Drinks At Work with Sam Bygrave

Drinks At Work with Sam Bygrave


“Brands follow the money.” Charlie Ainsbury, Darren Leaney, and Mariella Menato on the future of drinks

March 14, 2023

This episode we’ve got something a little bit different. This is a recording of a panel chat that I hosted the other week in Sydney at Paramount Liquor’s Future Proof Forum. It was a great night, a number of different distilleries and brands were on hand offering samples, and we had a great audience to listen to three of the talks on the night. This one you’re about to hear was about future proofing our industry — on the panel was Charlie Ainsbury from Proof & Company, Mariella Menato from Denomination Design, and Darren Leaney who is the head of product for Worksmith in Melbourne. 


We talk about sustainability for the spirits business and thankfully the panel was an engaging because that topic can get a little dry, and we also talked about pay in the bar world, if bartenders should be getting into bar ownership and if so, how, and we talked about what the panel wanted to see in the years to come. I really enjoyed this chat — I think you will too.