pick up Bronze in the International Wine & Spirits Competition and were then recently announced as a beaten finalist at the 2021 ‘Christmas Free-From’ Awards.

Long Shot ready for lift off

The Virgin brand is one we’ve long looked up to, and helped inspire us to launch our own business, so it was always something we wanted to explore working with at some point. After some successful trials on specific Virgin Atlantic flights, our seltzers became available in the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse (Heathrow T3) amid a pretty turbulent year for the travel industry. Helping out those thirsty travellers with some last-minute refreshment before they head Stateside...

Seltzers in Scotland

We also made our first footsteps into the grocery channel – working with the family-run artisan food supermarket Margiottas in Scotland. With 11 stores across Edinburgh and beyond, the Margiottas team are some of the most passionate in the business about curating the best food and drink choices, so we’re very excited to be working with them, and helping our Scottish friends out in the process.

Homesense does Hard Seltzers

Closer to home, our drinks are now stocked in over 75 Homesense stores across the country. So next time you’re heading out for some retail therapy, why not reward yourself with some of our vegan seltzers in your basket too. Now that’s smart shopping.

2022 and beyond

There have been many other big moments along the way, and we’re really excited to share some big news with you in early 2022 too, so keep your eyes peeled for more. As always, thanks for all your support along the way – we couldn’t do it without you. Have a great new year, and here’s to 2022!