In Store Tastings. #samples #drink

Welcome to the DrinkUp Podcast Daily Industry Brief, where we break down what's happening in the beverage business and what it actually means for brands, distributors, and operators. Let me tell you about the worst 3 hours in this business. The in-store tasting. Saturday, 2 in the afternoon. You set up a folding table right by the front door of a liquor store. Your own cloth. A cooler you hauled in from the trunk. Your bottle sitting there in the light like it's about to change your life. 3 hours go by, you pour 11 samples. 4 people ask you where the bathroom is. One guy actually tries it. He sips it, looks at you, says, not bad. Then he walks to the register and buys a bottle of Tito's. And you drive home and you do the math and it comes out negative every single way you run it. You sit in the driveway asking yourself why you ever left a real job. I have been in that driveway. So has every founder listening to this. Here's what I could not see back then. The clerk watched me show up. The owner watched me work his floor for free on a Saturday. 11 people who had never heard of my brand walked out knowing it was real. None of that shows up in your numbers that week. It shows up 3 months later when that owner takes your call because he remembers the guy who set up his own table. The Brevit Group has a stat I think about all the time. 2% of sales close on the first contact. 80% take 5 or more follow-ups. That table was contact number 1, and most founders quit at contact 2. They call the whole brand a failure and walk away. Nobody builds a brand on one good Saturday. They build it on 40 bad ones. So if you poured for an empty aisle last weekend, you didn't waste the day. You earned the right to walk back in, set the table again. That is how you win this game and build a brand. That's your Drink Up for today. Truthfully, Sam,