A ‘simple and boring’ decision by Honest Spirits co-founders Dave Lincoln and Luke Jones was all it took to start a spiced rum label from opposite time zones amid a global pandemic.
On February 28, 1990, the Royal New Zealand Navy issued its last daily ration of rum to sailors. The rum issue – quarter-pints taken twice a day – partly compensated sailors in the 17th century for working in dangerous conditions on the high seas and living off an unsteady, nutrient-deficient diet of salted meat, dirty water and “ship biscuits”. But that reasoning didn’t quite stack up 300 years later, especially in an operating environment with more complex naval technology.
The hallowed navy tradition may date back to 1655 when a British Royal Navy fleet captured the island of Jamaica. but sailors weren’t the only rum drinkers. Pirates, buccaneers and freebooters have an infamous association with the liquor too, from raiding vessels for the plunder that fleets transported back to imperial Europe, to trading goods for sugar cane molasses with the Caribbean islands so they could produce more rum from its source ingredient.
“Although we never talk about the pirate connotations, it does lend itself to our personalities – we’re a little bit rogue, we’re probably not your conventional gin or vodka drinkers, we’re on the outside,” says Honest Spirits co-founder Luke Jones. That rascal spirit is writ large in the spirits company that he and Dave Lincoln launched at the tail end of 2020.
Jones, a digital designer in the UK when the pandemic hit in early 2020, was on his phone when he came across a liquor still, an apparatus used to distil liquid mixtures, for sale. He and Lincoln, friends since high school in Auckland, had worked various bar jobs while studying at university and gained insights into high-end spirits and the broader industry. So Jones texted his mate in Auckland asking if he was keen, to which Lincoln responded, “Yeah, why not?” A fortnight passed without much discussion before Lincoln sent a two-page message outlining the pair’s business plan and his thoughts on flavours and aromas. Says Lincoln: “We make it sound so simple and boring.”
Rum-making isn’t as saturated a market as gin. Lincoln notes there are about 180 gin labels nationwide compared with the eight businesses currently dedicated to rum-making. And rum is versatile – it lends itself to a greater variety of cocktails and can be an ingredient to cook and bake with. But for all its tropical glamour and swashbuckling history, manufacturing spirits doesn’t come cheap. Most New Zealand independent labels use distillers-for-hire, explains Jones, and the Honest co-founders paired up with one in Takapuna on Auckland’s North Shore after realising the upfront cost of investing in distilling equipment was too prohibitive for a startup.
At the same time, Jones was still in the UK while Lincoln was taste-testing their six-spiced rum. Six months of daily Zoom calls, fine-tuning and a stint in MIQ later, Jones’s first taste of freedom was literally rum. “That was my reintroduction to New Zealand – Saturday morning, 9am in a carpark by the airport,” he says.
Production began in November 2020 and Honest Spirits officially launched a month later. Everything the pair have made so far has been reinvested in the business so they can eventually commit full-time to reaching household-name status. More products and innovation will fuel their growth, including an upcoming limited-edition collaboration the pair are excited to launch, and when the time feels right they’ll tackle exports. But for now, Aotearoa is where they want to be, says Jones, making “crazy concoctions” that people will enjoy. I spoke with the co-founders some more about how their friendship underpins their business.
Tell me more about your friendship. I understand you met in high school?
Dave Lincoln: We met almost 20 years ago, which makes you feel really old actually—
Luke Jones: We are old now.
Lincoln: —we’re 30-plus.
Jones: We met first year of high school and became really good friends in fourth form after a school camp. We got along and spent a whole ride home from, where was it?
Lincoln: Ohakune.
Jones: We spent the whole ride home, sharing headphones and listening to music—
Lincoln: —A bit of Eminem.
Jones: —some Eminem from back in the day and then we’ve been best mates ever since.
Had you guys drummed up business ideas in the past or was Honest Spirits more spur of the moment?
Lincoln: It was a very spur-of-the-moment thing. We always wanted to do something together and, separately, we wanted to run our own businesses because we wanted to work for ourselves. The opportunity just landed in [Jones’s] head and we went from there. But it’s never been like “We should start this business”.
Jones: Having a background and being in the industry through bartending, we knew it from different perspectives – sales, as consumers, managing and being glassies, and design – we were almost pinching ourselves at the start thinking, “Are we going ahead with this?” And then when we invested the first amount of money you realise “there’s no going back now”.
How has your friendship made doing business together easy? Or challenging?
Lincoln: We know each other inside out, we know each other’s families. Luke has his attributes, being in design and the creative world, and I’ve got mine so we do have different roles but also, we overlap quite a lot. You respect the other person’s opinion – it’s like “this is my field, I think we should go this way” and there’s agreement. If we do have a disagreement – it’s not so much an argument – he’s still your mate and you can hash it out quickly.
Jones: It’s like starting a business with your brother that you know can’t punch you—
Lincoln: That’s debatable [laughs].
Jones: —[laughing] it’s just hanging out with a mate whom you also happened to start a business with and you’re both extremely passionate about it. You talk about it all the time, you do work outside of work hours, not because you have to but because you want to. Apart from hanging out with family and friends, there’s nothing else that’s more exciting than this.