Quincy

0:01Halli Sigel:Welcome to the Emerging Brands podcast, sharing the stories behind brands you'll want to shop next. I'm your host, Kelly Bennett. I am a New York City-based brand strategist for CPG Food and Beverage Brands. In each episode, I'll take you behind the scenes of founders that are building better-for-you products and bringing them to market.

0:22Shelby Sims:it.

0:22Halli Sigel:Also, I talk to brand builders, retailers, industry experts, and tastemakers who help bring

0:28Shelby Sims:those cool products to your shopping cart.

0:31Halli Sigel:You will hear stories of real-life founders, their launch strategies, and practical advice you could use to grow your own brand or simply discover what's next on shelf. And the best part is you could shop all the brands featured on the show. This podcast is brought to you by Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is the go-to platform built for creator-powered retail activations. They're connecting everyday creators with CPG brands to generate shelf-level awareness, drive in-store momentum, and generate authentic content in markets that matter the most. Go to hummingbirds.com for all the details and let them know I sent you.

1:16Halli Sigel:Now, let's dive into the new episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. Today, I have a founder who is also based in Brooklyn who is creating something super cool. Before I even connected with her, I had seen her product on the shelves of all of my favorite local lifestyle shops, and I remember picking it up in one of those really cute stores in Brooklyn thinking, oh, I would love to talk to the founder. True story. And it was before I even connected with her. So Holly is here, Holly Siegel, the co-founder and CEO of Quincy. And I'm so happy to officially have you on the podcast today.

2:03Shelby Sims:I'm so excited. I actually was like, you know, first time listener or frequent listener, first time caller. I'm so excited to be here. I'm a huge fan of what you're built with your brand as well.

2:14Halli Sigel:Thank you so much. And thank you for listening to the podcast. That means a lot. And I love those full circle moments of people who've listened to the podcast and then come on to share their story because that's essentially the idea of this podcast to really have this community of founders that you could hear each other's stories. So let's dive into your story. I would first love to have you explain what exactly the product is. It's one just stunning branding, gorgeous design of your packaging. But for someone who isn't familiar yet, could you give us the overview of what exactly it is?

2:54Shelby Sims:Yeah, so at Quincy, we like to say that great cocktails aren't made by spirits alone. They require a great mixer and a great garnish. Where alcohol brands have built loyalty, we feel like mixers and garnishes have fell short or have been ignored until now. So we say Quincy is creating brand love for the other half of the glass by redefining what mixers and garnishes are for today's modern consumer. So our first product, which is the one that you picked up on a shelf, is our Dirty Martini Olive and Brine Mix, which is what we launched with, what we are known for. But at its core, Quincy is going to be the number one mixer and garnish company in the country and beyond.

3:35Shelby Sims:And that's really what we're building towards.

3:37Halli Sigel:Okay, love the vision. Let's affirm that right now that it is. And walk us through why olives and Brian, I know that you personally really saw this as a problem that people were making with finding that perfect ratio. So could you take us to the backstory of how you landed on this first product?

4:01Shelby Sims:Yes. So it actually started like many CPG brands during the pandemic. I was living at home and I was making a lot of dirty martinis. I opened my fridge one day and I legitimately counted, I think like eight jars of dried up olives because I was using all of the brine and then I didn't have enough. And then I didn't know what to do with the olives. There's only so many like punta nascos or things that you can make. So I thought to myself, why can't I just have the brine? that does exist. So I went on a whole journey of ordering all the pre-made brines on the market. I liked some of them. Some of them were a little too salty.

4:37Shelby Sims:They had vermouth in them, which I don't love. And then you still have to buy the olives. So I was like, wait, why can't someone make a jar of olives? That's like just enough brine, just enough olives, flip the ratio, essentially. And that's when the idea for Quincy was born back in 2020. But we didn't actually like come together, me and my co-founder until 2023 to bring the product to life. But it really came out of like a personal need of like, I make a lot of these at home. I love to host. And I just didn't feel like there was like a great solution out there that tasted great. And then like, ultimately it was zero waste.

5:11Halli Sigel:We love zero waste. We love sustainability. And the way that you connected those dots is really clever. And again, it caught my attention because it just, like you said flip the ratio it was more brian a little less olives but it totally makes sense for the use case of the product yeah so yeah so i think yeah what were you gonna say no no i think that

5:37Shelby Sims:mixers and garnishes in general are like a really ignore a category that's super ignored by consumers but they like really make the cocktail experience and so i think we really wanted to set out to make a product that was really clear of like what it could do for someone who's purchasing it. So like you said, when you picked it up, you're like, oh, I got this. Totally.

5:55Halli Sigel:So walk me through what were some of the early discussions to make sure that that resonated with a consumer and that they got it? Because again, you're doing something different. It's not a product that people usually see in the reverse of more brine and a bit less olives, right? You're doing something different. What were those early conversations to making sure that customers got it, that they would say oh I totally get what this is and yes add it to cart yeah it honestly is like an ongoing

6:30Shelby Sims:battle that we continue to face I feel like there's always that aha moment when you describe to someone like oh yeah you kind of tell them the story a bit of like well if you ever make them at home and then they they are like oh I got it so when we were setting up to label the product we're like we need to make this like as clear as possible like what is in this jar and like how you are going to use it and then through that like the education on our website and our socials we're trying to like tell people a bit of what we do but I think it's twofold one making sure they know that this is something unique and different and how to use it and the ratio is perfect but to like I mentioned like getting people to actually go to the mixers and garnish section of any grocery store I think we're really lucky we're in a lot of specialty stores in New York so it pops on the shelf but like I don't know when was the last time you went to the mixer and garnish aisle like what did you see.

7:18Halli Sigel:To be really fair with you, I don't go to those aisles in the normal grocery store because I don't know, I feel like they're a little stale. So that also made your product stand out to me in these cute shops because I haven't seen a garnishing type of cool brand like yours. And so I'm curious, what helped you connect the dots with consumers as far as getting even specialty shops to say yes to putting you on shelf? Like what was the thing that they saw of like, oh, cool, this, this makes sense. And we haven't seen anything like it.

7:58Shelby Sims:Yeah, I think one, our branding, we worked really hard. My best friend is a designer, and she was so helpful throughout the entire process. We knew it had to pop on a shelf, because we knew we wanted to target these specialty stores. So that was the first part, hot like a nice glass jar a really nice label we slurged a little bit on some of the like metallic um parts of our label which you'll see and that's the first thing when they see it they're like this is so cute this looks great then when they read the label we really have like five simple ingredients and we use the highest quality olives and our brine is very um special i would say we have kind of like a secret recipe of using the brine that the olives are cured in we cut that we filter at a certain amount of times.

8:44Shelby Sims:So first they're like, this looks cute. Then they were like, this actually tastes amazing. And I went home and I made myself a martini. I made my partner a martini and they loved it. And so that for us is like, we were able to kind of latch onto the beloved cocktail with martini and people just got really excited about putting it on their shelves. And then it started to actually move and people were purchasing it and repurchasing it. And yeah, it's just kind of snowballed.

9:11Halli Sigel:Incredible. And you said that you came to market in 2023 and it's 2025 now. What has been some of the other strategies you've been using to really help get the word out and educate people that there's like this cooler, innovative way to garnish or make their cocktails? Any other things that are really helping move that needle?

9:38Shelby Sims:Yeah. So we, me and my co-founder met through a mutual friend and we were connected actually in 2020 when we both were having these conversations like with our mutual friend. And then we decided to put it to bed and then bring it back to life in 2023. It actually took us a year and a half to develop the product. And we launched on shelves in July of 2024. So a little over a year at this point. So honestly, first off, we think it's like twofold. One is just like the natural like velocity off the shelves of like making sure we're in prime retail locations where like where people buy these products.

10:14Shelby Sims:But then also we love to like surprise and delight our customers. Like who doesn't love a martini? So we've been trying to show up in fun places like Sip and Shops. And we've done like a bead night at Susan Alexander. Like just fun ways to get in front of consumers who like know our demographic. but like it's not just like a typical sampling because we actually have a really hard time sampling our product because it's like alcohol adjacent though I do love making mocktails with it um it is hard to sample so we have to get creative and where we can actually make martinis for people it's been really fun and then um at the past one of the past events someone actually came up to us like I love Quincy oh my god and I was like wow this is crazy um it was really really exciting but just trying to show up in places people least expect us yeah so cool so

11:04Halli Sigel:something that I feel like you've been doing really well and going back to sampling is showing up in different brand collabs I want to say the one one of the first times I had your product was at a pop-up grocer event. They, it was a, it was an industry mixer type of event. And there was Quincy Dirty Martinis. I've seen you at friends of Feast and Friends with Philo and many other places I've seen on your social. What has been some of the brands that, or what makes this most sense as far as brands that you're partnering with or finding the most that you have similar demographics of consumers?

11:57Shelby Sims:Yeah, so we look for, honestly, we'll say yes to anything, to be quite honest. Or at the beginning, we were saying yes to a lot of things. People love martinis. And so the thought of having like a martini bar or we've made other cocktails with our product really excites people. We kind of have like a mini market that we just take with us and set up. and then we shake and stir our cocktails. And so honestly, I think that's like a piece of advice sometimes to founders is like, there's just like unexpected ways to get in front of your consumers. And I just kind of think like, okay, what are they doing outside of just going to eat and drink?

12:31Shelby Sims:Where are they shopping? What are they doing for fun? What are activities that they might like to do? And we really thrive in like a metropolitan area. And so we just look for brands that are aligned with like our demographics and also just wanna have fun because at the end of the day, like we're making cocktails else it's really not that serious and so just look for brands that like to celebrate like whimsy and having a good time and all those things.

12:53Halli Sigel:I forgot to ask you this because we jumped right into it because I just love what you're building but what was your background prior to starting the brand?

13:04Shelby Sims:Yeah so I spent the first 10 years of my career at high growth startups. The first was Casper where I kind of like cut my teeth in the CPG space. Not Food & Bev but just a little different. I was actually on their operations team where I launched a call center, totally different. I always say like my brain is very much like experience operations, like Venn diagram, like right in the middle. I love the intersection. From there, I worked at Chief, which is a women's executive club. I was their like sixth employee and I was also overseeing their experience teams. So again, like a lot of growth in these companies, wearing a lot of different hats.

13:44Shelby Sims:And I think that really like prepared me to be a founder and a CEO and kind of run a company that I actually had like no real experience in food and bev but I felt like I just like you know I knew how to do everything to like build a company but just kind of had to figure out how to get the products going totally but

14:02Halli Sigel:experiences and curating experiences and then plugging in a product it sounds like that's something that was very much in your wheelhouse and that totally makes sense with what you're building here, having it such a cool experience around having a good dirty martini in a fun environment. I could totally see how that connected. Yeah.

14:26Shelby Sims:I mean, community is really at the center of everything that I've done in my career and that I like to do with Quincy. And we named the brand Quincy after a bartender that we had met one night when we were out. And the ethos was kind of like Quincy's your best friend like it's the person that has the best restaurant recommendations you stay out late with they'll pick up the check like how do we really personify the brand and make it everything that like someone wants it to be for themselves so like martinis are very particular Quincy can be whoever you want it to be um so we try to kind of stay like neutral in terms of like our the demographic we try to like appeal to but naturally I think we fall into like definitely like the younger generation.

15:10Shelby Sims:But I will say like the majority of our online sales come from like 50 plus.

15:14Halli Sigel:I could see that because they're also up leveling the ingredients that they use. They're hosting more, maybe have bigger homes for parties and hosting. So I could totally see that. Something that we touched upon a few minutes ago, but I would love to circle back to is advice, because that is very much a big part of the podcast of having founders who've been now in the trenches and looking back and saying, okay, this was really helpful to know early on, or this is something I wish I knew sooner. For you, what would be that advice you would share with an emerging brand founder who's in the really early stages, they have a cool, innovative product.

16:01Halli Sigel:Maybe they're just getting into branding, packaging, needing to educate people on what makes this product different and how to use it. What advice would you share with them?

16:13Shelby Sims:Yeah, so I have like tactical business advice, which is think 10 years down the road, 20 years, where are you distributing and how are you distributing the product and build your margins to account for that build your pricing strategy think about all of that like right from the jump we had an advisor who told us that before we even looked for a co-packer to like produce our product like know who you're selling to and build for that because it's really hard to make room for other players in the space once you have a product and market and people are like used to your price point and all those things so that's a piece of like tactical advice and honestly it served us very well.

16:53Shelby Sims:Yeah, honestly, I was like, this is great. And then more like, philosophically, I'd say two things. One, comparison is a thief of joy. I've actually been seeing this a lot on like Instagram and TikTok, you know, and like founder talk or whatever. It's something I always say all the time to Shelby, my co founder, because it's so easy to look at other brands that aren't even competitors, like in your space, and you're like, they're doing this, or they're in this store, and I'm behind. And it's like, I just wasted 30 minutes of my brain space, like basically being sad about something that like I have full control over, like, or don't, but like, there's no point in like rising tides, rides all shied.

17:30Shelby Sims:So like in my, just a lot of like mental gymnastics to make sure that like, I'm like, no, this is exciting for everyone. Like that stores and retailers are taking emerging brands really seriously and excited to put them on the shelves. And then again, like just get comfortable hearing no.

17:47Halli Sigel:That's like my final piece because I, it's hard.

17:50Shelby Sims:Like I was not used to it.

17:53Halli Sigel:That's a really good one because like anything, when you're building something and you're putting yourself out there, talk about mental gymnastics and just needing to brush yourself off, get up again and go to the next opportunity or knock on that next door. So that's a really good piece of advice of being okay with the nose and getting yourself in a good headspace to really be strategic of what lane you're going to be excelling in and not looking around the room and comparing yourself to everyone else.