BevNET's Cocktail Showdown 2 - Social Hour

Speaker 1 [00:04] All right. Up next to the stage is Tom Macy of Social Hour Cocktails. You can clap, there you go.

Tom Macy [00:15] Judges, everyone here, I, I'm so excited to be here to introduce you to Social Hour and our mission to bring craft cocktails beyond the bar. Uh, I'm Tom Macy, CEO and co-founder of Social Hour, and, uh, I'm a bartender by trade. Uh, I bartended for 12 years at the Clover Club in Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn's first and still, still, I believe, premier cocktail bar. Uh, for 8 of those years, I was the beverage director where I was charged with creating, uh, seasonal menus, uh, 30 to 40 drinks multiple times a year. This is where I, you know, really found and honed. Honed my passion for creating and perfecting cocktail recipes sometimes quite obsessively. um, I was hired at the Clover Club by Julie Reiner. Uh, I was a bar back at the time. Uh, she's one of the legitimate pioneers of the modern craft craft cocktail movement. She opened some of New York City's most iconic and influential cocktail bars, and she is also a, uh, my partner in Social Hour. Uh, the premise of Social Hour is simple. Uh, we are looking to take what we do, Julie and I, behind the bar and put it in a can with no compromising quality and fully shelf stable. Now, accomplishing this was not easy. Um, just picture like this montage of like obsessive experimentation and like all these prototypes and us trying them and then just like disgruntled and like discarding them. It was a couple of years, but we eventually got to where we wanted to get, um, and we launched Social Hour in the spring of August, uh, in the, in, uh, in August of 2020. Our first three cocktails were based on a simple highball style concept. Uh, we have a gin and tonic, a, uh, whiskey mule, and our Pacific Spritz was a, uh, tropical. Take on a pair of TiVo spritz. These cocktails taste out of the can as if we made them from scratch behind the bar. We pull the same spirits and that we pull from behind the bar and use in these, uh, that's Perry's Tot Gin and Ragtime Rye from the New York Distilling Company down the street from us in Brooklyn. We are sourcing a rose wine blend from upstate in the Finger Lakes. Um, perhaps most importantly, these have the same ratio and ABV of a cocktail made from scratch. Our gin and tonic is 11.5%. It's an 8.4 ounce can. You make a gin and tonic from scratch, it's 2 ounces of gin, 66 ounces of tonic water, maybe a little dilution from ice. That is what you're getting. Uh, since launching we've kept our focus pretty narrow, um, in our backyard of Metro New York, mostly focused on, um, off-premise liquor stores. We're essentially self-distributing and it's a sales team of one for the 1st 10 months that was me, um, hustling around in that time we've opened 130 accounts. We've sold 2500 cases in the last 12 months. Uh, we have, uh, about a reorder rate of around 80% and, uh, all our accounts carry an average of. Three of our SKUs. Speaking of multiple SKUs, I have been along this this whole time. I've been very busy in, uh, what I call the cocktail lab, and this summer we launched 3 more cocktails. We were emboldened by what we learned through that rigorous R&D process the first time around and really wanted to push the envelope with these. So, um, we've got the S Sunkiss Fizz, the Prize Fighter, and the strawberry rhubarb spritz. With this, we wanted to lean into that idea of discovering something new, which I really feel like is like the magic of cocktail bars. You know, I, I love classic cocktails. They're classics for a reason, but you know, when I just explain the Sunkiss Fizz to someone and I say it's a vodka fizz variation with yuzu, peach, key lime, and like a touch of jasmine, and they're like, oh, that sounds really good, you know, like that spark of excitement, that's like what we're looking to capture and bring to market in a can to, you know, any venue or, or occasion where a craft cock someone's unwinding with a drink and a craft cocktail might be a nice option, but a craft cocktail bar is not feasible. Those, those moments are when it's time for social hour. Um, we've been very fortunate to have some amazing feedback, uh, food and wine, wine enthusiasts, Washington Post have all named us one of the best canned cocktails. Um, at the Ultimate Spirits Challenge this past year, we took home Best in category. All of our cocktails scored 90 points or higher. Our gin and tonic scored 97 points. Um, and I, I just can't help but mention that the, it will, it was number 18 in the entire spirits field, and I can't help but mention that number 19 was a 31-year-old bottle of scotch. Um, uh, so, but, but we have not slowed down. I have stayed in the cocktail lab through this, uh, this whole time, and we're actually launching next week our first limited, uh, seasonal offering in collaboration with George Dickle Whiskey. Um, they're bottled in bond expression. This is 13 year old whiskey. The harvest whiskey sour is a whiskey sour variation with maple, cinnamon, a touch of cardamom, um, honeycrisp apple, Meyer lemon. It's 20% ABV. This is, it's not carbonated. It's a huge step towards our mission of bringing a craft cocktail experience, uh, to anywhere outside of a bar. Um, so. You know, we're opposed for some really big strides in 2022, but I think what I'm most excited for is just this category and our opportunity to contribute to it. You know, it's a unique moment for RTDs and uh the RTD category, and I feel like Social Hour cocktails has all the right ingredients to meet it. Thank you.

Speaker 1 [05:18] Well done. Um, Tiffany, let's start with you. Uh, classic cocktail-centric, uh, brand, social hour. What are your initial thoughts on what you heard?

Speaker 3 [05:27] Uh, I love the packaging. I love the product inside. I love the packaging nails it. You see the, you see the cocktail, um, you, you know what you should be delivering it inside of, uh, when you try to do it on your own, that little part, the little left, the little, little part you have to do left when you're at home, put it in the glass, etc. um, all great. I think, uh, the last thing which is really on trend is working with a major spirit brand. That's a key trend as far as where some of the growth is as far as when you look at the category and you start splitting it up, being, um, if you look at some of the most popular, you know, products out there, yep, but it's also having that key brand. I'd be very interested to see how the dickle does. I know it's gonna be great. I worked on that brand when I was 27, um. Uh, 6 pack and assorted. Again, I already said it on other brands. 4 packs. OK, cool.

Tom Macy [06:20] And we cannot do, well, whatever, we'll talk about

Speaker 3 [06:22] multi-pack at a party. It'd be great if it's not at a

Tom Macy [06:24] party, it's, it's 4 packs and people break them up. Yeah, yep.

Speaker 1 [06:29] Uh, Carlson, you know, I think I saw some pretty interesting ingredients, at least for ready to drink cocktails in here. Fernet was one of the ingredients in here. Yeah, OK. Yeah. Um, do you see, uh, these types of ingredients as scalable? Do you think that there's a broad, uh, mainstream opportunity for Uh, some of these products,

Speaker 4 [06:45] first of all, I, I'm ready to facility that variety packs if you want to seem to be very variety pack centric that I'm willing to sign on right now. Um,

Speaker 1 [06:55] technologies,

Speaker 4 [06:56] technologies. Um, I, I, I do think this is enough. I, and, and I, I think that the really, you know, nice thing about this is that you, you touch on. Classics and you touch on a little bit of uh uh uh you know, a walkabout if you will on some of the others and I, I think the only thing you have to be careful with is getting too broad and doing too much rationalization just because you're gonna have a

Tom Macy [07:16] CFO were here he would be like Tom, you gotta remember to rein it in. No, I, I, I take that and yeah it's like I have too many ideas and I know that and it it but for sure focus, focus, focus.

Speaker 1 [07:28] Uh, a slightly higher ABV than some of the cocktails we've seen, slightly lower than others. Uh, Sebastian, I mean, where do you see this sort of, uh, this type of product is fitting into, uh, this, uh, the, the growth of the RTD space?

Speaker 5 [07:42] How do you know the question I wanted to ask? I actually wanted to point out the higher ABV content. Um, what's your calorie, uh, count on that, on those on average?

Tom Macy [07:50] It's like around 200,

Speaker 5 [07:51] 200, OK, because like that's the point, right? The variety we're seeing right now is, is, you know, we're going from 5% or like 4.2% in some cocktails up to 40% with golden rule. I think it's interesting to have. Higher ABV because it's coming closer to the cocktail experience, right?

Tom Macy [08:08] And I will say like I wasn't like I'm gonna make a 10% RTD brand. It was like I'm gonna, I'm gonna make the best damn gin and tonic I could possibly make in a can, and it just turned out that that, I mean that was like actually raising the ABB was kind of the aha moment. It was at 10 and then we raised it to 11, 11.5%. So it really it was just like. Following what the path of deliciousness was really our mission. And

Speaker 5 [08:29] that's great, but because ultimately we're looking for some kind of differentiation in the marketplace with so many brands, and I feel like as Saeed knows there is so much education and so much different understandings of what cocktail actually means and what it doesn't mean. So I like the fact that you're having, you're different in terms of saying, you know what, we do good cocktails and that means that we're like slightly higher ABV content. I like that piece.

Tom Macy [08:52] Thanks.

Speaker 1 [08:53] Saeed, uh, Tom mentioned he was trying to make the best gin and tonic he could possibly make. Uh, did he come close? Did he suc

Tom Macy [08:58] I don't know if you didn't get to the gin and tonic. I didn't get the gin and tonic, but I will say, I can only give you 4. I wanted to.

Speaker 1 [09:05] We'll change the rules for next time. Sorry, please.

Speaker 6 [09:07] I will say that whiskey mule was very spicy and that's exactly what I wanted in my whiskey mule is ginger. Your spice, uh, also I was very, very, very, very appreciative of the spritz that you did as well, like that strawberry rhubarb one. That one, it obviously rhubarb is very perfumey, but it's like if you wanted something like an Ativo style cocktail, that was it. And then also the um the uh the Sunkiss.