Story behind Glasgow founded drinks brand Panther M*lk

We talk to Paul Crawford, founder of growing business Panther M*lk, to find out where he sought inspiration for his drinks brand

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Paul Crawford and I'm the founder of Panther Milk.

00:05So Panther Milk is based on an old Spanish drink that's about 100 years old.

00:12So in Spain it's called Leche de Pantera, which is where the name comes from, Milk of

00:16the Panther.

00:17And it's got a really interesting story.

00:19So the troops of the Spanish Foreign Legion were nicknamed the Panthers, and a general

00:24in the Spanish Foreign Legion asked a really famous bartender in Madrid called Perico Chacote

00:30to come up with a drink for his troops.

00:33That's the legend, basically.

00:35So this guy, Chacote, whose bar is still in Madrid in Hemingway and people like that used

00:40to drink in it in the 1920s, came up with this drink with rum, gin, a bit of brandy,

00:48condensed milk and milk, and he called it the Milk of the Panthers.

00:52We started, as I said, as a small pop-up bar, secret bar, we only opened on a Friday

00:57and Saturday night, and it was kind of like a pre-sub club thing, so a lot of people would

01:02go before they were going on to the sub club, and we couldn't believe how popular it became.

01:08All the young DJs coming through at that time, Jasper and Jack Master and all these people

01:14would drink in it, and a lot of the time the DJs that were playing at the sub club would

01:19come before they played and stuff, so it really just grew very quickly.

01:25It was meant to be a pop-up for three months, but it lasted four and a half years until

01:29my pal Fergus sold the bar.

01:33So that's kind of how it started, then basically lockdown happened, at that time I had a job

01:40in a tech start-up business as the creative director, and everybody in the office got

01:47made redundant because of the pandemic, nobody knew what they were going to do, I had just

01:53turned 50.

01:54A couple of pals of mine were running a booze delivery service, and they asked if I would

01:59want to sell panther milk on it, you know, everybody was doing the cocktails at home

02:02thing at that time.

02:04So my son and I went into the bars and we made up 30 bottles of panther milk and we

02:09put it online, and by the time we drove home, the guy had phoned me and said, can you come

02:15in tomorrow, we've sold out on pre-orders of it, so 30 pre-orders came in straight away,

02:23and it just went like that the whole weekend, and we ended up selling 160 bottles on that

02:27first weekend.

02:28So that made me really think, look, there's a really strong kind of cult following behind

02:34this, people who just love the drink, so I should maybe look at trying to do something

02:38and create a brand around it.

02:41So that's what I did, and it ended up, you know, some pals of mine, when the pandemic

02:47ended, and pals of mine then asked me to supply their bars with it, so Banana Moon and various

02:52other places, the guys at Lokal here were great, Columbar, the Beer Hall, and it just

02:58kind of grew arms and legs from there.