Meet Our Makers: Aaron Trotman of NON

Aaron Trotman is the Founder of NON, a revolutionary drinks brand for a post-booze era. NON could be the liquid lovechild of a winemaker, a celebrity chef, a mad scientist and Mother Nature. But it’s actually the creation of serial entrepreneur and global foodie Aaron Trotman, now pouring at all the hottest parties.

Their non-alcoholic wine alternatives are 0.0% alcohol, but they’re not trying to be alc-free wine. They’re more like a futuristic cocktail made from fresh produce prepared in top secret ways. Think: coffee, caramelised pears, kombu, cinnamon and olive brine to name a few!

The story of NON is a great lesson in trusting your ideas, having a can-do attitude and learning as you go. Thank you Aaron for the best chat!

C&C: Hi Aaron! Can you tell us a bit about the early days of NON? Where did the idea come from and how did the business get started?

Aaron: The first time I had a non-alcoholic pairing that I thought was really cool was in 2017 at the Clove Club in London. Over the span of 12-18 months in that time period, I was ticking off the bucket list restaurants that I wanted to go to with my wife Miranda. During that time, she was always getting the non-alcoholic pairings and I was getting the wine pairings - I would always want to see what she had and try everything. 

I had a cosmetics brand in the past - a hipster beard oil company - and made a lot of mistakes with it. I was working on a new cosmetics brand and I was trying to make a tea blend for it - I had this home onsen idea (which in hindsight was another terrible idea!). But during that process, I wondered why you couldn’t get tea blend drinks in a bottle and why do they live and die in restaurants? Why do you have to go and spend $600 and do a meal pairing, spend ages there, book it et cetera? I just thought ‘this is a cool idea’ and decided to do it. 

I had no idea about drinks and manufacturing drinks. I knew a little about how to get cardboard boxes and labels and regulatory stuff, but I knew nothing about drinks - but I thought it was a good idea. So I bought an induction cooktop and some Breville dehydrators - I started with one dehydrator and ended up with four dehydrators! I bought a fridge from Gumtree for seventy five dollars. It was so hard to get it out of the old milk bar that it was in, but the guy felt sorry for us so he gave it to us for free. We just went for it.

Once we got it out into the market, everyone was saying ‘this idea is genius’, telling us it was really cool and asking if they could order some now. I replied back with ‘I’ll have it to you next week’ (I had no labels printed or anything) - I just said yes and decided that I would figure it out later. Then, I started to research non-alcoholic drinks and realised that the idea could be big. I fell upwards into this one, jumped off a cliff and built a plane on the way there. 

C&C: Did you find that most people had the ‘this idea is genius and we want to order some now’ response when it launched? What was the general reaction?

Aaron: Well, it didn’t exist globally - no one had done it. We went out to O.MY in Beaconsfield - a two hatted restaurant - and the chef there responded saying that NON was awesome and that this type of product was usually so annoying to make. They thought it was awesome that you could now buy this thing in a bottle. Usually, they would go off too quickly and they only have a couple of days of shelf life. It was the same with more casual diners like Supernormal - they said that it was super cool and they would use it - and independent wine thought-leaders like Blackhearts & Sparrows and P&V Merchants. These are the best stores that you can get into in Australia and they said they’d take it. It was the easiest thing in the world to sell. There wasn’t a need or a want for it, it was just that it was cool and delicious and would help the customers of the people we were selling it to. 

C&C: Amazing. NON has so many innovative flavours - from Salted Raspberry & Chamomile to Lemon Marmalade & Hibiscus. What is the ideation process like for these flavours?

Aaron: It’s always started at home or in conversations talking about how we’d tried a certain food or flavour and thought of a pairing that it would go well with. Until I had to start to explain the drinks properly, they were just really yummy drinks - but that wasn’t going to stick and help to educate people. Basically, there are the key markers of salt and acid - so in the Caramelised Pear & Kombu for example, there is olive brine in place of salt. The acid is the hardest bit to get right as it’s the bit that you need to cut through food. Everyone tends to take a shortcut with this by using citric acid, but there’s no body or flavour in it and it’s super easy to overdo it - it’s basically a preservative. 

We use verjus, which is sticky and thick but is actually from wine grapes. You then need a fruit component - we wanted some delicious fruit in there that has to be real, so that it tastes like the real thing and it can’t use fake flavours. If you actually go to a flavour house and ask for a raspberry flavour that tastes like raspberry, for example, they don’t have it. They’ll have a thousand raspberry flavours, but it feels like they’re all a different variation of the same flavour. You then need some nose in there as well. You need the bouquet - we can get that through teas, spices and coffee for example. Those things will also do the tannin component for us as well. 

Then, what is really unique about us and what I think is really important, is the unexpected finish. No one has ever said that they want a raspberry drink with a chamomile finish and are probably still not asking for it. But when you do have that, it makes so much sense. The unexpected finish transports you somewhere else straight away, because you’re not comparing it to something else, you’re having a totally new experience altogether and you don’t feel like you’re missing out. 

It’s a wine alternative because normally when you have wine, it informs the serve. You have it as an alternative to wine, it’s not a wine replacement and isn’t wine adjacent. 

C&C: What has the process of getting NON ‘on the shelf’ been like? 

Aaron: At the beginning, we were shooting for the stars with the best accounts and we were happy to stay there and didn’t need to do much. This bit wasn’t too hard and we got advocacy straight away. 

Then, COVID-19 hit and it became a bit weird and hard, but also the business was entirely brand new so we didn’t know what the base was anyway. 

Now, we’re still not in normal conditions so people aren’t being as frivolous with their money. I’d say we’re affordable luxury, but I wouldn’t say that we’re full luxury - there’s some challenges there.

Although, where it’s getting easier is that non-alc is at this tipping point where everyone was saying that it would go away, but it’s been five years now. All of this has totally changed and buyers’ perceptions have completely changed, where they’ve realised that they need to cater for people wanting non-alc options. More people are going into restaurants and stores and asking what the non-alcoholic options are. I was with the Cartel & Co sales reps in Sydney recently, and that was definitely the case there as well. 

The main challenge around it right now is just price, but that will sort itself out.

C&C: In that process of getting the products ‘on the shelf’ and going through that evolution, why did you end up working with a distributor and why did you choose to work with Cartel & Co? 

Aaron: Well, you can either get a really good or a really bad distributor. I’ve had good ones and bad ones. I met Hayssam and I knew he was a good one - it was honestly as simple as that. For me, a good distributor is someone who cares about brands, potentially has their own brands so that they know how to build a brand as well, they’ve got really good, engaged staff that treat their areas almost as their own businesses (which is what I’ve seen with the Cartel & Co team). It’s about clear communication and should be easy from the get go. It should feel good and if it doesn’t feel good from the start, then it’s never going to feel good and that became a really easy decision for me with Cartel & Co. 

C&C: What do you envision for the future of NON as a brand?

Aaron: I think this leads us back into what we were saying earlier, which is that non-alc is on a tipping point. I think that non-alc has a huge credibility problem and there’s a lot of people coming into the market with fairly average products. I believe that NON has set a new standard in the quality of liquids, the quality of the manufacturing process and having a brand tone and transparency as well. 

So what do I think we have to do? I think we’re responsible for upholding those ethics and principles - to not sell out, stick to our guns and help people have a really good quality non-alc experience to give them solid options. Honestly, I think it’s on us to do that. 

It’s on us to make it feel cool and luxe and hip - something that people can feel proud to pull out at a party. It’s got nice branding, it’s a nice bottle, we’ve never sold out and gone into a can, you know? It’s important that someone has the same sized bottle at the table as someone else. If everyone is getting a glass of wine out of a wine bottle and then you get something poured out of a can or into a different cup, how special are you going to feel? If someone is a vegan at your house and you’re entertaining, they don’t get a different plate or different cutlery, so why would you change their glassware if they’re a non-alc drinker? You’re all on a level playing field all the time - and the level playing field needs to be in the height of the glassware, the level of the cutlery, the size of the bottle and all of those sorts of things. That’s what I truly believe. 

C&C: If I was brand new to the NON world, which product would you recommend that I try first?

Aaron: Salted Raspberry & Chamomile. Pink bubbles, super clean, super fresh, easy to understand. It’s really easy to share a bottle with friends, have a conversation and socialise. It pairs really well with a lot of things - you can have it with a pizza night, spaghetti bolognese, some cheese, it’s really loose with Thai food. It’s super versatile, so it’s definitely one to kick off with.