After spending her formative professional years learning the ropes at Guinness owner Diageo, Jayne O'Keeffe has returned to the drinks industry as vice president of European marketing at non-alcoholic spirits brand Lyre's.

The Australian company has raised £35m (€41.4m) across four funding rounds since its inception in 2019, and its range of 14 spirits is now available in 60 countries.

Following its latest funding round of £20m last November, Lyre's is valued at c.£270m (€319m), and founder Mark Livings has said the company is on course to become "the fastest independent beverage brand to reach unicorn status."

The firm is eyeing expansion following the return of the on-trade, both in terms of the depth of its product line and the regions in which the company operates, with the Middle East, South Africa and the Caribbean all on the agenda.

Jayne O'Keeffe (pictured), who grew up in Co Cork and whose mother ran a bar in Kinsale, spent a number of years at Diageo ("a wonderful place to spend my 20s") in the early-2000s before moving on to Dundrum Town Centre, Arnotts, and then Marks & Spencer in the UK.

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She describes drinks as a "social" and "fun" industry to work in, but the chance to offer consumers "positive choices and options" was one of the factors that attracted her to Lyre's.

A Drinks Ireland study shows that overall alcohol consumption in Ireland declined 6.6% last year, and O'Keeffe believes people are becoming "more mindful of their drinking habits", while still wanting to consume something more flavoursome and interesting than a soft drink,

With onset on workplace and movement restrictions in March 2020, many people turned to alcohol for solace. A few months later, according to O'Keeffe, many home imbibers started reassessing their drinking habit.

"When Covid hit, we were like, 'Oh, my God, everyone's drinking, what are we doing?' And then very quickly, people just went, 'No, actually, I still need that end of the day punctuation moment. I still want to put down my laptop, put the children to bed, go out for a walk, but have something to look forward to in the evenings.'

"So to be able to pour a really great non-alcoholic drink ended up being a really positive lifestyle choice for people. So that I think is where the trend started."

The Lyre's non-alcoholic range includes an American Malt bourbon (RRP €23.84), an Amalfi Spritz (€23.84), and 4x250ml ready-to-drink premixes such as Classic G&T, Dark n’ Spicy and the Classico Prosecco alternative (€10 for the pack).

Still, when pubs, restaurants and hotels closed their doors worldwide in early 2020, Lyre's faced "a very tough couple of months", according to O'Keeffe, who was one of two employees based in Europe when the first lockdown began, with the rest based in Australia.

"It was our only major outlet at the time," she said of the shuttered on-trade, explaining that grocery retailers and off-licences are harder to break into.

"At that point our e-commerce channel was due to launch in May 2020 but we turned it on in a matter of three weeks across a number of markets," O'Keeffe recalls.

The company also offered online classes with mixologists to teach customers how to use its products.

"A lot of the big brands were thinking, 'How do we support on-trade?', when we immediately went, 'Actually, we have to build our own channel'.

"We avoided redundancies and pivoted people into other roles. We didn't lose one person globally," says O'Keeffe, adding that the company now employs around 126 people.

In Ireland, Lyre's products are stocked in Dunnes Stores, SuperValu and Tesco, as well as upmarket Dublin department store Brown Thomas, who approached Lyre's directly ("I've sold a lot of brands over the years and that hasn't happened before!").

O'Keeffe estimates that there are around 270 brands of non-alcoholic drinks globally, and Lyre's has been assessed by Drinks International as the number-two player in the market, which she puts down to the diversity of its product line.

"Sometimes it's not about the first mover, it's about the first scaler, and that's what Lyre's is. We've looked at the best selling brands in rum, tequila, gin and whiskey, and we've basically recreated that flavour profile.

"The product is king, and the level of excitement, enthusiasm and ideation on the team is really incredible. You don't get that in your larger companies. We don't have anyone who's jaded and tired, and no one ever says we tried that before, and that's really, really significant."