Welcome to our live show!

And this is the first time that my guest Mallory Patton— I've been calling her Mallory Von Patton, but welcome Mallory, the co-founder of St. Spritz, to Drink Up. And Courtney, co-host here today, out of— straight out of California near the Modesto area, welcome too. We're so excited to have you on Drink Up today, Mallory. So what is going on? You're in Puerto Rico right now?

I am.

Sam, this is like what you said we would encounter. Why am I? I'm frozen.

Oh, you are.

That's okay. Keep on going. That's okay.

Oh my gosh!

You look fine on my end.

Yeah, you're good.

All right, good. I'm happy not to be looking at my own self. So I'm super happy to be joining you live. This is my first live podcast, so I'm excited to have a chat. Sorry, I was distracted because my face was frozen on here. So I didn't hear what you were saying.

That is that is that is perfect. That is perfectly fine. And the reason I like to have a co-host too. I'm always trying to talk to the, the people out there that hopefully will join us a little bit. But tell us a little. So I, I've known you for a couple years, which is crazy. We had a conversation, it was like 2 years ago before you, we were just getting started and you were just trying to learn the space. And somehow I found you or you found me and you were just looking for some information like who are distributors, how does a category work, the whole bit, right?

Totally.

Um, I think the way that I learned this business is I just like anyone that would answer my email or my LinkedIn message, I would talk to because I wasn't from beverage. So I was like, I gotta get a quick education and I gotta talk to anyone that will talk to me. And that's just what I did. And that's how I think I found you. And that's kind of me turning over rocks. And I did that enough times to finally get this business off the ground. So that was, I guess, in 2023. That's Spring, summer, we launched direct-to-consumer with St. Spritz.

That is, that is, that is so awesome. So from 2 years, now you're like a national company. You've— I remember you telling me, hey, look, you know, we're gonna go DTC. My sister-in-law's JoJo, and she has like 3 million followers. I'm like, okay. But you piece this whole thing together. So walk us through kind of, you know, you have to go over the whole 2 years. I know Courtney's gonna have a lot of questions, right? And, uh, and she's She's the brilliant one of the bunch here with me and you, right? But anyway, just walk us through kind of where— how you went from this conversation with me 2 years ago to this, like, this great product called Saint Spritz.

So yeah, 2023, that spring, summer, we— I told you we were going to launch GTC and just test to see if we had product fit. Um, like you said, JoJo has an audience of almost 3 million, so we're like, this is a test group that we can launch and see if people are interested in this product. And since we were 5% ABV and from wine, we can ship direct to consumer. So we went for it. You know, we had spent a summer over in Italy and we just fell in love with those bright orange iconic Italian spritzes. And we came back to where we live and we kept drinking them. And so much of the drinks that we see out today are all of available. RTD category was booming and we're like, man, let's just get these ready to drink because when we're hosting, it's becoming a real pain, like mixing up these drinks and they're always tasting different. And then we went to the grocery store and we couldn't find it. So we were like, let's, let's try it, let's create our own. So yeah, we launched Direct to Consumer 2023, uh, had a great launch, um, and then that kind of led to us being like, okay, we gotta pick a market, start there. So we started in Texas because that's our backyard. And it was January of last year. Um, and then spring, summer—

You launched January of last year, Texas?

Yeah.

Oh wow.

We launched with the Molson Coors network in January because we spent like October, November, December getting everybody on board. Because as you know, with the beer network, it's fragmented, so we need the whole state. So we had to spend the time convincing everybody to sign us. And then we launched in January kind of with like Andrew's being our core DFW group to work with. And all we had then was Total Wine. And by the luck of a great introduction from Katie Beale at Ranchwater, we got a mandate for the Amalfi flavor, which is all we had at the time.

And then— You launched with one SKU?

One SKU, yeah.

That's awesome. And people wanted to talk to you during Q4 in the beverage industry. That's quite a feat right there.

Yeah, how did you get the Molson Coors network to take you on?

It was hard, right? So JoJo and I went and we spoke at a panel at the NBWA in Vegas, and we met a bunch of the wholesalers out there.

I remember when you posted that, by the way. I'm like, okay, she's gonna get some business. I tell all brands to go to— if you're gonna invest in any, um, like time to go as NBWA. You can pick up wholesalers there.

It was great. And Katie Beale invited us out there and kind of took us under her wing, which was amazing. You know, obviously, I think a lot of the female founders in this space really uplift other females, which is cool, as we were saying, Courtney. But yeah, we got the network together for Texas, launched in January with H-E-B and Total Wine, and then this past summer got a test within Target. And at that point we had launched our 2 other SKUs, which are Sicily and Hugo. So basically St. Spritz's iconic Italian spritzes. And it's just those 3. And the test within Target went super well. We were outperforming the category, they said, I think by 20x in those sample stores that we launched in. And they said, hey, can you launch the state of Texas for October? And we were like, woohoo, Target, October. And then In October, they asked us to do national for spring, and obviously that's back into October, November, December. And I said to the team, I'm like, there is just no way we're going to get distribution together for spring like in October. And Target just became an awesome partner for us, and they said, what if we help you lead those conversations? And we said, you know, as a female-founded company and bootstrapped company, for us to grow from Texas this to national essentially overnight, it's gonna take a lot, a lot of basically everything. And Target really leaned in and they were like, we're really behind this brand. It's very Target. We're gonna support you with end caps. We're gonna help you guys build your brand within Target. And we had connected with another female founder in the space who said like, Target will do what Target says they're gonna do. And if they're interested in helping you build your brand, they will do that. It's just been a great part of our journey. So yeah, this spring, last week actually is like really when they, the everything started hitting the shelf. So national at Target. And then in between that time we got 505 Walmarts tacked on and we got a test within Whole Foods for Texas and Total Wine matched the Target footprint. So a lot of—

What, so, so like I'm going to Bentonville this Thursday to call on the whole Beverage Out team with a brand that I represent. But what was the, like, how did you convince Walmart to take in your brand into 500+ stores?

So we didn't. Walmart was an interesting one because they came to us. The buyer, who's a really sweet woman, had tried the product in Florida from Total Wine, and she just said like, I love this, I wanna put it in the planogram. And I was like, oh, okay. And I'm the person that does our, our sales, B2B. Like, to be candid, I've never worked in beverage, so I'm like, okay, I think Walmart wants 505 locations, and, and talk back to the team. And so yeah, they said we'll take Amalfi for 505 locations, and it's just like that they came to us, which was really cool to see.

That's— that kind of happened to us when— sorry, go ahead, Courtney. Go ahead.

Um, my first question would be, um, uh, how much is JoJo promoting this on her channel? How much do you Do you think that any resulting kind of velocity and halo effect you might get from that is causing the velocity that you're seeing in some of these tests?

You know, I think with JoJo, because she's like my sister-in-law and my co-founder and it's our business versus I think in this industry there's so many like celebrity brands, but like truly like we run this business together, so it's every day of our lives, so it's very organically in her social.

Yeah.

Because it's our work, you know?

Yeah.

So I think a lot of, we get a lot of awareness for that. And I think that was part of the reason why we took the jump to go national because we felt like JoJo had this big audience and we were in Texas and we had some like spotty, like we're in some Targets or we're in some H-E-Bs.

Yeah, it's hard.

And it was really hard to drive that consumer to purchase. So I think that helps a lot. I think also, You know, in Texas, something that made us feel really good about launching nationally, because obviously like JoJo's microphone is amazing, but we don't— even JoJo will say like, we can't— this brand isn't going to succeed just on like my following. Like we have to grow outside that. And what we loved about Target was when we got into Target before JoJo even announced it, before we did any meet and greets, any of that, it was doing super well inside Target just Our distributors in Texas helped us get like great POS. That matters a lot. And it performed great. So for us, that was like a big sign that, okay, our product can do well at Target because that's where the shopper is.

I would just add one thing.

Of course.

I'm working on a brand now and I've worked on brands in the past that Target supports, especially at the launch, especially if you give them any kind of exclusive or exclusive flavors or promotions. promotions, but you got to fly after like a year on your, you know, you're not going to get that special support forever. And it seems like you've got the ability to do that. I think not every brand builds in that how do we drive velocity mechanism. They just kind of ride the target, you know, thing, and then they're not going to give you special treatment forever.

So that's great.

You're thinking about it right.

Yeah. I think, you know, JoJo obviously helps on the sales. We see that in store. stores, like at HEBs where we did fan meet and greets with JoJo, like those stores tend to like have just consistent great business because she activated that store. But really, we've done a great job on activating stores all across our footprint, you know, kind of that like 80/20 rule of activating with samplings in those.

And what's your, what's your velocity per outlet? Like, so when you get distribution, how much are you moving in a given week?

So it's super weird for us because I know like for us to get expansion at Target, it was like, you're doing $278 per store per week in the test. And we were like, whoa, that's huge, that's crazy. Now, and I don't know if you've heard this from other brands, but a big struggle that we have is now we can— we have VIP in iDig and we can see how much we're pushing out to distributors and where they're dropping it off, but we don't have line of sight to sales data unless we get it from the retailer. And a lot of them don't want to share it.

Right.

We're just a small brand right now. We're not gonna buy a million-dollar IRI package. So we're— I'm always like, hey, like when I'm inside a Total Wine or a Target, I'm like, how many did y'all sell this week? And I can see our sales velocity when our, our sample teams are in there because we took sampling in-house. And I can see like, yeah, hey, our girls went to Target, they sold 60 cartons in 3 hours. Um, so that's kind of how we measure it, is just like looking at how often That we're dropping off to the distributor.

That's awesome. So a couple of things, uh, I'm getting some questions in, in here. So let's, uh, let's see here. So I've got some friends, Mariana, Brian, uh, Peter. Um, Brian suggests 3 Tier Beverages may be able to help you with some data. Uh, so, uh, they threw that out there.

Headed my way.

Yeah, there you go. Send them our way. So we certainly can do that. I'm sure Courtney knows a lot of people she can introduce you to as well. Brian asked, have you gotten shelf space for hard seltzers? I know that's a question for me or you because you're not a hard seltzer, but I asked this because the category has contracted a bit and there could be some shelf space freeing up.

So we did have someone we spoke to said, hey, like, you guys are in a good position because there's gonna be a lot of shelf space available, right? Like, I think what my other co-founder Ben has said before for is like the beverage industry is like a game of attrition, right? It's like, can you stick around? Everybody— you can't— it's not like you can't compete with the, the big guys on dollars, right?

So, you know, that's what I write about all the time. That's— you nailed it.

You can't— you have to just create a brand that's special. And I think when he says hard seltzers, I think there was this huge boom of hard seltzers, but we are— we like were very distinctly when we formulated, like, we are not a hard seltzer. The world did not need another hard seltzer. What we saw was an obsession with this Italian culture and these lighter spritzes that everyone was sharing on Instagram. And you saw them on the White Lotus, and people were obsessed with it. And as you see the consumer that started to drink like better for you, and a highlight of how bad those, those ingredients are for you— like when we saw that our favorite spritzes had Red Dye 40, Yellow 6, and added sugar, we were like, we shouldn't really be drinking so many of these. So we are very distinctly not a seltzer. We are a true spritz in a can. And that's, you know, what we've, we've tried to do. So hopefully there'll be definitely shelf on the space, uh, space on the shelf for us.

And it sounds like you use more natural ingredients. I'm sorry.

Yeah. So we're made with 30% juice, which is why I say we're like truly a cocktail in a can. A lot of like, I think Truly or hard seltzers, have typically 2% juice, and juice is one of the most expensive ingredients. So I feel like during formulation, a lot of people were like, yeah, I don't know if you should use that much juice, it's going to be expensive. But we were really bullish that we wanted it to taste like a true spritz that you could order at any cocktail bar at any hotel and get that experience of what our slogan is, which is a departure in every can.

Do you worry about calorie count or sugar in your cans?

I don't, because like when we went through this process of creating our brand and talked with our friends, and I think there was such an emphasis on mostly women because that's our target, right? It's like people were less concerned about calories and more concerned about chemicals.

Yes.

And, you know, our drink has about as much calories as a glass of wine. And I know as a shopper, I have literally never gone to the grocery store store to the liquor store and like picked up a bottle of wine and been like, I want to do this one because it's lower in calorie. It's just like, it's all about taste and brand and ingredients for me. So I, I'm not worried about that.

Okay, I got it. I got a question. I'm going to put it on the screen here, see if this works. Okay, I'm going to show it. Here we go. Can you read that?

There it is.

What, what do you think about the concept of developing RTD brand and going about trying to share it with founders, startups, etc.? I mean, And the idea of almost a fully baked concept that someone could develop. And I can repeat the question, by the way.

Man, I think that's risky because I think part of being a founder and part of launching something that's your own is everyone has an opinion. Early on, Sam, when I was calling you, I was also calling like people who had either invested or started their own RTD, and everyone had different feedback. Like there was no like unanimous thing. Like, oh, you have to be sugar brew based. You're not gonna be able to make this work as wine based. You gotta be in 10-ounce cans that are small. You gotta be in 6-packs. Like, it was different feedback from everyone. So I think I would say no to that, 'cause I think it's almost like analysis paralysis. You would, if you have something that you feel passionate about and you feel like there's a gap in the market for, I think you can launch it.

Yeah.

I don't think asking other people And maybe for feedback in terms of how you can scale and avoid some trenches. But I think if you're confident in your idea, then just go for it.

Oh, it's very, very interesting. So I know Courtney's thinking deeply here. So we have a marketer, marketing expert. Well, every time I see you, I always think, can the distributor repeat your message? That's what I've referred to you as. I mean, it's always every time I see you now.

But, uh, I mean, their messaging for the 3 tiers of distribution, definitely the consumer. I'm really interested in your departure in a glass. I know other brands that have tried to kind of message, um, I take you to a place sort of thing. I, I give you the spirit of feeling like you're on the Amalfi Coast, um, without being like a Calgon take me away sort of thing, like get me the heck out of my Yeah. But then you're a very social beverage too. You're not like, oh my God, take me away to Amalfi. You're, you know, get together with girlfriends. So you're also better for you ingredients. You've got different names, different personalities and beautiful lifestyle imagery. When you think about what's in it for the consumer and if you could have like one sentence to say to the consumer, what resonates the most? And is that the same as what resonates with the distributor?

Yeah, we always— our kind of elevator pitch is we're the better-for-you, ready-for-you spritz. And I think from a flavor standpoint, we were really cognizant to keep it very digestible so it can be repeated by the distributor, you know, especially starting within the beer network. These weren't teams that were used to selling elevated cocktails in a can. They were used to selling Miller and Coors. So we said this needs to be very understandable. We don't need to have a Cosmopolitan, an espresso martini, a seltzer. It's like we are 3 iconic Italian spritzes that if you go to a bar, you can understand. The Amalfi, which is like the Aperol. The Sicily, which is like a limoncello spritz, but we made it like a little more subtle with the lemon basil because we felt everything in a can was either way, way sugary sweet Or just like flavored water. And then the Hugo, which is the second most popular spritz in Italy. So we really just kind of wanted to keep it very digestible. These are 3 iconic spritzes, better for you and ready for you.

Do you ever think of going to a bigger package size at some point, or will you stay in the single-serve cans?

So we are in 12-ounce slim cans, but we're sold in 4-packs.

Yep.

And then in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, which now I'm actually really excited, we have a partnership here in Puerto Rico with CC One with Coca-Cola, because we live here and we wanted the products here and there was some demand for it. So we launched the Amalfi here with them. They obviously had data on their side. They were like, look, the growth of Aperol on the island is up 70%. Like we can sell this. sell this product very well here. And for us, from a brand standpoint, we knew we were going to chase the US and we didn't have too much bandwidth to grow where we were living. So it was a good partnership to form with Coca-Cola from a data standpoint and just a production standpoint because they're vertically integrated here. So we launched Puerto Rico with a smaller can, which is— you have our— this is our US, this is our Puerto Rico.

Oh.

a bit of a more price-sensitive market, so the smaller can makes sense. And then they did 6, which is— it's been really cool to see, just testing out in different spots. But yeah, we're in the 4-pack right now and with the 3 SKUs, and I think our next innovation will be in a variety pack.

So Brian comes in, and we might have a surprise guest. Peter might join us from BrandArctica. I know he's, he's, he's, uh, he's interested. So just use the same link as he was on, uh, this past weekend. But Brian asked, uh, I'll actually put it on there so you can read it too, and I'll— if I don't butcher this, but ready, here we go. 750 or 1.5 could be interesting, very much occasion-based or in and out. Not sure I feel about it. Uh, that would be curious to hear Courtney's point of view.

That's what I was kind of getting at. Would you Do you ever give any thought to more of a multi-serve or pouring for friends? You know, thinking about your ideal occasion, are people mostly sipping out of the can or are they in their home entertaining and pouring it into glasses anyway, at which point would you consider ever having like a 750 to pass around?

I think we would love— whoa, welcome. I think we would really love the opportunity to innovate into a 750. And we've actually talked as a brand like, wow, it'd be really cool to get these in 750mls and chase them like on-premise at like your Nikki Beaches of the world or your Bagatelles. Um, but I think for the life cycle of the brand that we're at now, the single serve makes sense because it was solving a need and what we felt, which was like, man, sometimes I want to have a spritz at my house, but I don't want to open a whole bottle of Prosecco and toss it out. I know, I know they make those like but like, I'm not trying to mess with all that. I just wanna crack a can and go. And for us, you know, the occasion that we saw immediately, especially as we grow the brand, is like people taking it to the beach, to the park, you know, in their backyard, at a like soccer game, you know. It's, it's just the easy access of popping a can and pouring it over ice.

Yeah.

I love the idea of 750 mLs. I just think at this stage of the brand, we're female family funded, like we need to be able can't have so many different SKUs and I want to—

You need to stay focused.

Yeah.

Meet Peter, my friend Peter. Peter, I'm straight from BrandArctica, but he had some questions. I'm like, hey, you can come in and join us and ask the questions. Like, meet Mallory.

Mallory and Courtney, it's a pleasure to meet you both, and I love listening to you guys. So there's a lot for me to learn. And of course, Sam at this point is regretting ever making eye contact with So, and then I, on top of it, was like, oh look, I can get in and ask to be on the call. The truth is, Courtney and Mallory, I'm, I'm a horrible typist. Um, you know, me trying to craft a question that Sam then has to translate into English, uh, is not fair. So my— I wanted to expand them. I was the guy that asked the question about, um, You know, what if you, what if you were not a product development person? Okay, so like, I have no interest at all in developing a ready-to-drink product, right? But lately I've been flexing my creative muscle to go, I'm gonna make one with no client oversight and nobody to tell me what to do or not to do. I'm just gonna make one on my own timeline and have some fun. And then I came up with some really interesting options. And what I wanted to ask you was, you know, is it nonsense? And you may have already said yes, Peter, it's nonsense. But I want to make sure I was clear. Is it nonsensical to try to develop a full-baked, almost baked brand of a product, let's say a water?

Okay.

And then take that to people who are really expertise in developing product and getting it to market. So what I'm saying is I have all the interest in the creative side of it, but very little interest in like having to do that really heavy work, which I mean no offense to anyone by. What do you think about that? Is it still crazy town?

I think it's tough because I think— oh, is this for Courtney?

You're the one that did something in that space, so you answer.

I would say I'm interested to hear your feedback, but what I would say is I think that's tough because I think this is why you see so many big brands like your Constellations of the world. It just— they, they have in-house team that can make creative and whatever. I think the hard part is building the community. community and the brand.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so I think that is really what you have to bring to the table is like, not just the creative and something beautiful. It's you've got to prove because anybody can create something beautiful, especially with AI. It's like, it's so hard, even like for us. It's like we've created something that tastes great and looks great. And like JoJo has 3 million followers. And like for some odd reason, the buyers answered my emails. So we got onto the shelf, and it's like, it's still a dogfight.

Yeah, I could see that. And especially if you're not a JoJo, um, you know, I look at that and go, yeah, that, that is something that is important.

I'd be interested to hear what you'd say, because I don't know, maybe from the other side, maybe if you took an amazing idea to one of these big companies and it was just like a design package, you could sell it. I don't know if anyone's ever done that.

I mean, I've actually been talking to some people All right, well, Courtney, maybe we should talk.

No, I appreciate the feedback. I really do. And I will leave you with this because then I'll get out of here.

Okay.

I'm sorry. I will leave you with the idea though, that thinking about AI as sort of being able to do this and do that, it does, it can, and I use it frequently. I use it a lot. I love playing with it. But AI will never miss me when I'm not around to ask it questions. AI will never create any artwork that's based in an emotion, a real emotion that it owns, not one that we fed it. So I caution— I think of it and I go, it's such a great tool, but we have to always keep in mind There's so much power in someone's physical emotion to make stuff.

I agree.

Yeah, no, I, I, I, you know, it's like, how do you argue with that? I'm trying to figure that out still. But thank you. I think you both, uh, are rocking, and I, I wanna— I'm gonna keep listening and get out of here.

Well, tell, uh, tell Jay— Jay Williams was trying to dial in and he couldn't figure out the link. Send him the link and help him figure out, because this is the Freebird guy wants to do a co-promotion with you.

Freebird guy again.

Yeah, it keeps on— he keeps on hitting the, uh, the, the, the telegraph here. But anyway, thanks Peter for joining.

Thanks both, all 3. Bye.

Thanks Peter.

Hey, so if I could, uh, so let's talk a little bit more about your journey. Kind of, you— there's some things happening, some announcements, so that you wanted to get out. And let's talk about the big announcements. What's happening?

Well, the biggest announcement, which I don't know if we talked about this pre-record, but like our biggest announcement as a team is that we're now available nationally at Target, which is huge for us. And as a brand, I mean, when— it's funny, when we created the brand, I think right when we still had like our cans in sheets, like aluminum sleeves, I wrapped it around a Red Bull can and I took it inside a Target and I put it on the shelf. There you go.

You gotta stop it now.

Did I get that from my hooping? Okay, um, but, uh, you know, I took it inside Target and took a picture, and I remember JoJo being like, we can't do that, take that out of here, we're gonna get in trouble. And I was like, no, I need something for my vision board. So us launching national at Target, like this past weekend JoJo and I were at a Target in Prosper in Texas just getting some stuff for the launch, and we looked at each other, we're like, can you believe that we did this? Like, something that was our idea is sitting on the shelf in there. This is crazy. And I think for her, I think she's— I think a lot of her following, maybe people who are really dialed in realize, but like don't realize that she's building the brand. Like, it's not a celebrity brand that was handed to her and she's paid. Like, her and I are on these flights going to the, the flavor house and going to the factory, and our family's, you know, hauling around launching this thing. So it's— Target's a big company. big announcement for us. But, you know, that's, that's kind of the big news.

That's great. That's awesome. So congratulations. Not many brands reach the milestone that you've reached. I was at BevNet this past, I guess, fall. And what did they say? 95% failure rate, Courtney, when we were there?

Oh yeah, I cite that all the time. Yep.

So, so first of all, you're 2 years in and you're still growing. And so much more runway that has to, to go for you. So, which is awesome. So what, so what's, what's next for the brand? So that, that announcement, but what's next? What's in your mind? Like, where do you, where do you see things kind of evolving and where you want to take the brand?

I think for us, like, national at Target is like our focus, right? So it's this summer, we need to get really great velocity in Target. It's not just like, oh, we're national at Target, now the work's done. Now our work really starts, and we've built out a brand team of almost 40 people across the US to help us get out this summer. And we're doing this—

Are they sampling team or?

No, stationed in core different markets that we have.

So is that where you're using Pinata to do the tracking of the stuff?

We use Pinata.

Awesome.

Yeah.

I was—

hey, by the way, we gotta go on record. Who first told you about Pinata? I think it was me, hopefully.

I think it was you.

There you go. Please. Hey, Ian, did you hear it? I did introduce Piñata to you, but at least—

He is so, so thankful for that because it's streamlined things amazingly. But yeah, you know, focusing on just knuckling down and just doing great sales within Target. Obviously alongside the Target, we're in Total Wine and those 505 Walmarts, and then we got a test within Whole Foods. So really just crush our tests within Whole Foods. and hopefully launch nationally with Whole Foods. This October, November, December upcoming of 2025 will be the first year that we'll have national distribution. So a lot of my cold calling last season was like, oh, do you have distribution in XYZ markets? I'm like, well, no. So we missed a lot of opportunities. So I think in this October, November, December, working really closely with our, um, national distribution teams and getting some bigger places placements for next spring, right? So like staying where we're at right now in those placements we have and just driving great velocity and pitching for next spring/summer, hopefully with a variety pack with some of these bigger chains.

How does on-premise look for you, like the hotels, restaurants? What does that look like?

So when we first launched, we had some team going out and getting new PODs, and we were like, okay, we're gonna on the on-premise. And we found we burned a lot of money really fast on that. And we were quickly learning that our velocity really was easy to directly tie to efforts in retail. So we said, like, we're going to— we're not— right now we are not Campari. Like, we cannot build in the on-premise. We are going to focus on retail and just crush it there. And then we have more of like a pull versus push strategy there. There are some select accounts that will make sense, right? So in Dallas, we have some golf courses or hotel pools that do super well. We got a we were in the like some minor league stadiums that did great in in Texas. So I think really targeted on premise would be great for us. We've had some calls with some bigger hotel chains that were like, dude, we we sell 350 Aperol Spritzes. Every day by the pool. We would go through tons of this product.

So have you heard of IMI? Larry McGinn?

Yes, I— yeah, I have. Yeah, we're just a small team, right? I think would love to chase on-premise, but right now focus heavy on retail.

It takes a lot of work.

It's a lot of work.

What is the thinking for your D2C business as you blow out retail? You know, it's become kind of— and I know you started in D2C. Beverage is hard to do in D2C. It's heavy, shipping costs a lot. Do you see a role for it though as you get into bigger retail accounts?

I think our D2C channel is a great way for us to communicate directly with our consumer. I think it's a great way for us as we iterate like a new flavor launch or an LTO, we can say, hey, we're launching this special spritz flavor that's surrounding like the winter, and we can do like a smaller launch that's available DTC, and we can see like, wow, that did great in California. Wow, we could just have like direct line of sight to the data there. So I think that's what our DTC channel, um, mostly, uh, will be utilized for. And I think it's great, like if there's random areas of the country that for some reason don't have St. Spritz is a great tool. Anyone can buy it.

Yeah.

Are you global? Are you going global? Are you moving the product outside the US yet?

Well, we're doing the production locally here with Coca-Cola in Puerto Rico. And just last week we decided to— we have our contract goes like through the Caribbean with CC One. So the last year has just been Puerto Rico, but now we're going to push to surrounding islands like St. Croix and the other ones that have distribution with Coke. I would love to go global. I think, again, I always keep getting back to this, but as a small brand, because we've had some like distributors from Europe or South America reach out, and I just, it's impossible for us to be all things to everyone.

Yeah.

And I don't think we're ready to launch the UK market or any of those other markets Until we've proven ourselves.

Maybe cruise— maybe cruise lines would be a good place if you haven't looked there already.

The cruise line, I think, is going to be an interesting play for us, um, with Coca-Cola because a lot of the boats leave out of San Juan. So, okay, we'll be able to do some great fulfillment with them.

Oh, that's interesting. All right, so the last 10 minutes, I just really like— like, oh yeah, no, no, go ahead. So this is great.

Okay. No, Jay just asked a question.

Oh, who? Oh, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Jay Williams.

Yeah.

Jay, is that Jay? So Jay Williams, he's the founder of a company called Freebird. You and Jay need to meet Mallory. He's—

Yeah, we've connected on LinkedIn.

Okay. So first of all, you should watch what he posts. It's the most amazing human being on planet Earth other than you. You're more amazing than Jay.

All right.

But, but here, so I'm gonna put Emma— so basically he said, I love her. But here, here it is. It says, how can you— okay, here we go. Here we go. How can you still support your brand on a local level of service and connection but with a larger footprint?

How can you still support—

Yeah, I'll put it back on there.

Basically, as you get into national distribution, how can you still come across with a local type of high-touch level of support is how I would translate that.

Well, I would say like we've never been like— I'm not really understanding the question here, to be totally candid.

You're in there like giving a lot of love to your accounts, you're hustling, you're, you know, you're fulfilling out the back of your car as you said. there's charm in that. People love buying from people. You're, you're high touch. But as you get more and more removed, as you become national distributed in Target—

I would say that we've created a team like on the back end, especially with our brand ambassadors that I spoke to earlier. And I think I made a LinkedIn post about this, but we have created sort of a culture within St. Spritz that I don't have a better word to describe it other than like this sorority of people. It's just like we've created this community of people that work with our brand that are so passionate and like feel our vision that they're selling just as well as we are. You know, some of our like early team members are on our brand ambassador team and they're so bought into the vision and like everybody's starting to feel like family and we have like a group chat going that's like, I sold 60 cartons this weekend in Target, and everybody's just hyped up and I think that's—

And are they fully employed by you, or is that an outsourced team?

Um, they are not fully employed, no. It's a, it's an hourly contract. Um, but, um, what's amazing is we've created this— what we found is, I think after COVID, like, people just want to connect and have community. It's kind of nice to have something that's, it's like wholesome, it's surrounding work, and we have these like Zooms where we all chat. And I think that that's been really helpful for us to grow our footprint because obviously we can't be in every market. But now it's cool to see, like, our— one of our first brand ambassadors was another person who works for the company's sister, and she is just— she's become like— St. Spritz is her persona now. Like, she's— we call her— we call her like our— she's just like our mascot. She shows up to a tasting, or if it's an event in Frisco that's like a wine walk, and she'll sell our story just as hard as I would. And I think that's just You know, comes from creating a really great team.

What do you, what do you call these people? Are they like, you have a nickname for them or what you call them? Like, uh, the Amalfi crew or something?

Or I think early we called them like the St. Spritz Angels, but now it's like the St. Spritz brand ambassadors. We activate with like, you know, they're, um, part-time to help us on the sales side, but also when we do little pop-ups in the markets, like we do a pickleball event, We just did one in Austin and the whole— some of the brand team flew in from like California and Florida just to come. Like, that's how Barefoot's all of them—

like, this was Barefoot's model too. Like, just being in the community and representing the local, you know, they can identify the events better than you can from across the country.

Totally. I mean, we don't know anything that's going on in Minnesota, you know.

Yeah. Wow. Wow. Jay said the sprinklers, but that's, uh, brilliant. So can I become part of the crew? Can I join? All right, good. All right, awesome. Absolutely.

So you like spritzing, you can be part of the team.

Oh yeah, man, it, uh, 100%. So this journey hasn't been easy, so I want people to know this. So how, like, people fail more than they succeed. I was just on with another guy that did bottle keepers, and he said the most amazing thing before he answered the question. But I said, well, you failed like 11 out of 12 months before you started. He goes, No, I felt 11 out of 12 months for 10 years.

Yeah.

And I was like, wow, holy cow, right? Uh, so an entrepreneur like you, so like tell us a little bit about like, like what's been the— what's— what has been hard and then how did you overcome the hard and kind of where you're at now?

I think like when I'm on here and I tell a story, it's kind of like when you go on someone's Instagram and you see the highlight reels. It's like all the good, but like What you don't see is me staying up till 11 PM and then like turning around for a flight at 4 AM and, you know, barely missing my kids' soccer games. I don't want— I have to make it to a production run. So it's definitely been hard, but, you know, overwhelmingly a lot of it has been really great. And I think a lot of that is because we work as a family. So it's not like I'm being pulled away and it's this thing. It's— I'm getting to build a business with my sister. sister-in-law and brother-in-law. And now my sister, who used to work for Gwyneth Paltrow for Goop, is on our team too.

Wow.

So it's just like, I think keeping a positive mental attitude despite all of the hardship, because it's all going to be hard. Like, it's just— they say choosing your hard. And I have to— I look at this as like an opportunity. Like, how amazing that I was able to create this brand That was in our heads and we took off paper. Like, that's some people's— like, they never get off to that start. And how amazing that we were able to secure distribution. Like, all of it is—

Mm-hmm.

We're just really lucky. And, you know, I think just being positive and just not panicking is a big thing, because if you panic, it's— something comes up all the time. Something was wrong on the cans, we gotta change the cans, and oh, we forgot to file this. We got to do— everything's like a fire drill. But I think what's helped me as a founder is like panicking absolutely does not make anything less hectic. So just being like, okay, how are we gonna tackle that?

Oh, wow.

So it's the calm amongst the storm. Go ahead.

Oh, sorry. It would be the only call of the day if I didn't mention the word tariffs. Are you panicking about the tariffs, or are you guys kind of creatively Figuring it out? Is it affecting your business?

I'm not super panicked about the tariffs because we— a lot of our procurement happens like in advance. Like we have to put deposit on cans for the year and a lot of that is worked out. I'm sure there'll be changes for us, but most of our stuff is in the United States, so I'm not worried. I mean, I think it would be probably awesome for us if there was a 200% tariff on Aperol.

Oh, there you go.

I mean, who knows? But yeah, everyone can suck it up.

There's a lot of opportunities.

You can never predict what's going to happen. So for us, it's who knows what's going to happen with tariffs. We just got to mash on and do the best that we can do. I think part of making your business a success in beverage is just like what we've learned is adapting really quick because we've made bad decisions too, whether it's like a hiring decision or a packaging decision, and it's not letting it go so 6 months and then be like, that was wrong. It's like, hey, after month 1, look at it and what did that do for you? We did that with the tasting. We outsourced all of our samplings early on. And I think our first month we burned like $100 grand on samplings. And then we looked at the numbers and it was like 0 cartons, 1 carton, 2 cartons. And we're like, we might as well just given this stuff away. This is not good use of dollars. So we pivot immediately and trained up our own And like, I moved my family back to Texas for the summer and I was in H-E-B and in Target, like growing the brand. And I think just, just adapting quick and not panicking.

That's amazing to be able to, I think to be able to pivot for sure is, you know, I've, I've been an entrepreneur for 2 years and it's not for the faint of heart, uh, by no means. And, you know, I, you know, everybody's like, they put the romance out on LinkedIn, but I gotta tell I'm working 18-hour days.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, and it's tough. I mean, you see, like, I, I took a shower before this call, but I came off an airplane with my 3-year-old and I was managing to get back on time because I had to get to Target to get this stuff before our launch. And it's a lot of like, um, just, it's like tense all the time and you have to find your own peace within that because as a founder, it's, it could take over your life.

What do you do to— so, and, you know, kind of, and I'll let Courtney— I see Courtney, once you have your closing thoughts, and I'm going to put it to Mallory to have her closing thoughts, and we'll wrap up. Courtney, from the conversation today, anything that you want to share with Mallory in terms of thoughts other than you can't use this when you've used it already? Can the distributor repeat your messages, quote unquote? Courtney?

No, my piece of advice, I I think you're doing a lot of things right. My piece of advice would just be, I get anxious when I see brands that have only been around for less than 2 years and are already going national and Target and huge amounts of Walmart. You know, just thinking about your consumer, where they shop, what the occasion is, and staying close to that occasion. You know, I think the pool bars that you mentioned, you know, what kind of halo effect does that give you and what's your channel rollout? about strategy over the long run, um, because I believe that there's no race. You know, I think that being national target is a huge achievement that many people would want. Um, just make sure you can really support the velocity because it's hard to get it back if you lose it. Um, and what's your sequence plan? But I really admire what you're building. You're doing an awesome job.

Thank you.

Yeah, and then what would you, Mallory— so thanks for the announcements. Uh, So what do you want to leave with everybody about your brand, about you, anything? You know, if you're going to leave this podcast, what would you want everybody to take away from this conversation today?

I want everybody to go to their nearest Target and buy all 3 flavors of Saint Spritz and support us. I think it's cool, like, and why I was so bullish about doing this podcast is like, I want people to hear our story because I think a lot of times when stuff's shows up in the grocery store, people have no idea. And I find like for me now, because I follow a lot of CPG brands and I go through a grocery store and I'm like, I'm buying that because every person in here that's not like a huge conglomerate is like bleeding on the pavement to get their stuff in here. So I want to support it. So I'm happy that I was able to share my story here today. And, you know, we're a, we're a family-founded company and just would appreciate all the support in the world. Our website— we're obviously very active on Instagram at Saint Spritz, but our website has a store locator where you can find all the spots where we have placement and go shop, shop us at your Target.

That is awesome. We'll make sure when we, when we publish the actual, uh, podcast, I'll make sure that we put some information about the brand. If you could share that back with me would be great. Yeah, I'd love to get that out there. I, I absolutely just I love your story. I, you know, it's funny, you're bright as sunshine or a warm cup of coffee every morning. I see you come across somewhere in the world. I know you were like playing golf or something at a golf course too. You were in a store, but you definitely— I know you're working hard because you were texting me on a plane when you were flying. I'm like, are you going to show up or not show up? So I know you're a hustler and definitely have my full support and all the people out there that joined us today. Mariana, Marina, Jay, Sam, you know, myself, Courtney, Peter, thanks for popping in. It was great. Hopefully you're okay with that, Mallory, to have people show up and, and engage with your brand. I'm so excited for you and I'm so excited to see what the future brings.

Yeah, well, as our kind of motto here is, just do it. So here we are, we're launching National. I know, Courtney, it's fast, but we just felt, you know, with drinks there's a moment in time and everybody's spritzing right now.

So yep, I agree.

Everybody is spritzing right now is a powerful, powerful statement. So thank you. There you go.

Spritz for me.

Oh, there you go. There you go. Well, enjoy the spritz, everybody. Thank you for joining us on a happy hour on a Monday, and we'll see you soon. And Mallory, I'd be remiss to say you're always welcome to pop in. So actually, yeah, so when maybe we have Jay on, you can pop in on Jay's, uh, uh, piece would be great. I'd love— I know he'd love to have you on as well. And, uh, Courtney, thanks again for joining us, uh, co-hosting today. Oh, look at that.

This is the Hugo. It's like our latest flavor that everyone's obsessed with, and the Hugo Spritz is gotten so popular in America that we're— it's got a little bit trickier to make, so glad.

What's the ABV, Mallory?

5%. Okay, so light. Yeah, I kind of— I always say that I rose out of the like rosé all day generation, and I have 2 children now, and I absolutely— I don't know how I drank so much wine back in the day, but I can't drink like wine all day or I'll feel terrible. So the Spritz for me was like a major solution. It's light, it's perfect. I can have 1 or 6.

Yeah, absolutely love it. Well, thank you too, and stay on the line with me, and everybody have a great, uh, Monday. Cheers to the day! And that would be— let's see if it stops there. There you go, that's a wrap. That's it. So I'll give you