Brewbound Pitch Slam 13 Finals - Dokkaebier

Speaker 1 [00:11] Up next is Youngwon Lee from Dokkaebier. Youngwon, come on up. Thank you.

Yangwn Lee [00:17] So I just press

Speaker 1 [00:18] press timer

Yangwn Lee [00:20] and your timer. All right. Hi, I'm Youngwon Lee. I'm founder of Dokkaebier. Um, I've been in the alcohol industry over 10 years, and I've been to a lot of beer festivals, and what I've noticed over and over was that I was the only Asian guy pouring beer at the event like today. Uh, so, but it was a, a positive thing and I thought I was always the unique one. So when I decided to start my own brand, I thought being more original and true to myself would actually make us stand out and differentiate us and bring something new to the market. Our name um comes from the Korean mythical creature Dokkaebi that loved to eat, drink, and have fun with people, and, you know, they're wonders and shapeshifters. So we travel around, partner with local breweries, and we took the same, uh, shape-shifting approach and we create a series of experimental beers, uh, trying out different ingredients and flavors. Um, thanks to the judges, uh, uh, last year, we've taken some good feedback and upgraded our visuals from the left, uh, being very super minimal to something that's more straightforward with real ingredients in there. And if you see, look closely, there, you know, Tokib is hiding in the middle. And this is our creative outlet, this is our experimental batch, and When people, this is our sort of finding our own way of uh product-market fit, and we hear the feedback and people love it, then we redesign the package and refine the recipe and add it to our core brew lineup. So since then, we've have uh 10 beers on our core line and, uh, thankfully, we got some, uh, international, like, you know, design awards as well as, uh, a beer competition, uh, recognition. And Um, these 4, core beers are our bestsellers at the moment. So we have a Pilsner, uh, made with the bamboo leaves. We have a kettle sour. We pulled a culture from kimchi. We added chili powder and ginger in there. Uh, we have a blondele with the yuza, Asian citrus, and we have a milk stout with a, with a cardamom and peppercorn. Um, so these are the beers that we want to take it to the next level, and that's something that we will try to scale and produce in higher volume so we could actually distribute nationally. Um Yeah, sorry. Yeah. And, you know, we're, we take an Asian approach to our beer, but if you can look at over here, this is an LA Beer Festival that happened 2 months ago here and with over 6000 attendees, and we have a mainstream appeal, and we were the uh most popular brewery and most creative brewery, uh, at the event. So it was a good feeling coming out of the pandemic and then kind of seeing that uh our proof of concept is actually working and we have a lot of followers coming here. Um, in terms of our distribution, we're, uh, available diverse on a diverse on and off-premise channels. Uh, so from like local, uh, grocery stores to Bevmo to Asian retailers, uh, that never sold crap beer before. Uh, this is a good example of a Korean supermarket, um, sponsored by Coca-Cola. That refrigerator holds 13 cases of our 16 ounces. And, you know, because we're the exclusive crappier there, we actually moved 2 to 4 times the regular volume at our regular, uh, sort of beer focus accounts. Um, yeah, because, you know, the funny thing is craft beer is a huge market, but yet no one is marketing to us 1990 million Asian-Americans in the States. So we wanna grow in the sector. Um, And we're always, uh, I think being deeply rooted into our local community is really important for us. So we do collaborate with the local nonprofits and we sometimes pull out all our, all our recipes, put it into a special release so that we could, you know, contribute to the local community. Um, and this was part of it as well. Uh, there was a Korean movie that won a lot of Oscars this year, and that movie is about a Korean, uh, you know, immigrant life, and it really touched my heart. So I decided to make a beer that's dedicated for this beer. Um, uh, movie to really tell the story further. So we use water celery, which is the minar, the title of the movie, and we use a seed from it and we added lemon and, uh, lime on it and made a wheat beer out of it to represent sort of the bitter life and then the bright future that we dream about because it all starts with the seed, an idea, a starting point, a beginning of something great. Um, so, please join me and let me take you on a journey to the Far East.

Speaker 1 [04:37] All right. All right. Um, Laura, let's start with you. Um, you know, what are your thoughts on the, the taste, the packaging of Dokkaebier?

Speaker 3 [04:48] Uh, first of all, I love your enthusiasm. I love your connection to community. Um, this is probably the, the most unique, um, that I sampled and have, uh, looked at and, um. Just curious with a a product like this, is it just going to be focused in Asian markets is there, you know, is your idea is to expand beyond that and and how do you bring in that that consumer that um doesn't understand some of these ingredients and the attributes of your product?

Yangwn Lee [05:23] Yeah um. Can we have the microphone on? Um, I think the craft beer industry, the consumers are always open to trying new flavors. So I think we have, uh, we're received pretty well. Um, we're also available at local supermarkets like Gus's Market. Uh, we're available in about 200 locations right now, and I think 80% are actually the regular craft beer industry, and the Asian community is supportive, but it does have a higher learning. Curve. Uh, they've never sold craft beer before. It's more of an Asian, uh, Asian version of Budweiser, Kas Qingdao kite. So there's a learning curve. It takes me about 6 months of a sales cycle to get in, but once they get in, they love it. They, they come to me, Hey, am I actually selling really well? I just sold like 20 cases. Can you come here and then ref, you know, fill up the refrigerator? Some of our accounts, they don't even know what's in the. Refrigerator and we just go in there and fill it up because they love it but I think it appeals to the both community uh because for existing beer market it's, uh, finally like something that's new and that's perceived as something innovative and I think, uh, as you tasted it and I think we're hitting the right notes in terms of the regular beer drinkers and you know, kind of exploring and take a journey, uh, through the flavors.

Speaker 1 [06:38] Veronica, playful brews, unforgettable taste, um, unforgettable taste is, is great. Playful also helps to sell product as well. Do you see the playfulness outlined here on the packaging, or does it need to be up, uh, uh, increased, decreased

Speaker 4 [06:51] a little bit? Yeah, I think I got that definitely from the pitch more, um, where you're taking the story of shape shifting and making that the core of what inspires your next flavor. Um, I'm curious how you will, I, I, I guess from like a marketing perspective, like, it seems like your customer is going to be a very curious person, someone who's willing to take risks on flavors or ingredients that they might not have heard of. How are you gonna keep them, you know, um, engaged and, and able to find you?

Yangwn Lee [07:21] Um, so a lot of our customers, they come to our website and then when they get it they do a variety pack. So the variety pack actually has every single flavor that are available at the moment and then they take the journey and then kind of find their own, uh, favorites and then when they come back again they, you know, go for their, you know, favorites and because. Our sort of that experimental beer is our test uh for finding our product market fit. So, a lot of times when we add to these uh core lineup, these are the ones that we actually already received feedback and went through a couple of badges and that are sort of, uh, um, our proven, you know, flavors.

Speaker 1 [07:56] Great. Yeah, uh, Malika, the addressable market, I think that Youngwon outlined was tens of millions of Americans, Asian Americans that the beer industry is not addressing, not reaching. Um, can Dokkaebier not only reach those folks, do you think, but folks beyond that ethnic group?

Speaker 5 [08:11] Absolutely, you know, I think, um, we've been talking about inclusivity and diversity this week and. Um, so much of that is, is reflecting the people you wanna bring into the industry, reflecting the people you wanna bring into your brand through how you talk to them and the ingredients you use, and I think Der Beard does exactly that. Um, and you know I said yesterday I love this idea of global and local that the brand is bringing to life. That's an immigrant story that is uniquely American. It certainly speaks to Asian consumers, but I think it speaks to what America is about. You had that in some of your marketing material, and I think the connection is there. It's that storytelling and continued repetition of bringing people. in that'll be important for scale.

Speaker 1 [08:53] Mhm. Thank you, Ryan. We only have a few seconds left, but you get the last word on Dokkaebier.

Speaker 6 [08:57] Yeah, I mean, I would just say I think you know this, but be careful going national too quickly. I think, you know, if you could, if you could see the Bay Area correctly where the Asian accounts, the consumers pulled into the, the mainstream accounts and you build a really good market there, I think that'll naturally pull you into the right other markets, um, but just be careful to do that at the right time.

Speaker 1 [09:13] All right, great feedback. Well done. Thank you.

Yangwn Lee [09:15] Thank you.