In this spirits industry deep dive from Bar Convent Brooklyn 2025, industry leaders revealed the consumer-driven trends and strategic insights reshaping the alcohol landscape. From the global moderation movement and authenticity’s role in brand success to the explosive growth in fruit liqueurs and the evolving American whiskey market, these presentations deliver data-backed analysis on the forces driving today’s most significant category shifts.
How Moderation is Reshaping Alcohol Consumption with Diageo’s Claire Warner
In this presentation from Bar Convent Brooklyn 2025, Claire Warner, Diageo’s Head of Advocacy, reveals how the global moderation movement is reshaping alcohol consumption, driven by longevity, community, and multisensory experiences.
Teremana Tequila CEO on Why Authenticity Wins in a Crowded Market
Richard Black, CEO of Teremana Tequila, reveals how authenticity drives success in the booming billion dollar tequila market—even as 61 new brands flood the space. Discover why 86% of consumers now choose purpose-driven spirits, and how Teremana’s philosophy is reshaping the category.
Where Does American Whiskey Go From Here?
Seth Benhaim, Founder of Badwater Brands, cuts through the noise to reveal the real state of American whiskey—from 14.3 million aging barrels in Kentucky to 5% premium growth opportunities.
Why Fruit Liqueurs Dominate Drink Menus in 2025
Andrew Merinoff, CEO & Co-Founder of Chinola Fresh Fruit Liqueurs, reveals how liqueurs became the secret weapon behind today’s most innovative cocktails – with 10%+ sales growth and top-3 menu placement.
How Moderation is Reshaping Alcohol Consumption with Diageo’s Claire Warner Transcript
Claire Warner (0:03)
I’m Claire Warner, Head of Advocacy for Diageo. I’ve been in the industry for over 20 years, including 15 years spent making Belvedere Vodka for LVMH. Eventually, I left the traditional spirits world behind to help create the sister brand to Seedlip. Both Seedlip and Acorn were subsequently acquired by Diageo in 2020, at which point I returned to Diageo to head up advocacy while continuing to fly the flag for my brand, Acorn—which is admittedly still in a commercial cupboard somewhere at Diageo. I am actively trying to get that brand back out, so any help would be highly appreciated. One of my biggest areas of focus is the concept of moderation as transformation, primarily because I was there right at the beginning of the movement. In fact, I was probably one of the very first people to tell Ben Branson that he was completely crazy and that Seedlip would never work as a business. I am incredibly happy that he chose to ignore me at the time. If you think back to when Seedlip was first introduced, Ben’s core vision was simply to change the way the world drinks. Today, looking at a global category filled with over a thousand independent brands and a market value in excess of $25 billion, we can safely say that the way the world drinks has changed irrevocably.
Claire Warner (1:25)
This transformation is driven by our collective desire to explore entirely new liquid opportunities and social occasions. While the last 10 years have been absolutely instrumental for developing the non-alcoholic space, 10 years is still a relatively short window in the context of global drinking traditions and heritage cultures. There is still an immense amount of opportunity for both the category and the consumer to mature. We are moving to a space where early moderation frameworks give way to liquid choices and social occasions that are less about being restrictive or reductive, and far more about being enriched. It is about prioritizing active celebration over simple restraint or choosing to dial back. Looking at data from the IWSR regarding the next 10 years of moderation, we are entering a landscape where abstract moderation shifts from being the primary consumer driver to a world where taste and deep brand connections take center stage. According to the IWSR, public obsession with basic moderation will reach its cultural peak in 2028. After that milestone, the explicit need to label a lifestyle as ‘moderating’ will decline—not because we are returning to heavy alcohol consumption, but because the underlying societal pressure to avoid drinking will fade into a baseline standard.
Claire Warner (3:17)
Concurrently, we are witnessing Generation Alpha approach legal drinking age alongside younger Gen Z cohorts coming of age. This emerging demographic will select no-and-low alcohol options not simply because they lack an ABV, but because the liquids are genuinely delicious and speak directly to their personal values and lifestyle habits. The liquid must bring something more to the table than just being a substitute bottle. Because of this, we are seeing massive institutional investments in production technology. Moving toward 2030, next-generation brands will be intensely flavor-forward and focused heavily on functional performance rather than just being alcohol-free. This represents a distinct challenge and an exceptional opportunity for brand builders: moving away from simple alcohol reduction to connect deeply with lifestyle integration, establishing an emotional resonance with Generation Alpha and Gen Z. We want to reach a market state where the presence of alcohol becomes beside the point, and consumers choose brands based entirely on flavor profile, functional benefits, and the ability to deliver on a premium brand promise.
Claire Warner 4:37)
Alongside these macro shifts, I am incredibly excited by how the luxury tier is developing into a new space centered around longevity. Luxury is evolving. According to the Global Wellness Institute, the luxury longevity industry is now a staggering $610 billion market. We are seeing luxury move decisively away from superficial status and excess toward self-actualization and personal enrichment. This high-net-worth consumer is the exact profile that will drive the no-and-low category over the next decade. While society has long embraced luxury fashion, travel, and beauty, living a long, happy, and well-balanced life requires focusing intensely on what you choose to put inside your body, which creates a monumental opportunity for our category. Consumers are beginning to treat their own physical bodies as their most valuable personal asset, prioritizing wellness over external markers like a house or a car. This target demographic demands deeply multi-sensory experiences. We are operating in an experience economy, and we must utilize the no-and-low category to drive heightened emotion, sensory feeling, and presence.
Claire Warner (6:24)
This massive shift toward meaningful experiences and multi-sensory moments coincides directly with advancements in food science technology. Functional botanical ingredients will continue to evolve, acting as the primary commercial engine for the category. We are meeting this technological shift head-on with a consumer base that possesses a high amount of disposable income and a willingness to spend premium dollars on functional liquids that help them reach new levels of productivity, mental presence, and personal purpose. This functional landscape is what we are fundamentally drinking toward. In tandem with this trend, we must address the evolution of where we socialize. I am giving another talk later that presents a somewhat contrasting view regarding the decline of traditional commercial third places—specifically, bars and traditional hospitality venues. Unfortunately, this decline is a reality; we are currently losing roughly 50 traditional pubs every single month in the UK as third places become less culturally relevant to Gen Z and Gen Alpha. In their place, what are emerging are ‘Fourth Spaces.’ These are physical gathering zones that transcend traditional geographic limitations, designed specifically to bring a consumer’s online persona offline to connect with people who share their exact niche interests and lifestyle passions.
Claire Warner (7:50)
Traditional third places are beginning to feel antiquated to a modern consumer energized by wellness. Gen Z and millennials are actively seeking out fourth spaces that directly reflect their personal values, connect them with like-minded communities, and surround them with people who are inspired by the same cultural movements. Our statistics show that 95% of these consumers are highly interested in exploring their digital interests through in-person, grassroots events. Furthermore, listings for sober-curious events have grown by 92%, boasting a phenomenal 51% active attendance rate. This is the new frontier for modern socializing, and it requires premium beverage portfolios tailored to fourth-space dynamics rather than standard backbars. Look at the specific liquids currently shaping the future of moderation: the focus has shifted away from imitation alcohol-free spirits toward slow-sipping, social-sipping, and unapologetically flavorful liquids. For example, consider Sylva, Ben Branson’s newest dark wood expression inspired entirely by trees. Ben frequently jokes that he runs a tree company that happen to make drinks from trees. Sylva tastes phenomenal, carries the complex weight of a fine whiskey, and is designed for slow, intentional sipping at home—which aligns perfectly with the data showing that 72% of Americans now prefer staying in over going out.
Claire Warner (9:36)
On the flip side of slow sipping, we are seeing a massive surge in high-performance liquids tailored for a new social body—where athletic fitness meets targeted function and biohacking. This includes social adaptogen brands like Three Spirit, Kin Euphorics, and Hayashi, which are engineered to deliver a clean cognitive performance boost. Finally, we have hyper-flavorful sips that are completely uncompromising on profile. For instance, a recent premium brand collaboration with OTO CBD sold out its entire retail production batch in just three days. This commercial momentum proves that the conversation is no longer just about taking things out of a bottle; it is a celebration of intense flavor, functional utility, unique liquid formats, and beautiful packaging. If you believe there is no more head space left to innovate within the no-and-low category, I would strongly urge you to think again. The single greatest opportunity in beverage alcohol today is to create premium products that help our communities live longer, happier, and healthier lives. Our job as brand builders is no longer just to offer a liquid refresh—our job is to fully restore the modern consumer. Thank you very much.
Teremana Tequila CEO on Why Authenticity Wins in a Crowded Market Transcript
Richard Black (0:03)
It’s great to be here today with you all. I’m Richard Black, the CEO for Teremana Tequila. I’ve spent most of my life in the beverage alcohol industry, but what has happened in the last 10 years within the tequila category has been nothing short of remarkable. It has truly been an incredible growth story, and as a result, the landscape has become increasingly crowded. Breaking through in a highly saturated space is entirely about building authenticity, and that is what I want to walk you through today. Tequila has been one of the primary drivers of the entire spirits category. If we look globally, we see phenomenal macro metrics, highlighted by an +11% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the United States over the last five years. These are mind-blowing numbers driving the category. We are seeing incredible traction taking place in international global markets as well, with the rest-of-world CAGR up over 9% in the last several years. Mexico, the home of tequila, has been more stable; while there has been a lot of product movement within Mexico itself—particularly with the rise of aged, filtered cristalinos—the category overall is very mature there.
Richard Black (1:13)
With the meteoric growth and rise we’ve seen in the global marketplace, there has been an unprecedented wave of new tequila launches. This isn’t just a matter of simple line extensions or new SKUs; we are talking about entirely new brand entities entering the market. Over the last five years alone, 161 new tequila brands have launched. They are bringing completely different production philosophies, diverse taste profiles, and high-profile celebrity backing to the shelf. This provides consumers with a massive array of choices, but it also means this emerging category is becoming incredibly crowded. Let’s discuss how we believe you break through that noise, and how Teremana has successfully broken through as a brand. We truly believe that building real, uncompromised authenticity into your brand infrastructure is what allows you to cut through the clutter. You might argue that authenticity should always be a baseline requirement for any brand, and I completely agree. However, in today’s hyper-transparent world of social media, generative AI, and the internet, consumers can instantly dive deep into your brand to verify exactly where it’s being made, how it’s being produced, and who is genuinely involved behind the scenes. This transparency is why your authenticity today is more critical than ever before.
Richard Black (2:27)
Historically, many highly successful brands scaled up by purchasing bulk liquid from industrial distilleries and contract bottling it. While that remains a perfectly valid way to bring a product to market, those brands weren’t necessarily anchored in deep authenticity, yet they were commercially successful. In today’s market, replicating that hands-off approach would be a severe commercial challenge. We believe there are three key pillars to driving true brand authenticity: being purpose-driven, maintaining consumer-centricity, and establishing active community engagement. First, while your liquid is critically important—your juice has to be excellent to serve as a baseline gate-opener for the consumer—you must establish a corporate North Star. This is a mission that is far more meaningful than just selling boxes of product, and it serves as the ultimate engine driving the brand forward. Second, you must be intensely consumer-centric by putting the drinker at the heart of every operational decision you make, which is something we have done at Teremana from day one. Third, you must build and nurture a dedicated community because your community will ultimately make or break your brand. You have to react to and work alongside your community on an ongoing basis.
Richard Black (3:26)
When combining purpose with consumer-centricity, your mission must be deeply relevant and culturally connected; you cannot fabricate a purpose simply for purpose’s sake. Teremana was launched at the very beginning of the global pandemic. At that time, the world was filled with an immense amount of bad news, uncertainty, and collective anxiety. Our core brand purpose—bringing good ‘Mana’ and sharing positive energy with the world—resonated profoundly with consumers at that exact moment in time. Ensuring that your brand’s core mission is relevant to your consumer’s real-world circumstances is vital for establishing authenticity. How do you ensure your company remains truly consumer-centric? It requires developing a deep, empathetic understanding of your target demographic. This does not require purchasing expensive corporate market research; it is about physically talking to your consumers at grassroots events, engaging with them authentically online, and understanding what truly drives them and what causes they care about.
Richard Black (4:14)
Consumer-centricity also demands consumer-first decision-making. I routinely see spirits companies and startup brands saying, ‘I need to make this operational choice for my route-to-market, or I need to cut this corner for margin and cost,’ completely failing to view the decision through the lens of the end consumer. You must put the consumer at the very front of your strategy. While you obviously have to figure out your logistics and route-to-market mechanics, the consumer’s experience must be the primary lens guiding everything you execute. This leads directly to creating value-driven experiences. Having an exceptional product and great liquid is an mandatory baseline requirement. However, if you want to connect with consumers over the long term, you must engage with them on a deep emotional level, making value-driven brand experiences essential to your commercial success. The final pillar is about empowering and connecting with your communities. We see this across the entire spirit landscape: many of the most successful global brands start by capturing a small, dedicated community and building outward from there. Andrew Merinoff touched on this beautifully when discussing how Chinola successfully cultivated a tight-knit community of trade advocates before expanding in a broader commercial way.
Richard Black (5:14)
True authenticity requires empowering the local communities that your business physically impacts. Tequila features a massive, interconnected agricultural ecosystem. When Teremana decided to build its dedicated distillery, Destilería Teremana de Juanacatlán, in the small highlands town of Jesús María, Jalisco, we directly impacted a local community. We worked hand-in-hand with the local population to ensure our industrial footprint aligned perfectly with what they wanted for their town. Because we established that deep community trust and genuine local partnerships, we were able to reliably supply the market during the severe pandemic lockdowns—one of the most disruptive periods in modern supply chain history. Beyond your production home, it is about showing radical support back to the consumer communities that advocate for you. Because Teremana launched during the pandemic, we chose to show up physically. We built the ‘Mana Mobile’—a roving, customized food and cocktail truck that traveled across the country to visit first responders, feeding them for free after grueling 12-hour shifts. This initiative made a monumental impact by integrating our brand directly into local communities, driving massive organic word-of-mouth advocacy.
Richard Black (6:20)
Teremana is far from alone in this approach; across the spirits industry, authenticity acts as the ultimate differentiator for breaking through crowded categories. Look at a brand like Gray Whale Gin, which carries a beautifully defined purpose. Their entire brand mission is anchored in ocean conservation, which they execute by partnering directly with Oceana and 1% for the Planet, carving out an incredible, highly profitable niche for themselves in the premium gin sector. If you look at Athletic Brewing Company in the non-alcoholic space, they recognized the shifting consumer desire for wellness and great flavor. They knew consumers were actively searching for high-quality, non-alcoholic craft products that didn’t compromise on the beer experience, and their consumer-centric focus has made them a massive commercial success. Finally, consider one of the most successful independent spirit stories in American history: Tito’s Handmade Vodka. They started by owning their immediate local community in Austin, Texas, and systematically scaled that footprint outward. Today, they execute a wide array of philanthropic initiatives through their ‘Love, Tito’s’ platform. One of their most impactful community programs is ‘Block to Block,’ where they partner with local non-profits to build sustainable community gardens and urban farms across the country. That is the true power of community integration, and it has made them an unstoppable force in the spirit space. Bringing it back to Teremana, what has driven our rapid commercial scale—and what will continue to guide us toward 2030—is maintaining clear purpose, putting the consumer at the front of our strategy, and empowering our local communities. This formula has driven a historic commercial success, and we believe we are still at the very beginning of the Teremana journey. Thank you all very much.
Where Does American Whiskey Go From Here Transcript
Seth Benhaim — (0:03)
I’ll give you guys a quick background on myself. I started my career at 24 just after graduating from college when I created a vodka brand designed to be the first single-bottle, fruit-infused vodka on the market, which we ran for almost 12 years. From there, I launched Broken Barrel Whiskey—you may have seen videos of me on Instagram smashing barrels with a sledgehammer in a parking lot for years, which was an incredible amount of fun. After that, I started a consulting firm called Badwater Brands to help independent founders take an idea from a raw concept to a retail-ready product. Most recently, that path led me to an executive role with American Single Malt Capital (ASM Capital). We are a private equity fund raising a tremendous amount of capital to acquire premium single malt whiskey inventory and build out new spirit brands. My role with ASM Capital is unique because I am heading up production for our domestic and global single malt whiskey portfolios, putting those aging casks to great commercial use.
Without further ado, let’s discuss where American whiskey goes from here. As many of you know, the American whiskey sector has faced some serious structural challenges recently. To hit you with the bad news first: whiskey sales are down 1.8% year-over-year. That represents a massive loss of absolute volume when you consider that American whiskey sits right alongside vodka and tequila as one of the largest spirit categories in the country. Right now, there are 46% more barrels aging in warehouses than there were in 2020, resulting in a staggering 14 million barrels of aging whiskey nationwide. Fewer barrels are being dumped, which has created a massive backlog of unsold inventory sitting in the bulk whiskey market. This oversupply is a major headwind for production facilities that banked on contract distilling for non-distilling producers (NDPs) and co-packers. Over the past few weeks, the trade press has been filled with reports of unpaid bills, lawsuits, warehouse liens, and outright distillery closures. Furthermore, the international market has seen some serious bad actors enter the whiskey cask investment space, particularly out of the UK. Several fraudulent companies cheated investors on the promise of the exponential value growth of a whiskey barrel from new-make spirit through years one to five. It sounds like a lot of doom and gloom, and everything I’ve stated so far is admittedly discouraging.
Seth Benhaim (3:15)
Fear not, because if you look closely at the macro landscape, there is immense room for optimism. In the last 100 days alone, we have witnessed three major corporate acquisitions of American whiskey companies. Purple Brands—which owns Redwood Empire—just acquired Savage & Cook in Northern California; the Italian spirits giant Illva Saronno just purchased the New York Distilling Company; and our friends over at Middle West Spirits completed a major acquisition of the prominent NDP, Old Elk. Major moves are happening in the whiskey world. You can choose to look at the negative headlines, or you can recognize that a down market is a buyer’s market where an incredible amount of enterprise value can be created. What I really want to focus on today are the exact commercial drivers that will cause American whiskey to flourish over the next five years as we head toward 2030. The first massive, untapped driver is the export market. Shockingly few American craft whiskey brands have established a real focus on international export. When you travel abroad, you quickly realize how few bourbon and rye brands exist on international backbars relative to the thousands of SKUs crowding our domestic retail shelves. The global demand is there; the internet and social media have exposed global consumers to our liquid innovations, rare releases, and unique finishes. It is easier to get in touch with international importers and brokers than ever before—sometimes it is as simple as sending a direct message via LinkedIn. I highly encourage anyone operating in the American whiskey space to look at the global stage. Consider the vodka category as a case study: a brand like Monopolowa moves over 700,000 cases in the US annually, yet they don’t have a single local brand ambassador doing retail tastings; their entire operation is run seamlessly out of Poland. There are massive export opportunities to drive volume in international territories you might not have even considered.
Seth Benhaim (5:31)
Next, I want to make a critical distinction between differentiation and innovation because they are not the same thing. Differentiating yourself from your competitors and actively innovating within a product category are two completely different strategic vectors. Differentiation can be as straightforward as updating your packaging, refining your marketing message, or establishing a unique brand voice to explain why your bourbon or rye stands apart from the bottle sitting next to it on the shelf. A fantastic resource on this topic is an interview on Park Street University by John Glaser, the founder of Compass Box, where he breaks down the difference between impactful innovation and dull innovation. To give you an example of process innovation from my own experience with Broken Barrel Whiskey: years ago, when the market was becoming completely flooded with standard cask finishing, I felt it was vital to redefine what finishing could look like. Instead of putting liquid into a secondary barrel, we chose to break the barrels apart with sledgehammers and submerge combinations of multi-cask staves directly into the whiskey. That unconventional process won us the ‘Most Innovative Whiskey in America’ title at the American Whiskey Awards. How you present your story and market your production process is how you capture the modern consumer. If you are doing something genuinely innovative with your grain selection, your mash bill, your blending process, or your wood program, put it boldly on your front label. Modern consumers trust what they read on a package, so do not shy away from shouting your innovation from the rooftops.
Seth Benhaim (7:14)
We are also witnessing the rise of entirely new, emerging whiskey categories. For the first time in over 50 years, the federal government officially ratified a new standard of identity for American Single Malt Whiskey. This is a massive, historic deal that elevates American whiskey onto the global luxury stage. Previously, the single malt category was a complete wild west; now, international consumers know exactly what high-quality production parameters they are getting when a bottle reads ‘American Single Malt.’ This regulatory milestone is exactly why I stepped into my current role with ASM Capital. Single malt gives producers a tremendous number of creative levers to pull that bourbon simply cannot touch. Bourbon is strictly bound by federal law to new, charred American white oak barrels. With American single malt, you can leverage a vast array of used casks—such as sherry, port, or wine barrels—and innovate heavily through your malt bills rather than mash bills, playing with chocolate malts, pale malts, and peated distillers’ malts. Premiumization can also be driven purely through creative storytelling. For instance, I recently worked with a client who gave me a blend of standard MGP, Bardstown Bourbon Company, and Green River barrels—effectively the most common, widely available bulk whiskey barrels on the open market. Instead of hiding that, we framed the product around a ‘Tri-County, Four-Grain Blend’ as the core identity of the label, completely changing the narrative of those common barrels to drive a premium retail price.
Seth Benhaim (8:46)
Looking at the economic trends that will push our industry forward toward 2030, the American whiskey category is projected to sustain a healthy 5% compounded annual growth rate in total market value. Right now, bulk whiskey barrels are as cheap as they can possibly get. I am routinely receiving wholesale offers for fully aged, five-year-old bourbon barrels for under $1,000 a barrel; just a few years ago, that exact same barrel commanded upwards of $5,000 on the open market. What this means for an independent brand builder is that the barrier to entry has completely dropped. You can enter the market today and launch a well-aged, ultra-premium, high-value whiskey product at a fraction of the raw asset cost you would have paid just a few years ago. If you operate as a non-distilling producer, there is tremendous margin potential right now. It is a far better time to be buying aged whiskey barrels than it is to be building a costly distillery from scratch. This oversupply will naturally correct itself over the next few years, which is why we anticipate that steady value growth. Personally, I am a massive advocate for radical transparency; I believe in putting every single production detail right on the back label, sometimes to a fault. My packaging has historically been very copy-heavy and text-dense. On the other end of the spectrum, you see iconic luxury brands like Orin Swift’s Slander wine, which features a stark front label with nothing but the brand name. Both approaches can work, but you must maintain absolute authenticity. If you don’t want to crowd your physical packaging, weave your transparency into your social media, your website, and your brand education. Train your field staff so they can confidently explain every single detail of where your grains were grown and how your liquid was distilled.
Seth Benhaim (10:51)
Finally, the current digital direct-to-consumer (DTC) landscape offers an unprecedented opportunity to discover and own a niche community. There are more e-commerce platforms and target consumer groups available than ever before; you just have to find your specific audience. To give you a concrete example: I am currently working with a DTC brand called Find Familiars. They operate entirely online, bypassing traditional retail completely, and they recently sold 5,000 bottles in a single day of their Paladin Whiskey. Believe it or not, their entire brand is geared specifically toward the Dungeons & Dragons gaming community. Find your niche target market and build your brand activation directly around them—whether that means targeting local soccer fans, cigar enthusiasts, or specific lifestyle demographics. If you can communicate with a community in an authentic, transparent voice, you can build a highly profitable business. I never would have guessed that tabletop roleplaying gamers would buy out thousands of bottles of rare, cask-strength whiskey at the click of a button, yet they are currently on their twelfth consecutive single-barrel release and selling out instantly through that digital channel. To throw an innovative idea out to the entrepreneurs in this crowd: look at eSports. There are millions of dedicated eSports fans worldwide who are not children—the demographic skews much older than the general public thinks, and they possess immense purchasing power. How is your brand going to access an audience like that? While this style of community marketing applies to spirits in general, it represents a highly lucrative frontier for American whiskey. I am incredibly optimistic about the future of this category. There is boundless opportunity for brands that choose to innovate, differentiate, and push past traditional geographic boundaries to connect with consumers out in the open. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate your time. You can find me on LinkedIn. Cheers.
Why Fruit Liqueurs Dominate Drink Menus in 2025 Transcript
Andrew Merinoff (0:03)
We’re going to be talking about Chinola, a brand that hopefully most of you are familiar with. The reason I’m going to use it, obviously, is because I’m the most well-versed in it, but it also hits on a category trend that a lot of people have overlooked over the years. We have a tagline that says ‘the future is fresh,’ and it’s for a reason. We looked at four trends really driving industry growth, and flavor-first cocktails was a massive one. If you looked at cocktail menus 20 or 30 years ago, it was a lot of the same; innovation and ‘The World’s 50 Best Bars’ simply didn’t exist back then. We tried to drive through that by offering premium quality products that people are willing to pay a premium for. If you showed a $30 cocktail to an account years ago, you would have been laughed out of the room, but now consumers are willing to put that behind them. Although they might not have what we call ‘smashable’ session cocktails at that price point, they will still have a few. On top of that is the low-ABV appeal, and this is where Chinola hits on all sectors.
Andrew Merinoff (0:52)
We not only hit on sustainability and brand culture, but by telling a genuine story, we’re able to drive that home in a range where you can mix us with a high-proof spirit or a low-proof spirit and truly run the gamut. The last big trend we’ve had to be privy to is influencers, social media, and education. The barriers to entering the spirits space 10 or 15 years ago were much different. There were only 1,600 craft distilleries 15 years ago, whereas there are over 6,000 now. Anyone during COVID-19 realized they could create a brand. If you look at the market—and hopefully there are no Brown-Forman people in the room—Jack Daniel’s didn’t lose 10% market share to just one competitor. They lost it to 6,000 hyper-local brands owning their respective home markets. It wasn’t about a single competitor going to one place and saying, ‘All right, I’m going to fight you here.’ It was death by a thousand cuts, with a thousand brands winning their home bars. That was something we really wanted to capitalize on, and that is where Chinola plays its biggest role as the ultimate quality ingredient.
Andrew Merinoff (1:49)
A key operational factor for us was convenience. A lot of bars will obviously make their own fresh purees and liquid ingredients at the bar level, but consistency is key. One of our biggest driving factors was solving a major corporate challenge: how do you get a Marriott-type account with 15,000 locations to execute the exact same cocktail over and over again? When Chinola was first invented years ago, it was literally made in a Vitamix blender and stored in a water bottle. The liquid would separate and turn brown. In fact, one of the first trade people I ever brought it to looked at it and said, ‘What the hell is this lava lamp doing on my desk?’ because it looked that bad. It took five years of technical innovation to stabilize. When we finally launched in 2018, we made just a few hundred cases and sold them to our friends. In 2019, we made a few hundred more and expanded slowly into two, four, then six states. Our expansion was deliberate and long; we didn’t chase the shiny object of a big retailer like Total Wine offering to put us in 30 states at once. We went state by state, and today Chinola is available across five continents and 42 states, accounting for 15 million cocktails on menus this year.
Andrew Merinoff (2:49)
What we did is look at a universal bar challenge. We realized that every bar in the world, aside from physical seats, patrons, and bartenders, has two basic staples: liquor and simple syrup. I applaud anyone who bottles simple syrup and successfully sells it into retail to consumers who don’t realize it’s just a 50/50 mix of sugar and water. What these bars lacked was citrus and consistency. Operating in a market like New York, refrigeration space is at an absolute premium. Fresh citrus goes bad quickly, requires intense manual labor, and isn’t consistently flavorful—a single bad lime can easily ruin an entire batch of fresh juice. Our solution was to pre-batch the simple syrup, real fruit, and booze into a single bottle, effectively knocking out three steps outside of the bar. This completely changes the mathematics of a pour. While the average liqueur pour across the US is a fractional 0.25 to 0.5 ounces per cocktail, Chinola’s average pour is 1 to 1.5 ounces because our liquid is citrus-forward rather than sugar-forward. That allows bartenders to balance out cocktails more effectively while pouring through our inventory three to six times faster than our top five competitors. We offer a shelf-stable option that allows bartenders to be storytellers. I love winning over everyday consumers, but they are expensive to market to and only make a few drinks a week at home. A bartender makes 500 to a thousand drinks a night. To build true brand evangelists, you start with a good story and turn the trade into your storytellers.
Andrew Merinoff (4:19)
We also focused on simplified home mixology. One of the key things we noted during COVID-19 lockdowns was the need to get consumers at home to make cocktails without fear. We launched a drink called the ‘Chismosa’—which means ‘the gossiper’ in Spanish—composed of three parts sparkling wine and one part Chinola. That simple drink was our Trojan horse. Bartenders were furloughed and people weren’t going out, but they were entertaining at home. We used a simple recipe to drive volume; even a server who doesn’t know how to make a complex cocktail can easily pour a few ounces of sparkling wine into a glass and top it with Chinola. For the next step, we gave whipped cream canisters to 100 bars and showed them how to make an artisanal passion fruit foam to top the drink. It became a fantastic party trick. From there, we showed them how to make a passion fruit sangria by changing the base wine, using ingredients they already had at home. That is how we built a permanent presence on the back bar.
Andrew Merinoff (5:16)
One of the brands that executed this style of positioning best is Aperol with the Aperol Spritz. They completely own that drink by name definition; even when competitors try to introduce a version of it, consumers still call it an ‘Aperol Spritz’ variant. At Chinola, we knew we couldn’t win that exact same battle, so we chose to create and defend our own three hero cocktails. The first is the Porn Star Martini, which is one of the most famous drinks to ever hit Europe and is currently the second most searched cocktail in the world during its current renaissance. Although bartenders can swap the base spirit, you cannot change the fact that the drink requires passion fruit, so we can directly attack that menu placement. The second is the Mango Lassi cocktail, targeting a flavor profile well-versed to a massive portion of the global population; few brands in the US have geared craft cocktail programs specifically toward Indian restaurants, and we were able to capture that demographic. Last but not least is my personal favorite, the Piña Colada. If you have ever put fresh pineapple into a blender, you know the foam rises aggressively to the top and is almost impossible for a busy bartender to maintain. While we created a flavor profile that honors the Dominican Republic, we also built a liquid that is incredibly hard to replicate from scratch at a high-volume bar. You can walk into a grocery store and easily find fresh orange juice or apple cider, but you rarely see fresh, high-quality pineapple juice, and that is exactly what we stabilized into a bottle.
Ultimately, this strategy unlocks massive commercial opportunities. Whether you are marketing a liqueur, a base spirit, or a premium modifier, relevance behind the bar starts with being an indispensable part of the creative process. Becoming a staple in the bartender’s seasonal innovation is the fastest way to drive your brand home. We fit seamlessly between all current macro trends: from low-ABV to high-ABV execution, fresh agricultural formatting, sustainability, and paying fair wages to our farmers. The best part is partnering directly with the trade. When you bring bartenders down to the Dominican Republic and they physically plant the fruit, that experience stays with them forever. They return to their bars and brag about our story to their guests. This brand was created by the trade, for the trade, and that is how we expand. Never forget the trade, keep coming back to BCB, and I truly appreciate your time today.
More Resources on Beverage Alcohol Trends
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Beverage Alcohol Industry Forecast in U.S. and Around the Globe
Mergers & Acquisitions for the First Half of 2025 in the Beverage Alcohol Space