Interviews

Interview with Matt Bird, CEO and Founder of immersive food and drink platform Rebottling  

TechRound Team April 26, 2021

We caught up with Matt Bird, CEO and founder of immersive food and drink platform Rebottling (rebottling.com) to talk all things food and drink

 

Website: https://www.rebottling.com/ 

 

Tell us about Rebottling

 

Rebottling offers live-streamed food and wine tasting experiences focusing on the rapidly growing, luxury at-home market.  The company’s founding product is a customised hamper published in partnership with some of the world’s top chefs and sommeliers.

 

It is a custom-made box with each ‘issue’ themed around a specific restaurant, hotel, head chef, vintner or sommelier and their own, personal selections of fine wines carefully paired with a delectable ‘eat treat’.  Each presentation box arrives with hand bound tasting notes together with an invitation to a live online event.  The broadcast features the named partner,  who guides viewers through a truly immersive tasting experience, whilst remaining on-hand to engage with the audience and answer any questions.

 

Since its launch in December 2020 Rebottling’s beautifully presented monthly experiences or ‘issues’ have already collaborated with some of the worlds finest chefs and sommeliers, including Richard Weiss from St Jacques in Mayfair, Adam Handling of Frog and the  eponymous master chocolatier Paul A Young.  Its next experience on the 10th May 2021 is with Jason Atherton of Pollen Street Social.  With four Michelin stars under his belt, he has mastered the art of casual fine dining not just in his London restaurants but also in locations as far afield as Shanghai and New York.

 

Rebottling’s vision is nothing less than to establish a wholly new category in the at-home experience market.  Truly multi-dimensional experiences that represent the convergence point of wine and food tasting events paired with live content that is broadcast directly from the world’s top restaurants. Consumers enjoy the fine wines and eat-treats prepared by the chefs at the featured restaurants.  Meanwhile, the restaurant enjoys and benefits from exposure whilst profiling its own dining experience in front of an engaged audience, who would likely be future patrons of the featured establishments”.

Revenue in the first instance is generated from hamper sales. Rebottling is building a growing audience of high earning, influential ABC1s with significant disposable income. Live audiences of Rebottling’s broadcasts have grown issue-on-issue.

 

How did you come up with the idea?

I have always been passionate about creating wine and food experiences for communities of friends and corporate clients. Lockdown with all its restrictions and social distancing seemed like the perfect time to enable people to do this at home by launching an at-home luxury experience platform. So that is when Rebottling was launched – an amalgamation and digitisation of my experience.

 

What can we hope to see from Rebottling in the future?

Rebottling will be broadcasting directly from vineyards later in the year, in what gives a first glimpse of the truly favourable economics of working directly with family and boutique wine producers wanting to be discovered and connected with consumers. Without compromising on quality and ensuring the Rebottling hampers always remain unrivalled in quality; the company’s model will in part develop to feature paid product placement. Product will be provided at reduced cost to the company, but enjoyed and charged in full to the consumer and featured in the live broadcast.

A true value add to the vineyards, which are competing with tens of thousands of other wineries in what is a truly, globally competitive market. The restaurants and the celebrity chefs behind them add an additional layer of interest and engagement in the live entertainment, whilst continuously strengthening the Rebottling brand, each bringing their own audiences to the Rebottling experiences. Economies of scale will become a feature as viewership grows, with after sales of products featured during the live broadcast also contributing; the combined impact of which will allow the platform to move into a cashflow positive position within 12 months.

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