Fran Gresswell had her sights set on becoming a police detective from the age of 11 but her career path took a different turn and now she's bidding to make it big in the world of refreshing summery drinks.
The 22-year-old, who lives in Newark, had been studying criminology at Durham University and decided to do a business module before she even thought about creating a drinks brand. Arriving late and flustered in a lecture hall with around 200 students, she got a question wrong about the difference between gross and net profit.
"They basically laughed me out of the lecture. They said you'll never make it business, go back to criminology," said Fran, who has gone on to prove the doubters wrong by launching her range of Riviera Iced Tea. Two flavours are currently on sale, peach and lemon, and a third, raspberry and mint, will be coming out in June.
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Not only are they refreshing, the drinks are vegan, natural, low calorie and gluten-free so Fran hopes they will appeal to a wide audience. "I wanted to launch an exciting new soft drink brand as someone who isn't a big fan of the taste of alcohol but found there are limited options apart from the carbonated classics. Iced tea is becoming extremely popular in the UK and we have seen strong sales and really positive feedback," she said.
The cans are on sale in cafes in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, London and Exeter. Locally they can be found at Ugly Bread Bakery in Hockley, the Oat Shed in Kimberley, Tree and JandJ Alpacas, both in Newark, and Basilia in Langley Mill. The iced teas were the fourth best selling drinks on sale at a pop-up shop for start-up businesses in London.
Fran said: "We were in a shop in Regent Street in London where it did really well. I didn't have much budget for marketing and I didn't have any consumers down there so it was purely just on how popular iced tea is becoming. That was great."
She came up with the idea while bored during lockdown. "I wanted to go into the police CID since I was about 11. That was was always my dream. During lockdown I'd done all of my uni work, I was just finishing second year and I had nothing to do and I love iced tea personally. I saw a bit of a gap in the market because there is only Lipton and Arizona that dominate the UK market and they are both in plastic bottles.
"I decided to just go for it. I started working on it to occupy my mind and decided that was what I was going to do. I absolutely loved it, building the brand and marketing. It's the complete opposite to what I was doing.
"I finished my course and I graduated. Maybe in the future I'll go back to pursuing the police but at the minute I'm really enjoying building Riviera. I had quite a bit of criticism when starting the business due to my age and not pursuing the career I went to university for. Everyone was very sceptical. A lot of people said I should be getting a grad scheme job rather than taking this risk."
However, Fran pushed past the criticism and Riviera is growing, having doubled the number of stockists recently. She worked with a liquid developer in Rugby to get the flavours right and the drinks are canned and labelled at a factory in Devon, where she will he heading at the end of May to see the new flavour being canned.
"I knew the flavours I wanted to do just because they are favourites of mine and the ones that dominate. With the gap in the market I saw it going quite far. Because I've no experience I didn't want to start in my kitchen and have the blocks in the way if I wanted to take it to retail so I got it professionally done."
Having worked in bars at university and a wedding venue back home, she ploughed the savings she was going to spend on travelling to Australia into setting up the business. A small inheritance helped and a £2,000 grant from the East Midlands Chamber of Commerce funded mentoring.
Fran will be out and about at markets nearly every weekend over the summer, starting with The Garage in Chilwell on April 30. She will also be at Sherwood vegan market, Notts County Show and The Stalls at West Bridgford. The cans sell for £1.89 and are priced £2 to £3 in cafes, or a box of six costs £9 via her website.
"Obviously my budget's relatively low being only 22 so it was doing what I can myself. I do all the marketing and all the sales with help from friends and family at the moment. I want to build the brand awareness and hopefully get a retail listing to take it nationwide. It would be great to get into more stockists."
Her parents Malcolm and Carole are her biggest supporters. They were the founders of their own business, Newark Concrete, so she's got their full backing.
"They're really supportive. They didn't go to uni and back in the day they didn't do A-levels. They started a business that was really successful. This is very different to concrete but they love it. They're very excited about it and have been telling everybody."
In the short time Riviera Iced Teas has been going Fran has had to overcome several of the trials and tribulations that come with running a business. From planning to actually buying the materials she's seen prices rocket, packaging was a month late arriving due to Brexit, and the launch was delayed when the canning mixer caught fire.
Wendy Baird, who runs Tree in Newark, said: "We are so happy to stock these wonderful drinks that are made beautifully on our doorstep. We greatly admire Fran and her entrepreneurship at such a young age. The drinks are delicious and match perfectly with our ethos of supporting local as much as possible."
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