Brewbound Pitch Slam 14: Finals - Shoal Draft Cider

Speaker 1 [00:24] All right, up next we have Gretchen Espenson, who is the founder of Shoal Draft Cider. Come on up. So you have your,

SKU Mageddon [00:36] so is it this

Speaker 1 [00:37] one or that one, either one, and your

SKU Mageddon [00:39] time. Good morning. First, I want to thank, uh, the panel that spoke about citer yesterday. You guys made my job up here a lot easier today. I don't have to try to explain cider. So There we go. Getting the message out about the brand is the most important and most difficult job of being the cider company that I am. Of course, now you know the key traits about the cider and hopefully you've also had a chance to taste it. One of the things I do, and this is because I have a very minimal budget, I get creative with my marketing. In-kind sponsorships of events that align well with my brand, product placements. I've even been, um. Collaborating with some million dollar yachts to like put product on them so they take pictures during their. Uh, magazines and stuff. And that I find is really nice to connect that brand to to the lifestyle. And again, if you haven't tried them all yet, you should absolutely give them a try. They are in fact up the bar. All right, so this is the big meat and potatoes. How am I a blue-haired woman. Without stacks of cash. Making all of this work. The fact is, is that I knew that I had to be laser focused and have an aggressive business strategy that allowed me to not get distracted by things like tap taprooms, um, which are very fun and very wonderful and do have a good source of income, but you need the capital to make it happen, so I don't have that taproom distraction and I don't have plans to do so in the near future. Instead, I focus on consistency of quality of product, uh, consistency of delivery, and brand support specifically towards the distributed the distribution companies. That means that I'm SKU Mageddon aware there are too many SKUs. We all know about this. I want to intend on maintaining a small footprint of overall flavors, so making sure that there's only 3 to 5 flavors, so I'm not trying to push 15 different things at every distributor at once. I wanna work with you guys. So how is this working? Well, so far, so good. I've already sold over 90 barrels. And I have 40 very active accounts that are repeat customers to this day. These are active and current cus accounts. I'm excited to say that I have a distribution deal that will start this spring. In some of the most populous and wealthy counties around, uh, DC and in Maryland. And that means also that my production projections for this coming year are a whopping at minimum 400 barrels, which is a huge scary increase, but I'm very excited to do it. And again, my company, because it is sole is reliably paying itself off, which is very nice. So how do I plan to make that, that five-year coastal thing happen? Invest in marketing, fine tune and be perfect at my logistics, uh, and warehousing. Stay true to my lean strategy and commit to brand excellence support for my distributors and again keep making hard cider for fun people. Thank you.

Speaker 1 [04:25] You can hang on to that microphone. Judges might have some questions for you. You can slide over here for the cameras. Fantastic. Uh, Jess, let's start with you, um. I believe it was $13 for a six pack. It was affordable cider or approachable cider at affordable price. Is that, is that what it was? Um, you know, what do you think about that, uh, sort of as a, as a pricing strategy, Jos?

Speaker 3 [04:46] Well, I'm based in the DC area, so obviously, you know, that's where your, your market is. That's something that you see on a, on a regular basis there, especially for something like handcrafted like this. I think the consumers are ready for it, um. But when you talk about, you know, you've got your distributor in mind, you said a bunch of things that a lot of people don't say when talking to distributors, so really appreciate putting quality is number one. That's key, um, really appreciate focusing on a couple of core products and not just, you know, knowing that you're aware of that is huge, um, you know, and, you know, feet on the street, so I think that's key and then the other thing that we really care about is keeping us in stock. Um, and I know sometimes with the rotations it's a little bit difficult, but you know, just, just stay to those four things and you're gonna do really well.

SKU Mageddon [05:30] Thank you so much,

Speaker 1 [05:31] Jamie. We have the, the long term strategy laid out. It's still an early stage for, uh, Gretchen, but, uh, you know, what do you think of this as sort of the, uh, the long term vision for the company or the longer term vision for the company?

Speaker 4 [05:42] I like how focused you are, you know, you've got your footprint, you've got, you know, your. Assortment really tight and I think it's really smart that you're not coming out with a slew of of different flavors and I like the rotation to keep things fresh so I think that's really smart um the one question that I would have for you is how you're thinking about quality control just given the um the small team that you have from the start so how are you thinking about that and. Um, question number 1 and then the second question is just, I know you have contract manufacturing, but how do you intend to service all of the accounts that you have with yourself and one part-time salesperson.

SKU Mageddon [06:23] So to answer the first question, I actually work, um, with my contract producer, and they understand that I send out a sample of each product to third party testing. Um, after delivery, and I share that information with them and to make sure that we're still in parameter, so that's something I am very aware of, um, and want to keep on task as far as how do I service all of these accounts with just me and maybe one other person. That's where the distributors come in again. My company is very focused on being distributor facing, so I know I cannot do it all alone. I only have 40 accounts, and that's about as much as I can personally maintain. So, um, then that focus is gonna shift to. Um, hiring people that will facilitate and help the distributors do the sales and help them and their region as a brand representative as brand ambassadors, so I am very well aware of that little. Growth that needs to happen.

Speaker 4 [07:29] Right, thanks.

Speaker 1 [07:30] Rich, we heard, uh, Gretchen talk about being lean and a lean business strategy is really the approach she has, uh, uh, when she launched the brand and going forward, um, as an early entrepreneur yourself, I mean, what do you think about that strategy? What, what are some of the things that you saw in the presentation that, uh, make you think that that is a strategy that will work?

Speaker 5 [07:48] Yeah, I mean, I, I do believe it's a good strategy because like you said, like you're bootstrapping this a lot yourself like you can't, um. Let your like overhead costs like um you know be higher than the demand for the product so like you kinda have to bootstrap it and maybe say no to an account early but let them know that you'll be ready later so it makes a lot of sense um expanding up the East Coast it makes sense it's all within the uh brand message but I guess I wanted to know like are you looking to expand like outside of like East coastal like coastal cities. And like if so like how would you do that with like your current branding?

SKU Mageddon [08:24] You know, for right now I'm, I don't know how I would do that just because of the logistics of shipping heavy product these days is not really financially, doesn't look financially smart. So is there a day where I'm on both coasts and on the lakes and, you know, in Kansas? Maybe, hopefully that'd be great, but right now I'm focusing on. Being firmly entrenched in my area in the area that I understand and makes logistical sense.

Speaker 1 [08:55] And Ryan, um, we heard Gretchen talk about Scholl being the fun brand or a hard cider for fun people. You can see it up there. How much of a differentiator do you think that is for the cider category?

Speaker 6 [09:06] I mean, I think branding is huge. I mean, I think that the liquid's gotta be good first, which you're already focused on, but then the brand needs to follow after that. Um, and I would echo what my judges said, I mean, like the focus you have is really impressive. You're saying a lot of things that Honestly, a lot of beverage entrepreneurs don't say until 3 or 5 years into their journey, so you've got a lot of things already figured out and focus, being concise, being focused on what works for distributors and retailers and your partners there, and staying really, uh, focused on repeat buyers, on velocity, on the right markets is huge. So congratulations. Thank you.

Speaker 1 [09:36] Well done. Great stuff. Thank you.