Ep 600: How Acid Buddy Got 1,000+ Orders in Its First 6 Weeks, Creating a New Category Behind the Bar

0:00Tao:I always had some of the same issues from bar owners. After I create the menu, they call me after a few weeks, drinks are not the same. When you were here, I think there's a problem that consultants need to figure out. I'm all about sharing the knowledge, right? I don't hide stuff, I don't keep secrets, you know? So when I was sharing this, I realized that the way I'm explaining it to people, it's like a system, right? This mixology cocktail kind of crap thing, I want everyone to be able to do it. If you bought our product, they fit like Legos. Anyone can make a recipe that looks like the best mixage in the world.

0:43Tao, welcome to the D2C podcast. I'm glad we could put this together. I think I saw your brand like three months ago or something. It was even before you had even launched. This is a little bit earlier stage than we normally have brands on, but you've now launched. You've got, I think, a really cool product. Tell me why you built AcidBuddy.

0:59Tao:Thanks for having me, Eric. So yeah, the story goes way back since I started bartending. I started 15 years ago in Montreal, Canada. And as you know, we have some rules there that prevent us from really exploring a lot. We don't have a lot of options as our American neighbors. Prices are higher. So that's kind of how I started bartending. And I always have to figure it out, right? And I would see something that internationally is happening. And I'm like, can we get this to Canada? Can we make it happen? How can I make it better? And then in 2018, I started consulting full-time. And I always had some of the same issues from bar owners.

1:42Tao:You know, after I created the menu, they called me after a few weeks. Drinks are not the same when you were here. And instead of taking it as like, okay, I'm better than the bartenders they have. And that's the problem. And I was like, no, I think there's a problem that consultants need to figure out. You know, we always try to have consistency. And sometimes I would create a bar program, leave that establishment and come back and see that the manager or bar owners decided to not do fresh lime or lemon anymore. Obviously, the drinks that I left wouldn't taste the same because when they buy frozen lime, you know, it's overly bitter.

2:22Tao:It's too tart. Now it's cheaper, maybe faster for them. especially for high volume places. So that's how the problem already started. And then bartenders at some high level bars started to try to replicate the acidity that we find in citrus that we use by putting different, you know, food safe acids like citric acid, lactic acid, malic acid, absorbic, which is pretty much vitamin C. And I was like, okay, that's a good solution. So I was trying to even be a consumer myself, right? Because I if I find a good brand, I would use it as a consultant. And not to say that they were bad, but I felt that they were maybe too tart.

3:05Tao:Maybe they weren't hitting the spot. They weren't kind of, they weren't a one-to-one replacement. You had to put a little bit because they were too tart. So I started playing with it myself. I'm like, okay, well, I guess that's a good way of doing it. So I'm not reinventing the wheel here when it came to playing with acid in water to replace baseline but what i did at the time uh just again because of the the bar owners i was working for were like no i want you to do more of the cocktails you do but i want them to be cheap and easy and fast i'm like well that doesn't compute you know so i was like okay well i need to find where i can put flavor outside of syrups and outside of spirits right because if i find a really great spirit that brings the flavor and you layer it to the cocktail, but the spirit is$70, it's not going to be on the cocktail list.

3:57Tao:Syrups, at a certain point, I cannot put like 10 ingredients with sugar and water. Like they're going to hide and battle with each other. So I was like, well, what if I put my acids in a water that's flavored? So that's how I started doing flavored acids. And then, you know, long story short, I was doing it for a long time for consultants. never as a product and then i saw that even with that where i thought that i i made it so simple some bars wouldn't keep it up right they lose the staff the bar manager moves and then we're like okay well i think i need to make it even more accessible by actually making it into a product that someone can and boom make it into a cocktail and then we have a business partner here in the west his name is larry i made him some cocktails that have this product he's like these cocktails are different like what's your secret years of work but also i think the the flavored acid is what makes my cocktail stand out and he's like i want to help you bring this to the world and then i brought my girlfriend with me it was her idea to turn it into a powder because we we ship it around the world and it's a pouch and i was against in the beginning because of the image i was like People think powders are chemical or whatever, and it's not.

5:16Tao:It's fully natural. Acids are always powdered anyway. But this now is literally our game changer. It's the first flavored and powdered acid mix in the world. It's intended for any type of beverage. Obviously, my background is cocktail, but I think I'm a beverage expert. So non-apologetic cocktails, coffees, teas, anything, this works anyway. So there you go. super interesting i i love acid profile in a cocktail but first back out for a little bit and talk to me because when you're talking about making menus for cocktail places you were working with like the top cocktail bars in the world like talk to me about the business of cocktails a little bit like what's the tam of a product like acid buddy or the total addressable market it's got to be huge eh it is huge so when you think about it any bar whether it's a specialty cocktail bar that specializes in cocktails.

6:11Tao:So they might have a menu that's maybe 20 plus cocktails. But since I would say the early 2000s, specifically 2006 onwards, especially in America, London, Berlin, a little bit started, Canada, I would say maybe in the past 10 years, everyone had to have proper cocktails, right? It couldn't just be classic. You had to have your signature. So we have the second renaissance of cocktails. We call it the second golden age. The first was before Prohibition, so over 100 years ago. And that's where most of the old drinks we know about came from, right? Like the Manhattan and the Martini and all the drinks that are staples came from way back then.

6:51Tao:You're exactly right. They were between 1880 until 1920. And then after Prohibition in America, some of those cocktails were now created in bars in Europe or in the Caribbean because people couldn't drink in America anymore, right? So, we're definitely part now of that second revolution, and every restaurant needs to have a proper cocktail menu. Most of the time is between 8 and 12 cocktails, right? Most of those drinks, aside from a Negroni, an old-fashioned, maybe a Manhattan and obviously a martini, the rest are what we call sours, right? So margaritas, daiquiris, gimlets, pisco sour, so the sours with egg white, all of those drinks have to have some sort of acidity in it.

7:40Tao:And all of those drinks, 99.9 % of them have either lime or lemon. So you need acidity to balance the sweet. You cannot make a cocktail that's just alcohol and sugar. You either balance it with bitter or with sour. but because of uh technically it's easy to balance that with lemon or lime roughly the same ph ph is how we we we calculate uh acidity level um everyone just was like yeah this is what we do you know like why would i do something else right but what lemon and lime brings you is the flavor of lemon and lime right so that means that 99 of creations whether i put miso blackberries or tea or whatever I do, there's always that flavor of lime or lemon just kind of on the side there.

8:31Tao:And especially when you don't use fresh wine or even if you juice it fresh, but it's from yesterday, you don't want to throw it, but it's oxidized. It oxidizes very fast because of the pulp in it, because of how fresh it is, right? That kind of puts a limitation. So if we, this is almost like a product wise, you know, sometimes people is like, they create a product that they fall in love with but it it doesn't solve a problem this solves the problem except that it's a problem that we kind of made ourselves comfortable living with you know what i mean it's almost like you have a little bit where i can still walk it's fine i just want to run right for me that's kind of the comparison it's like bars are like it's fine like limes and lemon like why not you know but now we open like a level of creativity that even a dive bar can now use our strawberry butter, our tomato peach, our coffee cake.

9:26Tao:Just put it with booze and syrup. And all of a sudden, you have layers of flavor. You have the balance. It doesn't go bad. It doesn't oxidize. And anyone, anywhere in the world can add these layers of flavor in a very economical way, very safe way, very, you know, cost-effective way. Again, you don't have to throw it less waste. So it kind of hits all those spots. but all of a sudden like people are like wow that's genius i'm like i like in my mind i have that bias of knowledge i'm like i've been doing this for a while this is now with soprano so yeah this can go all over my my dream and my desire and the whole team we're pretty convinced that this will be in every bar in the house like i mean it has to be it's a category i love i love when you have category creator moments when you're actually creating something that hasn't existed previously, which is I think the main reason I reached out.

10:21The other thing too is like, I think I had some conversations, I was just at Shop Talk in Las Vegas, had some conversations, a lot of conversations about AI and all the things, and the big movement of like younger people who are drinking less. We were kind of saying, we think that might be overblown or there might be a rebound back to it when, you know, when people have less to do, some of them will drink a little bit more maybe, but you also are just as profound in the mocktail environment as well.

10:47Tao:So yeah, it adds flavor. It's non-alcoholic. We're trying to add on our platform, social or website, little booklets we're working on. We sell it also to a lot of countries where alcohol culture has not even existed, but people want to go out and get some sort of mocktail, call it NA, mocktail, whatever. So it works really well with coffee, with tea, with whatever creation, fruits, et cetera. I'm excited to see if chefs can use it in like ceviches and things like that because technically you can. But I agree, like part of this type of consuming that they call drink better and drink less or drink less and drink better.

11:30Tao:I don't like going extremes. I don't like to go like crazy and then be like, I think I should quit, right? Alcohol is, you know, it's not good for you. It's advice. but really good spirits like i mean he was doing this for thousands of years they brought us together going to the bar drinking brewing beer making wine you know these were better than water for you know for hundreds of years people it was safer to drink beer yeah exactly it was safer right that's because it was pasteurized yeah exactly and it has art behind it i think when people take like anything else right food any type of pleasure if you push it to the extreme you won't be good right so i do think that people not drink but we would never market this and like hey this is easier cheaper so you can drink more like i will i will never say that drink better and drink less to be honest like yesterday we we flew in from montreal graphic design so we can work on like new pouches new products new designs and uh brought them to my bar here outside of chicago called No School Tomorrow.

12:35Tao:And it was their first time. And I'm giving them a bunch of drinks. And after a while, I'm good. So even though they're tipsy, instead of being like, I'm tipsy, but I want to drink more, they're like, my mouth is full of flavor. It's almost too much, right? And that's kind of what happens when you drink things that are layered with flavor. It actually ends up being better because after a while, you're like satisfied. Your palate is like, I have enough. Let's go home and sleep, you know? That's how I am and that's how this product I believe in as well. It's beautiful. The other angle I was just thinking about too, someone made a comment.

13:12We were out at one of the bars at the Hazel in the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. And we're talking about bar lime being gross. There's like a meme about how bar limes themselves are often less hygienic than people realize. They're like germ factories or whatever that they've sat around for a long time. So you have the angle with your product of it being like perfectly hygienic as well, right?

13:34Tao:Yep, absolutely. Bar lines, I would never squeeze them in a glass. I mean, obviously some bars take care of it and wash it, but you cannot tell. I tell people sometimes if you go to a bar and see that ball of fruit sitting, even the ones they use for the peel, if you see the fruit sticker in it, just order a beer. That means they didn't even wash it. Like they're telling you they didn't wash it. when you go to clubs i mean we we had barbecues cutting thousands of limes you know they're sitting in buckets that like it's not it's not clean so and then when you go and squeeze it that oil from the outside is also not clean that's kind of what gets in the juice um i mean that's an angle that i don't use but maybe i should talk about it more yeah because i think it's gross a little bit yeah a little bit but i bet you'll get there i think you've got your core angles now let's talk about your go-to-market though like first of all the brand you just i think nailed i think the brand is really well done acid buddy it's playful uh simple and then talk to me about your go-to-market how's it gone since you've launched it we're really really happy i think obviously we always want want more just in the sense that we want more people to know about it it's not even in the numbers uh sense yet we don't want to put too much pressure on ourselves but i want people to be like hey like oh my god i didn't know this existed so that's kind of the play right now we've been uh six weeks uh we did over a thousand orders um which i think is good that's solid without divulging the exact numbers we we didn't hit six figures we wanted six weeks six figures we're right under so that's also good um we're doing a lot of sampling um that's needed obviously but to be honest we're very very happy with how we went I think my personal brand obviously helps I don't think this brand has a normal launch because we did a quiet soft launch in a sense like I didn't pay any influencers I didn't pay for ads this is very organic because I just wanted to see what would happen just because of the merit of the product.

15:50Tao:You know, some of the biggest name in this word, I always held the thing like, you need marketing if the product is not right, right? And you need super nice salespeople if the marketing is not right. I know the product is right. Now, I still need to do the rest to get to more doors but so far there's people asking us from over 75 countries we did ship personally to over 75 countries we don't have distribution there yet but those people are like i don't care i'll pay for shipping and i'm like did you try it he's like no i just i just know i get it i'm surprised no one did it before uh so the feedback has been amazing uh we are getting also people's ideas we We were like, hey, what do you think?

16:38Tao:There was no really feedback about the fact that it works. Right now, it's more about the size. I think for people at home, the size is too big. It's almost too economical. It works too much. People are like, hey, I don't mind paying per drink more, but I want a pouch that's smaller. Because right now, this pouch is meant to be dissolved in a liter, but it makes you technically 44 drinks. you know for someone at home 44 cocktails is kind of like a lot i get it i'm like i don't want you to drink that much right it also doesn't go bad really it's just more like the space in the fridge and whatnot so we are working now in smaller pouches so that's coming the speed of action now is kind of the essence for us and uh no we're really really happy we're proud when you see those messages like my favorite message the dms is when someone says this works you know with the big googly like it's not like it's tasty it's like this works for me that's really one of the best messages and we've been getting those and yeah more to come and we have to keep at it and we have to get it into more hands i think i'm just looking at your instagram feed here and i think it needs to be discovered more i i actually follow a lot of like pixologists on tiktok and reels and things like that.

17:56So I imagine partnerships with them, uh, or even just making, you know, I'm sure you're a busy man, but doing more, I see you do some of those videos, but like a real dedication to those videos over time on those platforms, I think we'll just absolutely crush for you.

18:09Tao:Uh, yeah, we need to, to do all of those. But again, it's time, you know, we're a small team now. We don't want to invest in hiring too much. We rather invest in product innovation, uh, market sampling. So we, at a certain point we'll have to, uh, right now we are talking with some people that we personally know so we can kind of create simple home contents for us on tiktok we're not on tiktok we are gonna do that so i'm gonna literally have a person being paid we're gonna ship her all the flavors all glassware we're gonna buy her booze buy her shakers and whatever don't even try to do what i do do what you as a home person that likes cocktails and likes cooking, like do your angle, right?

18:55Tao:You don't even have to speak, but I want you to pump them, you know, one per day. So we are going to do that probably next month. She's abroad. She's in Paris. So we're going to do that with her. We're creating an ambassadorship program with bartenders who kind of create menus locally. So we are going to give them commissions. I think that's one of our best ways. I think part of the, what makes us proud is we get people reaching out to us we want to sell this for you like when if you're a tequila brand bartender is like i want to sell this for you there's a thousands of bartenders like please leave me alone like i cannot get all these tequilas here like i won't be able to sell all of you our product helps bartenders and bars and bar owners and people at home so bartenders feel comfortable actually going to a fellow bartender or a competitor bar or a friend's bar and be like dude did you see this so we are gonna help those bartenders monetize because i'm a person that you know got my chance through a through a netflix series and whatnot and opened my bar but a lot of bartenders don't know what's the next step right like if they don't want to just depend on tips anymore and we all saw what happened with covid and whatever like it's kind of risky our job is kind of risky a little bit, especially nowadays.

20:14Tao:So they're like, what else can I do? So you can go sell houses, you can sell booze, but we don't need millions of those, right? So helping them monetize by helping other buyers know of a new product and us giving them commission, I think it's a good way of doing this. And then I think by the summer, we're going to create some sort of program that makes sense for especially micro-influencers. I like the people that have between 2 ,000 and 10 ,000. I think it's not about the views in this case. It's about the reach being so targeted that if you have 5 ,000 followers, but the ones that follow you that actually will ask you, hey, what did you use in that cocktail?

20:59Tao:And then just copy it. I think that's where the secret sauce for us will be in the next few months in terms of social. I think it's, yeah, I think it's a product that could be really built for TikTok shops specifically. It's such a neat platform because it's actually more like Amazon than it is like Facebook, as far as the brands are concerned, because it has this marketplace. And it's a product that lends itself so well to exciting, good content. It's branded so well, I could see it really taking off there. Even live selling, where you have like cocktail hours on like doing live selling, selling a product.

21:33I could see it being a massive success.

21:35Tao:I didn't look into TikTok shop yet. Like, how would you describe it to someone like me, for example? So, like, is there actually a warehouse that holds the product? No, you put your link, like, how does it work? Yeah, so it's still, you still have to fulfill it yourself, but you can basically, it's an alternative to Shopify in this case. So basically, they would check out with their payment equipment on TikTok shop. And the real play on TikTok shop is affiliates, where you would, I have a friend who I talk about on this podcast all the time, but he's scaling to probably a hundred million dollars this year and a very small team.

22:08He sells, it's called Frost Buddy, which are these, which you could do a collab with essentially, cause you can make cocktails in your Frost Buddy. But, but he literally just goes, he has now, I think he scaled up to something like 13 ,000 affiliates that he has people that just make, and again, micro affiliates, they're micro, they're not big influencers. And he just has them all on, on sort of paper from, I think mostly pay for performance models. I'm not entirely sure about that, but I could see that being a really cool opportunity for you guys.

22:37Tao:Interesting. So basically, if brands like us work with these micro-influencers, their followers, they watch them make these videos or these lives, I'm like, how exactly that? And then on the profile, they say buy. The buy button will be on their profile and they can buy directly from that person's profile. Yeah, that's genius. I mean, business-wise, I have to get into it. I'm not a TikTok person. Actually, even being on Instagram is almost like too much for me. I have to do detox days. But for business, I think nowadays having these socials, anyone can start a branding. You know what I mean? Imagine back in the day if I started this three years ago, I have to find a distributor first.

23:19Tao:We have to do ads on like TV or whatever. The world is a much different place when it comes to these kind of brands. Super cool. And you mentioned Netflix and we didn't even, we talked about it in the pre-interview. Just give me a little bit on your hero's journey to becoming a drink influencer and what you took away from your experience on Netflix. Yeah, I don't know if I'm a drink influencer. I mean, yeah, but because I tried before, as I told you, I couldn't even spend two minutes on Instagram. Like, it literally bothers me. And I don't know how to edit. I hate editing. I didn't mean to offend you, but even in the bar sense, in the bar world, you're an influential person.

23:55Tao:I don't take it as an offense at all, but I'm saying it as, to be fair, I didn't build that following because of my video prowess. You know what I mean? I'm not good at it. It took me time to understand hooks and whatnot. I had to do it for the business. But I would have gone my whole life without needing to learn about it. But for the business, it was something that I needed to learn. I mean, yeah, during COVID, bars were closed. I had kind of like retired from competing you know I'm 39 and bartending competitions back in the day were a huge thing right right now you still see them but they're not the same but your only way to to kind of do more as a bartender whether to get your dream job if you don't or just make more money somehow even before social basically become known without Instagram was to win a major bartending competition right and uh i tried you know i did something and then it was like okay this is not kind of the ride i want to take let me focus on something else and then covet kind of made all that disappear there was these people that were working on this tv show about drinks they had it in their mind for years it just never happened and they managed to convince netflix to take a chance during COVID where people were at home.

25:20Tao:And yeah, it was like a really weird ad on like a Facebook group. It looked like not serious. It looked like a Word document. They couldn't say the name of the show because it was the first season. And it was like a co-American Canadian production. And like, no offense to Canadian productions, but usually you're like, you know, it's not big, right? I'm like, if I do it, like, who's going to watch this? and I've heard three people maybe would like, I don't know, man, should I do it? Because also like if you build your level, sometimes the show, if it's so bad, it might hurt you, right? So I was kind of worried about that.

25:58Tao:But then I was like, no, I think for someone like me who keeps talking about, you know, Anthony Bourdain, rest in peace, he was like a big influence for me. I would have dreamed for someone just following me around and me tasting and making stuff. but at the same time i gotta take a shot at it and then the auditions were like three and a half months so it was quite long they were distance we had to answer questionnaires like really long 100 questions uh video send them a portfolio whatever and it was during right before omicron happened like 2021 and i did it and i was really happy i did it definitely changed my career my life people wanted it bartenders especially worldwide wanted it they needed it and a lot of people I guess they saw something in me they saw my creativity I was truly being myself I was very focused I really wanted to do the best I can because I was like there's only one winner and sometimes like that doesn't matter doesn't mean that you're no good or the other person is better or worse if i do my job maybe the right person would see me and i was like if one person sees me and helps me open a bar that's enough and it ended up being way more than that and yeah very blessed and very grateful to do it so that obviously helped me get a following online and their credibility i think that's that's what it is because if you i saw a lot of influencers not just in the bar world like just people who talk or whatever like do stints or or just like funny videos and they they launch um you know a seltzer or uh or energy drink it doesn't always relate to sales because the the millions of followers you might have that's huge obviously but people like you because you're funny not because you know how to make drinks right i think prime is a good example of that i mean those are huge and now it's all discounted because like we want to watch you we don't really like what you drink right me it's all about that is like people who tried my drinks or watch me work know that I take it so seriously, almost too seriously.

28:08Tao:I also actually stopped doing sponsored posts because I'm like, no, that's not how I do my Instagram. I don't think they're good for you to pay me to do that. I don't think they convert properly. I wanted to create my own. And this is actually just the first product of a much, much, much bigger company that we can talk about another time. So yeah. Yeah. Well, I kind of wanted to end on your vision for where this can go. Like we've kind of discussed, the sky's the limit with it. It's cocktailbuddies.com, which is the overall brand, which I advise everyone to go to. If you like cocktails, go check it out.

28:43Show us what the DTC audience can do in terms of purchases. Where do you see this going in five years?

28:48Tao:So all of this kind of started with me giving masterclasses where I'm all about sharing the knowledge, right? I don't hide stuff. I don't keep secrets, you know? So when I was sharing this, I realized that the way I'm explaining it to people, it's like a system, right? When people ask me about creativity, I don't tell them that it has to be me to know that putting blue cheese and vanilla strawberry actually works. Like, I believe that all of you can do it, but there is a system that makes cocktail work. Cocktail Buddies is the mother brand for all of this. Acid Buddies is the first because it's the most needed because it's the one where we didn't want to compete where it's kind of crowded.

29:30Tao:But the next lines are Sweet Buddy, which obviously is syrups. But it's syrups that have bricks. Bricks is how we measure sugar and liquid. That fits exactly perfectly with Acid Buddy pH for people to make the same one recipe for syrups. It's two ounce booze, three quarter acid, three quarter sweet. They're like, for real? I'm like, every drink you saw I made on Drink Masters on Netflix, same, same. Every drink I have in my bar, same. It's not the recipe that changes, right? If all your ingredients are kind of contained, that's what makes the drink work, right? So it's how you extract the flavor and bring it back.

30:10Tao:The right ABV, the right pH, the right bricks. so we're creating products that i want a bar a new bar a small bar a dive bar to go on cocktail buddy my vision is in three years a dive bar goes on cocktail buddy and just buys everything we have they don't need a consultant they don't need to pay thousands of dollars they don't need to train the bartenders that much this mixology cocktail kind of craft thing i want everyone want to be able to do it i come from a country where we don't have good cocktails like i come from tunisia and people just drink whatever right but i know that they want more it's just very hard so i'm creating products to be shipped worldwide that if you buy our product they fit like legos you know and anyone can make a recipe that looks like i made it that looks like the best bar in the world make it that looks like the best mixage in the world make it i want to democratize it for real without dumbing it down without compromising on flavor or on quality and yeah we started now but we won't stop until this goal is achieved that's that's how the team feel about it so we'll love that i'm a i'm a believer really would love to keep in touch with you over the you know we could do a yearly check-ins as you scale this up because i could see it becoming a really big thing again go to cocktailbuddies.com i'm going to go right now and grab a couple packs just to try at home.

31:37And I hope the audience does as well. Thank you for taking the time out of this. It's been a lot of fun.