{"data":{"type":"company_profile","id":221873,"entity_id":"wefunder:company:221873","attributes":{"canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/proper.beverage","generated_at":"2026-10-22T05:44:50Z","updated_at":"2026-10-21T23:52:40Z","entity_ids":{"company":"wefunder:company:221873","slug":"wefunder:company_slug:proper.beverage"},"profile_visibility":{"owner_published":true,"public_search_results":true,"site_search_listed":true,"privacy_mode":"promote","invite_only":false},"provenance":{"source":"wefunder_public_company_profile","as_of":"2026-10-22T05:44:50Z","claims":{"total_amount_raised":{"source":"FrontCompanySummary#amount_raised","last_verified_at":"2026-10-21T23:52:40Z","as_of":"2026-10-22T05:44:50Z","confidence":"high"},"total_investors":{"source":"FrontCompanySummary#number_of_investors","last_verified_at":"2026-10-21T23:52:40Z","as_of":"2026-10-22T05:44:50Z","confidence":"high"},"active_raise_states":{"source":"Fundraise.visible(nil, nil)","last_verified_at":"2026-10-21T23:52:40Z","as_of":"2026-10-22T05:44:50Z","confidence":"high"},"latest_fundraise_state":{"source":"Fundraise.visible(nil, nil).order(funding_started_at)","last_verified_at":"2026-10-21T23:52:40Z","as_of":"2026-10-22T05:44:50Z","confidence":"medium"}}},"company":{"id":221873,"entity_id":"wefunder:company:221873","slug":"proper.beverage","name":"Proper Beverage","tagline":"A sake and liquor brand that runs award-winning bars","story":"I'm leading a small SPV into the seed round of a local company and founder that I love - Proper Beverage.The round is nearly closed, but Byron and Bryson have agreed to hold the last bit for folks in Nashville and New Orleans, who already know Proper and Rice Vice.Proper Beverage is a new company with a ten-year head start based on two experiments: a sake brand (Proper Sake) that has expanded to offer beer, gin and shochu, and two award wining bars (Rice Vice) in East Nashville and Algiers Point in New Orleans.I generally avoid backing alcohol and CPG, but the strategy thery have for growth is interesting and I love their products.***Byron Stithem (CEO) is a mad scientist with a deep knowledge of fermentation science and the history of sake brewing in Japan, who has built a business that is compelling, exciting, and unusual. I'm excited to back him and his co-founder, Bryson Aust.Anyone can open a bar and many brands manage to sell into them. Proper doesn't sell through bars though - it owns them. Rice Vice has won national acclaim and offers Proper a unique entry to new markets by driving visibility and pouring almost exclusively Proper products.Even in a slow-growth case, where Proper's distribution fails to take off. This investment is backed by real, cash-flowing assets - $760K in debt-free bars, modeled to generate about $420K a year in NOI by 2028. This is a foundation that I have never seen behind an early beverage bet. I find it quite compelling.About the roundProper is raising $1M on a convertible note: $6M pre-money cap, 20% discount, 5.5% interest, 3-year term. As of October 20, over $900k is committed. This SPV holds the final $100K and will close before the end of the month.According to Byron, this round has one goal: prove their strategy to grow Proper Beverage before scaling it. They've developed a growth playbook in Nashville and New Orleans and this gives them the money to test it across the region.$1M takes Rice Vice from two bars to six across five Southeast cities by 2028.About 58% of the capital goes directly into opening new bars.The rest is working capital, including Proper's first real wholesale push.This is not a brick and mortar play though.The bars are the centerpiece of the distribution and marketing strategy that makes this bet worthwhile.The capital will prove out three things:The playbook repeats. Opening in Huntsville, Birmingham, and Miami will show whether their secret sauce -- a distribution strategy that uses their bars as free marketing and a wedge in new markets -- works outside Nashville and New Orleans.Food lifts the bar. Sean Brock has joined their team, launching a food menu at Rice Vice Nashville in August offering hand rolls and small plates, no hoods or custom equipment, the same in every bar. Early tests showed a 5x revenue lift. The plan assumes far less: $400-500K per bar, up from $130-160K today.Wholesale scales with visibility and real resources. Proper has never had a salesperson or a marketing budget. They project 4-6x wholesale growth, from $100-125K to $500-600K in 2027, with entry into new markets and people pushing the product.The story: two experiments, now joined in one companyProper Beverage is about a year old, built on two earlier experiments.Proper Sake (2016) taught them to build a category from scratch - Byron started brewing in Nashville when almost nobody here knew what to order. Ten years later it's three sakes, a lager, a gin, and a shochu.Rice Vice (2022) proved a 30-seat bar built around their own product is cheap to open, makes money, and moves a lot of Proper through one door. Esquire named it one of the best bars in America in 2023; the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Eater followed. New Orleans opened in 2025 and did 5,000+ guests in its first year.Together they add up to a strategy: enter each new market through a bar, then scale through distribution.A unique distribution modelNew alcohol brands all hit the same wall. Distributors won't place you without existing volume or a big marketing budget, and most young brands have neither. Breaking through is incredibly hard. This makes it a difficult vertical to back.Proper's strategy is unique though.By opening a Rice Vice bar in new markets, Proper walks in with the volume to drive distributor uptake and a marketing engine that makes money instead of spending it.At each Rice Vice, 85% of what's poured is Proper - one bar moves more than 10x the volume of a typical distributor account.That volume is the proof distributors want before picking up a new label. It's how Proper got into 10 states without ever hiring a salesperson.The bars are small and cheap to run - 1-2 people per shift, $125-175K to open, 20%+ margins - and they double as free marketing. The first one drove 1M+ organic views on social.Planning for an exitByron and Bryson are building Proper to be acquired after 2030. They intend this to be their last equity round. Their goal is to finance further expansion with cashflow from their bars so this could be your last chance to back them.American sake is a young market with few comps, but it's growing fast: the U.S. became Japan's largest sake export market in 2024, and a 15% tariff on Japanese sake since 2025 only helps a domestic producer.A conservative exit for the brand, if it hits its revenue targets of $6.5M and $9.6M in 2029 and 2030, would fall in the $26-38M range (4x revenue).The more important the brand becomes to the business, the more likely it is to be valued like a spirits brand at the top of this range. Distribution reach and recognition beyond the Southeast could unlock the bull case -- an exit above $60M.Buyers have been active at Proper's target scale in the past several years.Tilray bought Montauk Brewing in 2022 for an initial $35.11M, a regional brand it planned to scale nationally.Craft Brew Alliance paid $23M for Nantucket's Cisco Brewers in 2018 - a beer, wine, and spirits producer whose home base is one of the island's top destinations.As the U.S. sake market develops, large beverage groups are likely to enter by acquiring craft brands. In that environment, a U.S.-made brand with its own bars is a unique asset.The teamByron Stithem (Co-Founder/CEO) has spent 20+ years in hospitality and fermentation science. He sits on the board of the Sake Brewers Association of North America and is a U.S.-Japan Leadership Program fellow.Bryson Aust (Co-Founder/COO) spent 14 years in NYC finance before opening several New Orleans restaurants, including Barracuda Taco, Nighthawk Pizza, and Drift Inn Diner. That background shows in how tightly they track unit economics.As they prepare to scale, the founders were recently joined by:Sean Brock (Partner \u0026amp; Culinary Director) is a two-time James Beard Award-winning chef behind Husk, Audrey, and Joyland. He's building the Rice Vice food program.Kirk Estopinal (Partner \u0026amp; Beverage Director) is a James Beard Award winner behind two of New Orleans' best-known bars, Cure and Cane \u0026amp; Table, named by Food \u0026amp; Wine as one of the top bars in the U.S. He knows how to make a bar a destination without a marketing budget.","location":"Nashville, TN","website":"https://www.propersake.co/","total_amount_raised":3000,"total_investors":2,"is_funded":false,"is_active":true,"related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/proper.beverage","https://www.propersake.co/"]},"media":{"share_image_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/221873/xxl_avatar.jpg","logo_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/logo/221873/large_avatar.jpg","header_media_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/221873/standard_avatar.jpg","cover_photo_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/221873/standard_avatar.jpg","pitch_deck_url":"https://wefunder.com/rails/active_storage/blobs/redirect/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6MjI1OTc4MywicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--7656bab22982c06b25e7b4354fb2791385e31c8b/Proper%20Beverage%20Deck.pdf","pitch_deck_filename":"Proper Beverage Deck.pdf"},"links":{"company_url":"https://www.propersake.co/"},"highlights":[],"quick_facts":[{"index":1,"claim_id":"claim-fact-1","value":"A Nashville brand: Brewing sake in Nashville since 2016; now sake, beer, gin, and shochu"},{"index":2,"claim_id":"claim-fact-2","value":"Round nearly closed: $900k of $1M committed; final $100K via this SPV."},{"index":3,"claim_id":"claim-fact-3","value":"Rice Vice as entry wedge: bars pour 85% Proper products and moves 10x a typical distributor account"},{"index":4,"claim_id":"claim-fact-4","value":"Each bar is profitable on its own: $125-175K to open, 20%+ margin, +4,000 annual visitors"},{"index":5,"claim_id":"claim-fact-5","value":"Free marketing other brands pay for: Esquire Best Bars in America, WSJ, 1M+ organic social reach"},{"index":6,"claim_id":"claim-fact-6","value":"Backed by real assets: $760K in debt-free bars; ~$420K modeled bar NOI in 2028"},{"index":7,"claim_id":"claim-fact-7","value":"World-class team: James Beard winners Sean Brock and Kirk Estopinal joined in 2026"}],"team":[{"id":6816481,"entity_id":"wefunder:company_role:6816481","user_entity_id":"wefunder:user:1459954","role":"founder","name":"Read Ezell","bio":"Building investor communities on Wefunder","avatar_url":"http://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/user/avatar/1459954/large_large_cropped_ReadEzell.jpg?1790232825","profile_url":"https://wefunder.com/readezell","related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/readezell"]}],"featured_investors":[{"id":13989,"entity_id":"wefunder:company_investor_profile:13989","investor_profile_id":4654864,"investor_profile_entity_id":"wefunder:investor_profile:4654864","subject_entity_id":"wefunder:notable_investor:17892","name":"Sean Brock","role_title":"","bio":"Sean Brock is one of the defining chefs of modern Southern cooking. 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