Kingswinford vodka brand seeks to grow its US presence after founder’s epic California road trip

A team from Jatt Life, including its founder Baz Kooner, have just returned from the USA, where they spent two weeks promoting their five-times-filtered French grain premium vodka to hundreds of independent liquor stores based in Central Valley.

The trip, which saw the team fly into Los Angeles and drive more than 800 miles up and down Highway 99, aimed to target independent retailers to get a ground-level understanding of the consumer demand for UK premium vodka.

It sought to leverage the brand’s heritage by focussing on stores serving California’s sizeable South Asian population, especially the Punjabi communities living in cities across Central Valley, which are home to the descendants of the original farm workers who moved to America from India in the 1900s.

The team visited locations where Jatt Life is already on sale, such as Bakersville, Fresno and Stockton and also spread the word and found new stockists in a host of new locations including Sacramento, Yuba City, Marysville, San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles.

The California business trip follows brand campaigns in India and Canada earlier this year - the two other points of what Jatt Life calls its "Golden Triangle" of key international markets.

Social media content produced during the Highway 99 trip also drove a measurable uplift in UK sales during the two weeks the team was on the road.

Buoyed by the success, Jatt Life, whose product is available on the West Coast of the USA via a Canadian distributor, is now looking to enter into a partnership with the American Petroleum and Convenience Store Association (APCA), which represents around 2,000 independent gasoline, tobacco, liquor and convenience store owners across the USA.

Baz Kooner, founder of Jatt Life, said: "We spent two weeks of 12-hour days travelling up and down Highway 99, specifically meeting and talking to independent retailers to understand what consumers are looking for and where Jatt Life fits into the market.

“It's a hugely competitive sector and we're up against some well-established names, but the demand we found was unreal. Retailers and consumers responded to the Jatt Life name, the brand heritage, the black bottle, the fact that the liquid is produced in Britain, and the smooth quality of the vodka itself.

"It might sound unusual for a British vodka brand to take a road-trip approach to grassroots outreach in America, but we're a proud independent brand and we wanted to speak directly to independent retailers and show them what Jatt Life stands for.

"California is a perfect export market. It has one of the largest alcohol markets in the United States and the buyers were very open to stocking new brands, and what succeeds there tends to travel across the rest of the country."

Jatt Life, headquartered at Multipark Pensnett in Kingswinford, was founded in 2020 by Baz and Sunny Kooner, with the ambition of bringing a quality, premium vodka to a market dominated by long-established names.

The liquid is produced in France using French grain and is five-times filtered and its range comprises five expressions - original, forest fruits, lime zest, orange and pineapple, and vanilla bean - bottled at 40 per cent ABV. It also produces Jatti Gin and a Scotch whisky.

Jatt Life is available in the UK on and off-trade, including the Co-op Central Group, and in 18 countries worldwide including Italy, Australia and New Zealand.