Day 448 – You like it! You really like it!

Back after 3 days!

Saturday was a long day but, one that I would do over and over. Walt Disney built an apartment over the fire station on Main street in Disney land. It is one of the first buildings as the entrances come together when people enter Disneyland. It was said the Walt used to look out and look at the guest’s faces as they saw down Main towards the castle. The smile and reaction on their faces was what Walt loved. It gave him a huge amount of satisfaction seeing people enjoy his creation.

When I am at a tasting event pouring Eve’s Apple Pie, I feel like Walt Disney. I wait for the look on everyone’s face as they taste our Apple Pie for the first time. The wows and the amazings are great to hear but, the look of enjoyment is what makes me do these events over and over. Saturday’s event at Snohomish on the Rocks, was another one of those events.

While we were sharing our Apple Pie with a few hundred people, there was something even more exciting going on 833 miles south in San Francisco. A few months ago we submitted Eve’s Apple Pie to the San Francisco World Spirit Competition to see how it fared among it’s competition.

The San Francisco World Spirits Competition, the largest, most influential international spirits competition in America, is judged by a prestigious panel of nationally recognized spirits experts. Judging is based on a blind, consensual procedure, ensuring competitive integrity as it remains the nation’s most respected spirits competition.

This year there were over 1500 spirit  entries into dozens of categories. We entered Eve’s Apple Pie into the flavored Whiskey Class and won a Bronze medal! Now it is one thing to like and believe in your own product and creation. It is great when friends enjoy it and tell you that it is good. It is Fantastic when you see how good it is in the eyes of strangers when they taste it for the first time. It is unbelievable that when put in front of the most discernible spirit pallets in the world that we get recognized!

Yes . . .  it is really that good!

We were notified via email Sunday night at the close of the judging. They will be posting the official results on April 4th and we will be celebrating of course! We are proud of this accomplishment and humbled by the praise of our peers. I am excited to order some stickers to put on the bottles showing off our accomplishment.

Thank you all who support us, this is your win too!

 

Day 226 – Competition is good.

Colin and Carol our distillers are at an event in Yakima today. It is a blues festival of sorts and there is Wine & Spirit sampling going on. If you like the samples you can buy bottles right there in the spot.

Yeah now that is a blues festival right?

Well, there is another distillery there actually in Yakima. They make an Apple Pie Product. W have been at festivals, tastings and other events with these guys there and I have no problem with them. I am an entrepreneur and respect anyone that is going to set out on their own and take a swing. They on the other hand do not like it when we show up to an event.

When they realized that we were at the same event today and in fact right next to them, they actually asked the event coordinator to ask us not to sample Eve’s Apple Pie Moonshine!

Can you believe the balls it took to even ask? Do you think they have any idea how weak and desperate that made them look? Even they know that our product is way better than theirs.

I can make that claim because I have actually done tasting tests head to head with them. Also, at any event we have been at together we outsell them by leaps and bounds.  Eve’s Apple Pie is the best in its category and we know it and so does everyone else.

We do have a couple other things coming up. Next Saturday we will be at the Washington Wine and Spirit Awards in Wenatchee at Toyota town center. That will be a good time and then in September we have a show in Spokane with Southern Wine & Spirits and in October there is the Seattle Uncorked Witchcraft-Spirits & Potions event.

Anything we can do to get the word out. Our product is the best we just need to get people introduced to Eve now!

 

 

Day 216 – Coffee is for Closers. Closers can leverage opportunity.

We have some good things happening with moonshine. If you are a regular reader you know that we are getting some momentum. Some of that momentum is out of state.

I have a guy in Texas that has been approaching a few places and actually talked to Specs. Specs is a specialty liquor store in Texas. They have about 150 locations and would be a major score. The Broker talked to the buyer and he showed interest. He said come back when we had a distributor in the state. Glazers is the big spirit distributor in Texas and the broker of course went to them to talk about bringing on our line. This guy let them tell him no without even mentioning Specs. I was so shocked when he told me this I was left speechless. I mean that would seem to me a very important piece of information. Oh, by the way Mr Distributor we have may have already secured the biggest chain in the state to carry the product. Instant sales! Instead he just took the no! This is a guy who has been a broker for over 20 years and I am left wondering how he has managed to survive if this is a testament of his skills.

We have contacted another broker to fix this and make it happen.

Meanwhile in Kansas City, my boy Shawn is taking no prisoners. He has managed to get about 40 bars in town already committed. Shawn is  what I would call a local celebrity Bar Tender. The bars he has gotten on board are the cities hot spots and they all move high volumes of liquor. He knows that he has something of value to offer the distributor. He knows that a distributor is looking for opportunities when bringing on a new product. They weigh the risks and the amount of effort it will take to launch a new product. In this instance the product will hit the ground running at hot spots with bartenders that love the product and will make it move. Its like giving them free sales that they did not have to do anything for.

Shawn has used his influence to get a meeting with the buyer for Glazers in Missouri AND Kansas. You see Kansas City is in both states and has to be supplied by distributors in each state accordingly. Even if for some reason Glazers says no, another distributor will see the opportunity and pick us up.

It is the same thing as what we have going in Texas with Specs but, Shawn is the better salesman. We will get them all eventually but I just needed to share the opposite personalities of guys who see value and leverage it accordingly. It is about sharing the opportunity and helping someone see it. After all they are in business to make money too.

Day 132 – A sales call and perfect timing.

Sometimes your timing is perfect or, so it seems.

Today I had a stack of business card to go through and contact. It is Monday so I just sent emails. I will do follow up calls later in the week. I know as a business owner I don’t want to be bombarded on a Monday

One of the contacts was a local bar owner that I have only communicated through Facebook. We have talked a few times and he actually bought a bottle of Eve’s Apple Pie to experiment with at the bar. He liked it but was a bit skeptical of the lower alcohol percentage.

Now one bottle is not going to get it done and I knew that. One bottle is basically a courtesy purchase. One bottle will get sampled by all of the staff and a few regular customers that happen to be at the bar. When you follow up they will tell you that it didn’t sell or no one is asking for it. Well thats because no paying customer has actually had it.

I always knew I was going to go back and follow up but, when we decided to up the alcohol percentage I decided to wait. I knew that if I could take away that objection I would have a better shot at a bigger purchase.

In this business I need a sale of 6 bottles to be sure an owner is committed to the product. If they purchase 6 bottles they have motivation to get it moving because inventory is cash, literally. There is no credit or terms on alcohol sales its all cash. So as an owner looks at bottles sitting that equates to a pile of cash and they want a return.  They will be more apt to run specials or put it on a featured drink menu. The same thing can be accomplished if the staff, owner or both really love the product. Then they have a natural desire to share something they personally enjoy.

Since we have recently increased the alcohol percentage I knew it was time. When I reached out to him today he told me that he would be around all day if I wanted to stop by. Armed with a brand new bottle and a couple recipes I went to see him.

I shared the new formulation and he liked it. I shared a popular new recipe and dropped another account that was doing well and he poured a couple drinks for his staff and a guest. The views were unanimous! They all loved it.

I did not get the 6 bottle order that I was hoping for, because he loved it and he saw some potential, he ordered an entire case of 12 bottles! Not only that but he also dug out a chilling machine to serve cold shots and told me to get stickers made for it so we could brand it and have it prominently displayed with the Jägermeister and other cold shots.

So the perfect timing piece? The owner recently decided to stop carrying Fireball and thought this would be a great product to fill that hole. Fire ball is the most sold 750ml bottle of alcohol in Washington state and Eve’s being offered as an alternative is huge!

I would say that as far as sales calls go, this was a 10!

Day 129 – We have a great product – people just need to know.

Days like today are great for a business owner!

I have said how cool it is to take an idea and turn it into a reality. Over the last year and a half Amy and I have been working on our Apple Pie Moonshine. We took a recipe that we had been enjoying personally with friends and family for years and turned it into something big. From 3 gallon batches on the stove to 300 gallon batches in a Distillery.

Tonight we took part in a fund raiser in downtown Snohomish. We shared tastes of our passion with people on a wine walk and they loved it! It is so much fun to listen to people talk about OUR product!

It was about a 3 hour event and we had 80 people come by and taste. They had the opportunity to buy bottles at another location so we had no idea how sales were actually going until the end of the event. I walked into the event store and there was a bottle of Apple Pie open and everyone was sharing it. They were all talking about how great it was and how everyone was talking about it. When they realized who I was they all gathered around and wanted to hear the story of how we got started.

Turns out EVERYONE was talking about Apple Pie and it was the star of the event. I knew in my heart we had a good product. When you get positive affirmation like that from your customers it just fuels the fire.

Things are good right now and we have things happening. My challenge now is to add some gasoline to that fire. I need to find some capitol to get some marketing going. Sponsoring events and promos. Launch  events and tastings. I need to get displays made and point of sale material. One thing I have learned is that even successful and great products need to be advertised. The word has to spread to in order fro demand to increase. In short, people need to know about an awesome product. If they don’t know about it they don’t know to buy it.

Events like tonight are great. It proves that we have a product that people want we just have to introduce them to it and that is the challenge.