ROOTS HQ IS GO!

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

In a week’s time it will be exactly three years since the Roots story began.

2014 was set to be our big year. Instead, our set backs with new equipment forced us to a spluttering halt. It was frustrating not because of the equipment faults, but because we might’ve missed our chance to try and sell our soda. Failing because it didn’t sell is ok in my book, but failing because the bottling machine wouldn’t work, that’s unacceptable!

Roots HQ is now a strange beast. It’s all quiet except for the occasional chiller hum. Normally we’d be producing our soda non stop. We made such tiny batches previously that we had to produce all the time. Now when I look out across the silent factory floor, I see pallets of soda stacked up ready to go. It’s bizarre.

We’ve said that we didn’t always know what we were doing. We believed if we gave it a go, and were prepared to fail along the way, then we could get to this point.

A couple of weeks ago we produced our first batches back to back. Something not scheduled to happen until later this year when we were a little more confident. Now though, the wind is firmly in our sails.

Those set backs last year are strangely now working in our favour. We understand every piece of kit inside out. There is no question that we maintain our bottling machine to a much higher standard than we ever could have done without the problems.

On bottling day recently, a few faults were dealt with quickly and calmly while we kept the bottles flowing. I remember stepping outside Roots HQ one night to see snow falling. “Ah it’s gonna be a little colder tonight, need to think about the ambient temperatures in there over night.” I stepped back inside and made a few minor adjustments to our CO2 regulators, and then I went home. The next day I found the carbonation levels exactly where I expected. This was starting to be fun again.

In all that darkness, there was a whole lot of light to be found.

Roots HQ is now starting to look a lot like what I’d dreamt up three years ago. Now it just needs a bigger team.

Hannah joined up earlier this month. Hannah’s heading up our sales department.

We’ve been hankering to get our soda down and into the nation’s capital since 2013. We say hankering, technically it has already been there since 2013 in a number of BrewDog bars, but what we mean is to have it available in more stockists. We’ll start delivering to the big smoke in late April.

Bringing back our old taps and kegs to have our soda on tap at Roots HQ.

So here we are, we’ve got our heads down and got our act together. We’ve got our part to play in the very long overdue, and now unavoidable soda revolution! Note this in your diary and underscore it! 2015, year of the soda.

Peace be with you brothers and sisters.

Mark

Fault finding our dismantled bottling machine.

Organising the bottling machine's parts.

Roots HQ today full of soda and ready to go.

Strawberries arriving ready to make Kaleidoscope.

Bottles of Soda stacking up on bottling day before being labelled.

Contact

e: hello@rootssoda.co.uk
t: +44 (0)131 552 4495

Unit 13
New Broompark
Edinburgh
EH5 1RS

© 2018 Roots Soda Ltd.