Episode 70! Dan and Kimm Weber

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Shea got up to and we confirmed it with the City of Wausau 3,500 parking spots.

She went one by one.

She's a fast counter.

Yeah, so that was the final total.

In downtown Wausau there are 3,500 parking spots.

Well then can I go ahead and say I call bulls*** and all the naysayers about that?

Sorry about that Wausau.

Okay, that's Bull Roar.

Yeah.

Baloney.

Let's keep it clean.

But here we go with episode numbers.

This is the Wausau

is the show.

message so clear for business and stories we all hold so dear

What was that?

What was that?

What just happened?

Yeah.

I don't know.

Is that our anthem now?

Whoa.

Kind of blew my mind.

Did someone make that for us?

That was a long story.

Geez.

Kind of amazing.

Let's start the real way.

Okay.

I feel more comfortable.

We're not that cool.

Kind of

makes

me

uncomfortable.

Yeah.

Episode number 70.

Now we're there.

And now, here are your granite peak shredding, musky hunting, Melissa Langman Lovin', Brad Emanuel Groupies, Ryan and

Paul.

The Warsaw, the Warsaw business show.

Spring is almost over and the summer is coming.

The days are getting long.

Wait it all in.

Just to take you along, baby get ready.

It don't matter if we sit, no, not yet.

It don't matter if we sit for ever, ain't no fish, don't bite.

Jump in the river and cool ourselves from the heat of the night.

Wasonians, I don't think we say yee-haw out here.

Almost never.

Up in these parts.

Let's start it.

Yee-haw.

Yee-haw.

Wasa, next time you run into somebody you know, say yee-haw.

It's the Wasa Business Show.

I'm Ryan.

I'm Paul.

And where are they now, Paul?

Currently.

Right now.

Let's find out.

Brad Emanuel.

Okay, let's do it.

There used to be a famous VH1 special, remember?

Where are they now?

Where are

they now?

But where are they right now is our twist on it.

Remember that song by Whitney Houston?

Give me one moment in time.

No, I don't.

How does it go?

It goes, give me one moment in time.

Let's pull it up.

Well, here we go.

Where are they

right

now?

Currently, Brad Emanuel at this moment.

Here we go.

Let's call Brad Emanuel.

Give him a call.

What's he doing right now?

Brandon, what are

you

up to?

Where are they now?

Right

now.

What's our business show wants to know?

Are they looking at their phone?

Are they completely alone?

Right now, this instant right now.

You can pick up.

Yeah, it's ringing.

See if he picks up.

Might have had a gig last night.

Probably dead.

He's lost his most popular musician.

Multiple Grammy winner.

Yeah.

City Pete winner.

Thank you.

Same thing.

Yeah, what's the biggest?

Come on, Brad.

Damn it.

Here we go.

Through 2025.

Did he say 2025?

Hey, Brad, you're booked up through 2025.

You got to fix your voicemail thing.

It's Ryan Paul Cullen from the Wausau Business Show.

Hey, buddy.

We're just wondering what you're doing right now.

Where are they right now?

And we also wanted to give you some good news.

Yeah.

We know on good authority that Brad Emanuel, that's you, Brad, will be the first person in over 25 years to perform

as a band on the stage at the historic wassa club that David Anthony Hummer opened.

Well, he's doing that.

Yeah, Brad, you're

What an honor, an honor.

After 25 years of the place being dormant, people used to have weddings there and now that's going to all start happening again.

This building is on the National Register of Historic Places.

A true beauty.

And Brad Emanuel, Wausau legend, Brad Emanuel will be the first person to perform on that stage in over 25 years.

So congratulations, Brad.

Congratulations, Brad.

Also wanted to ask you if you're still making the six figures.

Give us a call back and

let us

know.

Talk to you later, buddy.

Hope he gets back to us.

You know, Brad Emanuel kind of looks like Zach Brown, doesn't he?

From the Zach Brown band?

Yeah, I can see that.

Look at that picture.

Doesn't that look like the

Zach?

Particularly in that picture, he looks like Zach Brown.

He's as good as Zach Brown.

I'm going to say it.

You know, the Zach Brown band opened for Little Big Town at the Grand Theater on March 20th, 2009.

I did not know that.

Are you kidding me?

Who told you that?

Sean Wright.

Oh, that's authority there.

Yeah.

And Sean Wright's either coming in this week or next week.

We're going to see how much time we have.

But who do we have on the show this week, Paul?

This week, we have Kim and Dan Weber from Timekeepers.

Timekeepers.

They're some of the best entrepreneurs in Central Wisconsin.

They've got

wet and all sorts of different craft cocktails that they're canning.

They can them.

Kim used to be the manager at Target.

Doesn't Dan have a background in like Brewmaster type of work?

Yeah, yeah.

He used to be the guy that did all the beer at the Great Dane.

Right.

Before he started.

Right.

So

we're going to hear all about that coming up.

And there's a new arcade bar opening in Warsaw, called...

Oasis.

I think everybody knows that now, but we got to stop by there and check it out.

I love games.

I'm kind of a pinball guy.

Oh, okay.

They got a whole lineup of pinball machines.

I saw that.

They have 10, 15 plus pinball machines.

I'm also a Pac-Man guy.

I wonder if they'll have the classic.

They've got a lot of the classics.

Tron.

What's the one Mike Tyson knockout

punch out or whatever.

Yeah.

They've got

all of them lined up

and it's

right over there across from the Jefferson Street in.

I'm going to go check it out.

Maybe later this afternoon we can check it out.

All right.

Sounds good.

We'll be right back with a couple of Wausau entrepreneur

Nouriel Legends, Kim and Dan Weber from Timekeepers.

There they are, let me get the door.

Okay, it's the Wassup Business Show.

Hang

on.

This is the Wassup Business

Show.

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Our team chooses to live and work in communities where many people only vacation or pass through.

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business show with Ryan and Paul.

Remind me the name of the place in Green Bay

Timekeeper

distillery Green Bay.

Oh, really?

I thought it was constantly different.

No.

Oh, okay.

No, it's just a satellite tasting

room.

Okay, just add Green Bay onto it dummy.

Yeah

It

is

Welcome to the Wausau Business Show.

We're on, yeah.

Welcome.

Here we go, here we go.

Dan and Kim, how did you guys meet?

You guys are kind of one of Wausau's power couples, we determined.

We did.

Congratulations.

In a pre-show meeting with the back office, we determined

that.

Yeah,

yeah.

I guess one person's opinion, but that's all right.

A lot of people, we've been talking to people around town about you, preparing for this interview.

That's right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, now I'm nervous.

You're only talking to millions of people.

Relax.

No, we actually met at the Great Dane Pub and Brewing.

I was the brew master there.

I had just taken over and then Kim had moved to the area to take over Target as the GM and was living across

the street.

So I think that it was only a matter of time.

Oh, what part of town do you know, is the book of love?

The origin

story.

Yeah.

So I lived in Madison, went to school there, worked for Target there.

So when I was looking for a place to live here, it was challenging.

I was calling realtors and saying, Hey, what apartments do you have?

And

they're like, we don't

really deal in that space.

And I so I landed on the corporate code, which thank goodness it was right behind a great day.

And

so I was like, Well,

obviously, I know the great day.

So

I'll

go there.

So

I would just stumble back and forth and met Dan and, you know, the rest is history.

He was there brewing beer.

He was.

Were you the original brewmaster when it first opened?

No, that was Pete McCabe.

So it was Herford and Hopps.

And that closed down.

Great, Dane moved in.

And then Pete McCabe was the original brewmaster.

I started the day they opened as a door guy just because I needed some hours.

I just came back from school.

and there wasn't a lot of jobs, especially in the manufacturing sector.

You know, I was like, hey, I need a job.

They put me a door guy.

He started training me and we ended up after barring till eight or nine in the morning.

I thought he was a pretty cool guy and I hung out with him in the distillery for a few days and I'm like, that's what I'm gonna do with my life.

And I picked up a two year unpaid apprenticeship.

Under him?

Well, under him and the great Dane.

Okay,

cool.

And then told my parents and they're like,

A brewer's not a job.

And it's just like, no, this guy gets paid.

I swear, I saw the paycheck.

And you had no experience, Dan, at the time in brewing or?

No, not in brewing.

Not at that point.

But you

liked beer.

I

loved beer.

I played rugby in college, went to school for manufacturing engineering.

And so it all really was just a really nice fit for me.

And so I could brew beer within six months.

I didn't know how to brew beer, but I could follow the process and procedures.

And then I was able to

up a lot of the knowledge along the way.

And they've been very instrumental to my development and the story of Timekeeper.

I mean, they literally sent us as brewers on to continued education courses at Siebel in Chicago.

They sent us to Germany and to Belgium.

Oh, that's where the real beard was made of, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So very grateful for those opportunities.

And, you know, ultimately really set me on a path that, you know, led to Kim and to Timekeeper and, you know, a family because neither of us

really planned on staying here.

Well, Kim, tell us more about like when you moved to Wausau, it was hard to find an apartment.

It was.

I had no intention of buying and at the time the market was good.

So I could have bought a house.

But my plan was, you know, I was a store director for Target transferred here to the Wausau area.

We usually did 18 month rotations.

And then I was on the trajectory to go and do more with Target.

So

it was

going to be 18 months.

Move up the corporate

ladder.

Small store,

small store air quotes.

You can't see me at home during every night.

And it's since tripled.

in volume since I was there, which is great

for us to

the community, right?

But I had no intention of staying here.

So it was going to be 18 months and let's move on to the next assignment.

And frankly, I wanted to go back to a larger city.

So I was all about renting, found a place to live and Dan kind of solidified me staying, you know, but I'll be honest, we both had eyes on other things.

He was getting recruited to go open micro breweries in Europe.

I was thinking about my next move with Target and it was the happy coincidence of Dan.

saying, you know, as a brewmaster, you know, you get to eat free meals, you get free beer, but you don't make a lot of money.

I could make moonshine and sell it to my friends.

That was his mantra one night at volleyball at campus pub.

And it kind of turned into like Kim know, like I could really do this like legally, right?

So we started looking into how that we would do that.

So we took classes on entrepreneurship and distilling and

I'm going to give Jim Tipple some credit here.

Jim

Tipple.

Bear Tipple.

He heard of our idea and was like, he was mayor at the time.

You guys got to come down to my office.

We're like, OK, cool.

Was his office at the Great Dane?

Right.

The boardroom at the Dane.

And thought it was just going to be a casual meeting.

I wasn't fully vested and I was like, I'm still going to move.

Like we're going to do all these things and we walk into the meeting that we thought was just with Jim and it was economic development, community development, zoning.

It was like everybody and we're like, okay, well, we brought a pen and a piece of paper.

So I guess the rest is history from there.

How long, Dan, had you been working at the Grand Dane before you and Kim had a magic spark?

So I had been there probably.

I was assistant brewer.

I was unpaid for about two years and then I was assistant brewer for about a year and a half.

And then I took over the brewery at 25.

Wow.

Relatively young then I would assume for

a brewmaster in the brewing world.

Yeah.

But very passionate, very dedicated.

Yeah.

You know, when you donate two years to your life, you kind of get the fast track.

That was quite the commitment.

Yeah.

Well, I worked and it was very valuable because I also worked other positions in the restaurant, whether it was expo.

going or waiting tables or bartending.

And so, you know, I was able to build those other skill sets that ultimately led into things that I was able to take with me to.

with Timekeeper.

You know, not coming in fresh.

You know, one of my things that I always say is like, you're a chef or victim to the chef because somebody has to

cook.

Yeah.

And when you have a restaurant or you have a distillery, like you need to be able to distill, you need to be able to bartend.

You know, those are my things is like, if you're going to go into business for something, you really have to try and wear as many hats as you can, especially in the beginning.

Because I think a mobile welding business would do great.

What I don't know how to do is mobile.

Ideas are easy.

That's what we always say.

So yeah, you know, having that background and then also picking up other jobs.

I used to be a waiter at the Back When Cafe.

Oh, hi, Lurkies.

Well, the back one.

Slen and Jolene, you know, they really showed me the ways of fine dining.

So we have been able to introduce that elevated, you know, extra service.

Yeah, service with Time Keeper.

Yeah.

Jeff Dixon over at Juliette just down the

road.

Okay.

I love that.

Craft cocktails.

Him and I used to work together at the back one.

And that's, you know, where I was really introduced to craft cocktails for the first time.

And

so, you know, again, kudos to the owner, Rob LaBrego at the Great Dane, where

you know, I had this idea of being a distiller, having a distillery, and instead of like kicking me to the curb, he said, you're a bar restaurant first and a distillery second.

You need to focus

on your

margins with cocktails and cash flow and all that, and especially while you build towards distribution.

And so, you know, that relationship that I had with Jeff, he was actually our first general manager, really tied in.

And so it's all these little pieces from our lives that really kind of, you know, came together to create Timekeeper.

I mean, it really started as a napkin idea.

And we took classes on entrepreneurship, took classes on distilling.

We were able to find community gap financing.

Very driven.

You're a very driven power couple.

Yeah,

exactly.

But yeah, we were able to get those steps in those journeys.

And then we actually had most of the funding up front found.

And then we went to go find some minority investors to help us carry over the finish line.

But really, again, trying to surround ourselves with people that

that we knew that would add to the table.

So our first investor was an attorney, our second was an accountant, our third was an ex-politician.

Oh,

fun group.

Yeah.

It's like the start of a joke.

Yeah.

Right?

And so between Kim's management skills, my manufacturing and, you know.

Your engineering credentials.

There you go.

You know, it really was able to make a nice, you know, a nice base to a project.

And so, you know,

they're more of a sounding board, but it's great when you're trying to navigate things like COVID or expansion or, you know, having, you know, one person's perspective of like, well, the stock market does this.

And then having another person's perspective of being like, well, you know, when people pull back, it opens a runway and there's certain investments you need to make into your community.

And so that was our big pivot into hand sanitizer.

It's like, oh, yeah, it's

right.

How do we do about this?

How do we go about it?

And

you're not still doing the hands

sanitizer though,

right?

No, no.

Thank God.

But I remember when you launched that during COVID, it was a huge help to a lot of people around the area.

Yeah, there was a buzz around town about it.

Timekeepers is doing hand sanitizer.

Right, right.

Brilliant.

We all heard.

You know, it was an interesting time for everyone, you know, with hand sanitizer.

You know, there's a certain, you know, price point for that.

And for us, we, you know, that's cheaper than we make vodka.

And then we still needed to add glycerin and hydrogen peroxide and hand bottle and hand

label.

So, you know, that's one of those things.

You do it because you should, because your community needs you, not because it's necessarily profitable.

And it was certainly a journey.

So,

Jim Tiple, who, correct me if I'm wrong, had his own cup at the Great Dane, right?

Well, I think he told us that.

A mug or something, right?

Well, most breweries, you can pay for your own mug.

That's pretty common.

But he did have mug number one.

Oh, the first mug,

okay.

The

best one.

Yeah.

Okay, so he was

there, you know, he was obviously a regular.

And that's how you met the mayor of Wausau at the time.

And he said, you got to come to my office and pitch this idea because what, you had been talking to him about it at Great Dane.

I just saw him in passing because we literally the night before volleyball had the idea, having a few cocktails, having the joke.

The

night before,

okay.

And yeah, I saw him in passing and I said, Jim, do you think Wausau could use a distillery?

he goes, that's an interesting idea.

And then, yeah, and literally again, a day later, his secretary called us and asked us to come in.

The

historic depot, you had no

idea what was

going on there, but that had been sitting vacant for years and years and years, right?

Yes, yes.

So we ended up, yeah, walking into the city council room and looked at a lot of different buildings and then just kept coming back to the 1901 train station.

Wow.

You know, because there's so much to do with manufacturing.

and service and you know we knew we wanted an event aspect to it as well so it's just a lot of property like

We needed a property to check a lot of boxes with a really low budget.

And

they wanted you in there.

Obviously, it was a win-win,

right?

The

city

was all for it.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, they didn't own it or anything like that.

They're happy to spend your money for you.

But they helped facilitate it, really.

Who owned it at the time?

Was it insurance still?

It was, I believe, Kevin Shavilsky.

Hi, Kevin.

Yeah, independently owned.

and just abandoned and for sale.

And, you know, all the windows were broken.

Yeah, it was really run

down.

Remember how run down that place?

Yeah, it

was kind of a shame, I remember thinking.

So this

is

iconic.

Right.

Well, to our community, that's what's always been just like mind boggling for me is like something that is so iconic to, you know, WASA and recognize all around the country with WASA insurance being the logo for WASA insurance.

I mean,

it's the most iconic building in WASA.

One of them.

I can't think of another one.

I know.

What's number two?

Yeah.

Well, and they built a replica.

The Westwood Company

built

this one sat.

vacant empty.

It was crazy.

This is the real one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you guys know that there is a photograph of the guy who founded 60 Minutes, his names, I believe, Don Hewitt on the train tracks behind your distillery?

He's like balancing on one leg on one of the train tracks.

We need to find

that.

Yeah, you got to get your hands on that.

Yeah, I think we have a copy of it here somewhere, but he was the guy literally that was responsible for creating the television show 60 Minutes and Wassa Insurance was the

First advertiser on 60 minutes.

We'll get in touch with Leslie Stahl and see

if we can get that for you.

Sounds great.

We actually, funny enough, had Dateline book our facility to do a murder follow up.

This was a couple of years ago.

So yeah, they loved the building and we had the crew outside putting like the black garbage bags over the windows because they were doing lighting, but it was.

Can you tell us about the murder mystery?

Yeah, it was.

Let's change the format of our podcast.

It

was before I moved to town, but I

forgot they were doing a follow up on it.

Which murder was it?

Was it on the tracks?

Was there a body

found?

No, it was, I don't remember the details.

I just know that they were on the

station.

And

if you

watch the episode, you can see the brick and like a little bit of the teal chair, but that's about it.

Did they give you credit in the Dateline episode anywhere?

No, but they paid us for it.

That's all the credit you need.

I was like, I sent an invoice.

business

on a standard rate or to charge them the Hollywood rate.

Right.

Money talks and you know what walks.

So then you guys wind up striking this deal and going in there and kind of flourishing on your own and how much time transpired between the time that you walked into Jim Tipple's office and the time that you guys were open in the train station.

train depot.

I want to say 2015, we talked to Jim.

October 6th of 2017, we bought the building.

And you were still working at Target at the time?

Yep.

I just left a few years ago.

I was with Target for 11 years.

You know, that W2 income and insurance is important.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

It ties it to

a job.

It's a wonderful company.

When

entrepreneurs come to us, I say, you know, it's really important to tie yourself to a company that has resources to help you grow and frankly, learn to fail on their dime, right?

Fail gracefully, of course, because it is on their dime, but...

Caveat.

Caveat.

So, yeah, bought the building October 6, 2017, got married October 28, 2017 and spent the honeymoon restoring it.

I guess, or starting the demolition process.

We

got the quote for what demo would cost.

And we were like, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm pretty sure some of our friends, some free beer from the Dane and some pizzas on the weekend,

we

can do that.

We

can do the Sledgehammer.

They're good at breaking shit.

Yeah.

So

we filled 640 yard dumpsters with the help of our friends and family, still waiting on that honeymoon.

We'll get there one of these days.

OK, we got some ideas.

Yeah, got some ideas.

So it was definitely a labor of love.

And I think really important, what I do, we both joke.

Would I do it again?

another business, no, I'd figure out a way to pay for that part.

But I think it was really cool for us to be in there.

And

I think there's

a lot of sense of ownership in the people that assisted us.

And it was just a great growing experience.

And then your first day open as timekeepers was when?

October.

Set six, yep.

So a year later, 2018, we were open then till obviously the shutdown in 2020.

So like I

tell folks, really started to hit our stride and identified those key pillars of our business.

And frankly, it didn't feel like we had to try very hard, right?

Like the community kept showing up.

It was a

different climate.

And our door is shut for COVID and Ever since then.

been truly a different landscape.

So

yeah, I remember when Dan made the call, I think it was the same day that Tyler at Malarkey's, they talked, they were like, yeah, we're going to close.

It was the day

before St.

Patty's Day.

And I was like, Dan, it's really not going to be that bad.

Like, we got this.

You know, people haven't started taking all the toilet paper out of Target yet.

So I wasn't

like, this is like, we got this.

And then it really reality set in.

Did you guys freak out at that point?

Or what was your response?

I mean, I guess you had your advisors, the accountant, the lawyer, and the doctor, was it?

I forget that.

How does that joke

start?

Like you

leaned on them

and they're like,

what now?

Jim?

Yeah, right.

Save us.

No.

You know, I was a little bit more pessimistic.

off the get-go where when I shut the doors I had my dogs with me and I was at the bar I made myself a Manhattan and Kim calls me she's like what are you doing and I'm like I'm sulking give me a yeah right well it's 10 30 in the morning I was like I'm sorry babe but you just don't shut down the government

and like things regenerated.

Like this is

so crazy.

The repercussions of this are going to be huge.

For

as crazy as it was for everybody, I can't imagine how crazy it would be if you just started your

business.

And I was expecting.

So we were going to have

our first

little one.

So it was crazy.

No kidding.

To

just kind of like all the unknowns.

So I think I was just blissfully unaware on purpose because I didn't want to.

I was like, it's just going to be fine.

It's going

to be fine.

Everything's going to be OK.

You're

going to will it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So then it was like a week later.

And she's like, hey, do you need a Manhattan?

Everybody's on board.

We're all in sync now.

Yeah.

They were flattening the curve.

Remember?

That's right.

Without

that

phrase.

Um, and so, but then things just continually escalated to get worse.

Another 30 days of flattening the curve.

Yeah.

Yep.

Exactly.

And they go again

and

again.

Well, that's when you started seeing the panicking where, you know, Kim can tell stories about the, uh, the buying trends of target and things that were running out that would be almost shocking to some people.

Kim, what was the craziest thing that you saw as the manager of target at the time that you were the most surprised by it?

Like, were there lines?

out the door at Target?

Yeah, it was really crazy.

Obviously the toilet paper wheel knew about that.

But I think the weirdest was people buying baby formula not for their babies, but for themselves.

Like what if all the food runs

out?

At

least I

can resort to the baby formula that

I have or

the kitty litter in case the, you know.

The toilets don't work.

Oh my God.

I

think there was just some fear purchasing.

And it was really unique to see that.

Did you see anybody like running and fighting over anything?

It wasn't that bad?

No.

I think it was just a lot of people.

And people kept away from each other for the most part.

They didn't want to be biased.

Yeah, right.

So

they were

scared of each other.

And

that's really where ship from store and drive up started to take hold.

So, you know, don't need to come in the store.

I would say for the first two weeks.

pandemic.

It was very busy inside the store and then it was very quiet just

people

were using those alternative means.

Was your store open every day during the pandemic?

Wow.

Yep.

That's wild.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Considered essential.

Yeah.

A lot of these stores.

Think back about all those people that, you know,

how much respect and admiration we had for everybody that couldn't work from home.

Right.

And we had a lot of our staff too during that time.

It's wild.

Man, that's six years already, huh?

It's crazy.

And

I mean,

think about it too, like even thinking about sanitizer, like there's usually a shortage to follow a shortage.

So there was a shortage of hand sanitizer.

Well, then similarly, there was a shortage of the...

containers that you would put sanitizer in.

So sanitizer production slowed, and we even saw that on the shelves.

Some companies got creative and were using, I'm not kidding, toothpaste tubes.

But that's where Dan, he's a guy of relationships.

He knows a guy that knows a guy.

So of course, he knew a guy.

And we were able to obtain, we all know Silver Spring Mustard.

He got a contact there.

They had a lot of mustard bottles from a contract they were no longer going to utilize.

So a couple

cases of bourbon.

some dead stock

leader,

we had some employees hand labeling and having their selves a good time.

And

fill in the muster bottle.

Fill in the muster

bottle.

We even

had a bottle filler that was meant to be used, I think, to fill our what, 750 milliliter whiskey bottles that Dan retrofitted to fill these bottles.

He was like, well, if I do this, I don't think I'm going to be able to fill bottles of booze for while I said, well, who's coming?

Right.

make the sanitizer.

That's

wild.

I remember we had to put our customers on what we called at the time allocations.

Did

you guys have to do any of that so there wouldn't be a run on certain things?

Like you can't

buy more than you normally do, sorry.

Well,

we are a craft producer.

And so that means I can

do some volume with what I'm designed to do, but certainly not a lot of volume with what I'm not designed to do.

And,

you know, the biggest hurdle was is first I figured out that I could make hand sanitizer.

Well, then there was legal issues because you had your major, you know, chemical companies that didn't want distilleries to be able to jump into this.

Sure.

And they would, you know, their fear is they would ultimately lose the large market share.

Eventually, you know, we were, it was a pretty quick turnaround that allowed distilleries to make hand sanitizer.

Then there was legislation like a month later that we had to put denaturing agents in it to make a less desirable product.

So people aren't

drinking it in

other

words?

Well, I

mean, what's a

denaturing agent?

Basically makes it unpalatable or undrinkable.

Okay.

And then so we had to do that.

And then once everything calmed down and got back to normal, then there was legislation or lobbying to like try and find all the distilleries that made a hand sanitizer.

And so it was just a really wild ride and just a wild west where like you're trying to get the best guidance that you can.

And you know for the first week there we knew it was illegal and then the Fed said okay, it's legal and then They see how quick they move when they can move.

Yeah, we need to move fast weird But you know at that point it's like okay, we're already behind the gun and we need to prioritize so it was Nursing homes schools anybody hospital related municipalities.

Mm-hmm.

So how did people find out that you?

had it going.

I forgot.

I

mean, maybe we made a Facebook post, but people were calling

us.

Okay,

well, the

mouth goes fast during a

pandemic.

Yeah, when

you're making sanitizing.

So once we're able to facilitate, you know, those that we considered highest needs, then we were able to sporadically open to the public.

And what we did is we had some fun with it.

you know, where we actually turned our patio into a drive-thru.

So you could come on the backside of the building and we would open up the back patio windows.

Yeah.

And then we would actually sell, you know, a ration supply of hand sanitizer.

Well, the next day when we ran out of rations, what we would do is we would actually sell batched cocktails.

So you can come through, get cocktails.

People were, you know, that was the big thing is not a

lot to do.

So, you know, it's being able to take that experience home with you and supporting a local business.

You know, a lot of people didn't know how they could help, but, you know, they're like, I'll come buy a bottle.

Like, I'm like, I got flatbreads and oranges.

Yeah, which are very

good, by the way, the very,

very

good stuff.

It's a

great atmosphere.

So that was a big pivot and where we were able to really lean on our, our investors and our, and our guidance.

Um, and then obviously that was a flash in the pan and we needed to know what was next.

And so we were the first, and I think we are still the only distillery that actually cans their own cocktails and seltzers.

So

I want to, I have a few questions on that before

we do

that.

How long.

What were you doing the sanitizer for?

Like, what period was this?

I would say heavy, heavy.

Yeah.

I mean, we shut down every other production and focus solely on that for about six months.

Wow.

Okay.

And then six months.

That

literally kept you in business because you obviously you couldn't just donate it all, but you earned a meager profit, let's say.

You

were able to keep our employees staffed, you know,

and

there

was.

It's not like you were gouging, but

you

kept you in business.

Candidly, it almost.

took us down.

We ever came to closing was about six months after COVID.

So because there was thresholds of what you got.

PPP money for I was I believe 25% loss of income or more.

Okay.

We were at 24% loss of income, but tanked in profitability.

Wow.

So,

you know, like those

are two different things.

Yeah, your margins.

Yeah, I mean, I'm making a third of what I make on a bottle of vodka by the time you, you know, you add ingredients and labor and everything else to it.

And then versus, I mean, a cocktail, when you get to charge $8 and $9 and there's 12 cocktails in a bottle, your bottle has a margin value of like 120 bucks.

Right.

Not four.

Yeah,

right.

You know, like my business plan isn't built that way.

Yeah.

And so when that... So

just crushed and compressed your margins.

Well, you know, when we were doing what we had to do to be viable, to show that we can keep our employees employed, we can make our payments, we can do this.

Yeah.

Well, COVID didn't really hit.

Wassa until like December 2020 to January 2021.

Right.

Remember

the

map?

It would show the dots

of where the COVID cases were nationally.

It didn't hit here and everyone was sick of playing by the rules.

We all went and did the holiday stuff.

Then it popped and then we did, we doubled.

our January sales from our first year to our second year.

And then we did a quarter of that year, that following January.

That's why no private events, nobody going out for drinks, nothing.

Everybody was sick.

And so, you know, your winter months are a little bit slower in the service industry.

So your Christmas party's kind of helped bolster that up.

Right.

It just we got kicked a couple of times with not getting PPP, not having the holiday relief, not having the follow up Christmas party.

So you

wound up not getting any PPP.

I think we got one round for for like 10 or 15 because we'd only been opening.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we didn't have any existing.

Right.

Wow.

What a

story.

And meanwhile, your baby's born and you're trying to

raise.

Because our apartment sold.

We had to buy a house.

It was.

We

bought the canning line.

And yeah, we bought the canning line too.

Yeah.

Because we got in the proof of concept during the.

We used to use a mobile canner while we were doing some hand sanitizer.

And there was enough of a demand where we were able to show proof of concept to invest into a canning line, which, you know,

those

can run quarter to a half million dollars.

And again, without any real sales, right?

Yeah, right.

These were the sales, you know, just trying to fight through that stuff.

And then you wind up becoming a co-packer.

You wind up canning your own.