I came from a background in hospitality, working since my teens in every position from dishwasher, to cook, to bartender, and it was about six years ago that I was in my kitchen experimenting with different recipes and trying to come up with a spirit that really embodied the idea of California in a Bottle. I wanted to use all locally sourced ingredients to create a light, refreshing spirit that was unique to the spirits market and I had never seen as a bartender. I had the beginning stages of what would soon become Chareau and needed help to bring it to market.

I teamed up with another distiller in Northern California who was already known for making some of the best spirits in the world. We took that idea and launched our first batch of 100 cases, only 600 bottles, here in LA, in the summer of 2013. We weren’t really sure how it was going to go over, being such a unique ingredient, and it just took off. We sold out in a matter of months in only 15 bars. We made another batch and the same thing happened. We were onto something special. We worked with that distiller for another 2 years as we spread Chareau across the country and we literally couldn’t produce enough, so we built our own place and now we make Chareau in-house.

It’s in a beautiful location in Camarillo, CA, surrounded by strawberry fields and citrus groves. We’re closer to all of our ingredients, and now because we have our own distillery, we can scale up really easily. We have the capacity to make about 16,000 cases of Chareau a year and we can double that capacity just by adding another blending tank. We aren't restricted by having a manufacturer that has long lead times or might not be able to meet our orders, and we no longer have to worry about the cash flow and projection issues of ordering in bulk only a couple times per year.

Our first customers were bartenders, and that was because bartenders would already know what to do with such a new and unique product. Consumers at home tend to have their favorite spirits that they like to stick with and are most likely to try something new when they ask the bartender, "What should I have?" And then maybe the bartender introduces something new to them. We knew that this was going to be crucial to our business plan, so when I started out, I went out to the best bars in LA to see what they thought.

The best way to scale up was to then have influential, award-winning bartenders in each market educate and introduce Chareau to other bartenders and then have that knowledge passed on down to the home consumer. Right now, we have five brand ambassadors, who are some of the best bartenders you will ever meet, out spreading the word about Chareau.

I've seen over 100 different cocktails made with Chareau, which is really cool and it's amazing to see what some these bartenders will do, where they take Chareau and put it into a five or six ingredient, well-balanced, completely complex cocktail.

But the average person at home probably isn't going to do that, so what makes Chareau special is that it's actually something that you can just sip right out of the bottle. You can just sip it on the rocks, or if you want to make a cocktail and have that craft cocktail experience, you can take any base spirit - say gin, rum, tequila, or vodka, add Chareau and any citrus you want, whether it's lime, lemon, or grapefruit, and you're going to have a cocktail that is just like any of the cocktails that are in some of the best bars in the country.

In the next couple months, we're opening several new markets around the US, so we're going to Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. We’re also supporting our distributors and brand ambassadors in our existing markets by hiring full time-sales managers. Up until this year, there were no sales staff and all of our success has been through word of mouth and the help of our team of brand ambassadors. We had a focus on building the brand and depth per account rather than just short sighted one-off sales into a vast number of accounts. We have a reorder rate over 70%, and almost every single tasting we do results in a sale. Now we just need more boots on the ground to go and do those tastings.

During this time we invested into our infrastructure so that we could scale up really, really fast. And now that everything is in place, it’s time to put our foot on the gas pedal.

Over the course of this year you’re going to see growth from those 6 new markets, an increased number of accounts in the existing markets, and a shift in the ratio of our sales from 90% on-premise/10% off-premise to hopefully 80% on-premise/ 20% off-premise as we begin to market towards the home consumer.

When I started out, I was selling out of the back of my car because we were a really small company, self-funded, and we could do that in California. I put over 30,000 miles on my car that year.... luckily, it was Prius. Now, we have a strategic mix of distributors all across the country in select markets. In some markets we have large distributors, which is great because they have reach into every single bar and liquor store. In other markets, where we may not have a brand ambassador, we tend to go with a smaller distributor who's going to give us more attention and help spread the word.

Honestly, quality. I didn’t have millions of dollars to buy fancy billboards or commercial ads to try to convince people that they should try Chareau, and I didn’t have the money to pay bars to carry my product either. If we wanted to stand any chance against the big players in the industry, we had to put out the BEST possible product. We had to put out something that bartenders would choose to use because they want to, so we spent over two years getting the recipe just right before giving it to any bartenders, and when we did, we went straight to the best one’s...why not?!

If you look at our website, almost all of the press that we've gotten is because we put out a high quality and unique product that was being served at some of the best bars and restaurants in each city. We have no publicist and we’ve gotten unbelievable free advertising.

In the future, we will be implementing a marketing plan geared towards the home consumer that will consist of in-store tastings, events, and digital marketing.

We start by making our own base spirit, which is really rare for a lot of spirits companies, but especially liqueurs. Most of the time, their base spirit will be a neutral spirit that they buy in bulk from a large, industrial distiller. We don’t do that. We actually make our own eau-de-vie, which is basically unaged grape brandy...and it’s clear because it hasn’t gone into any wood barrels. We make that base by distilling muscat wine grapes which keeps it naturally grain and gluten free.

Once we have that base spirit, we then infuse it with fresh cucumbers, spearmint, lemon peel, and muskmelon. We do that through processes known as maceration and redistillation - which means we take those cucumbers, melon, mint, lemon peel and we put it into the alcohol, and then let it sit like we’re making an alcoholic tea. Redistillation is where we then take that tea, put it back in the copper pot still and cook the flavor into the base spirit. By doing that, we can lock in the flavor and actually lengthen the shelf life. That's the foundation for Chareau. After that, we bring it down to bottling strength by adding fresh aloe vera juice, which is undistilled and uncooked, a little bit of water, a little bit of sugar, and then we hand-label and hand-bottle every single bottle.

I would say that our competition are other brand name liqueurs that you would find at your local liquor store. Being the only Aloe Vera liqueur, obviously those products are very different in terms of their flavor profile, but also what makes us different is that we have half the sugar and half the calories of the other liqueurs.
Their high sugar content not only makes them unhealthy, but also, it's something that’s so syrupy and sweet that you can't sip it directly out of the bottle.

We’re different from the competition, because we have the versatility to be a cocktail ingredient just like all of them, but you can also enjoy it right out the bottle and make a really, really simple drink.

We use natural ingredients because they’re better, and not just because it’s trendy... It actually produces a higher quality product. And also we believe that people want transparency. Not only is our product clear, literally, with no artificial neon colors, but we're one of the only spirits products where you can actually turn the bottle to the side and see all of our ingredients listed. We list everything on the bottle because we have nothing to hide. Everything in the bottle is on the bottle and they're all ingredients that you have seen before and you can pronounce.

Also, simplicity. People want a simple, high-quality product, and that’s why we created Chareau; so that it could be enjoyed right out of the bottle.