2013
Gabriel came home from a trip to South Africa and brought his brother a local cider. He was enchanted by the taste of apples and the freshness of cider. That's when we got the idea to make the first cider in Slovakia.
The first (unsuccessful) attempt to make cider from homemade apples happened in the parents' house in Budimír, Košice, Slovakia.
It took almost 6 months to create the final recipe for natural apple cider. Once their friends and family were happy with the recipe we decided to take a step further.
2014
On the 8th of April 2014, we established an official business Opre' Cidery LTD. The older brother Gabriel was 21 & Radoslav was 19 years old. We both were studying at universities.
It took them 3 months to get the right permits, purchase all ingredients, and equipment and start the micro-production. The first Opre' Apple Cider was born in June 2014.
We started to sell to local bars, restaurants & cafés in the area. It was a pretty hard job to sell ciders to Slovaks, who have never drunk it before.
2015
Attending cider & beer festivals in Prague, Vienna, and Bratislava to promote the new brand Opre'.
Moving to new and better premises to make more cider. The new facility doesn't have 7 steps to enter the building, so no need to carry everything by hand!
2016
Gabriel attends Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs in Spain. The 3 months internship at Petritegi Sagardotegia - Astigarraga in San Sebastian area. He learns about the Spanish way of making "sidra" and the traditional cider pouring of Basque ciders.
Radoslav started to study Biochemistry Engineering in Prague. Gabriel takes care of the business and grows the number of ciders.
2017
Addition of new brand mellos - honey-based lemonades. The design was created by EETER, who also helped design the whole brand Opre'.
In collaboration with bartenders, we’ve created a new combination of winter cider – Opre‘ Gingerbread cider
2018
At the beginning of the year, we received a few awards at The international festival WORLD BEER SEAL in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic.
Constantly developing new mellos drinks: natural energy, and ginger & lemon. Opre' Cider was introduced with 2 new flavors, Blueberry and Raspberry.
2019
The development of the new mellos honey cola took more than 1 year. The result is a perfect taste of natural honey cola.
We’ve attended the largest festival in Slovakia, POHODA where we had a successful time with our ciders.
2020
Lovely COVID years. Almost 90% of sales were in bars & restaurants and that meant coming up with something new. We went for the production of strong ginger shots for immunity. Most of the ingredients were in stock - ginger and lemon juice, bee honey, and apples. Combining those ingredients resulted in a new product - ginger shots
The pandemic was also a good opportunity to establish their first online store for mellos drinks.
2021
Decided to make a big leap in business. Moved to a 10x bigger production facility (old cake factory). This allows us to grow in the next 10 years in the same production facility. We also acquired new machinery and equipment such as freezers, coolers, and juice extractors.
Attending trade fairs and exhibition shows in London, Barcelona, and Koeln.
Our cider Opre' METZEN Cider received and BRONZE MEDAL from the International Hall of Gala Ciders, SISGA 2021, Asturias, Spain. The category was dry sparkling cider.
2022
Creation of new dinosaur brand STEGO. We decided to create a new brand for organic & vegan products.
Distributing our products to selected European countries. Opening new online stores in the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Started the production of private/white labels for different clients in Europe.
2023
Selling all products online through new online store www.oprebrothers.com
Developing new products for you - stay tuned.