Discovering the Perfect Sake for Every Occasion With Paul Dohrenwend and Reina Watanabe of Safu Sake

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper countins counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy beer and coffee My coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco stand in puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean Watch the sunset la Hoya shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom.

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom and I am thrilled to have you here on the Talkers and Tech Podcast. We interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly. So thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, new interview and on Fridays we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbrewedtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode. I am thrilled to have the team from Sakurasaki, Paul Dernwood and Reina Watanabe. Hey guys, thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Thanks, Neil. We're happy to be on here. We've been a fan of your show and excited to be on.

I'm a fan of alcohol and I'm excited to hear the story of a new San Diego company. So you want to give us a quick overview of what Safu is?

Yeah, Safu is a high end premium sake that is imported from Japan. We brew our own recipe at a brewery that's 150 years old. And the mission statement of Safu is to bring premium sake to America and then present it in a very approachable and memorable way. So we wanted the label to be in English letters and we wanted the experience to be truly A Japanese experience where you're tasting a fine, high end premium sake. And the idea was bring this amazing alcohol, which I, back in 2018, fell in love with when I went on a ski trip to Hokkaido. Reina is from Japan, so she knew about it all. But I just stumbled across this and it was, you know, I was a tequila, a wine, a beer guy. This just blew me out of the water with how well it drank and then how well it made you feel and then also how good you felt in the morning without a hangover because there's no impurities to this sort of higher end socket. I. I had hatched that idea with my friends on the ski trip. And then the idea turned into reality after we got home and we noodled it a little bit. And then I ended up going to business school. And there I formalized some of the foundations to a startup business. You know, a pitch deck idea. And then key context. And Reyna was one of my key contacts and once met her through LinkedIn, the whole story took off and she was sort of one of the key pieces to why we hold this. Awesome. The. I don't know if viewers can see it. They probably can't because it's about so this incredible bottle.

We'll have photos in the show notes for sure.

Okay.

But there's even more to this story because you're, you don't have a lifelong background in, even in business building. Right. Like you're a doctor by training.

True. Yeah. So I'm emergency physician by training. I've been working for about 15 years at Kaiser Permanente as an ER physician there. I've been assistant chief, chief of the department. Just really enjoying working there. Went on to business school to just really close the gap on a lot of investing and financial skills that I felt I didn't completely have mastered as I was participating with the San Diego angel conference, working with Connect as an entrepreneur in residency in a couple different startups, helping them hone their pitch decks for venture capital. So I went off to business school. Just happened to be right before business school, I went to Japan. And the idea to form a sake company had always been sitting with me. And as I was in business school, you learn about, hey, where is there, you know, kind of a blue ocean? Where is there a space that people may not be entering where it's less competitive? And as I asked people what their favorite sake brand was, people couldn't name one. So there you have it. There's definitely some room to enter the space. And then there was this Also phenomenon going on in Japan where the population was contracting and the sake drinkers were younger and not. Well, they were older. But the sake drinkers of the younger group population were not actually interested. They were more interested in the wines and the beers, the more American type bar menu. And so the. This artisanship that was going on at a lot of these sake breweries that have been around for hundreds of years, they started dying off and you lose that whole craft once a sake brewery goes to bed. And there was a thesis to engage with some of these maybe struggling breweries that were masters and bring whatever their product is or work with them to develop our own product and bring it over to America where actually sake was becoming this interesting drink that people are curious about. They've sort of run through the wine curiosity. We've done the craft beer people are now in the tequila fad and phase. What's coming next? And sake has been around for thousands of years. Why not sake? It's. It's an incredible alcohol and we just looked at it as a. A way of maybe popularizing it. This was sake's time to take it out of the sushi houses and bring it out into the main street. Oh, that's super cool.

Raina, you have a long history in the food and beverage space, Right. So take us through a little bit about that because then I want to ultimately hear how you guys connected.

Sure. A little bit of my backstory. I grew up inside my life in Japan. And right after I graduated my university, I wanted to expand my family business, which is potato chips business and manufacturing down in south part of Japan Kyushu area. So I decided to join this food distribution company called Nishimoto Trading back then now with Medic Asian Food, one of the Japanese food and beverage distributor. They have a couple tens of 20 different branch office in the United States. So I joined them and knowing this distribution and taking this crafted sake, imported sake to retail stores and restaurants up inside Francisco and knowing the market kind of struck me why these Japanese label sake are only consumed by Japanese clients. And the Japanese sushi chef owned restaurant. And I was always thinking that another, there is another market that we can take these great products to, which is like outside of the Japanese market, take hotel and restaurant and just a local hotel or restaurant. And I was working there for two years. And after that I was working for one of the leading drink beverage company and knowing about the distributions and they were titled with 7 ups. Good to see that how operations and logistics works in the United States. That really gave me an idea. Of how can I take this crafted Japanese products to major United States markets. And my family called me come back to Japan back in 2018. And I was there luckily. And by the time Paul called me with my phone 2019 and I got his voicemail first and he was introducing about himself and looking for private brand manufacturers, sake manufacturers and pointing out northern part of Japan which is famous for crafted Japanese Junmaitai Ginjo especially. And I called him back and asked him if he's interested into looking for one brewer down in South Kyushu, where I grew up, since I've been around them, most of the brewers and knowing that sixth and seventh generations of breweries, brewmasters and they were there forever with their family business, but nobody really know what they are capable of. So I got his pitch deck and thought it was brilliant ideas. And my sense and his sense was very mutually having the same goal. How can we bring these crafted products from Japan to US market and make it reachable to end consumers. We talked a lot and we we were on the same page analyzing how we can brand our products into US market. And we met this great brewer named Mr. Fuji and we were talking about how we can bring this taste palette and branding and taste notes especially suitable for American palates more because this is little bit challenging crafted brewing way in terms of taking out of sake strong sake flavor notes. So Dao in South Kyushu is very famous for shochu brewers, which is potato and wheat based, 25% deteriorated alcohol. There was 43 brewers where I grew up which was very crafted way. We have to take in terms of making sake newly. And we took time for that to make the palate light. Right. Over a year and over actually a couple months having a weekly Zoom call and some special bottle came up and couldn't wait to meet with Paul. So I hopped on the airplane and there was maybe five people on the airplane from Japan to United States at that time because of the pandemic. And we finally could meet in the United States and shook hand and we did our cheers and we tasted and that's how we really started and was super lucky to help him. Yes.

That's cool. So weekly you were like, you were testing batches and describing them to Paul over Zoom is how I was going for like months and months.

Well, we had really only two opportunities to taste it. She came once with a batch from the brewer that the brewer had left over.

Okay.

And we were going to see if that was going to be the product and it didn't really fit what we wanted.

Okay.

And at the time, one of our partners, the head of marketing, Wayne Partello, he is. He started. He was starting a company for marketing, and we were going to be a new customer. He, at the time, was also transitioning out of the Padres as the chief marketing officer there. And they were doing a lot of celebrations during the playoffs with the Padres. They were getting good traction, and they were celebrating at Lumi. And he had one bottle of sake over there. He said, I got. You guys have to try this. He brought that bottle up to my house and we tried it and thought the tasting notes were perfect for what we were looking for. And we got on a Zoom call that night, talked to the Japanese team, said, this is the company we think has a similar profile to what we're looking for. And that day, one of our sake Somalis in Japan drove over to the brewery two hours away in Hiroshima and got a meeting with them and got their formula, their yeast, and couple of things that they were using to get that flavor. Drove back down to where we brew the sake, and they bought the yeast and a couple of things. But since we were using a different type of rice, it reacted a little differently. So we didn't have the exact same flavor, but we created this unique flavor for our sake based on that bottle that we pull in from Lumi. One of the things is that the Japanese team is just really responsive. You tell them, hey, we're looking to do this, and bam, within hours, they're already on it. And that's the cool part of the story, is that we were communicating over Zoom and other people were hands and the hands and feet of getting stuff done over there. And that was one of the greatest things, is just the trust. The people that were in Japan and how serious they took this whole project until we actually had something that we could sell here in the United States.

Yeah, really cool. It's 43 brewers in your area. Sounds like kind of a San Diego kind of density of our beer scene to the sake scene there. But like you said, is it all consumed locally and there's nothing really exported up until where you guys have come in?

Exactly. So that's the blind spot of our region. There is a lot of brewers that is owned by 70 and 80 years old brewmasters. And Fuji Shuzo's oldest brewmaster turned into 92 years old, and he's a living legend. And they're still fulfilling people's demands within that territory, but now they're very aware that they need to pass along their craftsmanship to next generations. And there is no data because it's very crafted way how they made it from eastern fungs from a couple decades ago. So now our generation 30 to 50 years old generation are really trying to get support from government and also government support us to export our products and be out there how unpolished the diamond are sleeping in that area. And we needed to expose to that. And I'm so glad that Paul found us.

Yeah, that's really cool. So you formulated a product that sounds like it was inspired by the Padres which is cool.

There was a little bit of the origin story of the Padres there. And also one of the cool things is that this brewery has been around for 150 or six generations. They had never brewed the style the super premium level that we requested to be produced. And so they had produced lower sort of level sakes. But this was their opus in a way. This was the we were asking them to do something. And this level sake requires a lot more detail, attention to temperature, some sort of real vigilance in this really critical 34 day period when you're fermenting the sake. So would sleep there at the brewery and make sure it didn't go up too high in temperature. They could only brew it in the wintertime so it can only be brewed from November to about March or April. So after that we can't produce any more of this. So once you put your order in for the beginning of the year, that's it. So for them this is like a really cool story because they haven't ever done this in the grandfather Toji, the head brewmaster, 90 year old guy. This is exciting for them to move into a new space after doing the same thing for so long.

Wow. Really cool. And this a lot of it sounds like happened during COVID It's a.

It's a Covid baby which being a.

Doctor and got to a busy time for you while also starting this company. Like how'd you do it all?

Yeah. And at the same time going to business school. It was. Yeah. Luckily I have a strong supportive wife and the kids were starting to get to ages where they could. Someone could drive and take care of themselves. But it was a lot of as with starting up anything. It's you just run and gun and you try and plan as much as possible but you can only see so far into the future. So you're just kind of trying to get through all your tasks as and part of it was the team in Japan and the marketing team. Wayne and his team with Katie and our beverage branding team. We had a Portland branding team and we had that did heavy lifting of the design. And then we had the marketing team that helped with the brand inception and the story behind it, that surf story, that San Diego story, that connection between Japan and the U.S. and then we had the Japan team which was taking care of the brewing, the logistics, the shipping. Everyone in that sort of triangle did their job very well. It was a great team where you had to only say what you needed once and it was done. Which when you look for employees and people to work with, that's really. I'd say it's magic when you get a whole team that's like that and everyone's functioning at a high level, things get done. And I can only say that's how I was able to do it with all the other stuff that was going on.

Totally. Luckily, also alcohol sales really picked up during COVID People got really into their alcohol. You have a brand new product, how did you. So you've got a great team. You still gotta knock on doors and get it sold. What was that like actually getting it to market?

Yeah, we started out with a friends and family round. Friends and family were part of the investing team as well. We had. I had to raise a seed of money and then that team also had friends and family that were spider webbing off that who were interested in what project they were doing. So we were able to get a small bit of sales from there. And then I send out investor letters saying, hey, if restaurant owners, if wine shop owners, please let me know and we can start making connections. So some of our early sales, Lumi and other restaurants in town, Bishop Ramen and Psycho Sushi, they were connections networks made by people we knew in marketing, people we knew from the importing group we were using to warehouse our stuff up in Long Beach. That's one of the cool things about business is you tell your story and then people say, I know someone who does this or who's that? And that was something that being a doctor, I didn't come across too much because you really had your network built out and you really didn't have to do a lot of selling. As an ER physician, you're standing there and the demand is created just by people living life and whatever problems come up. So it was a new skill to lean into and really trying to be proud and confident with the story. And what also made me feel really good about the product was that we de risked it, meaning that we tasted it and we knew that ultimately what sells is the juice. We could have A great marketing campaign, but if you taste it and it's crap, no one's going to buy it again. And so the absolute beauty of the product, the actual experience you get from drinking this, people, their eyes went wide, their created smiles and they just said, wow, this is delicious. What is this? This is, this is mind blowing. So we knew we had something good. And that was very helpful is that I think people had a little sip, a little sip led to a little bit more. And then so in a way, you want something that kind of sells itself. We, we still have to get out there and do the footwork and go to the restaurants. But ultimately, once people start tasting and talking about it, it's starting to sell itself. Got it.

And you've hit some big milestones, obviously. One, the saki's here. I think I saw a post from.

You talking about flight chain.

Yeah, that in itself must have been crazy. So what was that feeling like when it showed up here in Long Beach?

Oh, it was. Well, we didn't know how long it would take to get across the ocean. There was all these rumors that boats were going to Korea and then back to Long Beach. It actually made it here in two to three weeks and waited about a week in port. So for me, it wasn't too big of a hassle to get it in. But to see the pallet in the warehouse was a thing of glory because it had been a year of planning, doing all that kind of stuff. And as you said, from there we had a big milestone about four months after landing in the country.

Yeah, tell us, you break the news, Tell us where you went from there.

We got into Costco within five months of being in the country. For any, I think consumer packaged good, even alcohol, especially wines and whatever, Costco is the largest, I think wine store in the world. It's massive. And we had again a network of connection from Japan. Our Saki sommelier knew a guy who had been in Costco as Saki before and he saw that our product plugged into his portfolio and he wanted to bring us into as well. So that was the in was with him. And really seeing your product on the shelf at Costco is like that gold medal moment of retail is seeing just legitimate buyer who trusts in the product and is willing to offer it and put it out there. And sales went great. We were ecstatic about the sales during the holidays. It was right over New year's, right the December 28th when we launched. And so there's my. There actually still may be a few bottles at Costco and we just, we just got word that they wanted to reorder too as well.

Congrats. That's a great feeling.

Yeah.

Very cool. Is it beyond San Diego or largely focused right now and just like a market adoption in San Diego?

Largely in San Diego. We did San Francisco. Costco wants us up there too as well. And so we're gonna move up there too as well. And then she, as a food broker has traveled all over the US to New York and San Francisco and does a lot of safu saki selling while she's there. So she's got us into a couple places in New York, couple places in San Francisco. Very cool. That's great.

We're excited to see that. You can know, is there a sake scene of like distillers in the US or. I don't actually even know that part. Can you make sake outside of Japan?

Yes, you can make sake. And There are about 20 breweries in the US all doing some version that some are. We actually have one here in town setting Sun Sake brewers. And we have. There's a guy in Arizona sake who's very fascinating. The Smithsonian did a write up about him and his stuff is at B shock. It was very cool to taste this stuff. There's sequoia sake up in San Francisco, momokawa up in Oregon, and then Brooklyn. Brooklyn kura. Brooklyn sake. Yeah, it's big in New York, but there's I think a few in Texas and it's just, there's not a ton. So if you look at the amount of beer brewers and still people are able to make margin and sell product and super hyper competitive space, I think the sake market is wide open. You look at wines, there's so many reds on the shelf, so many whites, so many roses. Yet these wineries still stick around. But I think as you said, alcohol is always enjoyable.

People are getting more curious and diversifying their palate and everything. I think just people want more uniqueness and sake is part of that, which is pretty cool.

Yeah. And I think people like discovering things. One of our mission statements is to have people discover sort of sake in our. One of our mission taglines is refresh your expectations of sake, because most people are, hey, I've had warm sake and a carafe and I or I do a sake bomb into a glass of beer and they may not have had the best experience. And it's. I can remember the first high end tequila I ever drank and thought, wow, this is like brandy. This isn't the gasoline you were used to. In college. And that was, it was transformative. It flips your head about how are you going to approach this whole alcohol space. And so that's what we want to do with sakes is to flip on its head that you can drink sake while netflixing at home and throwing a steak or a chicken or having some fish at home and. Or throwing a backyard barbecue and just treat it like wine and treat it like a great food pairing item. And the other thing is that you can shoot it. Maybe you're at a wedding, you don't want to shoot some gross Jagermeister or warmed vodka. We think that this is a great replacement for that. And also it's a huge celebratory drink. So in Japan it's used for weddings, funerals, promotions, et cetera. There's a lot of culture and etiquette around it, which is. It's actually really fun. Like you don't pour your own for the first class. You. You want to, you know, be polite and have other people pour for you. And there's some Japanese, the masas, these wooden boxes you put the glass in is. And then when you pour into the glass, you always over pour so that overflows into the masa. Because the person that you're pouring for is important. You honor them and you want to pour over and not just. You don't want to shortchange them ever. So you know, all this kind of stuff, which is really fun. And if we, you know, integrated more of this into celebratory events, I think you'll find that champagne isn't the only beverage you can toast at a wedding or whatever. You could have sake out there and people would be equally as happy, if not happier because there's no hangover.

Yeah. Oh, cool looking. I love the culture piece around it too. Is this going to be sold in Japan? Will people in Japan get to enjoy safu as well too?

What is Fuji doing with that? He's. There's a couple bottles lying around and 200 bottles lying at the brewery. I don't know what he's doing. He might be selling it out the back. Who knows. We might not be in the dollars from those sales, but he's got a stash for sure.

Like local dish drillers are selling to local. Like a small, like a crafted, like a boutique shop type of. Yeah, that's where people usually buy high alcohol contents bottles. Also Tokyo, Osaka area. Usually they want the crafted products from south and north. Yeah. So usually most of the products are shipped to metropolitan city you mentioned.

It's good you get. We'll learn about what it pairs with. We got to know what kind of tacos does safu pair with favorite.

So I love al pastor. Anything with al pastor. My favorite tacos are down at Tacos El Gordo, Ottawa. And so I think I'd recommend that if you're in town in San Diego, those are my favorite. I do always like the wahoo fish taco as well. And if I'm really jonesing for the best fish taco in town, I'll go to South Coast Grill town. Obi. Oh yeah.

Do you have a favorite?

So my culture, I didn't really grew up with tacos, but if I say I brought a bottle to this restaurant called Lanier in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, actually Paul's friend Peter is owned this restaurant and I really enjoyed it. Their tacos. Yeah.

Love it.

Yeah, they make really fresh tortillas up at Lana.

Yeah.

Yeah, love it. Very cool. We will learn to do more tacos and safu pairings for sure over time.

Absolutely.

Maybe even we'll do a celebratory tacos and tech and safu event sometime in the future. Be fun.

We are doing events, tasting events for biotech companies or anyone. And so we are doing sort of tasting events and pairings it with also local food vendors. We get fish from Haworth and we get beef from Swagu Beef and Down PB and Imperial Beach. They got great products and we love that there's a lot of great raw ingredients here in town that you could easily put on these killer dinners and tastings. So.

Okay. Okay, we'll do it. Well, congrats. I'm gonna go see if I can bootleg a bottle somewhere. If they're still on a shelf.

Hopefully we'll get you a bottle. If you don't pick one up at Costco, we'll make sure you get a bottle.

Love it.

Awesome.

Congrats, guys. And here's to Safu's success.

Hey Neil, thanks for having us.

Thanks for tuning in to the Tacos and Tech podcast. You can find all of our episodes on freshbrewedtech.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also follow fresh brewed tech on all of our social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Thanks again.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech in tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it.

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Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups, get the party started. You want taking tacos? Tacos goes in tech. You know we got it.

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