Story

The age of bland, mass produced spirits is out, and we’re ushering in a new era of authenticity—an era of handcrafted whiskeys, gins, and bourbons that tell an all-American story of bootstrapped success and whisper of cinnamon, leather, and crème brûlée tasting notes.

Stepping inside our Sacramento-based J.J. Pfister tasting room is like stepping back through the ages—with a modern twist. But the real experience lies in our craft spirits themselves. Our master distiller has made an art form out of the creation process, using his extensive sensory training to make every one of our liquors sophisticated, authentic, and multi-layered.

We’ve got the licenses, we’ve built the experience, we’ve crafted the spirits, and we’re proud to say our hard work is paying off. Here’s a transparent look at our top line revenue and traction to date:

We’ve secured distribution and have big plans for expansion. Currently, we’re distributed by Young’s Market in California and Vin Sauvage in Nevada. We are in Raley’s, Nugget Markets, Total Wines in Sacramento, BevMo in the greater Sacramento area, and many restaurants, bars, and liquor stores.

The J.J. Pfister story spans more than 170 years, beginning with a humble knitting company founded by our family patriarch, J.J. Pfister. J.J emigrated to the United States from Switzerland in 1869 and went on to found a knitting company in San Francisco in 1876. His business survived the 1906 earthquake, and he won an honor medal at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

Our J.J. Pfister logo, a combination of a knitting machine and a copper still, marries our past, present, and future as we carry on the tradition of excellence started by J.J. Pfister in the late 1800s.

We’ve laid the foundation for success one building block at a time, starting with our designer production and tasting room. Our state-of-the-art stills are manufactured in Italy and include a continuous still, pot still and rectifying columns. We can make any spirit with these, and they are designed to save labor cost by completing runs within an eight-hour day. All told, our facility includes:

The US craft spirits market is booming, outpacing even the craft brewing market! The industry is expected to reach revenues of more than $20 billion by 2023, growing at an explosive CAGR of over 32% between 2018 and 2023.

Big brands can’t replicate the craft experience, but they can acquire it. And in recent years, the numbers have been staggering:

From rave reviews to features in the New York Times, the word is out about J.J. Pfister.

When J.J. founded the J.J. Pfister Knitting Company, he made a part of his mission to give back to his community wherever possible. When the earthquake of 1906 struck, he did just that. So when Covid-19 began its devastating sweep through California, we committed to continuing JJ’s legacy and stepping up for our community. This involved making the difficult decision to temporarily pause our production of craft spirits and instead begin producing hand sanitizer. 

In the space of just two weeks, we were able to bottle over 16,000 gallons of sanitizer for first responders, including health care facilities, police and fire departments, utility companies, essential businesses and government agencies. We have also been able to donate hand sanitizer to charities such as Loaves and Fishes, The Food Bank, Guardian Angels, and Students for Health Care.

We have multiple revenue channels established, and more slated for the future. Thanks to our versatile Type 74 license, our income streams include:

70% of our customers are repeat customers, and our brand recognition is high in the Sacramento area. We have additionally recently expanded our sales team to include representatives in the San Francisco Bay area, the Los Angeles area, Sacramento, and Nevada.

In a key move, we recently unveiled our very first whiskeys—our High Rye Bourbon and Rye Whiskey. And we’re proud to say that both blends are so smooth you can drink them neat (that’s without ice or water). In addition to selling at a substantially higher price point then clear spirits, whiskies are amongst the most popular consumer spirits. Revenues in this category grew by 10.8%, or $387M, in 2019, and the whiskey market is slated for 5% CAGR from 2019 to 2025.

Note: Our whiskeys are not yet organic, but are blended in-house by our master distilling team and will be organic in future iterations!

Our 2020 milestones have included: 

Since expanding into the Arizona and Nevada markets, our next key landmark entails getting our sales to 10,000 cases of product—which we project will be achievable in the next 2 to 3 years. The 10,000 case threshold is key in the craft spirits market, and puts us in a position to entertain an equity Investment from a large spirit house. Our type 74 license also enabled us to launch food sales in our tasting room this quarter, which will enhance our status as a visitor destination in the thriving Sacramento tourism industry.

As we continue to establish traction and rollout these next steps, we estimate that our value will be 6-8X top-line revenue. We expect revenue to be $3M within 4 years, and $10M soon thereafter.

They say it’s harder to establish a craft distillery than to fly to the moon and back, and we’ve done it! We have traction, we have distribution, and we’re primed for growth. Invest today to get in at our current valuation before our whiskey revenues start coming in.

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