'Cream Will Rise To The Top.' How Emily Heintz Is Raising The Bar With Sèchey.

0:10Hello friends, I'm Ray Latif and you're listening to the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage, Taste Radio. In this episode, we sit down with Emily Heintz, the founder and CEO of Sachet, a retailer, brand, and curator of premium adult non-alcoholic beverages. Like the effervescent bubbles in her sparkling wine, Emily Heintz believes that true quality always rises to the top. Emily is the visionary behind Sachet, a dynamic platform that includes a luxury de-alcoholized wine brand, a dry bottle shop in South Carolina, and a thriving D2C business offering a wide range of alcohol analogs.

0:54Sachet also curated Target's non-alcoholic adult beverage set, bringing elevated options to the mass retailer's shelves. The strategic direction and impressive momentum of Sachet caught the attention of InvestBev, a private equity firm specializing in adult beverages. In August, InvestBev made an undisclosed investment in the company, with founder Brian Rosen praising Sachet for having, quote, gotten farther with less than anyone else we've seen. In this episode, Emily joins us for a deep dive into her vision for Sachet and the journey of building the brand. Framed around a series of true or false questions, Emily discusses the key factors driving the growth of the non-alcoholic beverage category how Gen Z and millennial lifestyles are shaping awareness and trial, and why she believes that the founder's voice is the most essential tool in connecting with customers.

1:52Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm honored to be sitting down with Emily Heintz, who is the founder and CEO of Sashay. Emily, great to see you. Great to see you. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, thanks for your brand new podcast set up, set up just for me and the team at Taste Radio. I appreciate that. Thank you. It looks great. Looks really, really good. Thank you. We love a podcast. Yes. And I love the fact that you're joining us today in the midst of dry January. And I have in front of me, or to the left of me, three of your wines, your Pinot Noir, your Rosé, and your limited edition sparkling Sauvignon Blanc, which I am very excited to open right now.

2:34Do you mind? Can we do a quick tasting before we get started here? Okay. Let's start with the sparkling. Okay. As you know, point it away from your face. Obviously, Emily, come on. It's not my first time. But you know what? Someone told me, I was talking to a bartender and he said, you're supposed to keep the cage on as well. You're not supposed to remove the cage. So you take the whole thing all off at once. Like even the foil, if there were foil on this. So one would think I should know that, but learning it alongside you. And I'm going to open one that is the same juice, but a different format that we're going to talk about.

3:07Okay. At the same time. So both me tasting the same product. Okay. So your closure is a little different than mine. My closure is different. But someone's going to hear the pop. Everyone's going to hear the pop here. Okay. This is sort of away from my face. Emily, this could be the end. So it was nice knowing you. Here we go. Oh, well done. Make it look so easy. Yes. Okay. I'm going to pour myself some here. Let's see. without breaking this setup here.

3:36Oh, drinking in the middle of the day. I love it. Yeah, that's one of the occasions we would love to steal. Okay. The midday work occasion. First, Emily, thank you so much for being on Taste Radio. Cheers to you. Cheers to you. It is really delightful. That is, and I don't know, you know, I said really, that is really delightful as if there were some hesitance or questionable thoughts in my head before even tasting this. And I'm sure you get that a lot, which is, could it actually be good if it's non-alcoholic? And it is really a delicious wine. Yes, thank you. It should be crisp and clean. It's a nice nose.

4:17It does taste shockingly familiar to what you can either say traditional or what some people say, the real sparkling wine. It's a Sauvignon Blanc grape. It is from the Bordeaux region of France and was made specially for sachet, de-alcoholized. So this was a wine. The alcohol was removed, which also removes sugar and calories. So bonus there. It is a health and wellness investment in yourself when you are trying an alcohol-free sparkling wine. This was a wine, as you mentioned. I think it still is a wine, just as it's de-alkalized, as you said. And I think it's very expressive of a Sauvignon Blanc and a sparkling wine.

5:03And yeah, I don't really taste anything missing. It doesn't feel like, and I think that's something that's great about wine is you're not necessarily supposed to feel any kind of burn like you do with spirits. And perhaps that's why this works so well. I mean, I almost said perfectly, and I think perfectly is an apt term. Yes. And we've had feedback that our guests and consumers have shocked and delighted, surprised their friends and family with a bottle of sachet wine. And it is a bestseller in our multi-brand retail location. And it's limited edition because we know that we continue to innovate in the non-alcoholic wine category.

5:42This happens to be organic and vegan, if those things matter to you, which we find exciting. And we were so impressed by the expression of a sparkling Sauvignon Blanc in the 750 that we introduced a 200 milliliter so that the bar to purchase was lower. People felt more comfortable trying a smaller format size. What is the price point on the 750? The$750 is$29 at sachet.com. And the 200 milliliter was exclusive to Target at$8.99 over the holiday season, and now is available exclusively at sachet.com for$10. Okay. I mentioned to you before we hopped on the mics, and I've mentioned this to a lot of people.

6:30I've talked about this on the podcast before. I've always been a little let down, sometimes a lot let down by non-alc wines because I love wine and I just want the same flavor, texture, aroma that I have come to know and love. Basically what I'm saying is I want no compromises. And I know that's really, really tough, but I think what you've created with the sparkling is one of these wines that I want because I don't feel like there's any compromise here. and perhaps even better, I know I won't feel it in the midst of this interview. Yeah, you can continue on with your day. Exactly, exactly. When you were thinking about non-ELK wands to begin with, and when you were venturing into your own journey as it relates to this category, what was it?

7:26I mean, what really moved the needle for you and got you sort of out of the idea phase and into the I'm doing this phase? Well, like most of us during COVID, we were celebrating and socializing at home as best we could, right? You know, part of that was drinking traditional alcohol. And I went through my own personal journey thinking about traditional alcohol and how it made me feel and started discovering alternatives. And that I could still have something in my glass and stay connected to the party without alcohol. So that was really the fundamental idea behind this. And because I have a retail and a brand background, I came up with a concept for Sachet, where it's a place where you can discover, explore alternatives, but you can still stay connected and socialize and celebrate.

8:18And then for Sachet, the embodiment of that is the wine bottle. So as a brand, we wanted to put our label on wine so you can take it home. You can have it at a bar. You can bring sachet to your friends and family and continue to celebrate, but not have the ill effects of alcohol. And when you realized that you wanted to moderate your consumption of alcohol, I think a lot of other people were feeling the same way. not a lot of other people opened or created a non-alcoholic wine brand. Going from A to B, especially when it comes to a relatively new category, or at least one that people hadn't really considered before 2020, is a big step.

9:09It's a big step in your life. And I do want to talk about your journey, and I do want to talk about how you think about the development of sachet and the non-alk beverage category as a whole. And as we have talked about, I'd love to kind of frame it as a true or false session here, a true or false session for sachet, as it were. And, you know, Emily, we can start here by me asking you, you know, true or false, your background or lack of experience in this business was helpful to you in getting the brand off the ground and getting to where you are today, true or false? True. So I think the non-alcoholic category has a lot of nuance.

10:00And early injuries have been struggling against the existing guardrails for alcohol. And a lot of early brands have really embraced sobriety. and for me, not coming from the alcohol industry and not having preconceived notions of how to scale the quote unquote alcohol brand, I brought fresh eyes to it. And I also understood that this nascent category really needed a laboratory to understand how consumers would react. And then how do we bring awareness and education to the category? I think that helped me and led me to develop a non-alcoholic wine without some traditional beverage background making me stay in one lane.

10:50True or false, when you started out, were you perceived as a pariah by alcohol conglomerates? Were they not happy about you doing what you're doing now? False. I think that traditional alcohol didn't believe in non-alcohol as a movement. So it didn't really pay enough attention to it until more recently. Big alcohol also looked at spirits and saw that as the entry point for non-alcoholic. But what we are seeing is that it's actually wine that has the biggest growth potential. If you can follow up on that, why wine versus beer or spirits? Well, 94 % of non-alcoholic beer today is the investment in the category itself.

11:45Wine, non-alcoholic wine, is only 5%. I think it's because while early investment into beer and the arrested fermentation process for beer, it's very close to what you might get in a traditional beer. Wine has a way to go with the technology, the dealkylization process, the price point. And so I think that's what you're seeing reflected in the numbers. Well, you also operate a business in South Carolina where you sell a variety of non-alcoholic beverages and alcohol analogs and seems to be doing well. In some cases, it feels like, say, Shay, the brick and mortar business is the prototype for a lot of these new non-alk bottle shops that we're seeing pop up all over the country.

12:33But just from your experience, this is not a true or false question, but just from your experience, are people gravitating more toward wine? Are people going in there to find wine more than they are other types of beverages? Yes and no. It's really evolved. And in the early days, so I founded Sashay in 2021, while it's always been a non-alcoholic element, we're truly a modern bottle shop. So sachet means dry-ish, which means our license in South Carolina allows us to carry traditional wine and beer. So while I was happy to be categorized as a non-alcoholic bottle shop, we are really an alternative bottle shop, a new way of thinking about the category.

13:16So most of our customers drink alcohol and most of our customers are coming in either replicating or looking for something that they currently drink that's traditional. And wine happens to be one of those things. The other opportunity for this category is around functional. So alcohol does, you know, give you a feeling, whether it's the perception that it helps you sleep at night, that it gives you like a buzz, that you maybe have a hit of dopamine, feel better. So the functional category is another one where consumers are coming in looking for. Well, I like the way that this makes me feel. What do you have to help me sleep?

13:54Or what do you have that's going to energize me? I think about that a lot because a lot of the folks I speak to in this space talk about the fact that they are agnostic about their customers consuming alcohol. They think, you know, it's totally fine for you to make your own choices and have optionality in your life. And that's what we're there for, to give you an option when you don't want to drink alcohol. But the reasons for why people don't drink alcohol vary. Sometimes it's just, it's a Tuesday, I'm not drinking this week. Sometimes, you know, someone has had a moment in their life when they're like, I'm just done with this.

14:29Some people, for religious reasons, don't want to drink. But true or false, the future of non-alc beverages is directly tied to consumers' perception of alcohol and the negative effects of alcohol. True that the industry will grow tied to alcohol and that the customer is more mindfully drinking. So yes, they drink alcohol. That's the key to growth. Typically what we see is someone who is fully sober is not turning to an alcohol-free wine, a distilled spirit that's 0%, or a cocktail in a can. And if they are, it's for special occasions. The most common use of alternative beverages, non-alcoholic beer, wine, spirits, is through sessioning, taking a day off, a month off is what we're doing this month.

15:27But then it ends up being, how do I mindfully drink throughout the year? And making a choice if I am going to consume traditional alcohol. I call it gifting my hangover, right? So if I'm going to go out on the town and I know I'm not going to feel great the next morning, like it's worth it because I'm socializing. I'm having a good time. And I think more consumers fall into that category about choice and sachet. Our ethos is drink less, live more. My vision was never, don't ever drink again because alcohol is a carcinogen. It's look, we know it's bad for us. We do a lot of things that aren't that great for us, but it's okay if you do drink, when you feel like you don't want to drink, come to Sashay to discover some options.

16:11I will say that Sashay, to me, expresses sophistication. In some cases, I think it feels like a traditional wine in that people perceive wine to be an elevated beverage and have for years. And sometimes I think that is to the detriment of the wine category. We're seeing people drink less wine and people always saying, oh, I don't know what to drink. I'm a little confused because there's just so many parts to the industry and so many parts to wine. There's varietal, there's vintage, there's region, there's style, there's all these different things. And oftentimes wine producers will say, we'll just drink what you like.

16:51I think that's fair. But drinking what you like and drinking what you like from the standpoint of packaging and marketing and communication is another thing. And I see modern wine brands pop up that are trying to be fun and young and lively. And I wonder how you think about that in the context of the development of your brand. So true or false, does sachet need to evolve with younger consumers' perception of wine as much as it needs to match the sophistication of the wine category or the perception of wine as it is today? True. I think that there is room for sachet to, yes, have a premium price point, a sophisticated, elevated bottle, right, that appeals to generations who are used to consuming wine.

17:51And I think there's space for the younger consumers who may not have ever tried traditional wine where they might be celebrating and they don't drink wine. So again, like playing with formats, you know, boxed wine, different varietals, adding functional ingredients. But for sachet, like we think that and we can see it that a bottle, regardless of what's in it, in your table or in your home represents connection. So I think that is applied to any generation, regardless of their flavor profiles or what they've had to drink in the past. So I hope that answers your question around where the brand is going and who is resonating with the brand.

18:35Yeah, it does. I guess I'm going back to a brand I saw on Instagram yesterday, and it was in a traditional 750 milliliter bottle. Actually, I think it was in a champagne sparkling wine bottle, but with a different kind of closure. It was with the crown closure. And it kind of looked like a cartoon. But it seemed like a lot of people were interested in this brand. It was a lot of hot pink and it definitely felt like it was for a Gen Z consumer. I don't know why I'm associating hot pink with a Gen Z consumer. But anyway, I think you know what I'm talking about here. And again, this is the complete opposite of what Sashay currently represents.

19:13Though, when you're thinking about connecting with millennials versus Gen Z consumers, it feels like there's a pretty wide gap there. Am I wrong? No, you're correct. They both drink differently. And I use drink to cover whatever that is in their glass. And some of the ways that we can achieve, like bridging the gap, is through collaborations with some of the leading brands. So, you know, Sashay is a lifestyle brand around alcohol flexibility, but we do have a multi-brand strategy. So we can align with some of the other brands that might appeal to a younger consumer and create a product just for them as a partnership.

19:54And that's part of the Sashay portfolio. We've already done some collaborations for our retail partner. We're discussing doing more. And I think Sashay with a dryish ethos gives us that flexibility. And because I have a laboratory, I have a physical location with multiple brands, we kind of know what's resonating with each generation and we can build and grow our portfolio and where we focus our innovation based on that data. And on now the data we have across the entire country. Emily, when you refer to your retail partner, I assume you're referring to Target. Is that right? Yes, we curated an assortment to introduce non-alcoholic beverages into the adult beverage aisle for the first time.

20:37So true or false, and I assume that the answer is true here, but Target is the best representation of, or at least has the best cross-section of consumers in America such that it is the perfect place for this category, this nascent category of non-alcoholic beverages to grow. Yes. Target is a trendsetter. They are a leader. They do an amazing job operationally. And Sashay for Target was a perfect partnership to introduce and to validate this movement that guests are asking for it and that guests use Target as a discovery retailer. Okay. So that was kind of a leading question, or maybe a leading true or false question, in that I would think that the future of this category hinges on its ability to be sold seamlessly with alcoholic beverages.

21:38And where do you buy alcoholic beverages? Well, certainly you can buy them in Target, but I think most people, at least in the Northeast, buy them at liquor stores, buy them at a Total Wine, a BevMo, what have you. So true or false, the future of this category is tied to its ability to align with and be sold seamlessly in beverage alcohol stores. False. Okay. All right. Let's hear it. I believe that the best place to discover brands and the majority of where consumers are finding things to drink, it's at bars and restaurants. And yes, we do need to have those brands available in liquor stores and upper grocery stores in mass retail.

22:26But from a discovery perspective, going into a bar in a restaurant and Sips on Lips is actually going to propel the industry forward a lot faster because you're out, you're there, you're trying it, you're seeing it on the menu. So while we are excited about the retail partners that have embraced non-alcoholic beverages. I think the next frontier is how do we get more bars and restaurants to embrace cocktails, alternatives, and not just create a mocktail with some sugar and bitters behind the bar. Yeah, I don't like when a blueberry lemonade was the only option that you had for a non-alcoholic cocktail.

23:07First of all, it's not a cocktail, but I remember those days and they don't really exist anymore. I always talk about one of my favorite restaurants in Boston. It's a place called Estragon. It's a tapas restaurant. And I know the bartender pretty well. And he says at this point, their non-alc cocktails are outselling their regular cocktail, their traditional ones. And they have a non-alc version of every single one of their cocktails. And I mean, that kind of blew my mind because I don't think that ever would have been the case, say five years ago. So things are moving pretty quickly. But I think one of the reasons why they do so well with non-alc is because their cocktails work really well with their food.

23:47So true or false, the growth of this space in bars and restaurants is directly tied to the beverage's ability to pair well with food. False. In some ways, true in others. I know you're looking for black and white, but you're not always consuming food when you're consuming alcohol or non-alcoholic beverages. So in some ways it's important. I think in other ways, going into a bar restaurant and feeling confident that they have a menu and that the beverage tastes great with or without alcohol is the number one priority. Pairing well with food is great, but there are scenarios where I go to dinner.

24:37I'm at the bar having a drink before dinner. I consume an alcohol-free sparkling sachet Sauvignon Blanc. And then with dinner, I have a Barolo or a Pomerol with my prime rib or steak, you know? And so we call that sessioning. So I think that there's a little bit of both there. Yes, it should pair well with food, but in every instance, it doesn't have to. Yeah. Okay. Quick break. If this episode has you thinking about what's next in food and beverage, explore BevNet and Nosh Insider, our subscription platform with deeper insights from the BevNet team. Visit tasteradio.com slash insider to learn more.

25:17Well, what do you typically pair a lot of dishes with? You pair it with a Pinot Noir. And I have your Pinot Noir in my hand here. I'm going to open it up. It's a screw top. Yeah. There you go. And this is... a type of wine, red that is, which gave me the most pause when I was considering non-alcoholic wines, obviously, because red wine is a very familiar and specific flavor. But let's give this a whirl here. Yes, red wine is the hardest to replicate because you are not going to have the burn that you do from traditional wines. But this does have notes of dried currants. It's really well balanced, dark red fruits.

25:57Feedback has been super positive on it. We do have customers coming back for it. I think the hardest thing to get over, especially for red wine, is people want real true depth and the burn. And non-alcoholic red wine, we're just not there yet. There's a lot of alcohol-free red wine out there that you may not like. Don't dump it down the drain. Make a sangria, make a spritz, like do something with it, right? But we find that our Pinot Noir, consumers like it on its own. So true or false, the lack of quality is the best way I can put it, is to the detriment of the category such that it is a problem right now for the category.

26:42True. When I founded Sashay, the number of brands out there were very small, right? And it's really exploded. But part of my job as a curator and as the owner of not only Sashay's wine as a brand, but a multi-brand specialty retail concept is to try everything. And so we go through that process before even considering bringing a brand onto our shelves. So I think as we grow, both I'm talking about Sashay and the industry in general, the consumer is going to be a little bit more weary, especially if they tried something that isn't of high quality. And what we hope is that the consumers will turn to a retailer-like target in their neighborhood because they trust the curation or to Sashay because we've gone out there and tried versus the marketplace approach that which you see pretty often today.

27:37It starts with an A, won't name the name. And most brands are going to be available direct. But how do you know if they're good, if you're ordering direct from the site? You really do need like a tastemaker to kind of say, hey, here's what you're looking for. And here's what I recommend. So that is my original concept for Sashay, a place where we can increase the awareness, the availability, and the convenience for non-alcoholic products, but also education. It's why we have a tasting bar in our store. and now while we'll continue to do that and there is a place in the future where sachet would have a retail store in the front and a full bar in the back with both alcohol and non-alcoholic choices so you know i think it's difficult when there has been this gold rush but at the same time i'm very grateful for early entries into the category like athletic brewing like guia like can you Forex?

28:34You know, they started this movement. Toast is another one that's a great example of early. So, you know, kudos to everyone for getting us to where we are. And then working together with brands that are high quality to bring them to the consumer is really where I see Sashay's role. How concerned are you, though, that someone's going to try something that isn't great and then say, I'm never trying this stuff again? Well, we've already been there, right? Most consumers have tried some version of non-alcoholic beer or non-alcoholic wine in the past because they were there. So I don't think anything's changed, but the proliferation of brands and the partnership with both retail and bars and restaurants to only put things of quality on the menu is going to help overcome.

29:21I hope so. And I think it does help to have influencers and thought leaders participate in this space and be very open and communicative about what's good and what's not. That requires trust. How do you trust someone? You know, people trust celebrities all the time. People trust chefs. But true or false, the messaging that people want to hear is from people like you. They need to hear it from the founders. The founder's voice is the most important voice, true or false? True. I think consumers can see through when there's not an authenticity. So in this category, it's really exciting that smaller founded brands with limited resources have grown and scaled.

30:13Even Sachet, I mean, we've raised a minor, minor, minor amount of capital compared to some of the other players in the space. and definitely compared to big alcohol, who can afford to heavily invest in non-alc. So I think consumers can see that. It's great to have a 0 % alternative to a traditional brand people love, but that's not always going to be the most innovation. I think the most innovation is going to come from a founder who's super passionate about the space and creating a product of quality. And it's, as you know, like building a beverage brand from scratch. is a labor of love. I think about Gen Z, and I think about the generation behind them, Gen Alpha, and how many of them, their first sip of adult beverages may be a non-alcoholic version of that adult beverage.