Izzy wizzy let’s get fizzy
The Polish owner of a soft drinks firm set up in Glasgow’s east end tells how she wants to employ and educate FRIDAY
NATALIA JEJER might be the newest entrepreneur in Scotland’s soft drinks industry but her introduction to fermentation would have left a lesser person scarred for life.
“As a baby, I was placed in a bucket of sauerkraut,” she recalled.
This was not a strange and unusual punishment. In Poland, it was quite normal for infants to be used as kitchen assistants.
Natalia said: “My gran would fill up the bucket with sliced cabbage. Then she would put in the carrot and the salt. She needed to bash the salt into the cabbage. I would be stomping around in it. It’s one of my early memories.”
These days, Natalia has moved on from pickled vegetables. She is the driving force in Bottle of Ginger – a community enterprise that aims to revive the east end of Glasgow’s drinks industry with a home-produced alternative to sugar-packed soft drinks.
The company’s first product will be a healthy ginger beer, fermented with pride in deepest Bridgeton.
Natalia’s first experiments in drinks manufacturing were not without incident.
She said: “When I first started making ginger beer, I had so many explosions I thought my flatmate was going to kick me out the house.”
Growing up in Poland, then the US, it was not young Natalia’s burning ambition to make volatile beverages in her bedroom. She wanted to be an architect and first came to Scotland in 2009 to study at Glasgow School of Art.
She said: “I never felt 100 per cent happy with it. It was focused on the object, the building. I was always interested in what happened between the buildings.”
Then, two years ago, she moved to Bridgeton. Living in Glasgow’s east end was a sobering experience. Trying to find out why she couldn’t buy fresh food from her local shops, Natalia discovered statistics that horrified her.
She said: “Bridgeton is in the top five per cent of the most deprived areas of UK. There have been two indexes of multiple deprivation in the last five years and it’s still in the top five per cent. Nothing has changed. Areas in that top five per cent consume twice as many sugary soft drinks as the national average.”
Bridgeton, which used to be home to thriving soft drinks companies, was drowning in a sea of fizzy juice.
Natalia said: “When I looked at the history of the area, I discovered an amazing soft drinks manufacturing heritage. It was so different from today, there was a community focus, it was unintentionally environmentally sustainable. It was part of the fabric of the place.”
Bottle of Ginger is Natalia’s attempt to put the yeast back into the east end. She has set up a community business producing artisan soft drinks. A Crowdfunder campaign raised £5000 to get the first batch up and running.
She said: “People think the name comes from Irn-Bru. But it dates from Victorian times when people could take empty glass bottles to local shops.
“They would buy ginger beer, which was made naturally. It was fermented at the shop. It was amazing, had pro-biotic qualities and was made from natural ingredients. It was the opposite of what soft drinks are today.”
The company’s first batch will be sold to cafes and independent shops across Glasgow.
In the medium term, she hopes Bottle of Ginger will become a sustainable business, employing Bridgeton people.
She said: “I want to involve the community in the process, improve their skills to be involved in the long term as a community manufacturing company.
“I would like our drinks to be substitutes for the unhealthy versions.” ● To donate, go to www.crowd funder.co.uk/bottle-of-gingerhelp-us-launch-our-ginger-beer