Interview: Iain McPherson, boss of pioneering Edinburgh cocktail bar Panda & Sons

How a creative entrepreneur dubbed the “Willy Wonka” of the drinks industry is achieving global recognition with his cocktail alchemy.

He now has a trio of Edinburgh drinking houses, including cocktail-focused speakeasy Panda & Sons, which was recently named one of the 50 best bars in the world. But Iain McPherson only originally entered the industry as a side hustle when was a student seeking to top up his bank balance.

He however found it to be a real vocation, enabling him to tap into his favourite subjects of art and history, bringing to life tipples using his creativity and spirits imbued with longstanding history and heritage. “It was kind of a match made in heaven for me,” he explains, and says it meant he could see a route to “hopefully opening my own bar one day”.

After stints including managing The Voodoo Rooms in the Scottish capital, he realised that dream, and is now the owner of both Panda & Sons (which opened in 2013) and fellow city-centre venue Hoot the Redeemer, and co-owner of Nauticus in Leith.

'There have been a lot of accolades this year, so we're really, really happy,' says the bar boss. Picture: contributed.

Panda & Sons was in October of this year named among The World’s 50 Best Bars, ranked 39th, and the only Scottish venue to make the list that was compiled with the input of more than 650 drinks experts from across the globe. The Edinburgh bar was praised for its innovative sub-zero freezing techniques “invented and evolved in-house in a basement laboratory coined the ‘Brain Melting Society’.”

Such methods include “switching” that freezes and separates the water content from a spirit, allowing it to be swapped for another flavourful ingredient, for example in its coconut daiquiri, Panda & Sons freezes and extracts the water in white rum and replaces it with roasted coconut milk that is then clarified.

McPherson, who accepted the prestigious award with colleagues at the ceremony in Singapore, welcomes the recognition, including that of his and his team’s innovation. “It's nice to have a bar from Scotland on [the list] as well, [and] I think it’s just a testament to how good the Edinburgh scene is.”

2023 has also seen Panda & Sons honoured at the Tales of the Cocktail Foundation’s Spirited Awards held in New Orleans, and McPherson selected as Bar Innovator of the Year by Class Bar Awards (while the bar also launched a new menu). “There have been a lot of accolades this year, so we're really, really happy,” he says.

Panda & Sons was in October of this year named among The World’s 50 Best Bars, ranked 39th, and the only Scottish venue to make the list. Picture: contributed.

As for the origins of the Panda & Sons bar name, he says his nickname is panda, and was born to a South Korean mother and Scottish father, with the latter side of the family dating back to his great-grandfather having had a grocery business called McPherson & Sons. The latter shut down before the bar opened, “so I kept the ‘& Sons’ part to continue that in a subtle nod to my family's business history”.

He also says he wants the venue to have a family-style welcoming atmosphere rather than being elitist. “We want three generations of families coming in, we want people of all races, all religions coming in… we want people to experience really positive, friendly, good hospitality, but also what we believe are some of the best drinks in the world”.

A driving factor in developing cocktail menus is the bar-owner having studied the science of ice cream, obtaining a degree from Carpigiani Gelato University in Bologna and also completing the “science of ice cream” course at the University of Reading in 2016. He consequently spied much more potential for using freezing as a technique to create flavour with liquids, “so I started doing a lot more research on that and experimenting”. That has led to both methods such as “sous pression” that debuted this year and allows the extraction of highly concentrated flavour from fruit, and to McPherson being branded the “Willy Wonka” of the drinks industry.

However, despite progress to date, the cocktail expert (who has also advised projects on marketing and growth in the blockchain sector) isn’t planning to add more venues to his bar network – at least any time soon. “I think with a recession looming, I think next year is going to be pretty hard, just as hard if not harder than this year has been,” he says, highlighting the large number of hospitality venue closures, and noting how he found the pandemic “really hard” but he and his team pivoted to delivering cocktails and operating food hatches.

The Scottish Licensed Trade Association says 170 pubs north of the Border have shut their doors for good since 2020, with the pace of permanent closures in Scotland this year so far, at 1.7 per cent, more than a third higher than the whole of last year and at least double the equivalent rate in England.

McPherson, who says his bar group (which also has an events arm) has from day one aimed to pay as high above minimum wage as possible to help provide more longevity in hospitality, also states: “For us, we don't want to stretch ourselves too thinly right now, we want to make sure our bars make it through – but at the same time, we're trying to develop more techniques for the global bar community and just keep pushing the boundaries of that… Once we're back into the positive environment globally, especially in Scotland, then I think that's when we can start to look at expanding again.”

However, in the meantime, consumers are all the while developing increasingly sophisticated palettes, accompanied by the expectations to match, when it comes to ordering a drink. “People are asking for really niche products and niche cocktails – and I think it's a great thing,” McPherson says.