Au Vodka has opened a glitzy and glamorous bar on Swansea's Wind Street - but you'll have to be quick if you fancy a drink there as it's only going to be open for the next three weekends. The popular Swansea-based drinks brand has set up a special "pop up bar" in the former Metropolitan Bank of England and Wales unit, located next-door to Founders and Co., to promote its newest offering, Pink Lemonade-flavour Vodka.
The pop-up bar opened in time for the May Day Bank Holiday weekend and will be open again this Friday, May 5 to Sunday, May 7 from around 3pm to 11pm/12am each day - and will also be open on the evenings of May 12, 13, 19 and 20. After that, the business owners will be returning their keys to the building's owner, ahead of the unit being taken over by the team behind Main Stage bar in Cardiff, who are set to launch Main Stage Swansea, a new permanent gay bar and cabaret venue which will open later in the summer.
Explaining the premise behind the new pop-up Au Vodka bar, the company's events co-ordinator Peri Hatay told WalesOnline: "It's a pop-up bar promoting our new pink lemonade flavour. The interior is all pink lemonade/lemon farm theme and customers can enjoy drinks from our cocktail menu." You can get the biggest Swansea news stories straight to your inbox with our newsletter.
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"It was a lot of blood sweat and tears [to set up the bar], we had 12 days to turn it around! The bar will be open this Friday, Saturday Sunday and then on Fridays and Saturdays until May 20. We have a competition on our Facebook right now 'Win a bar tab of £100 for this Bank Holiday'."
Asked whether Au Vodka plans to open a permanent venue, Peri added: "This is just an exclusive pop-up bar so it won't be open permanently." Photos from the venue show its glamorous, pink theme designed to match Au Vodka's new pink lemonade flavoured vodka, a small seating area - and an awesome, golden Vespa motorbike, perfect for a photo!
Au Vodka was set up by Swansea lads Charlie Morgan and Jackson Quinn back in 2016. They spotted a gap in the market as they watched their pals unwrap several boring bottles of the same vodka for their 18th, 19th, and 20th birthdays - and dreamed about what it would be like to create something a little bit different.
They decided to see if they could make a reality out of their vision, so tried their hands at making their own, calling it Au Vodka, first producing 2,000 bottles and launching locally in a few bars around Swansea. Word of mouth across the city helped it build up a reputation while it gathered plenty of attention on Instagram too, perhaps thanks to its trademark eye-catching gold bottle.
Explaining their success story, Charlie previously explained: "Me and Jackson were best mates in school and we just felt there was a bit of a gap in the market. We were 18, 19, 20 at the time and every one of our friends for their birthday would always get a bottle of the same old vodkas. We just felt it was a bit boring.
"We just felt we could do it a little bit better. For us, we wanted to do a gold bottle which we felt was completely different, and a couple of years later we did vibrant liquid colours of the vodka itself. The growth has been just phenomenal. There are so many people in the world who are involved in it now which is exciting. We thought we could do well but it's probably gone bigger than we thought we could do already."
The business is now worth more than £40m and Au Vodka is served in homes, bars and clubs all around the world - and some people are such hardcore fans of the drink that they were willing to get the Au Vodka logo tattooed on their bodies earlier this year.
Over the last few years, Au Vodka's popularity has grown and grown - and the company now serves a wide range of flavoured vodka including: pineapple crush, fruit punch, black grape, blue raspberry, red cherry, green watermelon, original - and the new pink lemonade flavour. The company also sells branded glassware, pre-mixed Au Vodka and mixer cans, miniatures and giftsets.
The Au Vodka Pop-Up Bar is located at 27 Wind Street, Swansea and is open on weekends until May 20, 2023.
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