From Liquor Licenses to Liquid Assets: Brian Rosen's Story - 009

In this episode of the Drinks.com Podcast, host Brandon Amoroso chats with Brian Rosen, Chairman of Growth Beverage,  whose rich background as a scion of Chicago's first post-Prohibition liquor license holders sets the stage for an enlightening discussion. Discover the keys to success in this competitive landscape, from sustainable business models to the role of e-commerce. Plus, learn Brian's investment criteria, emphasizing financial acumen and receptive leadership.

Through this conversation you will gain valuable insights into evaluating potential investments in the beverage alcohol industry, where financial acumen and strong leadership qualities intersect with the ever-evolving landscape of consumer preferences and market dynamics.

Topic timestamps

🎙️ Introduction and Brian Rosen's Background (00:00:00)

🚀 Founding Bev Strat and Role in Brand Sales (00:02:10)

🌱 Introduction to Growth Beverage Ecosystem (00:03:12)

🚫 No and Low Alcohol Alternatives (00:05:38)

❌ Challenges in Seltzer Market (00:07:56)

🌿 Sustainable Business Models (00:08:24)

👥 Building Direct Customer Relationships (00:10:01)

🔍 Regtech and Compliance (00:14:27)

🌟 Strategies for New Brands (00:15:32)

🌎 Expanding Distribution (00:16:07)

🌑 Challenges in the Gray Area of Alcohol (00:17:08)

💼 Capitalization for New Brands (00:18:04)

💡 What Investors Look for in Beverage Alcohol Businesses (00:25:55)

👔 The Importance of a Good and Active Leadership Team (00:26:45)

📊 Key Metrics Investors Want to Know (00:27:02)

🛠️ The Role of Expertise and Resources in Investment (00:29:25)

🍻 Favorite Alcohol Memory (00:30:22)

🎤 Wrapping up the Interview (00:33:04)

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everyone, thank you for listening to the drinkscom podcast, the business of online alcohol. I'm your host, Brandon Amoroso, and today I'm talking with Brian Rosen, the chairman of Growth Beverage and also the founder of Bev Street and Algoma Capital. I hope I got all three of those correct, but thank you for coming on the show.

Speaker 2: 0:28

You got it. Thank you for joining me. This is any chance we have really to speak to suppliers or founders about the industry. I'm happy to participate.

Speaker 1: 0:39

So before we dive into some of the topics we want to cover today, can you give everybody just a quick background on you and all the areas ventures you have going on?

Speaker 2: 0:47

100%. So I take a lot of pride in this first sentence. My family, I should say, was the first liquor license ever handed out in Chicago after prohibition. So we've been in business since 1933. That one liquor license, that one singular license, turned into the largest grocery and wine and spirit retailer in America. So if you're on the West Coast you think Bev Moe, you're on the East Coast, you think Total. If you're in Florida, like you are, you think Big Daddy or ABC. We were bigger than the mall in the day. We were the first big box store. We were the first store to put wine, cheese, glassware, cigars, reading material all under one roof.

Speaker 2: 1:33

That grew to be roughly $100 million enterprise and I sold that company in early 2000. I went on from there to because it seems like that's a natural progression. I went on from there to PricewaterhouseCoopers, from entrepreneur to corporate wonk, and ended up running the adult beverage division for PWC, covering North America, canada and Mexico. After I realized I don't like to wear a tie or a sport coat for that matter I went back to my entrepreneurship ways and founded a company called Bev Strat, and Bev Strat became the largest single sales organization for independent brands. We all know, if you're listening to the podcast, you likely know that distributors aren't going to build your brand. So we put full time sales people on the ground in various markets around the country to help sell goods. I grew that business and sold that business to MHW in 2019.

Speaker 2: 2:24

At the same time, I founded Bev Strat. I founded a company called InvestBev which now, after our last raise, is the largest private equity firm solely focused on the adult beverage industry only booze. We're at about $250 million under management. We've got that's InvestBev. Agoma Capital, which you referenced. Agoma Cap, which is a $100 million debt facility for distillers. Bev Strat I bought back at the end of my employment term. We still have that to help our brand sell. And then, of course, sprout Beverage, which is our incubator and accelerator, which will graduate its 20th brand in November and the winner gets $100,000 and gets welcomed into our growth beverage family. So those four companies make up kind of what I do every day.

Speaker 1: 3:16

And it seems like they're all sort of not integrated but connected in some way.

Speaker 2: 3:21

They're connected in every way. There is no. I know I speak in a lot of absolutes the biggest, there's no other. I understand that, but this is all fat checkable. There is no other place for a brand to come into a system and get capital, debt, sales and marketing, acceleration and incubation, m&a activity and exit ability under one roof. It just does not exist, and so we've created that in what we call the growth beverage ecosystem, and brands are welcome to come in at any stage. You don't have to come in from the beginning. You can come. You can be a growth stage brand, you can be a seed brand, you can be a mature brand. We welcome all people, and so it is what we call cradle to grave.

Speaker 1: 4:10

You're right, and are you primarily investing in brands themselves or are you looking at technology enablement solutions and other categories? Within the beverage alcohol space, there's a primarily brand building.

Speaker 2: 4:26

No well, it's brand. Of the 100% of our funds, 30% is in brands and what I would call support services, what you're calling technology. So reserve bar, we're an owner of reservebarcom, we're an owner of speakeasycom, we're an owner of Philo, which is a compliant software. We are, we're all about the support services too. We love to say the things that make the things right. So it's low risk, lower risk, I should say, and higher reward and kind of less fluctuation than investing in a brand all the time.

Speaker 1: 5:05

It's like providing the plumbing for everybody else. It's not exactly as glamorous or as sexy, but it is a great place to be. How to?

Speaker 2: 5:13

make the shoe laces. That's not sexy.

Speaker 1: 5:19

Well outside of when it comes to like the brand side of things and what you're investing in there. What are you most excited about this year going into next year? I've been seeing, at least from some of the other guests we have come on, whether it's different ways of packaging. There's low-alk, no-alk alternatives. What are some of the trends and things that you're most interested in how to get into next year?

Speaker 2: 5:42

Yeah, all of that. But it's funny when people talk about no and low or drink replacement or all that kind of jazz, they're talking about the brand in and of themselves, but they're not talking about the real usability of it all. If the no and low-alk category is 100% up year over year which it is that could simply mean that if you sold 50 units last year and you sold 100 units this year, you're 100% up. But it doesn't speak to the bigger picture it was. You're still less than 1% of the overall consumption universe. That's just a fact.

Speaker 2: 6:18

Now, when you think of no and low, I love the trend and it is a trend, and it is people that are younger than me, much younger than me, are doing one-on, one-off right. So one drink of vodka, one drink of replacement, et cetera. One drink full alcohol, one drink low, proof to extend the night, to extend the sessionability of their activity. I get all that, but the reality is an on-premise account isn't going to have two of everything one version of alcohol, one version of non-alcohol. It's not realistic. And how do you say to your bartender screaming at a club thank you for the Red Bull and vodka. Now, of a Red Bull and fake vodka? It doesn't work from a practical standpoint. So it does work, however, in the on-premise restaurant community, because there are people that want to be part of an activity and don't want to spend the time putting booze in their body. It does work at the at home ability. So I like those trends. I like Rama as a trend, I like Jin as a trend.

Speaker 2: 7:24

Tequila is saturated, vodka is dead. I mean, there are things coming here. Mixology was a thing, rtd was a thing, but if you're getting into the RTD market now, you're likely two years too late. If you're getting into the Seltzer market now, you're a hundred years too late. But people are right. I see it all the time. So if the average guy is just discovering the popularity of white claw, they're at they are. They've missed the boat entirely and any money spent in that production will likely go to waste.

Speaker 1: 7:56

Yeah, there's, I feel like literally a thousand different Seltzer brands at this point.

Speaker 2: 8:01

Yeah, I was in Miami this past weekend. One of my buddies launched the Vodka Seltzer and smart, smart guy and great brand entrepreneur and has a lot of successful brands out there. But launching a Seltzer now is just putting a cup of water in the ocean. You know, and I don't know how you find shelf, I don't know how you find cooler space, I just don't know. Because, for instance, in the Vodka category, for every dollar you spend in production you've got to spend $5 in marketing and that's just not sustainable.

Speaker 2: 8:35

And then when you look at new brands coming to market, it used to be, hey, we'll raise money, we'll come to market and if we and we're gonna burn through cash because we're gonna get our cases up and then we'll get sold to a constellation or diaggio or whatever, whatever. Now, because it's harder and harder to get to fundraise because of the economy and the recession and interest rates and all of those things, these brands have to operate down themselves. They have to operate cash flow on their own accord and that's not as easy as anymore. So you're gonna see a big shakeout in the new brand world. You know, if you haven't seen it already, you're going to see it the shelf is gonna shrink.

Speaker 1: 9:14

Do you think it's going to slow down the new brand growth and penetration because of the restriction in capital?

Speaker 2: 9:21

It's going to slow down the people that have no money. It's going to slow down the people that once they get past their friends and family around and they go looking for professional money like Invespev. You have to have a sustainable business. You can be losing money I don't, that's part of the game. You can be losing money, but you have to have a path to profitability. You have to have a model that doesn't say I'm gonna raise, raise, raise and spend, spend, spend and hopefully I get bought by another company. You don't have to have that, so you have to have a business, and so I think that will fundamentally change the landscape of the independent brand.

Speaker 1: 10:00

Well, that makes sense when it comes to brands, and you mentioned on-premise. When you're helping accelerate some of these companies out of Sprout Beverage, are you focusing more on on-premise? Are you leveraging e-commerce at all in terms of testing into new markets, or are you doing both at the same time? Where do you see no success?

Speaker 2: 10:26

Well, I mean, look, speakeasy is a great e-com play. It's. They've got warehouses, they've got retailers all over the world all over the country, I should say and it's a great inexpensive way to expand your brand without having to necessarily expand your footprint. E-commerce is great. When I was at Sam's, the first company I mentioned, we were the first wine and spirit store to sell wine online, 1996. So think about it. Back then it was like dial-up. It was dial-up, in fact. If someone asked us for a catalog, we would have to fax them a catalog. This is like fax machines aren't even gone, aren't even here in New York printed catalogs. This is I'm dating myself. Now it's a better way and I don't.

Speaker 2: 11:13

I think there's two kinds of e-commerce plays, to be honest. I think there is the first e-drizzly play, where, hey, I need a bottle of vodka and a six pack of beer right now. There's that. And then there's e-commerce for shipping or holiday gifting or what have you Like winecom reserve bar. There's a lot of gifting, things like that. So I think it's a natural part of the three tier system.

Speaker 2: 11:37

I think it's a natural part of the distribution model, but it's a hard thing to figure out because anyone who ships, you run the risk of these gray rules that affect interstate shipping. The consumer is going to have to really understand that shipping can't be waived like it is on Amazon, because this is a physical, hard, heavy product that requires packaging and styrofoam and bubble wrap and all that stuff so it doesn't break. So it's never going to be cost effective. What it is going to be is a chance to get rare and allocated items delivered to your door and the sooner that that shift is realized, the less price becomes an issue and the more is the issue really becomes is can I get what I want? So it will be great for vintage Bordeaux, burgundy, high-end tequila, high-end whiskey, rear whiskey, things that you can't get at your retailer, where the cost of shipping is a non-issue.

Speaker 1: 12:38

Yeah, I think the higher price per unit makes a lot more sense, and then for the brand being able to build a direct relationship with a customer and offer some of that like exclusivity A ton of preserve. So I think, speaking, I've seen a couple of really cool sort of programs around rarity and then that appeals to a certain brand.

Speaker 2: 13:01

Speaking. You just got the Tesla deal, where they're selling the Tesla tequila or I think it's tequila, the Tesla brand. They sell a lot of other rare whiskies. That's where it makes a ton of sense. It also makes a ton of sense for if a distillery or a brand wanted to get rid of old goods old bean, vintage not old like expired, but vintage and rare goods that's a great place to liquidate again excuse the pun all of those things instead of putting them. You don't have enough goods to put on a store shelf, but you have enough good. You have 300 bottles. It's enough goods to put on a speak easy and let it deplete. That way Makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1: 13:45

Yeah, and you're not buying $2 box wine online, unless it's maybe through that last mile delivery via.

Speaker 2: 13:53

Yeah, my dad would say no one needs a bottle of vodka in 30 minutes. If you need a bottle of vodka in 30 minutes, there's a bigger issue here. It's not a convenience plate in the e-commerce world of booze. It really is. It should be a rare and allocated play and then prices off the table. And when prices off the table, shipping cost is off the table. Discounting is off the table because you have what no one else has. The best users of e-commerce and booze are the ones who would embrace that.

Speaker 1: 14:27

And you mentioned the gray areas of beverage alcohol, which it feels like there's a never-ending amount of them, but over the past three to five years it seems like there's been a lot of investment in reg tech to try and make it easier for brands to be able to navigate all the various sort of hoops in each individual state. What are some of the things that you've seen on that side when it comes to technology and being the plumbing not necessarily being the actual brand builder and how is that helping facilitate growth for your companies? It?

Speaker 2: 15:04

used to be again, having the privilege of living a lot of life. I can look backward and say it used to be and it used to be. We would ship five, six, seven thousand boxes a day and you'd roll the dice. You'd say, hey, ups, fedex, let them catch one, but they're shipping a million boxes a day during holiday. So my five thousand aren't going to matter and the fine at $500 is smaller than the profit of $500,000. So retailers kept shipping.

Speaker 2: 15:46

Now there's a couple different players out there that are doing things that are interesting. One is the play, and I forget the brand names of these companies, but the concepts I know. One is where you buy or invest in retailers around the country. They become your beach heads. So you invest in retailers Mike Berkoff is doing it I forget the name of the company, but Mike Berkoff out of Connecticut and you invest in the retailers that are in complying states and then there's reciprocal states surrounding them.

Speaker 2: 16:23

So by buying a retailer in Ohio, you can ship to Pennsylvania, kentucky, indiana. So that's what he's doing. You get three states by buying one and all you have to do is buy a small, independent, tiny store, close the storefront, begin shipping out of it and you've got yourself compliant. That's one way to do it. Another way to do it is what Speakeas is doing, which is having warehouses around the country San Diego, washington DC, by way of example. That's another way to do it. Another way to do it is what Reserve Bar does, which is partner with retailers around the country. You can just sell from their inventory specifically. But you have a lot of issues there with vintage auto stock et cetera, because not everyone runs on the same system.

Speaker 2: 17:09

Ship compliant is a great option as well. The net it's all going to be a patchwork of setup until it becomes federally legal. And it's funny because you can do a lot of things that are questionable that are federally legal, but, heaven forbid, you want to ship Tito's from Ohio to Pennsylvania. That is a rule breaker in some way. So I think once the federal, once the feds, get their kind of the rack together and realize this is a non-issue issue, it's a taxation issue. It's an issue for the states that are giving up taxes, they don't know who to give them money to. So everyone gets very kind of attached to their brand and it will be like this for a bit until someone figures it out. But everyone right now was just patchworking together and it's working. But it's tough to build a big, big business on a gray, gray area.

Speaker 1: 18:03

And how do you see the role of distributor evolving over the next five to 10 years?

Speaker 2: 18:11

It's unrelated to shipping. It's more related to electronic ordering, which could be interesting to your listeners. The COVID did a lot of things Besides put four pounds on my body, five pounds and my wife would say 10 pounds. What it really did was it proved to distributors that they can operate with less salespeople. It proved to distributors that the operator, whether it's on or off premise, will order through their iPad or through their phone or through a desktop site. So what's happening is it used to be that a rep would go in, get orders, recommend items and leave. That rep had costs, base pay, incentive comp bonus, travel, gas, phone, computer, all those things. That's all gone by the wayside. Now Each distributor of the bigs breakthroughs Southern R&D C, young's Market have cut their labor force exponentially post COVID because they've retrained the on and off premise account to order online. In fact, a lot of them won't even take orders. If you call in an order, they won't take it. They steer you to the e-commerce site or to the electronic platform. So that's the biggest thing that's gonna happen and that's gonna make my company best at much more valuable, because we've got bodies that will go in and sell goods If you're an independent retailer, or any retailer for that matter.

Speaker 2: 19:44

How are you gonna discover a new brand on your iPad? You can't take it, you can't look at it, you can't touch it, there's no tactile feel to it, doesn't exist. They steer you. So new items on page one of the website? That's baloney. No one's gonna buy a brand like that. So new brands are gonna have a lot of trouble breaking into the market. Existing brands are gonna gain share and it's gonna hurt the independent brand small supplier. So if I look forward into the kind of the telescope, I see less and less salespeople. I see more relying on companies like Bevstrat and I see the independent brand continuing to struggle to get shelf because the store owner, for no fault of their own, does not know you exist.

Speaker 1: 20:30

All right and you need to buy what you think is actually gonna sell through.

Speaker 2: 20:34

And be paid for in 30 days. Yeah, you know, if I'm a shopkeeper we did a seminar for Sprout two weeks ago for 20 brands. If I'm a shopkeeper and I'm limited funds, I'm cash. I'm check to check. How do I buy a brand I've never heard of for an audience I do not know exists, no matter how good it is, that bill's due in 30 days? I got payroll every two weeks. My daughter needs braces. I can't mess around with filling my shelf with things that might not sell.

Speaker 1: 21:03

So, when it comes to these new brands that are entering the market, then what would your advice be to them? Like? What are some strategic ways that they can get that shelf placement Cause? Obviously, new brands are going to start and some will be successful, even if it's gonna be fewer than in the past. What are the things that they need to be doing? How can they like incentivize or not incentivize Maybe there's a better term for that but how can they.

Speaker 2: 21:24

There's a more legal term for that.

Speaker 1: 21:25

Yeah, I was gonna say that sounds, though maybe not the right word to use, but how do they get that shelf space and how do you look at them being able to grow in this new environment?

Speaker 2: 21:38

You gotta be capitalized. Let's start with that. This is a cash business. You can't mess around and not be capitalized. End of story. You have to have money. There's no business like this in the world that I've ever seen. You have all this upfront capital, production, legal accounting, label design, closure, bottle formulation. You're $200,000 in the hole before you sell your first bottle and your first production run is half a container as opposed to five cases. It just doesn't. It's a hard, hard business.

Speaker 2: 22:13

If I'm a new brand owner, if I'm a new supplier, the one thing I always harp on is find one account on and off-premise in an area where you live and be there. Make it a lighthouse account, be there, get in the face, let the owners know you are around, you are available for tastings, sampling, demos all of those things were legal and show that. When you get pulled in that account, then you go to the two accounts that are one mile away and you say, hey, x account is selling five cases a week. You guys don't have this product. You should give it a try and then you kind of spread out from that circle there. That's how you start a brand. You don't.

Speaker 2: 22:56

I have more guys that call our team, or gals, people that call our team and say, hey, I live in California but I want to. I think Florida is a great market for my brand. I'm gonna launch there. Okay, yin yang, how are you gonna do that? You live in LA, you want to launch in Miami. You're 3,000 miles away, you're six hours in the air.

Speaker 2: 23:18

I mean, come on, you have to be where you can support a brand, End of story. And so when I look at people that are launching brands gotta have capital, have capital For every dollar you think you're gonna do in sales. You need a five X in support. A, b have a pull strategy. You have to have a pull strategy. What pulls it off the shelf? Three, c you have to support the account. D launch in the area where you live. All of these kind of things. They seem basic but they're not and people repeatedly just don't do those things. And here's a scary stat for you, brandon You've got 50,000 brands registered for COLA in the USA 50,000, and there's 500 brands that account for repetitive skew velocity.

Speaker 2: 24:09

Think about that.

Speaker 1: 24:10

That's not a great number.

Speaker 2: 24:11

No. And the tagline, the hashtag on Sprout beverages be the 5% mean that 95% of brands fail. Be the 5%, so do the things that will not put you in the graveyard with Zima beer or with whipped cream flavored Pinnacle vodka. What have you?

Speaker 2: 24:33

I wish that one stuck around that one was the last thing, and I'll tell you an anecdotal story really quickly. I was on a plane years ago and we were about to take off and the guy next to me in the seat was on his cell phone and he was talking and he happened to be in the wine business. Just coincidence, nothing planned there Happened to be in the wine business. He was yelling and screaming at someone. I got off the phone and said hey, I'm in the liquor business, you're in the wine business. Tell me what you do. Where are you headed? He's like I'm heading to Florida to meet the biggest distributor in Florida, who will remain nameless, and I'm getting them to focus, I need them to focus on my brand for the fourth quarter.

Speaker 2: 25:10

Well, that's not an unusual story, mr airplane neighbor, how big is your brand? And I'm thinking just launched 5,000 cases, whatever. He said, 800,000 cases annually. And he's flying to Florida to meet not to be named distributor to focus on his brand at 800,000 cases. How, then, to our clients that Sprout or Invespev or Algoma Capital or Bev Strat and your listeners brand, how do they then get attention when they're doing 5,000, 10,000, 100,000 cases a year? They don't. They've got to be in the market, they've got to be supportive. And so that anecdotal story is a real story and it's a real sad story, if you ask me.

Speaker 1: 25:56

So, piggybacking off of that, what are you looking for when you're investing in a beverage alcohol business, then, whether it's on the software side or on the brand side?

Speaker 2: 26:06

Sure, we look for either cash flow or road to profitability. We look for a good and active leadership team. We look for a category that is either yet to virgin or a new take on a category that exists. We look for a team that understands their numbers. Know your numbers, don't guess. Know your numbers.

Speaker 2: 26:32

And when you come to Invespev and if you're looking for capital, how do I give you our minimum? Our check is one to five million. How do I give you a million dollars or five million dollars if you can tell me what your adjusted EBITDA is? I need to know that. I'm going to invest in you and I'm going to invest in you as a leader and any leader of any business needs to know their revenue, their gross margin, their path to profitability, their net income, their EBITDA, their cash balance, their bank balance, their balance sheet. It's a lot of stuff, but if you own your business, these are things you should know anyway, and so I think if you come to us with those kind of things all dialed in, you got a much better chance of making it through investment committee than you would otherwise.

Speaker 1: 27:17

Got it. So a lot of it is the team and the handle that they have on the sort of the back end of the business and the actual financials.

Speaker 2: 27:27

If 95% of brands fail, then what are you really investing in? Investing the people? We just put a million dollars into 10 to 1 rum last week it was very big public news. It's us and Diageo and Proghorn, if you know that group and we invested in leadership. We invested in the category Rum. I like rum, I mean as a category and as a drink. I like rum.

Speaker 2: 27:54

The founder is a smart, smart guy. People smarter than us have invested in it and like the brand. Those are three things that are. The guy knows his numbers. Those are three or four things that matter to us. We're going to announce a deal this week that is in a burgeoning category or an existing category, with a great founder who is eager, open to feedback and open to criticism. That deal will be announced this week. Nomadica is an investment of ours. Nomadica Wines Great female led company, an aggressive young.

Speaker 2: 28:31

I will do anything to make my brand work. Founder, we invested in her Can. You used to live in California. You told me can Can, the number one cannabis beverage in the country. We invested in the category of cannabis beverage because we know that at some point it's going to be federally legal. Right now you've got 10, 12 states that are legal. It's going to be federally legal, so things like that that give us an in speak easy. As we talked about Reserve bar, as we talked about the consumer needs to get their brands some way, and so that's what we look for, those things we look for in brands, and we're happy to help. If you're 80% there with some of the things I mentioned, our team will give you the 20%. We'll help you with your accounting, finance, hr, marketing. We will do all that to the companies we invest in, because it's in everyone's best interest.

Speaker 1: 29:25

There's definitely more on the active investment side of things you would say.

Speaker 2: 29:29

Yes, I'm at your dinner table with you nightly. That's correct. Our whole team. We've got a very robust team in Chicago made up of X Bacardi, x Molson Cores, x Diageo, x Beam Brands I mean these are and then from the food side, canagra Food and Honest Company and myself, my partners from the BMO Bank I mean there's a lot of people here that cover both the beverage industry and the financial industry together under one roof and they all become the resource of the brand that we invest in. So instead of having, you know, paying your account $8,000 a month to reconcile your checking account, we do it for free. So there are real big benefits of taking invest-bev money and you get the expertise and the historical kind of relationships that come with us.

Speaker 1: 30:17

That's definitely more of a strategic partnership, for sure, and just the check.

Speaker 2: 30:21

That was the idea. That was the idea when we built this company. Going on 10 years it was. We don't want to be on the sidelines, we want to be your partner and share the bed with you, so to speak, and all the good and bad that comes with that.

Speaker 1: 30:38

So I got two fun questions for you before we wrap up here, First being what is your favorite alcohol memory?

Speaker 2: 30:51

Memory or forget which one.

Speaker 1: 30:54

Memory, or I mean, you know well, I'll let you take it however you see best fit. Sure, Sure.

Speaker 2: 31:03

I've had some great. You know I'm not to be honest with you, I'm not like I drink one drink, it's gin and tonic, it was Sapphire, now it's Hendrix or Gray Whale. So, very simple, I can do anything I want. And if you're watching this, at home behind me is a shelf full of dead soldiers. I've had some really good times, and generally they're overseas. They're those times where you don't go out to have a great night, it just organically happens. And they've been all over, from Cuba to Italy, to, you know, to California, to Chicago, always with a good group of friends, always with a night that just doesn't end early. And so, you know, beverage has been part of those nights and part of my family, part of the threat and fabric of my family. You can't go anywhere in any of our homes, my family, my extended family, where there's not a collection of rare whiskey or vintage wine, or aged wine, what have you? So beverage or alcohol has played a huge part in my entire life and I'm grateful for it.

Speaker 1: 32:19

That's the common theme that I've heard from everyone is that you know it's around the people, almost more so than the alcohol itself.

Speaker 2: 32:29

I'm not my first wife in a liquor store, I'm not my second wife in a liquor store. I mean, I don't know if that's maybe I'm picking the wrong women, I don't know. But I've owned both stores, so maybe it's okay. But I didn't meet him in the aisles, I met him at the register. But you know, it's been a real important part of my life for sure.

Speaker 1: 32:53

And if you could share a bottle with anyone, who would it be and what would you drink?

Speaker 2: 33:03

It would be. What would I drink? I would drink some sort of French rosé, which I really enjoy. It'd be outside of you, overlooking water, so that'd be the location in the drink, barack Obama.

Speaker 2: 33:27

Okay yeah, I think there's a lot of. He's a Chicago guy. He was a customer of Sam's when he was a senator. He, I'm guessing, has some great stories to tell, because he's not only a president, a former president, but he's also kind of hip. So we regardless what your politics are he's a hip guy and so it'd be fun to hear about, you know, his late-night excursions with Jay-Z and Beyonce, you know, and is, you know, hanging out with world leaders and and doing those kind of things. I think that's really interesting. The stories would be great.

Speaker 1: 34:06

Okay, so rose on the water with Barack Obama. That's definitely the the best, I want to say best. Everybody's answers good, but that's the most interesting one that we've gotten so far, I aim to please. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I guess, before we hop off, is there anything else that you wanted to touch base on or or cover?

Speaker 2: 34:26

No, no. I think that. I think that I want the listeners to know that growth beverage as a whole, and all the companies that we have our, exist solely for the support of the brand and Whether we invest in you or not, or lend you money or not, or you work with Bev, strat or Sprout, you can always Find us as a great resource for knowledge and because this business will rip your heart out and then step on it. So we, having been on the other side of this kind of business, I've devoted the remainder of my life, my business life, to helping small brands, because they've helped me so much in my career. It's awesome.

Speaker 1: 35:06

Can you let everybody know where they can find you online?

Speaker 2: 35:08

Sure, we've got it's Brian Rosen. The best way is to find me on LinkedIn. For sure, brian Rosen, our websites are. The one website that leads you to every website is growth beverage comm Growth beverage comm. And that will lead you to invest Bev. I'll go Macap Sprout beverage and Bev strat.

Speaker 1: 35:30

Okay, awesome you know, thanks much for joining us. As always everybody listening. This is Brandon and Maroso. You can find me at drinks comm and we will see you next time. Thanks for having me.