For this edition of Coffee Unfiltered with Siren Grounds, we sit down with Ro Murray, founder of The Bitter Club, to explore the journey behind building a modern mixology brand from the ground up. What began as late-night experimentation in her London kitchen has grown into a premium bitters brand bringing bar-quality flavour into the home.
Blending creativity with commercial discipline, Ro shares the realities of scaling in the competitive FMCG space—from door-to-door retail pitching to building a loyal customer base through consistency and craft. In this conversation, she opens up about challenging a traditional category, growing with intention, and why long-term brand building always wins over quick success.
Can you introduce yourself and share the journey that led you to where you are today? What were the pivotal stages in building your brand within the food, drink, or FMCG landscape?
I’m Ro, founder of The Bitter Club – a modern bitters brand created to elevate drinks with bold, distinctive flavour pairings.
Born of a fascination with distilling, a lifetime of recipe perfecting and a complete inability to say no to a bourbon cocktail, The Bitter Club started in my kitchen with the development of Cinnamon & Orange Bitters as a delicious alternative for an Old Fashioned.
After a deep dive into the world of botanicals and many more months of testing, I developed Grapefruit & Elderberry and Hibiscus & Rose to complement. Finally, I had a trio that covered the bases of drink flavour modification by way of floral, fruity and aromatic varieties. I managed to get my kitchen licensed to legally produce and sell them, built a website and got cracking. The daughter of an entrepreneur, I think I was helped by a familial blind optimism – a key personality trait required of anyone who endeavours to start a business.
The first orders and reviews that came through (not from family) were real moments of excitement, but nothing beat walking into Bottle Apostle to see my bottles on shelves.
Over the last few years, I have grown the business slowly & incrementally – focusing on D2C at first, to prove the concept, before reaching out to retail. We all know the slog it is, knocking on door after door, but my belief in the brand comes from the numbers. Over 90% of independent retailers have re-ordered, and our revenue grows every year (70% yoy in 2025).
What defining moment shaped your approach to business or leadership? Was there a particular commercial challenge, retail breakthrough, or operational lesson that shifted your trajectory?
The moment that shaped my approach to business was realising I couldn’t do it all from behind a screen. Making the shift from D2C into retail made a huge difference. Initially, like many women, I was hesitant to approach retailers because I lacked belief in myself. I knew the product was delicious because I had been told, but I had to pull on my big-girl pants and sell in a new way.
Cold calling and emailing were largely useless. I ended up becoming a door-to-door saleswoman – walking around London with booklets and samples, knocking on doors and doing tastings. There were many days where it was relentless, frustrating and disappointing, but those days are always overshadowed by the days you win.
The next big lesson I learned is not taking no for an answer – and I have to remind myself of this daily.
The FMCG space is highly competitive and margin-sensitive. How do you approach growth – commercially and personally? How do you balance brand positioning, scale, distribution, and profitability?
I balance brand positioning, scale, distribution, and profitability by being realistic. Right now, my focus is on scale and distribution. This means that, like many growth businesses, mine is not yet profitable. I’d see that as the applause that will follow if I get the brand positioning, scale and distribution right!
Long-term, I believe the key to success in FMCG is to not be reactive. The most successful brands have always been the steady ships that don’t change with the tide. The household brands are the ones that know what they do, stick to it and do it well.
I’m a firm believer in organic growth and that a business doesn’t have to grow at supersonic speed. It just needs to be growing. For the first few years, The Bitter Club grew incredibly slowly, but every year, more customers come, and that’s all that matters.
What does building with intention mean to you in a category driven by volume and velocity? How do you maintain quality, brand integrity, and customer trust as you scale?
To me, building with intention means everything. My biggest competitor has been around for 200 years, so I look at my job as building the foundation of a business that my grandchildren could run. I see no correlation between long-term success and initial speed of volume sales – consistency is key.
For instance, I have recently noticed a significant increase in saturation in the RTD space. While a new brand might enter the space and sell a few pallets to a few supermarkets, there is no guarantee that they will be in those supermarkets six months later. My local Sainsbury’s changes its RTD fridge every few weeks, and there is very little consistency. Instead, I am trying to build a brand with real customer loyalty – and products that stay on shelves.
My product is an inherently slow product. Unlike a bottle of wine or a canned drink, it is consumed slowly. While this could be seen as a disadvantage in the FMCG space, I see it as an advantage. My product sits on people’s shelves a little longer, reminding them of my brand every time they walk past.
One of the reasons I focused so much on creating a beautiful bottle was to support this. Historically, bitters’ bottles have been designed to look old-timey or have not been modernised. I believe we live in an age of significant house pride. People are far more conscious of the aesthetics of consumer goods and how they will fit in their home. I created a bottle that people love to pick up and play with, that looks elegant on a home bar and deserves to be displayed.
Maintaining quality, brand integrity, and customer trust as you scale is all about keeping your eye on the detail, sticking closely to your core brand principles and always remembering your customer.
Resilience is critical in this sector – from supply chain pressures to retailer negotiations. What have been your most valuable lessons in navigating uncertainty?
It’s OK, and normal, to get things wrong. Believe in your product. Everyone has their own interests at heart – you have to make your interests theirs (align to win).
How do you balance ambition with wellbeing in an industry that rarely slows down? What systems or boundaries have become non-negotiable?
Everyone’s definition of wellbeing is different, and every entrepreneur has experienced burnout. In an industry that rarely slows down, I think it’s important to know when to close your computer and step away.
I’m a compulsive list-maker. I find it a helpful way to stay focused on what I need to be doing and to know when it’s acceptable to let myself stop. Like everyone, some days are longer, some are more stressful and some make you wonder what the point even is at all.
Ultimately, the pressure is coming from ourselves, and the desire to not let those around us down, so only we can strike the necessary balance.
What does legacy look like in your work? Are you building for acquisition, long-term category disruption, cultural impact, or generational value?
In a way, these are sort of intertwined. Long-term category disruption and cultural impact are necessary for generational value or acquisition.
I absolutely want to disrupt the category – by changing the way most people consume bitters. Currently, a fraction of people know about bitters because they have a few dashes in an Old Fashioned (or similar cocktail). A smaller group might even be able to name more than one bitters brand, but these will likely work in hospitality, F&B or be hobbyists.
Bitters are a fantastic way to create all kinds of delicious drinks. I have been campaigning for the B&T (bitters & tonic) as a fantastic low-ABV and low-sugar alternative to non-alc beer.
Many drinkers are looking for low/no-alc alternatives, but so many are full of sugar, quickly perishable or very expensive. My bitters offer an affordable alternative, with no sugar and a long shelf life (2ml/full dashes of our bitters with 150ml of soda/tonic water is ~0.5% ABV, the same as a Lucky Saint).
According to Mintel/Portman Group, “More than half of UK adults now use low- or no-alcohol drinks as part of moderating how they drink.”
I am also 100% building for generational value. My initial dream was to learn how to make whisky and build a distillery; however, this is incredibly capital-intensive. Without raising a load of debt or giving away equity, I am trying to do this the organic way. I have been able to see how a fairly closed-off and tightly knit industry works by sneaking in with a non-competing product that can work with the big boys rather than against them.
What advice would you give to women building their next chapter in food, drink, or FMCG?
Keep going.