Tomonotomo

0:00Welcome 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. it.

0:22Amanda Chen:Also, I talk to brand builders, retailers, industry experts, and tastemakers who help bring those cool products to your shopping cart. 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.

1:09Go to hummingbirds.com for all the details and let them know I sent you. 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 Amanda Chen. She is the founder of Tomo no Tomo, which is a really cool agave spirits non-alk brand that when I first heard about it, I absolutely wanted Amanda to come on because her background is really cool. She moved countries to start this brand. There's so much to dive into. So Amanda, I'm so happy to have you on the podcast today.

1:53Amanda Chen:Thank you. I'm really happy to be here. Of course. So let's just first dive into what is this product you're creating? What was the space that you saw in the marketplace that wasn't being checked off in your perspective? And what was it that you seeked out to create? Yeah. Well, I stopped drinking during COVID. And once the pandemic was over, I came back, I'm originally from Toronto, I came back to Toronto, when I was helping a lot of emerging brands, open up and create non alcoholic menus. As I was working on these brands, I realized these are really hard spirits to work with. So I think we all rushed in really quickly for the demand of non alcoholic spirits, just to have an option just to have an alternative, which is all good signs, but kind of missing the mark on what consumers are really craving.

2:47Amanda Chen:They want something quality. They want something that is the same level of care and handcraft as all of the spirits we already know and love when we go to a bar. So I think consumers right now are expecting the same level of hospitality, point blank. And I was extremely disappointed in the lack of brands that existed for non-alcoholic agave, specifically in that category. There's so many tequila and mezcal brands that are beautifully made, and it just wasn't getting the same shine in the non-alcoholic space. So I thought, okay, well, let me dig a little bit deeper. Let me go to Mexico. Let me do it right.

3:26Amanda Chen:I really wanted to grab the smoky aspects of mezcal. I thought that was also really lacking. There just wasn't any smoky spirits that were non-alcoholic available. And that's something that's like really missing in the spirit world. So I thought, okay, let me make something smoky, make something authentic, make something from Mexico, keeping the culture, keeping it handcrafted. And that was the beginning of this project. I really wanted something all natural, authentic from the start, not just an alternative that we just grabbed from a lab. Okay. You touched upon so many things I am so fascinated by, but I want to take a step back first and talk about your professional background, because you said that when you came back to Toronto, you were helping restaurants develop their non-alcoholic drink menu, cocktail menu.

4:19What was your career prior to starting the brand? Yeah.

4:24Amanda Chen:So before that I was a bartender in Toronto. Before that I had a background in digital marketing. I also had a line of flavored salts and sugars, and those were basically the little salts that go beside a tequila bottle in the liquor store. So I was working a lot with tequilas and mezcals already to begin with. And then during the pandemic, I opened up a cocktail club, a virtual cocktail making class where I would host classes. We did Zoom rooms. And then I was also delivering cocktail kits. And that was really popular during the time that everyone was working at home. And so I was able to create lots of recipes, send over kits, but I just didn't have the same feel as being behind the bar, talking to people in person, sharing stories.

5:09Amanda Chen:It was just kind of rushed. You had one hour to make three cocktails and then everyone left and they were still home. So it wasn't the same energy. It was something I didn't want to be promoting that everyone's just drinking alone at home. And so that was kind of the shift. And I thought, I still want to be in this industry, but I just want to make it different. So what made you want to dive into non-alk after being a bartender, having a tasting virtual tasting room, creating cocktails. What made you personally curious about this space? I didn't know that I wanted to stop drinking until the bars closed and I was stuck at home and I was drinking by myself.

5:50Amanda Chen:And I thought, you know what, this actually doesn't feel good. I don't feel healthy. I also don't want more people in the same state where they can't leave their house. They're just by themselves and they're just aimlessly drinking. And it just wasn't a fun story. It wasn't happy, you know? And I thought the first change comes with me. If I change my lifestyle, I want to live healthier, happier, more conscious. I want to connect with people better. Just realizing maybe my connections weren't that, um, weren't that great when, when I was drinking. So I thought maybe if I just focus on myself, drink less, be more mindful in general.

6:27Amanda Chen:And I think the whole craze of Uber deliveries and all of these cocktail kits and the super convenience that came out of that really disinterested me in continuing to feed that beast. I didn't want to feed the Amazon beast. I didn't want to keep going with that, where everyone's just ordering everything and everyone's staying home. So I thought, but let me try to make something different. I wanted to stay in Mexico once I came to Mexico. And I thought, if there's a way to make me stay, maybe I can build a business and maybe I can continue not drinking. Let's see if that's possible. And I thought the only way to make that possible is to create that reality for myself.

7:09What a cool way to turn just your own personal curiosity and desire to feel more connected into jumping into non-alc, moving countries. Like I said, when I was talking to you originally, I was like, oh, this is a good story. I love someone who takes the leap and goes all in. So I would love to hear what was the first starting point of actually building this into a brand and business? It sounds like you started from the way beginning of learning how to actually craft this non-alcohol agave spirit. But I would love to hear what were the steps that you took early on?

7:56Amanda Chen:Honestly, I didn't really know what I was doing. I think that's how it always goes. You just go with brave confidence. And I started off with doing a competitive analysis. And I noticed that all of the non-alcoholic mezcals and tequilas didn't even have agave. So I thought, number one, I'm going to make sure I'm using agave, making sure that's additive free, no preservatives, and it's going to be handcrafted. That's all I asked for. And that was nearly impossible to do. Everything needed preservatives, everything needed flavorings, because you need to boost up that flavor profile. And I thought, well, if I have to de-alkalize an existing beautifully crafted tequila or mezcal, I'm not doing anything good there.

8:36Amanda Chen:I'd rather people actually buy a good, nicely made tequila or mezcal. And I don't want to spend double the amount to take away the 40 % of alcohol and just burn it off. So I thought, okay, this isn't working, but maybe if I keep looking deeper into how non-alcoholic beers are being made, yes, they only have 5 % alcohol. It's easy for them to burn off. But now a lot of brands are making alcohol-free beer from the start. They're choosing ingredients that don't have as much sugar. So there isn't a lot of alcohol to start with for them to even need to de-alkalize and they can actually just distill the way that it is.

9:08Amanda Chen:With that in mind, I thought, okay, let me think of agave ingredients that have less sugar. So tobala is only harvested in Oaxaca, Mexico. And this specific strain of agave has a lot less sugar. So to make a mezcal, it needs so much tobala agave, and it's super expensive, and it's super rare, and all of that. But actually, for one liter of mezcal, I can get three liters, three times the amount of tomo no tomo spirit because i don't need this i don't need the sugars to turn into alcohol so just thinking a little bit smarter thinking a little bit differently and then using the natural resources that we already have there was a way to to solution and we are officially the the first alcohol-free agave spirit distillery in oaxaca mexico so cool okay so you figured out how to essentially it sounds like work more aligned with nature to see what was already the least friction to create this product and really work with what was already naturally occurring in this strain right so how did it actually start becoming a business so I think that's the biggest challenge of going to a new country, learning to speak the language, learning to understand the culture, and then building your own community was the biggest steps to get into.

10:37Amanda Chen:And so I remember thinking like, okay, I can just keep talking to my scientists. I can keep looking at competitors that already exist, but I'm creating something new. I need to carve this path for myself and I need to go 110 % in and not look back. And so there's been a lot of moments where I thought, I just want to speak English. I just want people to stop trying to rip me off. I want people to stop gating ingredients and resources and labor and people, but, you know, just keep pushing, keep pushing. And yeah, a year later, I now have my own suppliers. I don't have to go through another guy and another guy and another guy and ask for favors.

11:14Amanda Chen:You know, I am finally legit with my connections, my labor force. I'm able to order a proper amount where it's not, you know, disinteresting to other suppliers here. I'm actually also sourcing my agave from the only other woman owned mezcal producer here in Oaxaca. So really trying to push that as well. And, you know, offer, offer the ability for not only women to continue working, but for a whole new industry, a whole new category to exist in Mexico. That's really cool. So you're also supporting another woman owned business in your production. Yeah. I didn't know that. That's a really cool connection.

11:58So how did you start getting your products on the radar of consumers who didn't have this option before? Right. Cause you're creating something new. How did you start getting it on the radar?

12:11Amanda Chen:Literally everything has been word of mouth. I started in Austin, Texas. I literally started at a Kickstarter. Right before I was able to even afford my first machine, we've got a custom-made machine that's able to distill this product. I raised my first 10k on Kickstarter and then I needed to deliver. So I finally took the risk and made my first batch and then I literally lugged across 60 bottles from the border across to Texas and delivered all of the first batch to my Kickstarter group. And then I took a bus to Austin and I met the only people in the non-alc space. Like there were five or 10 people that were huge connectors in that space and they were running around with my product.

13:01Amanda Chen:They ran over to Tails with a cocktail with my product and suddenly it just became this cult favorite that everyone was pining for because it wasn't available yet. We were still figuring out how to actually import the product into the States. So there was all this curiosity in action already happening by the time we launched in October. When was it just last October? Yeah, just last October. We just hit our first year. Oh, incredible. I didn't realize it was only just last year. So just to back up a little bit, because there's so many emerging brand founders who listen to the podcast. So I love breaking down just the very practical steps that you did to build the brand and business.

13:46So Kickstarter, was that also targeted to people in Texas or in Austin, Texas, just going really local to that area?

13:57Amanda Chen:No, to be honest, that was just the closest place that I could ship out the products to. So that was the only place I could lug the product out before I was able to figure out the importation process. The Kickstarter, it was coming from my background in digital marketing. I still didn't know how to talk to investors. I still haven't figured that out yet. I'm slowly talking to more angel investors. We're getting a lot of traction after the first year that I can actually talk behind. But before that, yeah, before that, I didn't have anything. I just had the idea. But I know how to get consumers involved.

14:30Amanda Chen:I know how to get consumers excited. And so I had a really cool Kickstarter video. I literally spent every day messaging people on Instagram. A lot of the backers actually were non-alcoholic bottle shops. And those are our first clients. so the bottle shops are really working together to make their businesses continue as well because they need things on the shelf to keep their businesses running so I realized how interconnected our businesses were and how small and mighty this movement was of people that wanted just more options to exist no one was competitive on which category you were in they were just like oh you're in agave spirit awesome we've got two shelves waiting to be filled we've got lots of space for you.

15:11Amanda Chen:It wasn't like, oh, we've only got half a shelf left. And, you know, you got to run over hoops in order to be on that shelf, you know? What a cool welcome, right? Because usually it's the opposite experience. Exactly. Being a new CPG food or beverage product to market. So how did, so the bottle shops were your early Kickstarter supporters to get new product on their shelves because their consumers also want to try what's cool and new. And it's a win-win for both of you. Has that continued on as you're in the market for a year now? Has bottle shops been the biggest needle mover or has it been food service?

15:58Because I know you were also working in that space.

16:01Amanda Chen:Bottle shops and direct to consumer has been the main game, pretty 50-50. and only now have we put some focus onto bars and restaurants. We were just, we just launched a year ago. And even just last year, there was still some hesitancy in bringing in non-alcoholic products to the bars. It's still a space where more alcohol is being served. So I really didn't want to compete with alcohol. I was just like, I'll go to a space that's completely alcohol free where people are ready to consume these types of beverages. but a year later a lot of non-alcoholic spirits are pretty normal in bars and restaurants and we've actually got a lot of placement in Michelin star restaurants so that's kind of been another way to show the quality and level of premium aspect of our product.

16:50How did you get on the radar of Michelin star restaurants?

16:55Amanda Chen:Honestly I don't know I literally just got emails with a PO so that's that's really cool how it's just been word of mouth which means a lot of people that know about the product have been saying really great things about it um i know from my own background being a bartender i wanted it to be something that other bartenders could respect could play with that there's enough complexity in it and it wasn't something that they had to add a million other ingredients in to make the drink digestible and i feel like without even needing to say that. A lot of the bar managers have realized that and instantly just made the purchase.

17:29Amanda Chen:They didn't have to contact me, didn't ask for a discount, didn't ask for a free bottle, nothing. They just like instantly ordered and that was it. Very cool. And also your branding and packaging is really beautiful. Thank you. You're welcome. What is on the radar for say the year ahead for the brand? Yeah. So now we're really focusing on bars and restaurants. We really want to be the only non-alcoholic agave spirit that people are serving at the bars. I think like in the very beginning of this conversation that a lot of the earlier brands missed the mark. They just wanted to create an alternative.

18:05Amanda Chen:They wanted to move really fast. Now consumers are asking for something better quality, something with a story behind it, something authentic, something made with real ingredients. So I think we're instantly the winner for that in all bars and restaurants and continuing direct to consumer. And then later of next year, we're going to add in some canned cocktails and really get into grocery so that there's more convenience as well. And we know that we have an award-winning base. So why not make that more convenient and approachable for everyone else? I love that idea. Please keep me updated on that one.

18:39Any advice you would share with an emerging brand founder who is in that in-between stage of, okay, should I keep going with this idea or does this make sense? Should I put myself out there more? Should I take this huge leap? I would love to hear what you would share to that founder.

19:02Amanda Chen:Well, my last business in the cocktail kits and the virtual cocktail classes was explosive. It was booming. It was doing really well and I was unhappy. So do whatever is going to make you happy, however much more work that might be. I'm physically up at 4am, and it is still until midnight, basically. I've never worked this hard physically in my life, but I've never felt so fulfilled. I'm so appreciative that I found the suppliers that I have, the community that I've created, the lifestyle that I've made, and that I can actually inspire and help others also have a life that they want. Just leading by example, just existing and being a person that has done this is already enough for me to feel fulfilled.

19:48That's a great piece of advice. And that very much resonates with me too. I've always seek to be feeling at peace with whatever I'm working on or whoever I'm working with. And it's not easy because you usually have to say no to a lot in order to have that fulfillment and peace. But once you are able to do that, it's like the biggest unlock, I think.

20:13Amanda Chen:Exactly. And just knowing how you feel instead of like, oh, what are the investors going to think? What are the consumers going to think? What are my sales going to be? And all of that stuff is relevant. You do need to have all of that figured out as well. But if your heart is in it, you'll go 100%. If your heart's not in it, then it'll always be a debate. Absolutely. That's such a great, great piece of advice. Last question, where can we shop your incredible product? Yeah, you can get it directly online at tomonotomo.com. And we also have our list of local non-alcoholic bottle shops. If you look at our store locator as well for, for any local spots that you want to support.

20:54And I'll definitely link it in the show notes so people could shop directly. Amanda, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and creating a really cool, innovative product. And just big congrats on your first year.

21:08Amanda Chen:Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. You're so welcome. Thank you everyone for listening and I'll see you on the next episode. This podcast is brought to you by Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is the go-to platform built for creator powered retail activations. They are 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. Thank you again for listening to this episode of the Emerging Brands Podcast. It really means so much to me that you listen to this show, share it with your friends and support it.

21:56Before I wrap up, I just wanted to give a shout out to a few brands I want you to keep an eye out for that I'm working with. First up is She's the Sauce. She just launched her pre-orders sold out, which is incredible. This is a new protein pack fiber filled sauce line starting with a creamy ranch and honey mustard skews. It's made without seed oils, gums, fillers, so it's a cleaner, better-for-you option that tastes incredible. Next is Cotto, a new cottage cheese dip that's reimagining the classics in a modern way. Then we have Nomi, which is a better-for-kids brand, making mealtime way easier.

22:41Next, we have Frankly Good Coffee, who is expanding in food service and specialty retail, bringing their air roasted, small batch, unique blends to more people. And I'm kicking off brand strategies for a new pudding brand, ready to drink beverage, and a baking brand, and a few more in the works that I'm really excited to share about soon. If you are a CPG food and beverage founder and you're ready to launch a brand people want to shop, head to withkellybennett.com for the details. and as always thank you so much for listening shopping the brands featured on the show and following brands I'm working with it means so much see you on the next episode