Ep #195 Starting a Buzz-Worthy Brand with Anna Zesbaugh

In this episode, I chat with Anna Zesbaugh, the inspiring founder of Better Buzz Brands that makes Hooch Booch and Corpse Reviver beverages, to discuss her journey launching an alcoholic hard kombucha company during the pandemic and then adding a non-alcoholic beverage to pave the way for more sales.

Despite facing significant challenges, Anna's tenacity and innovative thinking led her to create a unique product that has captivated the Denver market and beyond. She shares her experiences navigating the complexities of the alcohol industry, from finding the right brewers to securing distribution and educating consumers about hard kombucha. Join us as we explore the creative process, the power of persistence, and the exciting future of Better Buzz Brands.

Find out about her products at https://drinkcorpsereviver.com/ and https://drinkhoochbooch.com/

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Transcript

Sari  
Every business has 10 problems at any given time that need to be solved and the way we solve our problems is by asking questions, and getting answers that help us to get to the next step, to get into action, and try things because we can't just solve problems in thought, we need to actually take action, and to help you get into action, to help you feel confident, and provide clarity so you know what to do next, I am hosting two completely Free Live Ask Me Anything Sessions on May 21st and May 22nd. They are kind of divided by pre launch, if you haven't launched yet, I'll take questions about that. And then post launch if you have a business and you're ready to grow it, or maybe you have questions about whether you checked all the boxes correctly, I'll focus on those questions. And to register totally free, you go to foodbizsuccess.com/AMA2024. Get yourself registered, you can come to one or both of them. And it's a way for you to get to know me and my expertise after working with hundreds of packaged food brands and helping them launch and scale to 100k and beyond. This is a great way for you to come and ask that burning question so you get an answer and can move forward and get more success more quickly when we get into motion and action. We see success and we get momentum. So come join me, get yourself registered. The link is also below in the description. See you there! 

Welcome to your Food Business Success. This podcast is for early stage entrepreneurs in the packaged food industry ready to finally turn that delicious idea into reality. I'm your host Sari Kimbell, I have guided hundreds of food brand founders to success as an industry expert and business coach and it's got to be fun. In this podcast I share with you mindset tools to become a true entrepreneur and run your business as like a boss, interviews with industry experts to help you understand the business you are actually in, and food founder journey so you can learn what worked and didn't work and not feel so alone in your own journey. Now let's jump in! 

Welcome back to the podcast. So glad you're here with me today. This conversation with Anna Zesbaugh have better buzz brands is awesome. It's so good. She is a friend. She's a colleague, we're both based here in Denver. We run in similar circles and see each other somewhat frequently and I'm always so awed at everything that she is doing with her business and how far she has come. So you're going to hear about how she launched her alcoholic, hard kombucha company during the pandemic and it almost didn't happen. I mean, the tenacity she had to have to make this work, and then how she has pivoted and evolved and grown into different kinds of sales channels, and just trying new things, how she's hired a team. So without further delay, here is our conversation. So welcome, Anna!

Anna  
Thanks.

Sari  
What a story you had. So take us back to 2020. Your, your world blew up and you started a business. So tell us a little bit about the backstory on that. 

Anna  
Yeah, so I was working in luxury hospitality hotels, restaurants. And then my most recent job was a creative manager at a corporate event planning company. And COVID happened and I got furloughed from my job. And we had this really crazy time in Denver where the mayor shut down all of our liquor stores called the Denver prohibition, it lasted about three, four hours. He went back on the news later that night. I was like just kidding, terrible idea. I was bored at home on the couch. And I started researching prohibition like hey, what actually happened during that time? Was it just like this? Probably not. And found out that classic cocktails really emerged during Prohibition 1920s to mask bad flavors of hooch or alcohol because people were making in their houses, in their bathtubs, bathtub gin. And so yeah, classic cocktails emerged during that time. Then my sister was living in San Diego in 2020. She was going to college out there and hard kombucha was like really coming onto the scene and I've always liked kombucha like I've kind of been into like health and wellness. I started practicing yoga when I was quite young and just interested in the space and then the name hit me hooch like prohibition alcohol like kombucha could not get it out of my head. And was like, I think I'm just going to go for it. I was literally bored at home and so I kind of created this like mood vision board of like, what I wanted the packaging to look like and yeah, then I decided to incorporate the business. I'm crazy.

Sari  
No big deal, I'm just going to create an alcoholic beverage, that can't be bad.

Anna  
Alcohol, all things, great idea.

Sari  
And I'm curious. Yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit about the alcohol piece because people often ask me like, do you work with alcohol brands? Or THC? CBD? And I'm like, some of it, yes. And some of it, no, I don't. So what what were some of the hoops you had to jump through for the alcohol piece? 

Anna  
All of the hoops. Yeah, so like, going back. So I incorporated the business in July of 2020. But I was like, really ideating. Before that, like before I incorporated and I reached out to a bunch of brewers because I knew that it was like a brewed product similar to beer. But what I didn't know at the time was that kombucha because of the bacteria nature of it is actually like a beer contaminant or like a contaminant to a lot of like machinery. So a lot of places that contract produce don't want to deal with kombucha because they are worried about it contaminating other products because of the live bacteria, which is like the whole reason for enjoying Kombucha is the bacteria, the good bacteria. So I emailed like 30 brewers and one got back to me and was like, sorry, can't help you. Okay, great, all to a great start. And I was hoping for someone I could help with the recipes in the formulation, because that's not my expertise. My expertise was like, well, what expertise I had was what I thought my secret sauce was, which was like the idea for classic cocktail hard kombucha, the branding, you know, making it like a ready to drink cocktail, but it being a kombucha, not brewing, I had no experience in brewing. So I walk into this place on South Broadway, I was like, I think I have to hit the streets like I can't like, emails clearly not working for these people. So I walk into this place called Dos Luce is on South Broadway. And the owner was working and all breweries were closed at this time. So it was just like a one man show and I walked in and I was like, hey, are you the owner? And he was like I am. And I was like, so I'm starting this hard kombucha company getting help from a brewer, are you interested? And he was like, I know nothing about kombucha and nothing about brewing kombucha, but I did go to school for fermentation science. Maybe I can help. I was like, I'll take the maybe. He was like, come back on Thursday, come to me with your ideas, and let's chat about it. So I did, came back on Thursday. And he was like, I can help you with recipe formulation. But I can't help with like long term production. And I was like, that's fine. That's a step in the right direction. So I've gotten says it okay. He told me a list of things to go get at the homebrew store. And I went and bought them. And I got like a homebrew kit. And I started making it in my house in addition to what we were making at his facility. So I bought like, you know, tea, sugar, all of like the hydrometer, measure alcohol, all of this stuff. And basically, every single day, for the next nine months, I would go to Dos Luces and we would work on fermenting together. And so I really learned how to produce an alcoholic product, how to measure, you know, initial gravity and things like that to measure alcohol. And then alongside of that, like the brewing was happening sort of on the day to day was on the back end. And when I was working on the branding with a close friend who was a freelancer. And then I got connected to an attorney who specializes in alcohol, specifically beer, which was I think, super key to knowing what was like, as you know, there's label requirements, there are certain things that you have to have on packaging. And so I think, especially in a highly regulated industry, having someone that knows a lot more than you do is key. So that's how it all got started. And then all the pieces sort of came together and we want to nine months later. 

Sari  
Okay, amazing. Yeah, that's a pretty, that feels like a good treat. I mean, you were definitely like you were putting time in every day working on it.

Anna  
It wasn't even like I was interacting with my social life that much.

Sari  
We were all locked down. 

Anna  
So it wasn't like, I've cancelled my friends were like, I have work happy hour. Like there was nothing happening at this time. I had the time.

Sari  
So you put in the time there. So it sounds like the attorney, did they kind of help you walk through some of the regulations and things that you had to do on top? 

Anna  
Yeah, like get our wholesale license to sell alcohol, like get the permits that were needed, you know, make sure all of our formulas were approved by the TTB like all of the legal slash requirements that needed to happen for alcohol, we had like, crossed the T's dotted the I's. Thanks to legal help. 

Sari  
Yes, definitely important, especially when it comes to regulations and things. The first thing, yeah, imagine if you like had it all done. And then you're like, oh, we missed this one thing. Well, the branding is amazing. I mean, you have definitely done such a great job all the way through the business with your branding. So you launched nine months later, and what was that like? Tell us about the the launch? And obviously, you know, ecommerce really isn't available. I don't know if you did any there. But you kind of had to go more mainstream at the streets.

Anna  
Yeah, well, I think direct to consumer was buzzing during COVID. We could not tap into that being like that you can't really sell beer direct to consumer. Not only that, but it's like, so expensive, and it's heavy to ship and just didn't make a whole lot of sense. So we hosted a launch party at this like kind of secret location. We have just like popped up in this space. And it was actually the same weekend that the mask mandate had been lifted. So it kind of felt like this like weird serendipitous, like prohibition kind of party. And it was just actually really aligned. It was perfect. And then from there, we launched and we basically were like, okay, we're starting to sell here in Denver, then I basically was taking samples prior to that launch party, but taking samples to like store to store, liquor stores. We didn't really start with like chains, more just like independence, right? Like your neighborhood liquor store, is where we started. So I walked into the samples. And it really allowed me to create a relationship with the buyer to be like, hey, we've got this product, do you want to buy it? You know, get the feedback actually tell the story of how we got started. And most liquor stores very clearly remember the Denver prohibition. I don't think they knew of anyone that had created a product based on it. And so they all kind of chuckled and thought it was funny. Like I remember going to these liquor stores and they had like t shirts made like I survived the prohibition like it was funny, like the story like really resonated with them. And so we had a handful, I think, five liquor stores that I was kind of like servicing on my own, gathering data, hearing what you know, customers thought about it, etc. And then like, three or four weeks later in June, we brought on a distributor to really help like amplify and grow the product.

Sari  
So yeah, you kind of have the mainstream liquor store avenue. Were you able to get into any grocery stores along with that, too, since they had opened up?

Anna  
I don't think any grocery stores, like at this point. I think we've been working on now that we had a distributor, I think we've been working on like getting approved at Whole Foods and getting approved at Natural Grocers and Sprouts and total line and things like that. But those came later, we were really focused on like, independent to start. And really only liquor stores like bars and restaurants. Still, we're not really open yet. So we didn't really tap into that until maybe six, nine months later. Even then, like this is mid 2021. Things like still weren't really open yet. So just kind of like taking what we could get, which was mostly liquor store shelves. 

Sari  
So you get through that. And then what happens? You get some data, you're getting good feedback.

Anna  
Yeah, well, then the place that we were producing, which was like a small local brewery here in Denver, like basically couldn't handle capacity anymore. They were like beer is our number one priority, and that's our beer. So we found like a larger contract production facility, a co packer to make our product, and actually they were doing non alcoholic kombucha already, so they just needed to get an alcohol license. And they were, you know, pioneers in the kombucha space. So doing hard kombucha felt a lot easier. It was just more aligned. They were, you know, a production facility. So we started to ramp that up. We had gotten some feedback, like certain things on the cans were a little bit harder to see. And so we did like a couple quick packaging tweaks. And that's really when we started to get traction for like Whole Foods and total line and places like that. So then we kind of integrated with a couple of chains. I'd hired my first employee, like our Director of Sales and Marketing, was the title literally just anything else that I didn't do.

Sari  
Was it a full time employee?

Anna  
I think she started part time, and then worked up to full time. Yeah, was kind of how it started. Just the two of us probably for like the first year and then we started adding more people as we expanded. We launched in Minnesota a year later, which is where I'm originally from, which hindsight 2020 I don't know that I would have launched in Minnesota because I don't think we really thought too much about product market fit. I was just like, oh my god all my friends at home are so excited and I got to bring it to Minnesota but hard kombucha is very niche in and of itself. And in a market like Colorado that's a little bit more accepting. It works. Minnesota, probably less so. So we definitely deal with a lot of education when it comes to our product. A lot of people still don't know what Kombucha is. They don't understand why they should be drinking hard kombucha. What matters, why etc. So now it's really well to now is really kind of the education on the why behind the product. 

Sari  
Were you making it in Minnesota as well, or just making it in Colorado and shipping it? 

Anna  
Yeah. Shipping it. 

Sari  
Yeah, that's a lot of logistics. And it's not close. You're like, I have home ties there. It seems like it would make sense. But that's yeah, logistically, that's a lot of moving pieces, for sure.

Anna  
Definitely. Yeah.

Sari  
Because that's what we love to do as entrepreneurs, we get something good going. And then we're like, let me complicate it.

Anna  
Let me make it harder for myself.

Sari  
Instead of just like working your circle outwards, right?

Anna  
Right. Exactly.

Sari  
And yeah, Kombucha is one of those products, especially hard kombucha, it's like Kombucha is already a little bit niche. And either people love it or hate it, or they're, like don't know anything about it. And then you put it in the liquor store. 

Anna  
I think it can be polarizing, like flavor, like fermented foods in general, I think are polarizing, like either love pickles, or you hate them, you know, like, either love kombucha or you don't? You know, like, I feel like light beer like a chorus people are like, can take it or leave it. Yeah, it's just more polarizing. So there's a lot more education, liquid to lips, you know, demos, tastings events, etc. to really move the product. 

Sari  
And was it hard to get a distributor? How did that process go?

Anna  
Not really. I think I wish I would have, like, looked at more. Like I think I was just like, this one seems good. And I didn't really know to like that. 

Yeah, it was just like, perfect. It sounds great. You're gonna help me sell? Awesome. Yeah, as we know, in the space distributors don't necessarily sell the product. A lot more logistics behind it. But yeah, now we just pitched them on the product. I just pitched them on the product. And they were like, yah, we like it, feels aligned. Let's do it. So. No, it wasn't.

Sari  
Typically they're different distributors for alcohol than like food. 

Anna  
All different. Yeah. Pretty much alcohol, just alcohol. Alcohol can do some other things. But no, no, cannot do alcohol.

Sari  
Okay. Yeah, makes sense. You can share as much as you want to share. But can I ask how you were funding the business to this point? Or were you profitable right away? I think people think like, you must be like rolling in the dough.

Anna  
No, because I've been furloughed from my job. And I was the only employee at the start. I was on unemployment. So I had saved up a lot of money during COVID not doing anything. And the initial batches were small. So it was easier to turn the cash quicker. And then my parents had put a little bit of money into the business. And that was really it. I mean, I didn't have super high costs, because again, the production runs were small. I had hired a friend to do the graphic design, like I was pretty scrappy about it, I think, would have been like, I'm going to hire this massive agency to do my design. And I think I could have easily spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it was all done. pretty scrappy. So yeah, it was it was mostly just bootstrapped.

Sari  
Nice. Yeah. And then was it hard? Was that scary to hire somebody? I think people always get pretty nervous about doing that piece.

Anna  
Yeah, I feel like you know, when the time is when you're just like, I don't have enough hours in the day to get this done, even when you're working like so much like, now after hiring and kind of building a team, I feel like I start to notice these points when it's like, it's sticky and sticky. Like you want to hire like right before that. But of course, then I didn't know but I knew that I need help. And then I couldn't do it all by myself it. Alcohol is a very face to face business. Like you have to show up every single day to keep your top line to keep your product on the shelf, versus you know, traditional CPG and grocery it's a little bit more done behind the scenes, behind the computer like this is a show up face to face business. This feels in physical checks still, which shocks me on a daily basis. So I knew I needed help, like I knew that I did not have the woman power to be able to do it.

Sari  
I think hiring is one of the biggest capital expenditures that people wait too long on a lot of times because they're scared and I get it, but you got to free up your time to do what you're best at and so hiring when it's uncomfortable like finding that sweet spot and I have my Master Your Business Program, we talk a lot about when to hire and getting it set up with processes and everything so you're not just like, I don't know what I'm doing. 

Anna  
That's not great either. I feel like coming from the hospitality industry know that human capital is so important because you can't have a hotel and you can't have a restaurant without human capital. And so I've taken some human capital classes in college. And so I felt like, I knew that I needed that. I knew that I couldn't do it alone. And so just kind of had to bite the bullet and be like, alright, let's go for it. And again, it was pretty scrappy up until that point, so it wasn't like, and I was still on employment. I was still making money, and not paying myself through the business. So it wasn't that crazy, but I don't think I thought about it at that time. I don't think I was like, wow, how amazing that like, you know, essentially unemployment paid me to start my own business.

Sari  
Well, you do pay into your own unemployment. I've been on unemployment twice. And it's like, sometimes I felt guilty about it. I paid into that. Exactly. All right. So let's fast forward. So you're cruising along, you're in two states. Would you call it like, slow, medium or fast growth in the alcohol space?

Anna  
I would say medium, we have gotten a lot of accounts, like our account base is quite large. So I would say that part of the growth has been quick. The velocity turns on the shelf are slower. So like the initial sales in like we are able to get, and especially in Colorado, we don't have a ton of, you know, competition in hard kombucha space. And we're the only local option. And so we kind of rule there. But it's not going to be a Seltzer, a beer moving product, a wine moving product, it's just again goes back to this niche point of like, it's not generating these turns. You know, people think about kombucha and they're not like, I'm going to have seven in one sitting. And that's what I'm going to do to get me like really buzzed. Yeah, and not that it's easy but we've had success there. And where it's been slower is the education and the moving off the shelf. 

Sari  
So before we move on to the launching, the NA product, what were some of your strategies for that education? You said, demos, of course, like getting, would you say liquid? 

Anna  
Hands and hands is what we say. A couple of different strategies. One is of course, at the point of sale, like any sort of marketing materials, stickers you can put on. And then of course, tastings, you know, you've often seen those like 3 to 5pm on a Friday or Saturday, or sampling products. That's a really great way because I think people were nervous about trying kombucha, nervous about trying hard kombucha, it's a new category. So we're trying to drive trial and then get people to repurchase after that. So that was a big and has been and still is a big strategy of ours. Beer festivals, one festivals kind of you name it, we land in all of the categories, it seems like or we're kind of this like, ancillary to all of them. So we attended a lot of those just, you know, knowing that these people are probably people that enjoy drinking beverages. So we attended a lot of those random pop ups at like, you know, boutiques, yoga classes, you name it, like we were like, if they're interested in having us there, we'll be there. So just trying to create a really robust again, yeah, promotional strategy.

Sari  
Very much in person, though. So. Yeah. Okay, so then, let's talk about the NA line, do you decide to go add?

Anna  
Yes. So we team brainstorm quite often on like, new flavors to add to huge, huge, very classic cocktail prohibition still inspired. Like we do not really want to waver away from that. And someone was like, what about the classic corpse reviver cocktail, and we're like, name sounds kind of cool. No one really knows about it. Our top selling skews or top selling flavors for Hooch Booch are ones that are more recognizable, like an old fashion, a bee's knees, etc. So interesting. Then at the same time, we've seen this huge shift in the beverage space to this sort of low and no category people are getting. So we're curious. When we're at events, people are saying, I don't drink or I'm not drinking today, or you know, they place alcohol in this very specific occasion of their day, or specific occasion of their week or month or year. And we see this huge seasonality of summer peaks and then we slow way back down like a bell curve. And we're like looking at the data and we were like, people are asking for no, no. Maybe we don't play on words. This this is kind of over a couple of weeks. We're kind of stewing on this idea. We're like, what if we like take the word corpse Reviver and make it like, you know, what if it has electrolytes in it, and what if it's a mocktail? And what if it drinks, you know what if it has benefits still, but it's non alcoholic? And so that was kind of our original idea of the corpse Reviver. We wanted it to be a mocktail. And we wanted to have electrolyte benefits. And so we launched with that. And we quickly realized that that was maybe a little bit too confusing for the consumer. And all of the areas and the hurdles that we were running into with Hooch Booch expansion, we are still seeing because it was marketed as a mocktail, which is an alcohol alternative. So they were ID checking out the store. Because we had like boneless cocktail on there. We were like corpse Reviver boneless cocktail, no alcohol.

You are being too clever.

You're way too clever. And I think this is something to kind of break down even further to is like the consumers dumb. And I'm not saying anyone that's listening is dumb, but like, you capture someone for two seconds. And you know, the retailers that we have on board are like, well, if you're saying it's a bonus cocktail, we have to check IDs for it. Like you're essentially marketing it to someone that's supposed to be 21 plus. So we scratch it, we go back to the drawing board, and we're like, well, that idea was cool. It was really clever. We might need to reel it back a little bit. And so we did a ton of research on you know, what constitutes an NA beverage, what the different categories are in NA, and right now I think it's very confusing because the categories are kind of merging. You're seeing these like mood boosting drinks, then you're also seeing these like cocktail alternatives. And you know, there's so much that's happening in the non alc space, but we decided for simplicity sake to avoid everything that we've been dealing with alcohol, that we would go fully functional, and that we would redo the packaging, and that we would take a deep dive into consumer behavior and preferences to say like, hey, I think we could really drive more velocity if we open up our usage occasion, instead of just being a drink that someone could enjoy from maybe 4pm to 10pm. Now we're saying you can enjoy it 24 hours a day, you can drink it as your mocktail and you know you see all the time people pouring into a wineglass and drinking it as a mocktail. So we didn't have to say it was a mocktail on there, we can make a beverage, whatever we wanted, and market it all day long. So that's kind of how we decided to reel it back and reposition what we are doing. So well then. But that's the whole story.

Sari  
I remember trying the very first you know, the first round and really enjoying it and say I choose not to drink, especially a lot of networking things and stuff. So I always really appreciate when you add your your product there, so and I thought it was great. I mean, you change the formula a little bit too, right?

Anna  
A little bit but not crazy. Honestly, not crazy. It was more like the packaging and positioning. It's now just changed the game, which is what so telling and so important that the liquid has to match what you're going for on the packaging, like it has to go together. 

Sari  
So I love the flavors. It's there like botanical a little bit, and like they're not just like grapefruit.

Anna  
Yeah, and we didn't see anything with Hooch Booch too. You know, like, everyone was making the hard kombucha as if it was just a kombucha with alcohol like lemon ginger, blood orange mint, which like, that's all fine. But like, we're marketing alcohol here, you know, like let's change it up a little bit. So we kind of took that same methodology into corpse Reviver of like, you can walk down the grocery aisle, and you can see lemon lime, you can see all of these standard flavors. That's not what's going to set us apart. 

Sari  
And I mean, the new packaging is just beautiful. And so. So this year, you took it to Expo West? And that was your first time having a booth there, right?

Anna  
Yeah, I had walked Expo East, I'd won the ticket through Naturally Boulder. And I walked Expo East. And I was like, yeah, this is cool. And everyone was like, Expo West is so much bigger. And our COO and myself, we chatted about it, and we're like, it's a really big expense. Should we do it? Should we not? And ultimately decided, like, if we're going to get our name out there in the functional and analog space, like, we got to go. We got to like scrape the pennies and be like we're going. And I think it was one of the best investments we've made today.

Sari  
I got to get a photo of your booth and I could share it out because I heard so many good things about your booth. So but you were up for an award. And so how'd that go?

Anna  
Yeah, so we'll chat about the booth real quick and then we'll chop it up so you kind of all encompassing so we last minute like decided to go to Expo like maybe six weeks before so we're like alright, well we signed up we go, like everyone had been like you know go to spot in the North Hall, we'd asked a bunch of, you know, industry questions on where we should be, how we should do it. And, you know, I reached out to all of these booths vendors to get quotes, and they were like astronomical, like 20- $30,000. And I was like, you know what, that just doesn't seem realistic. Like, I'm going to go back to my scrappy mentality, I think we can get a pop up booth, our graphics are so cool. Let's lean into the graphics, let's do a cool outfit, and let's just like sell ourselves. We don't need this huge, massive booth, we literally got an 8 by 10 booth, carried on the plane, our pop up booth, and we're like, we're just going to go with it, and then got these like hand painted jumpsuits. Anyways, that's what drew people into the booth and drew people into the product. Now, I have submitted like Hooch Booch beverages in the past two awards. And I've always known that like in the beverage industry, like people definitely look to those awards. I didn't really know that much but I was like, I think we should submit for it. And had submitted and then we dropped off samples. The first time that we dropped off samples, we did not have them finished in the cans. It was literally sitting in the tank at our brewers, they gave me three big bottles of it to take. And I took an empty can that we had gotten like Brandon, that had just come in. And this is like the deadline like this is like the day that they're due. I take the empty can over to our old brewers in Denver, and I'd have them pour the liquid into that branded can and then seal it on their seamer in the machine. Because I was like, we have to present this finished product. But we don't even have the finished products, not even done yet. We finished producing like three weeks before Expo, and then chips Expo. So it was like so quick. And then they told us we were in the next round. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. Like I literally, they have no idea what I went through to make these samples happen. Then, of course production is finished and I brought them more samples. And luckily the offices in Boulder so we could literally just drive them down the street. And we didn't have to ship them. But yeah, so that anyways, we go to Expo, we're sitting at the award ceremony against like, you know, all of these other brands that are in our category that have been around for longer than we have for sure and have really innovative ideas. And yeah, we won the best new beverage at Expo, which is really exciting. And we are so seriously so shocked. Like I looked over at Shannon and I was like if we win, we're all going up on stage. She's like, don't get your hopes too high. And I was like, but if we win, we're all going up. 

Anna  
We should at least have a plan, just in case.

I'm like all our name. And we were just so honestly shocked. Like, it was just so new. And so I don't know, it was crazy.

Sari  
Amazing. Where have you gone with that, that you like, have been able to chart new territory? Are you still going in liquor stores with that? Like, what's your strategy on that?

Anna  
Yeah, so I mean, prior to Expo, we were just selling through like our alcohol distributor here. And it's pretty much it. So from there, and I have been talking to a lot of retailers pre Expo, like I had reached out to some, like regional kind of chains that I had known about letting them know, we're going to be at Expo and blah, blah, blah. So then, of course, post Expo, I'm like, did you hear we got the next season like rattling it off. You know, because it's a big deal. And so I'm like, you know, leveraging all of that. And so, I think it's a little bit of both, like, you know, some of them had tried the product before, and we're waiting until post Expo to get it or it has definitely opened up more doors. And now people are like, it's something to watch. And I think it helps, it's not going to change the game. But having that little, you know, award symbol gives validity, for sure. 

Sari  
I'm glad it was such a successful investment. There was good ROI.

Anna  
I had no idea. I was like this could either, like be really good for us, or we're going to be wasting a lot of money.

Sari  
Yeah, it's not cheap to do trade shows. 

Anna  
The four of us team members, luckily, we're all like around the same age gals. But we all stayed in one room, because also all the rooms that Expo were sold out. So like, literally, we're each carrying two queen beds, our team. I don't know, I think like really a true testament to like, entrepreneurship and like what it takes sometimes. You see all these, you know, massive brands at Expo and you're like, oh, my gosh, I can only imagine one day but you know, sometimes it's just scrappy to get there at the beginning.

Sari  
Yeah, people loved it. And you mentioned your team, who do you have on your team now? What roles are they filling?

Anna  
Yeah, so we have COO, she's fractional. She's been with me like literally since day one. Her name is Shannon. And then we have a sales director here in Colorado. Her name is Lauren, and then one of our sales managers in Minnesota, Riley. That was the four of us that went and then we've got a team of people at our Taproom here in Denver, which is we sell both product lines, alcohol and non alcoholic there. And then we've got a couple of other fractional people. And then of course, a large tasting and promotional team, as well.

Sari  
And do you mind explaining some people might not be familiar with that term fractional COO? So does that mean? How has that been good for your business?

Anna  
Yeah, so we have a fractional or part time COO, Operating Officer and FO, financial officer. So basically two positions that I think are extremely key to a startup and a scaling business, but probably don't have 40 hours of work for them. Nor can we pay for these people 40 hours of work. So we take them for 5,10, maybe 15 hours a week, and have them work on like a really expertise level at a rate that's, you know, affordable for us.

Sari  
They I'm assuming they contract out their services to other people as well. So then they that's how they kind of build out their.  And it's great. I mean, there are a lot of people do fractional work. So we're seeing more and more that.

Anna  
We've started a lot of people on our team from a fractional standpoint, or like, you know, started them at the taproom. And like, get yourself familiar with the product. And I think most people that are willing to start part time have been the ones that have lasted the longest. It's a good way to like get your toes wet and see if there's something you even want to do as well. And again, also makes the expertise more affordable for us.

Sari  
And because you have a team helping to support you, you got crazy and decided to open a physical location. Sometimes I'm like, how do people ask me all the time? How do you go? Like, how do you get everything done? And I look at you and I'm like, I don't know how she does it. 

Anna  
The Taproom kind of came like around the same time as corpse Reviver. But I've kind of been like an idea in the back of my mind for a really long time. Basically, during 2020, 2021 starting the business of Hooch Booch, we, you know, attended a lot of beer festivals, wine festivals, like I mentioned, and everyone was like, where are you based? And we're like Denver, and they're like, Nn, where, where's your brewery? I'm like, whoa, we don't have one, we contract produce. You know, and I think in the beer world, like everyone has a brewery like that's where you make your product. 

Sari  
It's past time here to be clear in Colorado, especially like, that's what people do. And we get into this go. 

Anna  
Culture. So I was like, I feel like you need a physical location and coming from the world of hospitality, I was like, you know, we can drive trial, we can do events, because so often we were doing events and pops up like around the city. But with alcohol, it's so difficult. I'm like, we have our own liquor license, we can manage it on our own property, we can now bring outside vendors into our space. I knew I didn't want anything booming and that again, wanted to do it sort of scrappy. So it's this small, little space nestled in Rhino in this like, little complex, it's about 1500 square feet. And you know, if one person's in there, it feels cozy. If 50 people are in there, it feels cozy. And yeah, so we opened that in September, as a way to drive trial, it as a full bar. So we have full spirits, of course, we make a lot of hard kombucha cocktails. We serve quite a lot of mocktails, we see a lot of people coming to the space for that.

Sari  
Yeah, so cool. So I loved that space.

Anna  
It's such a good space. And it's like a good community hub. And it's just, I felt like we were missing like a home base, especially now, with everything that's happening. It's nice to just like, you know, our teams kind of in and out grabbing samples. And it's a fun, collaborative, like any meetings we have, we can host in our space. And so it's just, it's good to have.

Sari  
And so the last thing I wanted to ask you about is alternative sales channels, right? So you were doing the traditional liquor stores and things like that. So you have gotten into Red Rocks, which is a big music and theater here in Colorado. And I know you're expanding into some other kind of event spaces. So can you share a little bit about what that process has been like, and I know you have to get different types cans. 

Anna  
There's so much that goes on with that. In the space of beverage, we sort of dictate on premise versus off premise. On premise meeting like a bar, a restaurant, a hotel, a venue, and we have the off premise, which is like a grocery store or liquor store. And what we say a lot in the industry is that on premise sales, drive off premise sales. The more you can like, see it on a menu, the more that you maybe taste it at a beer hole, the better it is to drive it in Whole Foods, etc. So we're like, man, maybe we should be leaning more into on premise. If on premise sales really drive off premise sales. Well, because we live in such a niche category. We're like, we should look at venues and kind of once the door started opening with venues. And we realized that we did have such a niche like that a lot of these places have exclusives on beer. They have exclusives on seltzer, exclusives on one, exclusives on Nanak. But no one had a provision for hard kombucha on their contract. And so we kind of found this like crazy little niche to be like, we can get into the menus. So we kind of leaned into that and have been leaning into that I'll say it's expensive and I'm not sure that the ROI is there. But we're testing the waters to see what's possible. So basically, how it works is you get like a sponsorship deal in Red Rocks case, Denver or some venues or at the University of Denver's case with the EU. And then the concessionaire is the one that's purchasing the products and buying it. So it's kind of like this whole three part, triangle relationship, if you will that's very difficult I'll say because the sponsorship piece is a marketing sponsorship, then you've got to work out the logistics of getting the product in venue. So it's interesting. And alcohol, again, is very highly regulated. So I'm curious to see what's possible in the non health realm with venues. But we've been leveraging a lot of our relationships that we've gotten with Hooch Booch now with corpse reviver. There's so many alternative channels, you know, there's weddings, that's a huge untapped market. You know, bar carts. I mean, concerts and venues, I think is one of the biggest ones, because that's just where people find out about products and find exposure. But yeah, I mean, there's food service, there's hotels, you know, in the Grab and Go fridges in hotels, we do well in those. There's so many different places that a product can be put, but I always come back to with our sales team. Like I always say like is the juice worth the squeeze? Like you could drive yourself absolutely insane trying to get into every single spot. And so ultimately, I come back to at the end of the day, like what is actually going to turn velocity for us, it has to be a spot that's in alignment. Hooch Booch is not going to sell well at a dive bar. It's just not going to and so let's stop wasting our time at the dive bar. And let's go for maybe a more high end spot where we're going to be able to see the turns.

Sari  
And that's why it's so important to know your customer and understand, like who is your avatar.

Anna  
Yeah, we come back to like a persona all the time. Like does this person go to these concerts? Does this person shop at this store? If not, then probably shouldn't be selling there. Yes, we might get it one on the shelf. But the whole part of it is to get it off the shelf.

Sari  
Stores will discontinue you fairly quickly if it's not moving. And it's a lot of effort to get it to them and then get it back. And then I saw a billboard a little while ago.

Anna  
So I mean, yeah, with alcohol, like there's so many ways you can and cannot market and one of those ways that you really cannot market is like digital ads, it's really hard to do digital ads with alcohol, just with like meta and Facebook and all of their requirements. But autohelm has always been pretty strategic for alcohol brands, like billboards and doing some fun stuff on there. So we played around with it, you know, pick strategic locations that were close to high volume liquor stores, or grocery stores for us, the messaging is got to be there, the creatives got to be there, it's got to be something that's fun and cool. You can't just be like, buy this beer, you know, like, it's got to be something that's good and catchy. So with it again, it's really hard to quantify. So I don't know that we'll do it again. 

Sari  
I like that you're experimenting, trying some things. But I think what I really appreciate about you is you come back to the data. I like to give those things like a certain amount of time, like it's a three month thing, or a six month thing or a year long thing, but we're going to keep evaluating it and actually keeping KPIs. 

Anna  
You got to track.

Sari  
But is it actually working?

Anna  
All of your money, you could easily. It's an expensive business. Easily. 

Sari  
Okay. And then are you getting into direct to consumer at all with corpse Reviver?

Anna  
Yes, I think we'll try to work on getting into Amazon shortly, just because shipping beverages is expensive. And they're obviously a fantastic logistics company. But right now, we do sell on our website. And it's been going extremely well. We also do like fair wholesale, it's been nice to like, post something and see an order come in. Because that's just like, we've never had that data. Again, we now have customer data to see who's actually buying things and customer emails were as we never really had that data before. And shockingly, people are interested in buying them online. So I'm like, cool. I'll take it. 

Sari  
I so appreciate you sharing your story. I'm curious, I know you have really leaned into communities and getting support. So maybe if you could just kind of share a little bit about how that's been really useful for you. Especially, we're very fortunate to have Naturally Boulder here, FoodWorks, things like that. So, you know, how has mentorship or community supported you?

Anna  
I feel like it kind of goes back to the human capital piece of what we were talking about earlier, where like, I know that I don't have all the answers when it comes to CPG and or alcohol. Like, I'm the first to admit that, that I'm still very much learning. And so I think industry groups and you know, even just other female founders, you know, navigating the space as a young woman in the space. But yeah, Colorado FoodWorks, Naturally Boulder, Startup CPG. There's so many organizations that are supporting people in the space. And I think multiple ears, eyes, mouths are better than others. And so I'm just constantly asking questions and trying to learn. And I think building those networks. Now I feel like I have an arsenal of people in my tool belt that I'm like, I've got a question about sales, I know who to call. I know someone that knows something about marketing, or I know someone who's scaled the business. Let me talk to that. And so most people I think, are super willing to lend advice and share anything that they know, especially in this space. So might as well tap into the network, you know,

Sari  
Right. I'm sure yeah, you would not be in the place you're at now.

Anna  
No, I just ask a lot of questions constantly.

Sari  
Yeah, you're essentially building out an advisory board, like people you can go to and you know, I like to say until you have your own like, borrow mine, right, like I have all these connections or, you know, get into groups that have those connections. Well, where are you going from here? What's exciting in your future?
a
Anna  
That's a hard question. Where we're going is Hooch Booch is really trying to simplify operations. You know, we've come out with a lot of flavors. And so again, we're looking at the data to see which ones are performing well and which ones are not and kind of trimming the fat, essentially getting rid of what's not working and amplify what is working. So a lot of that. Of course summer at the tap room. We're really excited to host a ton of events and things so keep an eye out for blind Tiger events, and then corpse forever just expansion and retail. We've been seeing a lot of you know, retailers really excited about the product. So we'll continue posting on where you can find us in locations. Well, that's what's happening.

Sari  
I love it. Great. Oh, good. And I love that you're willing to like, yeah, cut the you know like, iIt's okay. Like your children can be ugly, like, be willing to cut it. 

Anna  
Totally. Yeah, you have to be able to you know, you can't get tied to one thing, because that one thing might not be what's going to make you money. We are running businesses here. You're not operating nonprofits unless that's we want to get into. 

Sari  
Well, thank you, Anna, nice to chat with you. So where can people just find you real quick? Obviously, Instagram. Everything under Hooch Booch. 

Anna  
Either https://drinkcorpsereviver.com/ and https://drinkhoochbooch.com/. 

Sari  
I wish you a great rest of your day. Appreciate your time and we'll talk soon. 

Anna  
Thanks, bye. 

Sari  
Such a great conversation with Anna, I really appreciate her just being so open with you guys. And I know there's so much you can take away from that conversation. Some of my favorite things are that she was just tenacious, she did not give up, she was going to figure out how to get this stuff brewed. She hired before she felt totally ready. And she just keeps going. She keeps trying new things. She's willing to pivot. And she's willing to raise money and keep going to the next level not getting stagnant and staying too small because that's where we lose efficiencies. So she needs to grow bigger quickly. And she's also willing to pivot to cut things to you know, say this is not working and move on to what is. Until next time, have an amazing week.

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