The owner of a Liverpool gin distillery has revealed how his firm came perilously close to going out of business after being forced to shut due to the Covid lockdown - just a month after launching.
Turncoat Distillery the doors of its first gin bar at the Royal Albert Dock on February 7 last year, tucked away inside the basement at the iconic location, below Revolución de Cuba.
In March, the coronavirus pandemic forced the hospitality sector to close its doors, and until lockdown restrictions eased on April 12 of this year - 13 months - the bar had only traded for a total of 96 days.
Much to the relief of owner Terry Langton, who founded the business in a garage in 2016, it has now reopened to customers outside, in line with national guidelines.
Mr Langton has explained to BusinessLive just how close the firm came to going under, how he managed to keep it afloat - and why he is now optimistic about the future.
He said it was “very tough” to have to close so soon after opening, adding: “We were just at a loss as to what to do for the best.
“We had had a very slow launch due to building delays pushing the date back several times.
“We ended up launching in February which is the worst time of year, especially if you want to raise revenue and get a positive cashflow.
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“But on top of that, there were two major storms which just left everyone staying at home. Then the Prime Minister told everyone to stay at home. I don’t think we had a week of normal trading when we opened. I was at my wits end.”
Mr Langton said the firm was “very close” to going out of business altogether, and that Government funding was, in the early days at least, “slow and clunky”.
He added: “If all our lenders wanted their money we may have had to have folded. It was very surreal.
“Eventually the council sorted the rates issue and we started to get some funding through and get the furlough going.
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He said the firm used “every” Government support package available to keep his firm alive - from bounce back loans to furlough to “a myriad of grants that genuinely confused the life out of me”.
“We’re only in business due to local and government support - so complaining about delays and confusion is just daft,” he said.
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He added that the bar is financed by independent asset finance lender Propel, who “supported us each step of the way”, including with payment holidays, reduced payments and interest only deals.
“We wanted to get to a position where we still made some payments rather than kicking the can down the road and having massive arrears.
“This could have created a situation impossible to recover from when we got trading again. It was hard using the working capital and not knowing when we could open - it was almost impossible to plan.”
Mr Langton said he made an “ethical decision” not to make any redundancies for its 19 members of staff - and that he was “very proud” of that.
He said: “We’d worked hard to put a team together, and I wanted to keep everyone.
“This ended up burning through a fair bit of working capital, even with the furlough, but when we came to relaunching, the team were ready.
“We could get back open very quickly for the 2020 summer. I think this resonated with our team from bar staff to managers, that we’re not just a numbers organisation, we look after and respect the team. We thought that was a good investment which is paying off.”
The firm also pivoted to open a pizza kitchen at the bar due to the reopening restrictions - Bar Voltagabbana - one of which was at the garden of St Luke’s Bombed Out Church, and at the Botanical Gin Garden in the Baltic Triangle.
He said: “This was a hard thing to ask the team; setting up two new kitchens on the drop of a hat, with a new contactless ordering system, a field kitchen set up and fresh dough - but we did it.
“This meant the kitchen teams still had jobs and we could make some revenue.”
Despite the struggles, Mr Langton and his team are now “very optimistic” for the future, and that future initiatives include launching new products, opening a new bar with business partners in Hope Street, and further growing the Voltagabanna brand.
He added: “Liverpool is a hospitality city in every sense of the word - that's our strength as a city, and as businesses. We’re all hard workers and believe in what we do - that’s what will lead to getting out of this.”