Somewhere between the first pour at The Ritz and the last call at Soho House, there’s a good chance the juice came from Squish. Cold-pressed in Italy, distributed from Nine Elms, and drunk in venues holding more than 60 Michelin stars across the UK, Squish has quietly become the juice behind some of the country’s best bars and restaurants. It does it all from right here at New Covent Garden Market (NCGM)

It’s a busy season for co-founder and Managing Director Dan Harrison. The Food Exchange-based business is about to take occupancy of two brand new units on Buyers’ Walk and is preparing to launch a range of cold-pressed cocktail mixers (pictured below) that, he hopes, will change the way bars build drinks at speed. But to understand the new units and the new mixers, you have to go back to a problem most drinkers never notice.

A problem hiding in plain sight

Squish started the way a lot of good ideas do: two friends who spotted something broken. Dan had known co-founder Rob Simpson since primary school. Rob had spent years in the spirits industry, much of it with Bacardi, and knew the UK bar trade inside out. The bartenders he worked with were producing world-class cocktails, but their juice was letting them down. The options were either fresh and unreliable, or pasteurised and flat. After juice is heat-treated, the best of the flavour is lost. “It’s like asking a Michelin-starred chef to cook with canned vegetables,” Dan says.

They founded Squish in 2014 and started production from a small unit in Battersea. Within a year they were supplying The Ritz, The Savoy, The Ivy, and Harrods, all of which remain clients today. It was a quiet kind of revolution: not a juice for shelves, but juice built for the bar.

In those early years, Squish delivered everything itself. Dan and Rob loaded their own vans and walked into kitchens and bars across London. “That hands-on experience taught us what it actually takes to run a foodservice operation,” Dan says. “We learned why correct packaging matters, why a missed delivery isn’t just an inconvenience but a problem that hits a venue’s service, and why consistency is the thing that keeps accounts, not the thing that wins them.”

That understanding, more than the product itself, shapes how Squish operates as a wholesale partner today.

Designed for service, not shelves

Squish sells exclusively through foodservice wholesalers, more than 20 of them neighbours here at NCGM. Field to Fork, Le Marché, Rushton’s, Oui Chef, FoodPoint, and All Greens are just a handful of many clients. Indian restaurant chain Dishoom is supplied via The Menu Partners. Beyond the Market, Squish supplies Classic Fine Foods, Woods Foodservice, Allan Reeder, and north-of-England based Deli Fresh.

One of the very first Market clients was Yes Chef, which still purchases multiple pallets a week, with each pallet carrying 800 one-litre bottles. “In a blind taste test, you’d know a Squish juice straight away,” says Yes Chef co-owner Paul Murphy. “We’ve worked with Dan and Rob since they first started the business making small batches of fruit juice in Battersea, and they’ve just got better and better. The firm has amazing packaging, which references NCGM on the label, plus their customer service is the best of any juice company I’ve ever worked with.”

That last point matters more than it sounds. In 2025, Squish ran at over 98.5% on-time, in-full delivery. It’s a number you only chase if you understand who you’re really serving. “When you’re supplying the kind of venues that notice if Tuesday’s lime juice isn’t as good as Monday’s, that reliability isn’t a nice-to-have,” Rob says. “It’s the whole job.”

Italian press, English market

The juice itself is cold-pressed at a family-owned specialist in southern Europe, a partner Dan spent years finding. The plant had been pioneering cold-press processing long before most people in the UK had heard of the term.

“We did consider UK production, but the reality is that the best fruit for our range is grown in southern Europe,” says Dan. “Producing close to the source means we get fruit at peak season, processed within hours of harvest.” There’s a logistical case as well: transporting finished juice rather than raw fruit means roughly half the lorries on the road. Full loads arrive from Italy into Nine Elms each week, and the distribution operation runs six days a week. Everything else, the offices, the warehouse, the team, stays at the Market.

The juice, pictured above in 1L bottles, is processed using High Pressure Processing or HPP, a method that uses pressure rather than heat to extend shelf life. That gives around four weeks of shelf life into wholesale, without dulling the character of the fruit. “Heat pasteurisation would make things last longer,” Dan says, “but it changes the product. For us, flavour is the whole point.”

Cocktails in seconds

This month, the same thinking gets pointed at the cocktail itself. On August 1st, Squish launched a range of cold-pressed cocktail mixers built for professional bars and sold through the same wholesale partners. The opening line-up: Espresso Martini, Margarita, Passion Fruit Martini and Piña Colada.

“We’ve created perfectly balanced cocktails that you can make in seconds,” Rob says. The pitch to operators is operational rather than nostalgic. Faster service. Tighter consistency. Fewer hands at peak. The drink that arrives at the table is the same one the head bartender signed off when the menu was written.

Manufacturing of the mixers will also take place in Italy, with Squish holding UK exclusivity. “We’ve built our cocktail mixers for the same audience and the same wholesale channel as our fresh juice business, on the credibility of our existing brand,” Rob says.

Dan is clear about where the priority sits. “Hospitality is our home market, and it’s where the brand earns its credibility. Any market expansion has to be well founded, and our test is simple: we don’t lose the top end in the process. The mixers in particular are much better suited to that kind of growth.”

The brand is already crossing the Channel ahead of the launch. Squish is about to start supplying international members club Soho House across Europe, with locations in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Ibiza, Amsterdam, and Berlin.

A long-term bet on the Market

This summer, Squish took occupancy of two brand new units at 429-430 Buyers’ Walk. It’s a significant investment for the business and a deliberate one.

“The Market is where Squish started, and it’s where we’ve chosen to stay,” says Dan. “It’s also where most of our wholesale partners operate, so being here means we can respond quickly, solve problems face-to-face, and stay close to the people who matter most to the business.”

Pictured above is the Squish team. Back row: Rob, Fraser, Vicky, Mark, Rob C and Dan. Front row: Kristin, Junior, Kasia and Allegra.

Asked for the one piece of advice he’d give someone starting a food business, his answer comes back quickly. “Get closer to your customers than you think you need to. For years we delivered our own product and spent time in the venues that we were supplying. That’s where you learn what actually matters to the people buying from you. Being physically present at the Market has been one of the most important decisions we’ve made.”

You can visit Squish's entry on the NCGM wholesalers' directory here and their own website here.