49: How Monique Huston of Winebow Decides Which Spirits Brands Make the Cut - Business of Drinks

Welcome to the Business of Drinks, where we go behind the bottle, interviewing beverage innovators and icons about how they built their businesses. We take a data-driven approach, analyzing the brands, products, and categories that get customers and consumers excited. And we cover several drinks categories from wine beer and spirits to non-alcoholic drinks, as well as THC, adaptogen, and functional beverages. So whether you're working in drinks or just interested in the stories behind your favorite brands, join us each week as we explore how companies are unlocking growth at every stage in the game. Thanks for joining us, and let's dive in. Hello, BOD Crew, and welcome to the show. I'm your co-host, Erica Ducey, joined by my partner in crime, Scott Rosenbaum. Scott, tell us about today's guest. Today we've got a really insightful conversation that will benefit any drinks brand looking to grow in the US. We're talking with Monique Houston, the vice president of spirits at Winebow, a top US importer and distributor of wine and spirits. And Monique has been leading the charge in the spirits world for the past decade, bringing a wealth of knowledge and keen eye for quality when it comes to spirit portfolio construction and sales. Winebow has a great portfolio in particular when it comes to agave spirits. They represent brands like Fort Elisa, David Soros, Ciembra spirits, Art Nom Tequila, El Bujo Mescal, and Ciette Legua Tequila. Yeah, I loved hearing your discussion with Monique, because she really gets down to brass tax in this interview, sharing the do's of landing and nurturing distributor relationships, but perhaps more importantly, the don'ts. And there are so many pitfalls that brands fall into, and a lot of them weren't even on my radar. Yeah, she has seen it all. And as someone who is approached by hundreds, if not thousands of spirit brands a year, she certainly knows what can connect and resonate and the way about the way to go about doing that, whether it be with the distributor itself or with the distributor's customers like retailers, bars, restaurants. She really knows how to build a portfolio that outperforms the market by being really thoughtful and considerate in every aspect of doing so. Yeah, and it's very strategic as well. She talked to us through how do you build this outperforming spirits portfolio? And a thing she said that really stuck with me was that as an importer or distributor, you have to be willing to invest in the front end in that category. So meaning you have to be part of that movement to put things in front of your retail and on-premise customers to get them excited. And that's really taking some chances, assuming some risk. And I hadn't necessarily thought about it like that. But I think a great example is what Winebo is doing right now with their Japanese spirit portfolio. So she definitely has a deep understanding of the complexities of distribution, brand storytelling, and market dynamics to make this big undertaking really come together. Yeah, it's kind of counterintuitive what she shares, which is to grow Winebo sales, to grow their own brands. It's not just about more, more, more. It's not about necessarily adding another dozen agave-based spirits to the portfolio to sell more agave. It's more about drilling down and selling what they have by doing it better and better and really building on the relationships they have both within and without the company. Yeah, definitely. And you know, there's just so many aspects to relationship building in this business. And she talks us through how to effectively engage with sales teams and retailers, making sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to promoting a brand. Because there are so many ways to screw that up. She shares this slushy machine disaster story of misallocated funds that will stick with me forever. But you know, it's not just that. It also goes down to a work with how do you do an effective work with as a brand going with your distributor to retail or on-premise accounts. Turns out there are a lot of ways to screw that up. Yeah, you know, I recently watched a documentary about the political consultant James Carvelle who said, "If you're not willing to sell, you're not willing to win." And he was talking politics, but it every bit applies to the drinks industry. And you know, Monique makes clear that a supplier's work is never done when it comes to selling and that there are right and wrong ways to go about doing so. And often the difference is just asking your customers what they need. Yeah, totally. Like, coming from that place of curiosity and not entitlement, so I think that is really interesting. Also, she shares thoughts on emerging trends in spirits, what's next for agave. Some interesting takes on Ram that I found pretty insightful. So I think we'll get a bit of insight into what she sees coming down the pipeline in the coming years. I really enjoyed this conversation, so grab your favorite drink and join us as we explore the ins and outs of building a spirit portfolio that not only meets, but exceeds the expectations of the market. We are speaking with Monique Houston of Winebow. And now a word from our sponsor. Is your drinks brand looking to start or expand important distribution? Whether you're seeking to enter new markets or you're unhappy with a current distributor and desiring a better fit, you should know about SWIG partners. Founded by industry experts, Eric Siegelbaum and Amy Troutmiller, SWIG takes the guesswork and the legwork out of distribution strategy. SWIG helps brands and distributors find the right fit for long term relationships and sales success. U.S.-based importers and distributors should reach out to with SWIG they can explore new products for free. And brands, you can get $100 off by mentioning business of drinks. Find out more at SWIGpartners.com/businessofdrinks, that's s-w-i-g-partners.com/businessofdrinks. Hi Monique, so happy to have you here. Welcome to Business of Drinks. Hey Scott, thanks for having me. So let's dive right in, if you will. I know, if I understand you're from Omaha and-- Omaha, Nebraska. Proud Omaha. So you got your start in what I imagine is not typically thought of as the drinks capital of the world, but you started at a tavern, a restaurant that is called Dundee Dell with a really unique whiskey list if I'm not mistaken, is that right? That's correct. I know it hurts my feelings, but people describe Nebraska as a flyover. You know, when you're from there, you don't know, you know, and you're always like flying out of there, but it's actually a really, really fun city. And there are-- there's a lot of very understated money there, if you think about Berkshire Hathaway, places like Conagra, Union Pacific, Creighton University, University of Nebraska and Omaha, it's a very well-educated population, and it's actually like a kind of quiet money population. And so where the bar was situated was kind of halfway between the two universities. And we just had this great kind of-- a lot of the professors, we had a lot of teachers, great public school system, a lot of people that are just very curious. And I was fortunate that when I started-- happened to start at this pub. I had a great front that worked there. I didn't know anything about whiskey. I didn't really know anything about spirits. The owner had a passion for single-lalt scotch, and he had been collecting since the '80s. And that was very rare. That was very unique. You know, now every bar, every bar at your corner bar, any style of bar, maybe a Mexican bar, probably has 30 whiskeys behind the bar. But in the '80s and the '90s, those kinds of things, seeing 30, 40, 50, 100 whiskeys, that was like a whiskey bar, and that was an effort. But to your point, Omaha, not necessarily the Mecca, it was difficult to get things into Omaha. We did not have really kind of a sophisticated distributor network. You know, if you think about really highly allocated whiskeys, they didn't come to Nebraska. They didn't have a distributor-- they didn't have a proper distributor in the state of Nebraska. So that either made it very easy for us to get things, or it made it very, very difficult for us to get things. But really, under the tutelage of my business partner there, and then some incredible, you know, still my greatest mentors in the world, they still meet up every Tuesday at 4 o'clock at the Dundee Delf. in Omaha, Nebraska. You want to meet the greatest group of guys and gals you show up at the del four o'clock there will be people that will educate you about whiskey for three hours and these people just all took me under their wing and they had a gorgeous collection of books you know going back to the great Michael Jackson until I just really started reading everything I could about whiskey and we started or I continued in a tradition of holding regular first Sunday of every month whiskey tasting they got to be very popular much like your podcast and we had to go from having them once a month to having them twice a month or sometimes three or four times a month but also you know you think late 90s early 2000s it was nice I guess that there weren't a lot of women in whiskey because people you know if I went to distilleries if I went to Scotland if I was somewhere as the representative of this great whiskey bar it was pretty memorable there were not a lot of women visible in the industry and that also meant that I formed some really brilliant friendships whether it was in Scotland or the United States but there weren't really whiskey ambassadors that with that's a new thing in the past 10 years 20 years so if you could get a distiller to come all the way from Scotland and it was you know if they were going to go to Los Angeles and Chicago and New York well we're just kind of right in the middle there so it wasn't actually that hard to get people to stop in Omaha and I'd say I can get 40 people to come and sit and listen to you for two hours and buy every bottle of what you have to sell and we had the enthusiasm level we had the interest level we had the passion we had the pocketbooks and it was amazing I mean still now looking back at some of the kind of whiskey royalty that we had with every great Scotch distiller every great independent bottler because we were kind of first you know the first people asking you know when these people were coming to the United States so I was very very fortunate to be kind of under the tutelage of a large group of really passionate people that's that's that's amazing so you're kind of this whiskey ambassador at large in in Nebraska if I might and and how how do you go from from that and kind of being a sponge soaking up learning and then teaching you know how does your professional journey kind of progress from there yeah it's a great question it's you know I'll tell you when I was there I didn't know anything about import or distribution it was people knew I think I was kind of a sucker you know as a buyer they knew that if they had some new bright shiny thing Monique would buy at least a bottle of it it didn't matter if it was the newest you know purple gum vodka or if it was like a three thousand dollar bottle of single wall Scotch I probably wanted at least one of them because I wanted everything and so we could we we collected and you know educated across a lot of Scotch but we also had a huge tequila collection bourbon collection vodka collection we had everything and we were a restaurant I mean a restaurant was over 50% of the revenue it's great and they still have fabulous fish and chips and really great British food but I didn't know anything about those tiers because I was just kind of like an easy mark and I ended up I moved out of the country for a little while got some experience more with production and tasting and blending and did a few interesting projects and when it was time to come back to the US I knew Omaha maybe wasn't going to be quite I don't know right back where I wanted to be I had been living in Spain and Madrid mainly which was really interesting and Chicago kind of seemed like a good in between so here I am and a couple great whiskey industry friends here in Chicago my buddy Brett the Runspinny's my buddy Mike Miller that runs Delilah's my friend Mike Ryan he's to Runsable and my three friends here all were like you know maybe you should think about distribution think about this distribution tier so fortunately introduced me to the solar family who at the time ran this great import arm and distribution company and I went for a walk with Randy solar through the warehouse and there was port charlotte fives reglotti little mill compass box charbet top of teo tequila just collecting dust just just just these things that just needed a little bit of TLC needed a little bit of education but there were things that were I mean PC5 had been long sold out in the United States I was just thinking about it from the perspective of my bar oh my gosh I would have bought this I would have bought every model of this and I would have sold it and I think you know Randy and I just really saw something in each other where he didn't really quite understand the gems that they were sitting on and and it wasn't just about knowing about them it was being passionate about it it was about being able to talk to other people about it and kind of ignite that that passion with them so when at the very beginning I remember him saying I don't know what your job is going to be and I was like I don't know what I'm going to be able to do for you you know but let's work together and within a few months I was helping them they were a tequila importer they imported some single malt scotches so within a few months they had me traveling all across the country as their full spirits educator which was amazing I mean they placed a lot of trust in me they let me learn based off of their experience but also by you know making mistakes and kind of tripping over myself sometimes but I got to call on wholesalers all across the country which was so interesting you know what worked in Omaha definitely doesn't work in Chicago and didn't work in San Francisco and doesn't work in in New York but you can't really know that unless you get there meet people and I will also say perspective when you come from the Midwest and you come from a place that's you know really kind of like modest or third or fourth tier you don't have any expectations you know just excited to like go into these great craft cocktail bars and go into these you know meet these people that you've only read about and you know going back I've only been here for 13 years even the internet things were still kind of new you know it wasn't like there were celebrity bartenders or really even celebrity chefs so I'm so fortunate that I got you know here in Chicago to meet Charles Joly and Paul McGee and all these folks who zero ego and just took me under their wing and thought oh okay you know this girl is at least interested but taught me a lot about cocktails and cocktail components and things like that it was yeah really really interesting but definitely these folks kind of took a gamble on me the solar family and then that wholesaler eventually sold in two glazers which became southern glazers and the larger company kind of the scale and the scope and the expectations of working for a company that size I wasn't as excited or as passionate about growing these huge massive conglomerate brands and kind of having these things put on my shoulders of like oh you have to go sell a million cases of XYZ vodka it was just like that's going to suck the life right out of me so that wasn't necessarily a good fit and so at that point in time that up was you know who would become my boss here at Weinbow locally and came to work for Weinbow our fine wine and spirits company so I've been here 10 years in a couple months amazing amazing so yeah that that that previous role you kind of you were the first one in it you didn't inherit it you aren't it wasn't a role they were looking to necessarily feel they kind of created it with and I did think that I would that that it was just it did end up being kind of created around me and what I was excited about they did have a brand ambassador previously in that role but it was very much he's great and he's still in the industry he's still an ambassador works for a fabulous company he was just like a scotch geek that liked to get out there and talk about scotch and so that wasn't necessarily and maybe still isn't necessarily the sexiest thing in the world you know spirits are growing in all different places all different categories different price points so I think it was quite helpful that I was kind of a little bit into everything and certainly into educating myself about everything and in two not just our brands but coming from the perspective of having been a buyer and an educator and never being locked down to one brand or one portfolio I think they're they're really needs to be this openness there's a real lack of categorical expertise now you've got you know it's you've got people that are brand ambassadors maybe for their portfolio or this particular thing and your sales technique can't just be to go out and say mine's the best you know it's like you really need to know about the category the price points were this fits packaging you know all kinds of other pieces so there was definitely a curiosity in me and thankfully I was in a position where you know I was given the ability and the resources to learn everything about everything that I was interested wow so you know today your your vice president of the spirit portfolio at wine bow it sounds like an incredible role what what is your day-to-day like it's more spreadsheets than I would like it's more PowerPoint presentations than I would like yeah I mean I think there's probably certainly nobody would think that this role is like a a brand ambassador it's not like I have an expense account and I'm out you know getting to eat and drink on the company or like our partners dime all the time it's definitely nothing like that on the portfolio side and I don't know if you've ever worked in a restaurant but I I like to describe it as back of the house from the house so I've got the best team on the planet I've got six folks on my team that manage kind of back of the house for our spirit portfolio so it's essentially kind of putting together all the components of a great dish and so our customer is a retailer a chain retailer an independent retailer a bar a restaurant how do we give them the best overall book portfolio that we are capable of supporting and educating about so we need to have you know for us it's quality first and foremost So if we're looking at agave suppliers or scouts. suppliers or rum suppliers, we want the best of the best. We're not as tied to price. And if we've got the best tasting product, does the packaging support? That is their level of kind of premium or luxury to it. You know, it's nice closures and nice paper and all of that. And then the story behind it, who are the people that make it? You know, I want to know the actual distiller that makes it, you know, yes, the owners are important, but we really want to get into the nuts and bolts of it. The why? Why does this product need to exist in the market and co-exist with everything else in its category? And then looking across how does that fit into our total portfolio? Let's say of the rum category. And then on the my team side, we need to make sure that we have the right amount of inventory in house, that we have the education to educate our team and our customers and help it pull through. That it's incentivized, that it is programmed properly, that people understand, you know, what your priorities are, you know, from the the owner supplier all the way down through us. So we do a lot of just back at the house stuff. So that by the time that portfolio goes out, let's look at it as like a physical book, you put that in the window. It's like, it's the perfect dish. Everything has been thought of, you know, to the best of our ability. So it does mean, fortunately, that I get to spend a lot of time with our distillers and our owners. And so I do get to travel a fair amount to far reaching places to visit our distillers because somebody's got to come back and help write the education programs and talk to our, you know, we've got about a team of almost 30 people on my spirit's team across the country. And then we've got about 650 sales people. So hopefully everybody gets to go and visit our partners, you know, one day, but, you know, we've got to have somebody here that can tell the story. And I can't imagine that that's easy to do. I often describe, you know, the drinks business as a game of telephone, right? The supplier tells the importer, tells the distributor, tells the retailer, tells the customer, you know, how do you think, you know, you represent a portfolio of over a hundred different spirits producers, you know, how do you get one of the salespeople to remember a particular producer or story? Is there something you look for in a supplier when it comes to simply, you know, divining the easiest message to get across? Yeah, it's a great question. And I mean, in a lot can get lost in those games of telephone certainly. And we have a lot of people to take care of. And one of the interesting things is we're a distributor, but we're technically the supplier's customer. They are selling me product. I am paying them for product. Yes, we get to go on and resell it and we get to profit from it. That's why our company exists. And obviously the United States free tier system or a class B system or whatever it is. So I feel like sometimes it would really benefit suppliers to remember, to look at it from the perspective of the fact that your distributor is your customer. Because I will say people get really stressed out in all of a sudden, it's just like, it can be demands and goals and, you know, you have to do this and all these things like, you know, once we own the product, we own the product, we don't have to do anything. But do we want to sell it? Absolutely. And we all want to sell it profitably and we all want to, you know, hit all the story points and all the right price points for sure. There's a lot of different things that people can do. I mean, at base, some of these, some of our partners are one or two people. That is true. I mean, that, you know, and so they cannot be that they can try to be the distiller, the person that's actually bottling, labeling, packaging, shipping the POs. And then maybe all they can do to support us is be on a video call every once in a while and update us on education or provide us with like a great piece of point sale. Maybe they get out to a major market once a year. And so to me, those are great things. We just need to be very clear about it. I think people need to be very upfront about what they can and cannot do. Maybe what, you know, budgets are what timeframes are that we can work. And I think, too, it's really important that we do have a lot. And I think there's an increasing amount of brand owners in the industry that have never worked in the industry. So, you know, they are, they are the shepherd of a brand or, I don't know, a big pile of money or a big pile of booze, but maybe don't have any spirits or spirits in wine industry experience. And for a lot of those folks, I think it really behooves them to be aware of what they know and what they don't know, but also bring on, you know, some mentorship or some consults, you know, hire someone or a consultancy that can give them a real inside look at the industry. Sure. So, I love the point you make that, you know, as a distributor, you know, yes, there's this partnership, but you are the customer. Besides the physical product, right, in the seat where you said, what do you look for in a brand, not just a product, you know, what do you look for in a brand when you buy it? Is it, is it just story? Is it, is it pack? Is there a certain combination or what's the magic that you look for? Yeah, that, you know, for me, if the, the liquid is great, I mean, the liquid has to be great. Absolutely. So, it's, you know, tequila whiskey, whatever it is, it's got to be like, oh, wow. We can always make packaging improvements, and we often do, you know, end up in kind of a consultancy role to say that pack size doesn't work, or that bottle size doesn't work, or the paper quality isn't high enough, or can we switch to real cork to support the price point that you are asking for? But really, at the end of the day, the, yeah, the story needs to be there too, and it needs to be sincere. We're in such an interesting time right now, you know, the younger consumers are skewing to drinking less, sure, by volume, but they're drinking better. And, you know, I, I like to say, when I was growing up, if I needed to learn about something, learn a fact about something, I literally went to my grandma's house and looked it up in an encyclopedia, you know, she had like the full set of encyclopedias. Now, if I think about my niece wanting to know more, otiquil is really trending, I want to know more about that. They want to go look at a producer on Instagram. They want to see a human being harvesting a crop and this crop then coming to the distillery and going through the equipment and, and seeing who the distillery is. So there's a sense, more a sense of connection, more a sense of reality. And then if they ever get to like meet that person, or see a video of that person, or that person is, you know, at a bar restaurant, or they're signing bottles, or they get to shake their hand, it just really deepens that relationship. So we definitely need to have, and the story does it need to be some made up BS about, you know, six generations ago, and I dug up this recipe for this bourbon, that's, that's a great real story. We don't need that as a great big story. We have a great partner in the agave space, who really didn't know anything about agave spirits, came from a, I believe a banking or investment background, lived all over the world, and then wanted to reconnect with his Mexican heritage, and just thought this would be a really cool way to do it, you know, and it was, it's fun to go through that discovery with him, him learning the market, him learning how to tell those stories, and him going back and kind of investigating his personal history. So the sincerity of the story, I think, carries a long way as well. And that's not just with your distributor, that's with your customers too. You know, people like to see that warmth and that openness. Fair, fair. Yeah, let's dive in, you know, I think, you know, wine bowl has a really exciting agave portfolio, you know, as you just mentioned, tequila, mescal and beyond, and, you know, I'll point out a few love for Delaysa, David, Sero, Sandra, spirits, right? Artinam, El Bujo, I can go on and on. But how do you think about, right, this, this, this is a category that's grown tremendously over the last few years. So, you know, how do you decide when to add a new producer versus, you know, focus on what you, you know, those you're already working with? How's that process? It's a great question, and I'll tell you Scott, it's super challenging right now. A, folks reaching out during OND of October and November Summer are insane. That is crazy to me that when we're focused on the highest sales period of year, people will like, hey, are you in the market for them? Like, no, I'm just focused on sales. So, I mean, you got to know your audience and know, you know, kind of what they're focused on. And most people are very respectful of those boundaries, but it always kind of blows me away. We, on average, I would say all the way through December, I'm just like looking at my email folders right now, I get about 20 to 25 potential partner requests a week. So, that's everything, spirits related coming through our website or directly to me through LinkedIn or through conferences or whatever it is. So, there's still new distilleries, new brands, you know, all kinds of new things popping up. And it's certainly, I don't want anything to be a self-fulfilling prophecy where if you don't have a good distributor, your brand probably isn't going to thrive. Probably isn't going to succeed. We don't, you know, want to be the person that, you know, that is deciding or not deciding that, but I very often say, especially in the agave space, we're not really looking to add partners. And when, you know, those partners that you just named and the rest of the portfolio, they are all very intentional. They are all, you know, we're very fortunate and we work very hard to create long-term relationships and long-term investments in our partners. So, a lot of these folks started working with us in one state and now maybe work with us across our entire network. You know, all of that takes investment and takes intention. And yeah, we just really respect and love people that are loyal, you know, that are open, that are honest, you know, that stick with us and grow with us. But we've been on the agave train for 25 years. I mean, we were helping support Dalma Gay right out of the gates. You know, when people were barely talking about tequila, it's like, okay, a mezcal. A few years ago, we had to even look beyond that. Once we felt like, okay, we've got this great portfolio of tequila and mezcal. Now we've added riceia, baccanyora, so toll, Mexican, you know, bitter spirits, with cures, rum, seems like everything Mexican is cool right now. So you can't just suddenly decide that once all the data shows that it's been happening for the past five years, you have to be willing to invest on the front end. You have to be willing to be part of the movement and put things in front of your customers and have the education to say, you know, maybe maybe not just this thing that fortaleza that you're asking about that you're excited about, but maybe let's also talk about these liqueurs or these other things, you know, that it might take a little bit longer for your customers to be asking for them, but we know that there's quality and that there's a story and that there's going to be an audience for it and we all need to build it together. So, you know, and this time of year really getting into January of February is when we start to reexamine what's working in the portfolio, what worked through this holiday season, where we have gaps, which could just be a price gap in a category, it could be, let's say if we were talking about rum, it could be a style gap or with whiskey, it could be, you know, we don't have anything from Taiwan right now. Okay, is that a place that we're really looking to go? So we then we get really proactive, which is who are making what we, you know, conceived to be and and tend taste to be the best products. Wine though, you know, I believe right now we're either the fifth or large, fifth or sixth largest importer distributor in the United States, I haven't seen final numbers. So we're not going to have access to, you know, the Diagios and the turnover cards and the gallows of the world. That's all well and good. We want to let the big guys kind of compete way up the top and beat each other up about price or, you know, whatever they need to do. We want to kind of, we want to be that very strong third or fourth in every market, but we want to always be the company that our customers can look to and know that anything that my sales consultant or nice spirit, its team brings them will be led by quality. No matter what that tasting is going to be awesome. You're going to taste some great things. Maybe you need them, maybe you don't, maybe you can afford them, maybe you can, you know, maybe they fit in your program, maybe not, maybe you have room on the shelf, maybe not, but it's going to be a great tasting. It's going to be a fun tasting, you're going to get some education, you're going to taste some full stuff. So, um, and then two, we're always looking for up and coming categories. We made a big investment in Japanese spirits at the beginning of the pandemic. For me, I did not know anything outside of whiskey. I did not know anything about Japanese spirits. I like sake, but I didn't know anything about Shochu. And we look at Japanese spirits, these kind of single distilled pot distilets, mostly unaged, kind of like Mescal was to Tequila. And it's such an interesting category. There's more Shochu produced in Japan than Tequila produced in Mexico. And 99% of it stays in Japan. So, it's just like, that's crazy. So, you got to go to Japan. You got to go visit these distillers. And it's so fun. I mean, tasting sweet potato distilets and all these rice distilets and all these other crazy starches. It's been a really, really fun educational journey. And we've seen a lot of growth in the categories. So, first and foremost, it just has to taste good. And then, you know, we've got a story. And if it's really great and it's got a great story, I mean, maybe sometimes we find a need for it. Interesting. So, so let's put some teeth on this. Let me preface this by saying, right, that this is not an open invitation to listeners to pitch Monique or Winebo or any distributor. But how do you like to be pitched on a new brand or product? Is there, you know, the platonic ideal of what someone would bring to you and when they bring it to you and how they'd go about that? It's, unfortunately, I'm a very positive person. But what I immediately think of are like the what not to do. And it's just even in just getting, you know, 100 emails in the past three months. It is mind boggling to me that someone would just email out of the blue, no presentation, no, no pricing, no picture of anything, you know, just, hey, I'm so and so from such and such brand, do you want to work with us? Like it shows such a lack of, I would say, respect for time for the reader. And it's not, it's not like showing any, like sizzle, you know, it's like you need something that grabs you. If you know that every distributor and every distributor right now is getting pitched dozens of times a month, that just goes without saying. I think it's the most congested tier of the industry right now. Consolidation has not helped that. And people are busy. And I think because the industry has been challenging, you know, in the past, you know, let's say year or six months or three months, we're all being asked to do a lot. So you've got to have something in that email is probably what's going to happen. That's probably going to be the first point of contact. So it's like, there's got to be something in that initial email that I go, oh, okay, that's cool. So what amiss, you know, to not just attach a professional presentation. That's, you know, like the first point, I would say to a lot of people are brand owners, that's fine. Or they're associated with a celebrity or a level of celebrity or B level celebrity. I don't know who these people are. Me personally, I can't speak for all, you know, distributors or importers. I want to know about the people making it. I want to know about the actual distiller and the raw ingredients and the, you know, the types of stills. And also the why, why does this spirit, why does this exact thing need to exist? So pitches for me that are like, I'm so and so from such and such. And we partner with DJ potato head. They have 100,000 Instagram followers. Not interesting. Maybe it is potato vodka, not for me, but maybe for somebody else. But you know, it's, there's got to be something that kind of like grabs your attention. I also, and I loved it when you sent me over the questions, do your homework. What are some things in this person's book that you respect? What are, you know, so if you were a tequila brand, the smart thing to do would be to say, wow, you represent my five favorite tequelas. These are them. It would mean so much to me to be in a portfolio with them, to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. And here's why I think my product is good enough. And here's why I think maybe actually it fills a gap. These are at these price points. Mine is here. Or these are all distilled by men. And I'm female or you know, whatever it is. But I think doing a little bit of homework, not in like a brown nosing way. But, but in a way that just shows that you put a little bit of effort into it, I think, you know, makes a lot of sense. I think the other thing that drives me insane lately is people saying, I'm the only person doing this. I'm the first person doing this. I'm the, I get pitched all the time and I've probably heard it all before. So I would be very wary of saying the only the first, you know, this, this, because I just start, and I'm maybe I'm just mean. I just start hooking holes in it. I think there's definitely sometimes a lack of contextual awareness, right? A brand might be the only in their state or in their city. But when you're dealing on a larger scale, right, there's certainly someone else typically doing something if not exactly the same way, similarly enough. And, you know, I do love the point that I don't think folks get ahead, right, by knocking another portfolio or another brand, but so much goodwill and social capital can be garnered by saying, you know, I really respect what you're doing. Wanted shows that you have an awareness of what they are doing. And it shows that, you know, you can tap into that by using your brand as an analog. If you like this, this, you know, my brand potentially fills a hole or a different price point. I'm curious, you know, a friend and colleague of mine likes to say that, you know, salespeople like to sell what sells. They typically don't like friction, right? They want a brand that's already moving. So you mentioned, you know, incentives at the beginning of our conversation, you know, how do you or how do brands effectively incentivize sales reps to really push product? Yeah, I mean, you just put it really, really well. I mean, the best incentive is that people want to buy it. So it's tough. It's really tough to put something out there and say $5 a bottle or $20 a case or like whatever. I mean, that just gets lost. It's not, you know, it can add up to be a lot of money, but that just gets kind of lost. I think largely parts of the incentive model were broken pre-COVID, but then COVID just completely broke everything. You know, being in a time where, you know, retail was really thriving. And I think largely a lot of those programs went away. More, I think that our sales consultants are more interested in providing value to customers and making sure that their customers are taking care of. They're still restaurants close. There are still people that have not come out of COVID unscathed. And so I think making sure that your customers that are ordering every week that are, you know, helping you pay the bills all the time that they are made whole. And so if the incentive is you sell an ex, I go in and I do a staff education or I go in and I do a cool incentive for the staff. I think a lot my sales consultants are very excited about somebody that wants to do something for the customer, the end customer that ends up benefiting them. So I think that ends up being really big. And then too, you know, if you have an incentive program that's that's some kind of cash incentive program, it's fine. And it probably ends up going to grocery use or a mortgage payment. Then there's not really though that kind of sense of celebration of having accomplished something. So we have found, especially coming out of COVID more excitement. So rounding, whether it's trips or in education trip, recognizing, wow, you've done a great job of selling this brand. How much better could you do if you got to visit the distillery and actually meet the distiller and you kind of go from being a sales consultant that was great with that brand to being kind of an ambassador for that brand? What a great position that puts everybody in. So we've certainly seen more of that that's been really exciting for people. My primary ask of our partners right now because there are so many new things that have hit the market is if somebody's kicking off a new brand that we're really excited about, nothing shows that level of excitement to our team, like just being able to give them samples. And you know, it's not decanting a 750 into 50 ml's that look not great, you know. So it's expensive to give everybody samples. I get that. But if you can't afford to provide a sample, a full-size sample of a product that you expect 600 people to go sell or 100 people in a state to go sell, you're probably not in a great financial position to be maybe like kicking off that brand. So to me, if that's your budget, you know, and you should be able to share what your budget is with your distributor partner and say what is the best use of this spent? We had a, we had a Sambuca partner, this is maybe ten years ago, that without asking us, we got four huge boxes sent to the warehouse. So four huge boxes showed like the size of a mini fridge. And we go out and we open up one of them and they are branded Sambuca slushy machines. No one has ever asked for a Sambuca slushy, not ever. But they're, and they're branded. So you can't change that. And technically, I know here in Illinois, it's illegal to use them for anything that has not got that product in it. So they just sat, they just sat and collected us and had that distributor, they were nice machines. I'm sorry, had that supplier said, we have $10,000 to spend. I would not have said buy four slushy machines. You know, I would have said Sambuca, maybe maybe a couple reps get to go to Italy and become Sambuca investors. I don't know what it is, but there were definitely better ways to spend that. Yeah. So, so, so, so, so making assumptions, right, is is is certainly a no no when you've got someone in the market, you know, your distributor, your importer, that that's the value they add. I'm curious about, you know, along those lines, best practices, you know, what do you observe in suppliers when they partner with your colleagues, when they work a particular market? What do you like to see? Do you like to see them saying we should visit this account and that account? Do you like the sales consultants to direct that? How do you think about, you know, on the ground, hitting the street when a supplier's in town? What should they do? It's a it's a, it's a moving target. That's another thing that COVID broke was like the old school work with model. But I think anyone who worked in the markets 15, 10, five years ago, you know, versus now, no one wants to be taken on a milk run where they're just going out, you know, visiting new accounts and no one wants to be taken on a run where there was one viable account and there's six non-viable accounts. And you're just watching people drop off cases or pick up checks or taking them out to lunch. So I think it's about being really open on a front about what the day or the time spent is going to be. I typically will, you know, work with educating our suppliers that if you're going to spend a whole day with the sales consultant, the primary thing you should be concerned with is that that person can tell your story and educate about your brand as well as you can by the end of the day. So maybe it's the first three accounts, you do the whole deal, you know, you show everything. This is the order I would taste things in, I would add water to this or I would put this over ice or I would add tonic to this and then establish, okay, I'm going to do the first three. But then when we finish with those the last three of the day, you're going to do the presentation. I'm going to be there to back you up, but I want to make sure that you understand. They can't be off in their car or on their phones or, you know, out doing something else. You need them to be your ambassador by the end of the day. But I think that starts with a conversation over coffee in the morning talking about the customers. What is this customer like? What do they not like? So kind of establishing some, you know, some rules. I find, especially coming out of COVID, that most people are not just doing like a full day work with. You've probably got a supplier who either, who has done their research in the market. And they say, I kind of want to see these accounts or this type of account. I want to be in the James Beard nominated Michelin star tactile bars. Okay. So is everybody else? Those are kind of maybe more a difficult appointment to get. So maybe we can do that, maybe we can. But maybe, you know, maybe they're running around on their own high spotting accounts. I think to a willingness of having a balance of going in and doing some education and some accounts that are already sold, along with that kind of thrill and endorphin rush of going in and actually selling something. So, you know, it's just, you're going to be asked to do a lot of things. We're all being asked for a lot of hats. And so I think we expect that of our supplier partners as well. I wouldn't say, you know, also, it's a lot of people are small operations. So you can't have someone that lives in every market. And we've had people hire people in markets well before they should have. You know, so that's a lot. I mean, to have a 60, 80, $100,000 salary sitting out there isn't to take a lot of cases to be able to recoup that. So, you know, if people come to me right when, you know, right out of the gate or year one, should I be hiring someone here? Probably not. If the sales aren't there to support half their salary at this point, this is maybe not the right time to invest in that. Maybe you need to have somebody that can come visit everywhere, you know, once a quarter, you know, or something. And just again, being really straightforward about what your budget is and what your expectations are. But it is awfully nice to have people on the ground. And it is really, it is really pleasant to have partners on the ground that are willing to get out and do a lot of the, you know, boots on the groundwork themselves. And, you know, actually kind of do some research, look through the account list. You know, one of the things I think that's really helpful, you know, is if you haven't been in a market in six months, look at who bought six months ago, but hasn't bought in six months. So we all did our job six months ago. We sold things and they haven't bought again. So is it collecting dust on the back bar? Because none of it's all new bartenders. They don't know anything about it or there's a new bar manager. Is it just sitting on a store shelf? And that store is about to disco it and you're never going to get that placement on the shelf again. So is it simply going in and setting up a tasting? You know, so I think that's where a lot of people miss is there's a real rush to getting new business. But until that bottle comes off the back bar out of the well or off the shelf, none of us are done with doing our jobs. Yeah. That completely resonates. I think, right, that shiny new object syndrome, be it an account, right, tends to distract from the, you know, getting reorders and increasing, you know, same store or restaurant velocity, getting it to move quicker where it is. I'll never forget I used to be in distribution and a supplier, you know, came to town and said, I wanted to visit, you know, all the accounts we visited last time. And I said, don't you want to visit some new ones? And he said, I want to make sure everyone who purchased last time is happy selling more than they were before. And it was the first time the light kind of light bulb went off. And it really stuck with me. And what I'm hearing is maybe not exactly the same, but it's really important to you. I've never heard anyone say that. And if someone actually said that, that would be so thrilling. Because that's exactly, that just like makes me smile thinking about somebody saying, no, no, it's not about that. I want to go back out and make sure that these people are happy. That's a big deal. Because that first presentation, I mean, if everybody's doing their jobs, the sales consultant has gone out and tasted the account on something. And then maybe it took a couple other reminders. And then maybe they were do, they were working with one of our specialists one day. And the specialist went in, cool, got the key sold. It takes so, it takes a village. And when you've taken all those steps, I think they still say it takes about seven impressions for someone to bring something in, no matter, you know, how they're receiving those impressions. Those rewers and those that the depth of that sale is so important. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, what I hear is, right, this is at every level, be it the sales consultant, be it the retailer restaurant, it's teaching them to fish, right? It's teaching them to deliver the message. So yeah, if half the day is spent visiting accounts, but the other half is spent hanging out and getting that rep, getting that consultant excited so that they can go out other days, not just one out of 365 and push your product. That is more valuable than visiting seven accounts in one day. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think too, there are a lot of times, you know, we, a lot of people left the industry during COVID. We lost like a lot of veteran bartenders, you know, we had a lot of bars and restaurants closed, we had retailers closed, you know, people opened during COVID and actually it wasn't sustainable. So a lot of people are new. You have a lot of brand new bartenders, brand new bar directors, brand new people standing in the aisles at stores. And I do think people get into this business because they're passionate about food and beverage. And so to actually meet someone who who is helping you on that journey, who is kind of taking an interest, not only in selling you something, but in kind of a level of mentorship and education, I think just feels really nice, you know, to have somebody be like asking those questions. And even just I've had I have worked with people where you go into a place that I'm not even actually trying to sell you anything today. I just want to take a look at your shelf set and I just want to ask you, what's moving? What's not moving? What are you worried about? What are you stressed out about? And I think sometimes people walk away and a week later that retailer says to their sales rep, can you bring me back actually those bottles and actually I want to taste back in and when I go through this, like I want to carry that stuff, that seemed like a nice person, that seemed like a person that I want to help succeed. - This is a bit of a leading question, but dovetailing off that, you know, how important would you say it is that a supplier visit a market before ever selling into that market, right? If they want to sell in Florida, should they spend a week in Florida, just, you know, visiting stores, restaurants and getting a feel? - Absolute freaking lootly. And I'm sorry, but if you can't afford to do that, then you can't afford to do business in that market. That's just all there is to it. It's crazy, we've got a great relationship with some top retailers, top retail chains. And so talking to some of these people that are driving billions of dollars with the business, it's like how dare you call on me at our corporate office and you've never been to one of our stores. You know, so they'll ask them questions, oh, you know, like where do you see yourself sitting? Like you're here, you know, what did you think the last time you were in this aisle or the way that we had this situated? I mean, they'll kind of ask kind of tricky questions, but out of respect to the other market that you're coming into. I think too, you know, I'm in Chicago, so we're a very bitter place. You know, so we like good cocktails, we like better spirits. So looking at some menus and saying, oh, you know what, I think I could really fit into. I'm seeing these trends that are a little bit different and I think my spirit would fit really well into this space. Yeah, just coming in and just like drinking and enjoying or even going into, if you're gonna go call on, let's say a cool independent retailer in a thriving neighborhood. Do you go to five bars around there? I went to these five bars over the time that I was here this week and I made these five placements. You guys should have this retail placement or saying to the retailer, I made this retail placement. I'm gonna go sell it into these bars so that people, you know, and just kind of like making sure that they're driving business both ways. But yeah, I think that those relationships are invaluable. - There are no shortcuts. It's not reinventing the wheel. - Right, right. So yeah, this is all tremendously insightful and useful to hear, you know, in thinking about the future, right? What has you excited for? What wine bow is planning to do or a particular category or brand? What's on the horizon for you? - We still see a lot of upside in agave spirits. I mean, to me, it's still kind of tip of the iceberg. I feel like, you know, you look at volume or you could read some doom and gloom about, you know, they're being a lake of tequila there. There's a lot of volume out there, but the brands that people are excited about, the brands that you named, definitely some other ones. People are really, really excited about it. And these are people that they've kind of graduated from maybe like an aiejo with a lot of additives, these kind of vanilla, cakey, carmoly, these kinds of things that are kind of agave spirits, but they don't even taste like agave. We really have taken a big stance on additive free agave and transparency in our agave spirits. And so when people truly get into the flavors of something, you know, these mineral flavors, these really beautiful, you know, tropical fruit driven or salinity, minerality, whatever it is, when people get into that, that's like 5% of the market right now. So we still see a really big upside with all of the producers that we work with. So we're very excited and very bullish still on agave spirits. We're also really excited, excited like I said earlier about our full Japanese spirit portfolio. Those are not selling in the Japanese restaurant too much. They're selling into the top cocktail bars in the country. They're selling into people who think that sweet potato distalits or soba distalits or whatever are interesting. So people that are into flavor and we see a lot of savory trending right now. So that's really definitely playing into that. For us, I think the thing we're really excited about this year is wrong. We jokingly, you know, in the industry, I think we're always like, is it the year of Rome? You know, and people get excited, well, I guess when, I think when your average consumer thinks about Rome, they think about huge brands, like white rum and Coke or a spiced rum and Coke, you know, or something like that. Not necessarily a gorgeous daiquiri component, you know, or a sipping rum. And I think there's a lot of value to be had there. These are still spirits that confuse people quite a bit. There's no standard. There are very few laws governing, you know, what could go into them or how they're produced or aging and so, you know, I don't know that anybody's ever going to really get a handle on that. But we are very clear on what our producer partners are providing and so in the same way that we, you know, are very proud to have this gorgeous portfolio of additive free cave, just being really transparent about where our rum is coming from and, you know, best case uses, but we're seeing a lot of growth in the space. And again, I think it's interesting. It's kind of like tequila mescal drinkers got into agricultural rum and Claren from Haiti, these other really flavorful, non-traditional kind of rums and it seems to be actually driving the category. - Interesting, interesting. And is there any, you know, in closing, is there any particular resource, a person to follow on LinkedIn and online class, a movie, a book, a place you direct someone who's just starting out. Let's say there's a supplier, right? Never sold into the US before, whether they're US based or not. Where would you direct them? Where should they start before they're thinking about, you know, distribution or anything like that? Where would you point them to? - Yeah, there's so many things. I would say to non-US folks come over and make sure that there's a space for your spirit. I remember once some folks pitching us that I just said, "You've never been in the United States." Okay, come here, we'll go to a huge Benny store and they had flavored vodka and we went to the flavored vodka aisle 12 years ago at one of the bines, which there was like, that was the massive surge of like cereal. There was like fruit loop, Mountain Dew vodka and all kinds of crazy stuff. But they had all these flavored vodkas and the color of the vodka didn't match like our idea of flavor. So for them, green was meant not apple or melon. And I just remember watching their faces as they looked at the competitive set and they were like, whoa, okay, maybe we need to rethink this all things. So again, kind of like your time out just going into states before you approach them, come over and do some market research and make sure that everything is going to be a good fit. In terms of other resources, I think there are a lot of people you myself included that are there as not necessarily like mentors, like resources of information, but I hand my card to plenty of people that I encourage to reach out and ask me questions and very few of them do. I am not a LinkedIn person. I don't know why. I don't love social media, but I don't like being pitched. I don't like getting messages on it. It feels intrusive. I don't like a little pop up things. So, you know, but my email is not hard to find, but I think being prepared, you know, reaching out with like emails and things other ways are really good. I really like a lot of the industry conferences. So I like the American Distilling Institute, the American Craft Spirits Association, BarConvent, Brooklyn, I wouldn't recommend that anyone go and maybe spend the money to be a vendor or have a booth the first time, but spend a hundred bucks or 150 bucks and go see what's going on in the market. Go see what people are doing at their booths or what cocktails they're making, or there's always education sessions. You have to go sit in, you know, on panels that like I'm speaking on or people from other distributors, importers, but, you know, spending $150 on a pass to go to BarConvent is a wonderful investment. And I would say the same thing about ADI and ACSA, I think those are great. I did a program through Zingerman's. You know, Zingerman's is. - Yeah, there aren't they like a delian Michigan? Am I mistaken? - It's like a delian Michigan that's just like thriving and everybody's obsessed with how good their food is, but also they have like the most amazing employees. And this mail order business and like all these other things, they offer leadership courses. So the folks that started it started these leadership courses. And, you know, I think coming up from being a lot of us in the industry came up, I think bartending and waiting tables. And I never really had had formal, you know, education in like leadership or conflict resolution, you know, those kinds of things, where it's like this stuff comes up all the time. So I found it really, really helpful, you know, that the class that I was in was, yeah, it was really, really fascinating. I absolutely love that. I would say too, just like, you know, I'm sure you get these, that like the Mark Brown industry news report every day. Well, more automatic conferences. That's what we're all looking at at six o'clock in the morning over coffee. And so it's like, if you're not looking down at your phone, you know, reading through that whole newsletter, there's probably something going on. 'Cause I think that's really interesting. There's some great books actually want someone on my team. Ian Feffer wrote a book called A Business Behind the Bottle, which I thought was really great, was just his like, you know, decade of experience on the distribution side. It was cool for me as someone that has worked with him for that long to kind of see the output of like all of these, you know, different experiences that he's had and going through COVID with that. So there's no limit to the amount of resources out there. And you definitely got to use them. And sometimes too, it's just like Google. I'm blown away, there are people that don't know that there's different taxes state by state. That's just Google, that's easy, you know, you could do that yourself, so. A great, a great, well, Monique, thank you so much for being so generous with your time, your insights, your experience, so grateful to have you here on Business of Drinks. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, Scott. I appreciate you having me. This was really fun. Welcome to last call, so Scott and I were just discussing that we need to have a PSA about distribution, which is that if you are a brand right now is the time that you need to be reaching out to distributors. So January and February are when most distribution portfolios are starting to examine what worked well in the prior year and in the prior quarter over the holidays, where they have gaps, and where there might also be price gaps in the category, they're also looking for stylistic gaps in their portfolio, like say a Japanese whiskey and their whiskey line up, or maybe it's a subset of RTDs like they don't have a long drink in their portfolio, or maybe even an emerging category, that they're excited to help grow. So if you're a brand and you're looking to grow into new markets this year, now is the time to pick up those phones, send those emails and try to get some appointments. This should be a priority right now, and Scott also has worked extensively in distribution and has some tips. Yes, it's absolutely true that if your calls went on answered in September, October, November, December, that is completely business as usual. That's when distributors are busy selling, doing the most selling, and hopefully selling your brand the next year. So now is the optimal time to at least introduce yourself, meet someone, a warm intro is always better than cold outreach, so if you can get an introduction from a sales rep that works for that company, a brand that's already distributed by that company, that goes a long way. Think about yourself as a consumer, when was the last time someone cold outreach to you, and you followed up immediately and purchased that product or subscribed to that service? Likely not going to happen. I can recall as a distributor, most of the brands I ended up working with, I had established a relationship over some period of time, whether they initially reached out to me cold, or I got to know them through a warm intro. So warm intro is always over cold ones, or cold outreach. You need to make sure that when you address the distributor, you are helping them solve one of their problems, not one of yours, okay. Your goal probably is to sell more, which is why you're seeking distribution. Your goal is to keep margins high, to open more accounts, or to sell more volume. If you are incapable of one of those three primary ways of enhancing their business, you're likely not going to have a shot no matter how cool your bottle looks, no matter how wonderful your liquid tastes. So that's really key. And then this last one shouldn't even need to be a tip, but spell check. If you're going to email an outreach, nothing is less professional and shows you don't care enough, especially at this really important stage, than sending out an email that is littered with grammatical or spelling errors. Even if your first language isn't English, you are going to be selling your product in what is I'm going to assume an English speaking market here in the United States, so you need to be spot on. That could be using software. It could be having someone read it just to make sure that all the nuances are correct. So warm intros, make sure you are solving a distributor's problem, and you spell check when writing an email. Yes, sage advice. So brands now is the time January and February hop on the phone, send those emails and start to get in front of new distributors. Now is the time. Seize the moment. And with that, thanks so much for listening.