Real Al: In search of the best british cider and ale
From hedgerowed lanes to London’s pubs
We had a fun chat with founders, owners and all round cider lovers, Al and Ish about the roots of Real Al and how it’s all tied to a love of the delicious and whimsical composite parts of the British countryside. Al is the founder and commercial director; she got her taste for the industry with her dad running a brewery in Shropshire. She works across everything at Real Al, but right now — in the most simple terms — is focused on getting as many of the flavours of the countryside into London. Ish runs marketing and operations; comes from a very creative background and has visions of a future deep in the countryside, with fresh air and fresh apples on hand. Al says: ‘Ish brought in a bunch of systems, coordination and creativity that was really needed and that’s changed the business truly for the better.
Real Al’s delicious mission
Both Ish and Al say ‘Cider has a brand issue’ and they themselves, with Real Al and their own cider brand — Crafty Blends — are trying to address it by sourcing far and wide. The producers they work with are small, producing less than 2000 litres and are dotted all over the country, with their driver spending his days collecting from little farms and micro-producers deep in the countryside.
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Distributing the Countryside
Real Al was founded in 2012 and today is a multitude of things; primarily it’s the distributor for cider and cask ale in the UK; in Ish’s words: ‘we cast the net really wide to bring the true flavours of the British countryside into our cities, primarily London as being honest, we don’t always get the tastiest things in our big urban bubbles.’
They’ve recently just completed something ‘very exciting’, Ish says; a rebrand. Real Al worked with Outsiders to bring a new life into the distributor, reference more of its fun side and root the brand in the greens of orchards, apples and hops that fill their day-to-day. Ish says: ‘it’s really very exciting and has set us up to think really effectively about where we’re looking to go.’
Ops on tap
The operations of Real Al are complex, of course — working with many hundreds of producers around the country, up until recently running a taproom in Walthamstow, acting as the supplier for The Cider Festival and most importantly, facilitating the deliveries of all the drinks they are sourcing from the countryside, into London pubs and bars. Al says: ‘there’s a weekly process of bookkeeping and administration that I swear grows each and every time; between our own processes that Ish has worked on and those that our bookkeeper has brought in, it’s really quite a complex but now mostly streamlined thing.’
How Apron powers the pour
When thinking about how they make the most of Apron, Al says it’s simple: ‘beyond reconciliation which is mostly our bookkeeper keeping us true, it’s all about the expense card… we’ve got drivers going down hedgerowed lanes to pick up cider and things going on far outside of our warehouse-sized bubble in Walthamstow that in short, always result in money being spent and those people having expense cards that we can govern really easily is a dream.’
Ish adds that the process of capturing receipts via those expense card payments gives them the ‘balance we need to have a good view of the business on a weekly and monthly basis.’
The Real Al team are really pushing to progress the mission of solving ciders brand problem, but they’re doing it in their own way; it could see them leaving London one day, but for now, they’re blessed to think about the flavours and fresh air of the British Countryside while growing their business in London.
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