WHAT’S COOKING WITH KRISTIN LEMURA, AWARD WINNING GIN DISTILLER

In our latest ‘What’s Cooking’, we hear from Foodpreneurs Formula member, Kristin Lemura from Noble Bootleggers Distilling Co. Kristin is busy as a gin distiller, taking care of her family, working as a hospitality teacher and winning awards! Recently Kristin, and her partner Dan, won a silver for their Christmas pudding gin and bronze for their cherry gin. An enormous thing for this small distillery. Read on for how Kristin does it.

Your business name: Noble Bootleggers Distilling Company

How would you describe the business you are in?

Distiller of specialised gin, aged bottled cocktails and whisky

What do you love about your work?

That it allows myself and my husband to work together. We can be very creative and solve problems by learning how to make the best products possible. We are both self taught and we find the journey incredibly rewarding. If we don’t know how to do something, we figure it out!

What part of your job would you gladly give away?

The social media and marketing of the business – it’s not my strength.

If you were starting out in business again today, what piece of advice would you give your younger you?

Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. It’s how we grow. If you fall over, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep going.

Women start businesses 41% of the time to solve a problem. Sometimes this means we have a great vision but don’t have enough resources to sustain our business for the long term. Tell us what resources you started your business with eg. money saved, business premises, business partner, and how long before you started paying yourself?

My husband and I had saved up a small amount to get things rolling. We decided that in order to keep overheads low, we would start the business from home. Initially, we had two other business partners with us, but unfortunately they weren’t as financially and emotionally invested in the vision as we were. Parting ways was challenging, but it was the best move we could have made.

Have I started paying myself yet? No! Any profits we are generating are being reinvested back into the business. The plan is to secure some more consistent clients on board. This will allow my husband can concentrate on the distillery full time and I will continue with my ‘second love’ – being a hospitality teacher. I find it extremely rewarding passing my knowledge onto the next group of hospo people who choose to to make this hard slog their lifelong passion. Starting my masters degree is also on the cards too!

As you know we are passionate about women #backingthemselves. So tell us about a time in the last twelve months that you’re really proud of. 

Being awarded for our gins at the 2019 Australian Distilled Spirits Awards. Silver medal for our Christmas Pudding gin and a Bronze for our Cherry gin. When we won the awards we had only been distilling seriously for about 8 months after selling our cocktail bar.

As we are always growing and learning, what is the one thing you would like to take time to learn more about?

Having the ability to close sales more consistently.

The world is changing so fast and technology enables us to do so much more. We’re interested in which app you could not live without and why?

I could not live without the website builder Squarespace. I love how it creates beautiful, visually appealing sites and is very easy to manage and use.

Why did you decide to become a member of Females in Food®

I wanted to surround myself with strong, independent, positive women who all have a dream to succeed. Having a community to be able to bounce ideas off one-another and to have people pushing you to be better really appealed to me.