Just the tonic Lucy Warhurst (2006)
92 . ROSE . SPRING 2020
With the low- and no-alcohol trend sweeping the drinks’ market, we talk to Lucy Warhurst (2006), founder of Percival & Co, an independent drinks’ brand creating premium, lightly alcoholic drinks – low in sugar, gently sparkling and utterly reinvigorating. I started working on Percival and Co., a new independent drinks brand, whilst bored and disillusioned by my career in finance. During this time, I became very aware of a gap in the market for high quality drinks with lower alcohol content. After long days in the office I would be gasping for something refreshing and reinvigorating, but without the high alcohol, calorie and sugar content of the usual offerings. It seemed crazy to me that my healthconscious friends and colleagues would spend huge amounts of money on gym membership and organic food, obsess over calorie counting and completing 10,000 steps a day, and then destroy all their virtuous doings in the pub without any consideration as to the units of alcohol and hidden calories they were consuming. The phenomenon of ‘healthy living’ has dominated almost all other food and beverage markets with natural, low calorie and low sugar
