I’m Charlie, one of the Co-founders of Festico! Festico was a crazy idea I had in my final year at the University of Lincoln.
Tommy joined me on the project a couple of weeks after I had the idea. He runs the Identity Agency, a small creative agency based in the Enterprise Building on the University’s campus. He helps with the branding, marketing and sales, and I handle the day-to-day aspects of running the business.
After three years of drinking at university, I’d tried almost every combination of spirits and mixers. I’m not mature enough to enjoy wine yet and can never drink a lot of beer at once. I needed a drink that tasted nice by itself but was also easy to drink.
After hearing about hard seltzers from an American YouTuber they seemed like the perfect solution to my problem. They had many different exciting flavours and came in a convenient can. However, after trying them I was utterly disappointed.
The seltzers had this strong soda water taste that lingered in your mouth and barely any flavour. It’s safe to say I was very disappointed. This is when we had the idea to create a hard seltzer that tasted as good as it looks and dropped the sparkling water flavour.
There genuinely isn’t another hard seltzer like ours.
Local bars and eateries are really enjoying our products. It's great talking to people who’ve tried a traditional hard seltzer and then tried our non-traditional seltzer. They're really able to understand what we've done and most of the time it's their new favourite drink!
For businesses, we’re amazed by the support of so many venues that just want to help a local business out. There's a real community between the independent bars and restaurants and we’ve been lucky enough to be accepted into that community.
The drinks are selling steadily, and as we start to run a more focused local marketing strategy we’re hoping to drastically increase the sales of our drinks, which will help us order higher volumes of product and pass on the discounted unit cost directly to venues.
We’re stocked in over 10 different locations across Lincoln and are available online to order in packs of 12 from our website so you can enjoy them at home. Our website is www.festico.co.uk.
- University of Lincoln SU venues- Towers, The Swan, Engine Shed and The Barge.
- Akedo Gaming Bar
- Trebles
- Axed Lincoln
- Straight and Narrow
- Virtually Golf
- Slow Rise Pizza
- The Drill Hall
- Cafe Portico
- Tension Twisted Realities
- Cafe Zoot
Our office is based right in the heart of Lincoln on the University campus in the Enterprise Building. This gives us the chance to have boots on the ground and be involved in a number of events in Lincoln. It also means we often walk to venues to drop off their stock which is a lovely personal touch.
Our next steps are to establish ourselves in Lincoln, we’re planning on attending lots of events as well as hosting a few of our own!
One of our favourite parts of Lincoln is the community, being a part of such a close-knit city has really helped us in our journey. We’ve had help from numerous people in various businesses across Lincoln and we wouldn't be here today without them!
Keep up to date with Festico on social media @festicodrinks and if you want to get in touch with, please email us at hello@festico.uk
