Day 349 – Soooooo close!

Wouldn’t you know that as soon as I get a job things are starting to get some real traction with Eve’s.

In the last 48 hours, our infused vodka recipes have been approved, we have finally gotten a hold of someone who knows what they are talking about at Walmart. We are being presented to Albertsons and Costco, and Whole Foods in California is getting closer! It is like the fuse has been burning forever and it is getting close to the powderkeg!

I’m not sure what happened but it is AWESOME!!!

While these are all very great things, they are still just potential and will take a lot of work to make them happen. This is one of the reasons that it is nice to be partnered up and have other people you can rely on to help get the ball across the finish line.

Thinking ahead we will need to be making some serious Apple Pie if these deals go down! We are already planning on Walmart starting with a 25 case per month order just in the Western Washington market. add in those other accounts and we could be at 150 – 200 cases a month with just one product.

We have two other moonshines we are just about to launch and then the vodkas in the Spring. With a good foothold of an anchor product like our Apple Pie we could be moving close to a 1000 cases a month by this summer!

Its all blue sky right now but, why not? I mean we are in a couple other states and we have a great product. We just have to figure out how to keep up with the demand and the growth and we should be good. We also have to hope that we can get our local distribution under control.

In the mean time we just keep keepin on and trying to move forward. Keep your eyes open for bottling parties because we are going to be needing a lot of help!

 

Day 283 – Chores and Bureaucracies.

Sort of a chore day today as I was busy being lazy and spending time with Amy all weekend.

Had to clean out the Garage before Amy got home so she could park in there again. She gets grumpy when I take her parking in the garage for my projects. I feel better when she can park in there too. I mean leaving the house at 4:00 is much safer when you can load up and get into the car in the safety of the garage.

I cleaned a bathroom and picked up the kitchen and living room also this morning.

We heard back from the TTB on the Peach Cobbler Moonshine label and we are having the same issues we had with the Apple Pie label. They do not want us to use the word moonshine and want us to use liqueur just like they did with Apple Pie. Even though the process is the same and the recipe similar. Even though there are several other products out there that use the word Moonshine in the same way we want to.

It is hard for me to wrap my head around how a bureaucracy actually functions and gets any work done. I do not understand how completely subjective the process seems to be. Every label and recipe seems to be up to the individual agent reviewing them with no regard to previous approvals.

When we went through this last time they actually told us that all moonshine labels including the big national brands were under review and that all would have to remove the word moonshine from the label. Obviously that did not happen and it looks like we are going to battle again.  If Ole Smokey. Midnight Moon, and Firefly; the national brands can do it I better be able to!

Regardless that just means that we are that much closer to having the Peach and White lightning done and ready for launch soon. Once those are out of the way then it will be time for the real fruit infused vodkas! I cannot wait to see what kind of fight we are going to have with those, only time will tell!