'To date, we’ve sold over 8 million cocktails': The rise of a Northern Ireland drinks brand from a £500 idea to pouring local pubs, Netflix HQ, Silverstone and now a major Singapore launch

I’m Paul Burns – most people know me as Burnszy – and I’m the co-founder and director of Cocktail Keg Company, a Belfast-born business that’s been quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) changing how people drink cocktails.

The idea really started back in 2017, though we officially launched in 2018. My business partner, Anthony “Soda” Farrell, and I had already spent over 20 years behind bars across Belfast and beyond — building menus, slinging drinks, and obsessing over quality. We saw a gap that frustrated us daily: great cocktails were locked behind skilled labour, time, and mess. Busy pubs, events, airports — even homes — wanted quality without the faff. So we asked a simple question: why can’t cocktails work like beer?

Our answer was fresh, premium cocktails – batched exactly like we’d make them behind the bar, using high-quality ingredients, no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives – and crucially, cold-filled and unpasteurised. We’re still the only cocktail producer doing it this way. No heat treatment means no flavour loss. We handcraft every batch, keg it, and suddenly anyone can pour or tap a proper cocktail in seconds. No training. No waste. Just consistency and theatre.

We initially focused on the on-trade, supplying pubs and venues where speed and quality matter. Then Covid hit. Overnight, hospitality shut down and we had to pivot fast—into retail and online. It was brutal, but it changed the business forever. Today, our cocktails are poured in over 400 bars, restaurants and hotels across Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain. You’ll find us in Belfast International Airport, Dublin Airport, every Wagamama in Ireland, all Lidl stores across the island, and every Tesco Superstore in Northern Ireland. To date, we’ve sold over 8 million cocktails—a number that still doesn’t feel real.

Along the way, the awards followed: 15 Great Taste stars and 5 Irish Quality Food & Drink awards. From our Tommy’s Margarita and Espresso Martini to Irish Coffee, Ranch Water and Carrot & Walnut Daiquiri, the recognition matters because it proves we never cut corners—on ingredients or process.

The road hasn’t been smooth. We’ve survived a pandemic that nearly wiped out hospitality, recessions, Brexit, supply-chain chaos and rising costs. We adapted by innovating—creating a local citrus alternative to replace imported limes and lemons, a sugar substitute made from beer waste, vacuum systems to help bars ditch CO₂ gas, and planting a tree for every online order. We’re on track to become carbon neutral, and recently secured £1.2 million in funding to fuel growth, including our first London base.

The past six months alone have been surreal. We’ve secured pouring agreements at Netflix’s UK headquarters, Silverstone, the NEC Arena and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. This week, we won a major distribution contract in Singapore, with our operations manager Rory Kelly Naughton currently on the ground meeting five major hotel groups—and already locking in pouring agreements with two. That announcement is still to come, but it feels like a milestone moment.

Before all this, hospitality was my life. I’ve spent 25 years in and around it—creating projects like MOTH, an electronic music event that helped reshape Belfast’s club scene, co-founding Blaklist, an award-winning cocktail bar that hosted everyone from locals to Game of Thrones cast members, and more recently working on Anam Irish Citrus, Irish Gods Lager, and Katsu Kitchen. Cocktail Keg Company is a continuation of that same instinct: build things that genuinely raise the bar.

For me, success isn’t just numbers or awards—it’s impact. Jobs created. Local suppliers supported. Quality made accessible. Being from Belfast and building something here that punches well above its weight means everything. We started with £500, two lads from the local scene, and a belief that great cocktails shouldn’t be exclusive.

So whether you’re pouring one of our kegs in a pub, grabbing a bottle in Lidl or Tesco, or sipping one in an airport lounge—there’s a story behind it. And it started right here.