When life handed Aidan Quinn lemons, he made lemonade. “I was on furlough from the spring of 2020 until October,” says the 27 year old soft drinks confectioner. “I was just doing nothing and that’s when I started taking things a bit more seriously. My partner used to hate it; it was a whole day of me clattering around juicing various different things. It was very labour-intensive. But it was my happy place.”

Quinn is still in his happy place, only now that place has more space than it did before. In a former MOT garage in a wee pen behind Minard Road in Glasgow’s Shawlands, the Southsider is living out the sort of childhood fantasy that took root in the minds of any kid whose imaginations were lit by Roald Dahl’s fantastical vision in stories such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and George’s Marvellous Medicine. Behind the shutters of his tiny unit sits a gleaming chrome vat and a kit for juicing, canning, pasteurisation, labelling and carbonation.  These are the accoutrements of pop, and Quinn, with his company Cruice, is working his way up the charts.

“When I was 16 I worked in kitchens and wanted to be a chef,” he says, “then I went to Edinburgh Napier University where I did hospitality management, but after working in kitchens I realised I didn’t want to be a chef because the hours were horrendous.  I went to uni, did an events management placement and that ignited the passion for events. I worked for Luv Events, doing anything from Perth Races in a food van to sophisticated wedding bars and I really enjoyed doing different things every week. It was hard work but good fun.”

This positive work ethic and early entrepreneurial spirit led to him setting up a company running gin festivals around the country called My Gin Festivals. It was during this early phase of his burgeoning career that he met Simon Ross, who would go on to become the business partner of his soft drinks start-up, an idea he was brewing during lockdown. “I was working out the process, working out if I was to scale up, how I would do that. It kept me sane throughout lockdown,” he says. Quinn first started skiddling with juice when he was supposed to be doing essays.

“I was making juice in wee bottles back when I was at uni,” he recalls. “I didn’t really enjoy organised uni. I would be messing around in my flat doing flavours. I joke to people all the time that I came up with the name Lemonaiden before I came up with the recipe . . . but I actually did. 
“It was a wee bit of a side gig. I would take bottles to the local market at Park Lane in Shawlands. That’s where I first started.”

The market, which runs on the first and last Sunday of every month, is one of the most popular in the city, eschewing the standard-fayre venison-and-cheese vibe of the so-called farmers’ markets in other parts of the city with an offbeat, craft-led, DIY ethic. It’s also where Quinn can still be found selling his juice in person, at the place where he received the sort of feedback that has kept up his pep for pop. “I was there one weekend in 2020 and one guy came up and said that our Lemonaidan tasted like summer after he’d had a drink of it. So I held onto that. It encapsulates everything we’re about, nice summer drinks. It was a wee part-time thing then when I met my business partner that’s when it went boom.” 

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Just like Wonka’s fizzy lifting drink. Quinn and Ross have so far sunk a five-figure sum into starting Cruice, and part of the business’ USP is in its boutique hand-crafted vibe and irreverence. 
Their Space Cadet ginger beer was inspired by Quinn’s old boss and his choice of language to describe certain staff members. “We pride ourselves in having fun,” he says. “There are no major external investors. My business partner and I have put the money in to grow the business to where it is now.”

So is there an element of childhood wish fulfilment to Cruice’s business venture? “I wanted to be a WWE wrestler or a footballer,” he responds, laughing, “then I wanted to be a chef. But I never thought I’d be here doing this in a former MOT garage. It’s a dream come true, to be honest.” Quinn estimates Cruice produced six million litres of fizzy juice last year. Like the rocket on the label of their second line – Space Cadet ginger beer – the trajectory is skybound.

While the city’s other fizzy drink has become a global multi-million-pound international brand, for Cruice’s founders, who use freshly squeezed fruit juice, not girders in their recipe, the graft is real.
“It’s been a slog going round the place, door to door, because you do get some rejection, but you find there are others who want to support local craft brands. But we have grown our customer base from zero to 30 independents across the UK, from Aberdeen to Ealing. Instagram is good for keeping on top of who is opening, who is new, and who is stocking craft product. I go and try to get my face in there with the right person. In our first year we sold 25,000 units and that was without any major wholesaling, just the sweat off our own back going door to door around cafés and markets. I’m out every weekend to different markets – Uddingston, Stepps too, Chatelherault, wee ones like St Andrews where all the students come out in the morning looking for something like Lemonaidan after a big night out.”

The name Cruice is a portmanteau of craft and juice, acknowledging something Ross and Quinn identified in the early days of scoping the market. “There’s just not a massive range of alternatives when you compare it to the craft beer market,” says Quinn. “I think there really is space for craft juice and I think supermarkets are starting to think that way too.
“There are people who don’t just want to accept Coke and Irn Bru, people who realise there are alternatives which can be fun, funky and local.”