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You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
All right, everybody, so our next guest. I think we last cut up. It was Saint Patrick's day. It was very appropriate. But as many folks know, we don't need an excuse to drink whiskey Irish whiskey to be excited.
I think that's fair to say. There's also Scotch whiskey, US whiskey, Canadian whiskey.
There's more. And listen, this is a big market, a global market. There's lots of players, but we want to bring in one who's got his own little take on it and back with us. Is Aiden Meghan. He's founder of Natterjack Irish Whiskey and he joins us once again in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. Wearing shorts because it's hot out right.
So it's hotter on the New York that it is in Texas.
You're speaking my language. I came in and out every day here wearing shorts. Everybody gives me a hard time.
I was instructed by my wife not to wear shorts, so thank you for outing me on that.
We just did a.
Story about shorts, no shorts in the office, and we did a whole segment on it because apparently some people are like, yeah, it's really hot, why not it's gotten casual, and others are like, you can't do it.
You can do it. Okay, I can do it. You can do it.
How are you.
Amazing, really really good? Yeah, thank you for having me back.
It's been a few months. Tell us something's been.
Going, and things have been going great. So look, we've been traveling to anyone who will have us to go and promote the whiskey. We're now in fourteen states in the US, we'll be in twenty by the end of the year, and then with a bit of a tailwind twenty five by Saint Patrick Say and we open up
New England. So it's been just been incredible. The reception to the whiskey has been great, and we got national national distribution through through Total Wine and More, which was massive because we won Irish Whiskey the Year for twenty twenty four.
Those recognitions are important, are Yeah, we've talked about it with our own crater on the restaurant side, in terms of like different global recognitions. What it global recognitions? Excuse me what it means for a restaurant, but for you guys, like, these are things that move the needle.
Yeah, and the previous winners are like the massive, like the twenty twenty two bottle. That one is a thirty year old Irish whiskey and it's two and a half round a bottle. Ours is eighty. So you talk about value, and everyone loves value or it doesn't matter who you are. So it's a it was really just an incredible award and it was really well taken. It opened up these
kind of chains. We've just opened up a big chain in Texas as well, so these are these are massive for Look, we've got a I think we've got a good story, but people are like where can I buy it? And it's really it's really frustrating when you're like, well there's local liquor store on sixth and and you're just like that's not a compelling story. So so this is this change this year. It's been amazing.
So talk about that process of going state to state here, because I think a lot of people who've lived in different states might understand that local and state liquor laws very drastically across borders. Absolutely, So it's like it's really tough on a distribution level, especially if you're a small independent player to succeed here. How do you do it?
So you partner with In our case, I'm gonna speak to our case, because we're not with one of the big distributors, with individual distributors in each in each market. So what we do is we go we educate them, we incentivize them to to incentivize them by bring them along on the journey, right, So meet them, spend time with them, spend time in market with them, telling the story so they can then effectively tell the story as well.
That's a slow process.
Oh, it is absolutely. I think I was home two days in May, so you're on the road. It's it is pounding the pavement. But that's actually what we've got to do. But then you add to the team, right, So we're now up to we have eight reps, we've a national sales director, we're just about to hire a national marketing director, and we've got three people in Ireland. So it's it's like it's a lot of a lot
of pounding the pavement. But as you scale you then you get them to tell the story and they can educate people.
And I want to get to the story. But I do feel like it's a it's a moment in time, or has been for years that in the liquor market, the alcohol market overall, that starts newcomers can really find a niche for themselves, that people are interested. I think consumers are looking for different choices.
They are, and they're looking for authenticity as well, right, And I think at the larger brand level that authenticity doesn't speak to someone who's who's into the process or into starting a business or those sorts of things. They struggle with that. So so for for a brand like ours, yeah, it's an amazing time to be able to actually go and meet the people and tell them our story.
Remind us of your story for those tim was it here?
I wasn't here.
Do you like this because you know I missed us when you guys did this. Shanali was with us. Shanali Bosik, one of our reporters, talked to us though about your story remind our world.
So I yeah, I was an equity trader and a hedge fund back in in twenty fifteen. I think was when I kind of had the moment. I was like, look, is this everything that I want to do with my life? Like I loved it. I think I was okay at it, like a decent career, but I was like I wanted to build something. I wanted to build a business. Now I was running the business with my partners and that sort of stuf. But I was like, this is the time for me to go do that, right, I had
no real responsibilities at a house. I sold the house and moved back in with my parents, which they were very good to take me in for a couple of years. And that was it. Yeah, I sold the house and that was just like how much is this going to take? It turns out it took a lot more time and a lot more money than I ever fathomed. But then we got outside investment and our investors are based out of Michigan, and so so the first thing I had to do is I had to build a team. So I
found Jordan via whose artist Doller. I found a team of industry guys to help me because had no idea what I was doing. And in some ways, I still.
How do you do that? Or is that just the trader mentality, I don't know, let's figure.
Outlet's figure it out on the go, right, So I built I found actually my first business plan recently. It's dreadful, like it is absolutely horrific. So you go and you you learn, right, and so the business plans that they as they as it grew, it kind of became its own kind of thing. And then and everyone.
Told horrific, Like what was it about it that you went that everything like Jim's and NBA, he could have you get it.
You could have putished it up for me, but like maybe maybe not. So the like it's the graphics were dreadful, the layout was dreadful. It was it my focus was in the wrong place, right. I didn't realize what it
took to build a whiskey company. I had this idea, we'd buy a building, we'd put in stills, and we wait for five years and very and then of course no one, no one has any problem with the execution risk of someone who doesn't know what they're doing, doing it for five years and then finding out if what they did sales right. So I just didn't understand that, and it took a long time to kind of get my head around.
That the five year time horizon is some seriously delayed gratification here. I mean, it's not like you're throwing an app on the app Store, the minimally minimally viable product to see if it actually resonates with consumers, like this thing has to hit or else you're out of luck.
It does, right, and then but I also think what I didn't want to do was what a lot of my peers had done, which is release of vodka origin, and that was that's that. What I did know what I wanted to do was is that clearly, yeah, you and I could have a gin in twelve hours, so it could. I had a bath, Tim and Aiden's gym boom right.
So so when Tim's not doing over the regat.
So I needed to so but I wanted to do whiskey. So then we need to source whiskey. But this is back in twenty fifteen sixteen, that wasn't much available from a sourcing perspective. So I got you know, I got offered eight thousand liters of this two thousand liters of eight year old double still, and I was like, I could buy that. Now I've got the capital and we can take it to market. But what happens then if it's a success, I can't get any more of it.
So then that was all that was available contract. Yeah. Yeah, So I learned that, you know, I learned that I wanted a plan for scale, that we wanted to go for something that could really take off and if it takes off, that there's not so many breaks on it. Because what I didn't want is to have them as a huge success and be like, Okay, you can have some more five years when everyone's forgotten about it and
you sit around going bankrupt. So so I really we held off and held off until we could get that proper supply contract that would allow us to grow. And we've now secured five years is worth of what we need for the growth trajectory that we're on. So it's been amazing, But that meant we had to push it back a year, and that's a year. Don't forget me and my parents' basement, they're like, what are you doing? I'm like, well, I'm like.
How hard were you?
Ye? Love five? I'm not being judging thirty five. It's like that's what parents are for.
They take in when they need it exactly.
And then but then I met my wife and I was like, yeah, I need to move back.
Yes, you is going to go back to the parents.
Hey, but she she loved you.
Then yeah, that's a big thing, exactly exactly.
But you also had to deal with the pandemic.
Yeah, yeah, and that was that put us into a kind of a tail spin. Right, So we had initial investors who weren't happy with how it goes. And the weird thing about the pandemic is Perna, Rickard and Diaghia, the big companies were doing really well because they own every part of the shelf. So if you wanted a twenty dollars or one hundred and twenty dollars bottle that were two hundred two two thousand dollars, they owned everything. We had one skew, right, so it's like who's taking
a punt on a fifty euro bottle of whiskey. We've got the pricing wrong as well. But during the pandemic and so sales slowed, but they actually continued in the US, and because we pivoted a little bit to urs, so we were able to pivot because of our display our display box into the off prem the US. By the end of the pandemic, we were in kind of nine states and that was pretty amazing.
Wow, which really kind of gives you some momentum.
Right, Yeah, when you expand to a new state, how much do sales grow very briefly.
At the start, very small, You've got to go. You've got a program.
So it's not just being available, it's about educating the folks.
Zoom shows. We go to shows, we educate. We do staff trainings in chains of bars or in bars, right, and you try and get onto cocktail lists and then you try and get the placement in the right place behind the bars that people can see because the toad people do call out the toad.
So yeah, the toad on the bottle.
I gotta say, like there are times like I'm buying one, I'm like, I kind of like that bottle.
What it looks like.
Your bottle is pretty cool. And we're going to get into the toad in just a moment, because you guys have actually been doing some really honorable stuff around that and making sure that the toad stick stays around for a long time. We're going to come back to Aiden Aiden Meghan, he's founder of Naderjack Irish whiskey. We might even sample some.
Oh, yeah, it is Friday.
It is Friday, five o'clock almost somewhere. No, it's five o'clock somewhere, was five o'clock here here. We want to get back to Aid and Meghan, he is founder of Naderjack Irish whiskey. Who is here back here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. You brought us something. We want to talk about the mistake. What is the mistake?
So our blend for Blend one and for a cast strength, it spends three and a half years expert one year Virgin Oak, right, So I thought we'd taken out in twenty twenty are Blend one blend and put it into steel containers for the next time we needed to do it. So the pandemic was on, we didn't have a huge need for whiskey. So about a year later I called up the guy who'd done it and I was like, where's that whiskey now? And he's like, it's still in barrel.
I was like, wow, no, you can't, we can't take it. So I was like, well, we're going to do because I can't sell that as Natterjack and I didn't have a brand for it, so it's like, okay, So we left it and then Jordan, via our distiller, was so he tasted about six months and he's like, that is
the best whiskey we've ever made. It's incredible. So he's like, so we said, okay, great, Well this is what a screw up becomes a good thing, right, and evolution is full of mistakes and and but we everyone was like, okay, let's let's let's really market this. We're going to say, you know, this was always your vision for the whiskey. And I was like, but that's all, like, it's a lie.
Continue talking.
So I was like, let's call it. Let's call it a mistake. I've made some huge mistakes in my life. So some of the best parts of life come from mistakes. And I was like, let's just own it. It was Wow, it was a screw up that sounded very good. It is. It's like our whiskey is a year older and one year later in virgin How big of a badge, forty six barrels. It's all sold. Yeah, huge, you can't. You can get some through natterjack dot com. And it's when I when I say it's sold, it's left our left
our distribution right. So it's still in stores, but we don't have that's the I haven't seen a bottle in since I saw on today. Smells really heavenly, thank you. Yes, So it's really heavy on the outlass to walk us through. So it's a little bit lighter on malt than our original blend, but it's still in there.
About seventeen or smell lighter, yeah, I feel.
And then there's lots there's still the char number four and still for me, toasted walnut, a little bit of cinnamon and it got it.
I just sit here and smell for the next how many minutes?
Five minutes?
It got amazing?
So what does that teach you? As someone like these mistakes? So now are you guys experimenting more?
Yeah, we are. We're playing around with it, we we do. You know what it taught me? It taught me that problems are only problems if you see them as problems. That's pretty nice, right, So you.
This is why you make mistakes in life?
Sorry? Sorry? Yeah, So my biggest trading steak was about Korean one non deliverable forwards, which is which cost me my job in the really yeah did yeah? I rolled the wrong amount. I didn't know what a non deliverable forward was. So I now know what a non deliverbal forward is and I no longer. So some mistakes cost a job.
Some mistakes can make a great credible delivery, like yeah, yeah, and I think it's our I think it's our best whiskey.
But then also for our first shipment to China in twenty nineteen, big shipment on a thousand cases, we had had a thousand case order was the first year of the business. Fay and I hand dipped all the bottles in black wax and they all got sent to China. But they went through the equator, which is fifty degrees liquid expanded because it's hot, wax man because it melts packed and so all the bottles opened. So it got to China and they said they opened it and it
smelt amazing. There was no whiskey, so sorry, it was all open. So we turned that that was a mistake. Yeah, turned that into mister Wang Or, our Chinese distributor, came in and he was like, are you going to cover the cost of this And I was like, no, You've got insurance. He's like, my insurance doesn't cover wax melting, and liquid expanding in the equator, and I was like, Okay, if you triple your order, I I'll cover the cost.
The first one He's like, don't. So our year was a complete was amazing in twenty nineteen because this big fast at your feet there. Oh yeah, I couldn't believe it. When he woke down, it was like because I knew I was gonna have to pay if I wanted, Like.
Yeah, Aiden. One thing I wanted to talk about was just the changing viewer around alcohol that we're seeing here in the US. I was with some family like cousins, extended cousins, extended family over the weekend, and everybody was talking about, Hey, did you guys see that article in the Times over the weekend about people drinking less and alcohol actually not being good for you at all?
And it seems like.
Study after studies coming out that says like, okay, you know, even in moderation, alcohol isn't good for you. How do you think about stuff like that?
I do think about it quite a bit, and I think there definitely is a movement that way. And look, I think we know that alcohol isn't in moderation. It's one study one day says it when the other day says right, but for me it's it is definitely a
movement towards drinking less and also drinking better. So when we talked about authenticity and knowing the process and knowing the producers, I don't I think that's really an opportunity for us for people to say, right, well, if what I'm going to have tonight is one whiskey, I want to drink something where it actually means something to me. So it's an opportunity to connect with a consumer in order to really bring them along in the journey with you.
If you only have the one whiskey, make it a natter jack, right, Don't spend like it's like anything, right, don't spend your calories on a cheap donut, Go and get a really nice donut. And the same is And I think that's how we try and tell that story as well.
So like my mother, it's like when you're gonna go shopping, like you know you're gonna buy something, make sure it's something you buy really good and make sure it lasts forever.
Like rate this idea of quantity over maybe quality, just generally, like you do wonder whether or not that kind of kicks in again in a world where we are very blessed by abundance, but you do wonder at some point where people are kind of like, well, wait a minute, you know, and certainly in a higher inflationary environment.
I think that's right.
Yeah, the natterjack toad. First of all, if you haven't seen this bottle, I'm going to take a picture into it out but it is makes your bottles so distinct. Remind us about the natterjack toad, and I can actually hold it up for everybody so they can see.
Can they see, Oh yeah, look at that.
So the natterjack toad camel. Yeah, that's the mistake.
But yeah, sorry, there's a little bit of a there's a little bit of a but there's a little bit glare for No, it's actually really kind of cool the way you guys did it.
That was that was a mistake from the first printing of our The whole thing is just a mistake, all right.
Mistakes are don't drop it or else that will be a huge mistake.
Mistakes are good, But keeping these toads around are also good. And you guys have been doing it.
Is Yes, natterjack toad is the only toad indigenous to ardent. But it's a very Irish toad. It can't hop, it walks, it can't swim with great and it does things its own way to survive. So it's very definite in how it walks. It has a croak that can be heard two kilometers away like or sorry, amazing, calling you herd two kilometers away, like like some whiskey drinkers.
And it's not like those male toads are so desperate there, we got right.
So so but as I say, they're not very good at swimming and they live in pools, so that's not a great combination. So what happens is they tend to die off. So they're endangered in Ireland. They're originally from Ireland. They're across Europe, but they're they're originally from these sand dunes in Kerry and so we released yesterday released a
thousand of them. We reckon about twenty percent of that will survive, and then we do next week we do another thousand and so they're incubated at Dingle Aquarium and then they're released. Scott and Stephen, we're down releasing them into the wild in the West of Ireland. Portuate of your profits too are going absolutely so. We sponsor the program every year. It's a great program to keep them alive.
And I think without them, well, this will probably called Aiden Meghan's Whiskey, and we wouldn't be sitting here.
We love talking about it, and love hearing your journey, and we love hearing about the mistake. Pank kids are really kind of fun. Looking forward to what comes next. Well, have a great weekend you too. Stay safe in me again, Founder of natter Jack Irish Whiskey. And I'm going to send out a picture in just a moment, Carol Master timstand this is Woombrough Yah