Scottish beverage start-up Be Spring has launched a range of sparkling drinks aimed at the growing iced tea category, made with Scottish water, real tea extracts and natural fruit flavours.

Founded by brothers Luke and Oscar Grieve, whose drinks industry backgrounds include roles at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and Diageo, the brand was developed around what the pair saw as a gap between traditional sugar-heavy soft drinks and more health-focused alternatives that can compromise on flavour.

In this instalment of ‘Start-up spotlight,’ we speak to co-founders Oscar and Luke Grieve about the inspiration behind the brand, the development process and their ambitions for Be Spring.

What inspired you to launch Be Spring, and when did you first identify a gap in the market for a Scottish sparkling iced tea?

We’ve always genuinely loved iced tea. It’s been one of those drinks we naturally reach for, whether that’s picking one up on the way home or trying completely new flavours whenever we travel.

Travelling was actually one of the first things that made us realise how limited the UK iced tea category felt. We’d find brilliant flavours and brands abroad that simply weren’t available back home and it made us question why there wasn’t more innovation happening here.

At the same time, we saw an opportunity for a healthier Scottish soft drink brand. Scotland is associated around the world with freshness, natural beauty and incredible water, yet we didn’t feel there was a modern soft drink brand really bringing those qualities together.

That combination of our genuine love of iced tea and the gap we could see in the market was what ultimately became the starting point for Be Spring.

How did the initial concept for the brand take shape?

We’d always spoken about building another business together following the unfortunate closure of our family business during Covid-19.

Since then, we’ve probably had hundreds of business ideas. One of us would phone the other convinced we’d found the next big thing, we’d spend an hour pulling it apart, and usually realise it either already existed or wasn’t quite as good an idea as we first thought!

But iced tea is what kept coming back into the conversation.

It was a category we both genuinely cared about, and we believed there was an opportunity to create a premium Scottish drinks brand with a real identity and purpose behind it. That idea gradually developed into what Be Spring is today.

Be Spring is made with pure Scottish water. Why was the provenance and quality of the water particularly important to you?

There are two sides to it for us.

Firstly, Scotland is famous for the quality and purity of its water. We wanted to take something Scotland is renowned for and make it a central part of the product rather than simply treating it as an invisible ingredient.

Secondly, we’ve always found it strange that when you pick up a soft drink, you generally know very little about where the water inside it has actually come from. Water makes up the vast majority of most soft drinks, yet its provenance is rarely talked about.

We wanted to change that. Pure Scottish water is one of our most important ingredients, so rather than hide it in the background, we’re incredibly proud to put its origin front and centre which is Loch Katrine.

Can you explain how the tea is brewed and how this process contributes to the finished flavour?

At Be Spring, we use real tea extract produced through a carefully controlled extraction process. The tea is concentrated and converted into a stable extract before being incorporated into our finished drink.

We deliberately chose this approach rather than brewing tea leaves separately during every production run because it gives us far greater control over the final product. It means we can precisely manage the tea profile and ensure the flavour and quality remain consistent from can to can, while also creating a product that can be produced reliably at scale.

For us, it’s a modern approach to iced tea, using real tea while combining it with the precision and consistency needed to create the light, refreshing drinking experience we want Be Spring to be known for.

Which flavours are currently available, and what inspired their development?

Our current range consists of Apple & Hibiscus and Raspberry & Black Tea, and we also have a more classic iced tea flavour in development.

Apple was a natural starting point for us because we’ve both always loved apple-based drinks. This could’ve been sparkling, blended with other flavours or just your classic fresh apple juice. During development, we experimented extensively with different combinations and hibiscus ended up being the perfect complement to apple's flavour profile.

Raspberry followed a similar thought process. We’ve always enjoyed raspberry drinks, but we often found that some tasted overly artificial and almost as though they were trying to recreate the idea of a raspberry rather than showcasing the flavour itself.

We wanted ours to taste clean refreshing and recognisably natural. That philosophy really sums up what we want Be Spring to offer, which is refreshment without consequence or compromise on flavour.

Why did you choose to use black tea, hibiscus tea and natural fruit juices in the range?

We chose black tea and hibiscus because they bring very different characteristics to each of our flavours.

Hibiscus has a much more delicate profile and works brilliantly with our Apple & Hibiscus flavour. It adds a subtle tartness, almost reminiscent of cranberry, without overpowering the apple. That makes it really accessible, including for people who may not normally consider themselves big tea or iced tea drinkers.

Black tea has a much more pronounced tea character. In our Raspberry & Black Tea flavour, it gives the drink a really crisp, clean finish that works particularly well alongside the tartness of the raspberry.

The natural fruit flavours are then able to remain at the heart of each drink rather than being overwhelmed by sweetness or artificial ingredients.

What challenges did you encounter when developing a drink with no added sugar or artificial sweeteners while maintaining its flavour?

This was probably one of the biggest challenges during product development.

When you make the decision not to rely on added sugar or artificial sweeteners, you do have to work much harder to make sure the drink still delivers the flavour and refreshment consumers expect from a soft drink.

We were fortunate to work with a fantastic development partner, and the process involved multiple iterations and a huge amount of sampling. Small changes could make a significant difference to the finished drink, so there was plenty of back and forth before we reached something we were genuinely happy with.

For us, the really important thing was never to sacrifice taste simply to make the nutritional profile look better. The finished product had to deliver on both.

The packaging features mountains from Scotland’s west coast. What is the story behind the design, and what did you want it to communicate about the brand?

We wanted the packaging to feel genuinely connected to Scotland rather than simply using Scottish imagery for the sake of it.

The west coast of Scotland is particularly meaningful to us because we grew up there, and we wanted the design to capture the feeling you get from being there which we have always felt is the openness, space, freshness and being surrounded by nature.

Those are all things Oscar and I were incredibly fortunate to grow up around, and they’ve had a huge influence on how we see the brand.

There were plenty of iterations before we landed on the final design, but the goal was always the same, when somebody sees a can, we want it to evoke that sense of freshness and freedom that the Scottish landscape gives you.

How have your respective experiences at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and Diageo influenced the development of Be Spring?

Working within two of the world’s biggest drinks businesses gave us an invaluable perspective on both the industry and how consumer behaviour is changing.

From our respective experiences, we could see some clear long-term shifts particularly with consumers becoming more health conscious, and younger generations increasingly moderating their alcohol consumption.

That led to a lot of conversations between us about where we believed the drinks market was heading and what kind of product we would actually want to create.

We really felt there was no in-between in offerings either. At one end of the spectrum, you had incredibly sugary soft drinks, while at the other, you sometimes had products that were positioned as extremely healthy but lost a lot of the flavour and enjoyment people actually want from a drink.

We wanted Be Spring to sit in the middle of those worlds, something genuinely refreshing and enjoyable, but without unnecessary ingredients. That’s where our idea of 'refreshment without consequence or compromise' comes from.

Why did you choose to enter the sparkling iced tea category, and what differentiates Be Spring from competing soft drinks and iced teas?

For us, everything starts with the product.

We wanted to create a sparkling iced tea with no added sugar, no artificial sweeteners or ingredients, made using pure Scottish water. It needed to taste genuinely refreshing without relying on all the unnecessary extras traditionally associated with soft drinks.

But the brand around the product is equally important.

Be Spring is more than just a name to us; it represents a mindset, a call to action, if you will. We want the brand to stand for optimism, energy and getting out there and enjoying life. There’s a particular feeling when spring arrives that we felt growing up on the west coast after long, dark winters: the days get longer, everything becomes brighter and people naturally want to get outside and do more. We want Be Spring to capture some of that feeling.

We’re also incredibly proud of its Scottish identity. Scotland has an amazing global reputation for its landscapes, natural beauty and fresh water, and we’ve tried to weave that throughout both the product and the brand.

Ultimately, we want somebody picking up a can of Be Spring to feel that connection.

What are your priorities for the next 12 months, and what is your longer-term vision for Be Spring?

Our biggest measure of success will always be whether consumers genuinely love the product.

Over the next 12 months, we’ll be growing Be Spring across events, direct-to-consumer and the on-trade, so seeing strong consumer feedback and repeat purchases across those different channels will be incredibly important to us.

Alongside that, we’d love to begin meaningful conversations with one of the major supermarket groups with the aim of an exclusive partnership. Reaching that stage would be a fantastic milestone and a strong indication that the brand is heading in the right direction.

Longer term though, the ambition is much bigger than simply getting Be Spring onto shelves. We want to build a brand that people actively look for rather than simply buy because it happens to be there.

If consumers begin walking into a shop, café or venue and asking, “Do you have Be Spring?”, that’s when we’ll know we’re building something with real staying power.