822 Meredith Mills-Merritt: Founder & CEO of The Original Southside

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Goldin Show is brought to you by Rula, affordable in-network online therapy designed to fit real life.

0:50Kara Goldin:Let's be honest. Most of us will need support at some point. Maybe it's after a hard season, during burnout or when stress and anxiety slowly start stacking up. We've all been there. And when it comes time to actually find a therapist, the hardest part shouldn't be figuring out who takes your insurance. But for so many people, it is. That's what's always felt backwards to me. We don't think twice about using insurance for our physical health. So why should mental health be any different. Accessible, affordable care shouldn't feel like a maze, and yet for too many people, it still does. That's exactly what RULA is changing.

1:33Kara Goldin:RULA works with most major insurance plans to make real licensed therapy more accessible, often bringing the average session cost down to around$15 and sometimes even zero, depending on your benefits. This is legitimate mental health care using coverage you already have. What really stands out is how intentional the matching process is. RULA takes your goals, preferences, and background into account so you're connected with a therapist who actually feels like the right fit, not just the next available option. Many therapists even have openings as soon as the next day, which makes starting feel doable instead of overwhelming.

2:16Kara Goldin:If taking care of your mental health is part of your plan this year, RULA makes it easier to begin and easier to stick with. Real support covered by insurance when you need it most. Thousands of people are already using RULA to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit RULA.com slash Kara Golden to get started. After you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's rula.com slash Cara Golden. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Cara Golden Show.

3:01Kara Goldin:Today, I'm joined by Meredith Mills Merritt, the founder and CEO of an incredible brand called The Original Southside. It is a premium gin-based, ready-to-drink cocktail brand that's rewriting the playbook in the RTD category. Meredith's inspiration came from something deeply personal. Her mom, Leah's summer cooler. I cannot wait to hear more about this fun, fun story. With a background in prestige beauty, Meredith approached this brand with a level of precision you don't always see in founders who are launching in the spirits category. And I would love to hear a lot more about the brand storytelling that she's been doing since day one as well.

3:49Kara Goldin:But the result is a premium 10 % ABV cocktail made with certified organic, vegan, gluten-free ingredients, ingredients sweetened with sugar cane and crafted with a proprietary gin distilled in Vermont. Love it. And beyond the liquid, she's creating a brand that truly stands out. Love, love, love everything about the partnerships and the national retailers that she's been able to secure. And I cannot wait to dive into how Meredith has turned this family recipe, family tradition into a fast scaling spirits brand. So Meredith, welcome to the Kara Golden Show. So nice to meet you and so excited to have you here to talk all about the original Southside.

4:40Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited.

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6:02Kara Goldin:That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com slash Cara. Code Cara at checkout. This episode of the Cara Golden Show is brought to you by Rula, affordable in-network online therapy designed to fit real life. Let's be honest, most of us will need support at some point. Maybe it's after a hard season, during burnout, or when stress and anxiety slowly start stacking up. We've all been there. And when it comes time to actually find a therapist, the hardest part shouldn't be figuring out who takes your insurance. But for so many people, it is. That's what's always felt backwards to me. We don't think twice about using insurance for our physical health, so why should mental health be any different?

6:51Kara Goldin:Accessible, affordable care shouldn't feel like a maze, and yet for too many people, it still does. That's exactly what RULA is changing. RULA works with most major insurance plans to make real licensed therapy more accessible, often bringing the average session cost down to around$15 and sometimes even zero depending on your benefits. This is legitimate mental health care using coverage you already have. What really stands out is how intentional the matching process is. Rula takes your goals, preferences, and background into account so you're connected with a therapist who actually feels like the right fit, not just the next available option.

7:36Kara Goldin:Many therapists even have openings as soon as the next day, which makes starting feel doable instead of overwhelming. If taking care of your mental health is part of your plan this year, Rula makes it easier to begin and easier to stick with. Real support covered by insurance when you need it most. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit rula.com slash Kara Golden to get started. After you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's rula.com slash Kara Golden.

8:20Kara Goldin:You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. Super, super excited. So for listeners who may not know the original Southside, how do you describe the brand? Okay, so a South Side, for those who are less familiar, is a cocktail that even the most legendary living bartenders can't agree on its origin story or how it's made or how it's served. And so going back to the 1920s, the storyline that we stuck with was you have Chicago, which was split between the north side and the south side in Al Capone times. And so the north side had the good imports from Canada. The south side had that quintessential bathtub gin that you hear about during that time.

9:04And the bartenders in the area had to disguise how bad it was with anything that they could get their hands on. So sugar, citrus, herbs, and voila, you have the south side cocktail. So that's actually how it came about.

9:18Kara Goldin:I love it. And your mom's original Southside recipe, how did she come up with this recipe? Did she just try it at one point or was this something that had been initiated before her, maybe a grandmother's recipe? Yeah, we I grew up in a gin family. And so on my dad's side, he was making gin and tonics for his grandmother when he was in his teenage years. Same thing on my mom's side. So this recipe got passed down through someone going down the family tree. And so every summer, our lake house was in a pretty rural part of Oklahoma. So you were kind of using whatever you had on hand or whatever you had brought up with you.

10:01So it was always whatever gin we had there. Back in the day, it was those frozen, you know, Minute Maid canned lemonades that, you know, are so full of scary things. that made it really easy and delicious. And then any of the herbs that we had. So most of the time, because it was deep in the summer, we really just had mint. And so she would combine all those together. And what we didn't realize at the time is her summertime cooler was exactly a Southside recipe. So when I was going through this process, I was like, you know, no one's really going to care about Leah's summertime cooler. I want to use it as an opportunity to educate on actually what this cocktail was.

10:41And so through generations of gin lovers, here we are.

10:44Kara Goldin:So fun. So you were in the beauty business before deciding to get into the spirits business. What made you think that this was a not only a category that you wanted to enter, but also a scalable business that you could start? I fell in love with CPG and product innovation during my time in the beauty industry. And I will say that I've always classified myself as someone with an entrepreneurial spirit. And I knew I wanted to do something. I just didn't know what it was. And as I moved through the beauty industry, it was so saturated. I didn't feel like I could create a product that would be competitive.

11:30And so I started to think about other things. This is also during COVID. So I feel like everybody was drinking, but also had a passion project during that time. And mine just happened to combine to lead to where we are today. and I got my hands on some really interesting market data around gin when I was doing my master's in consumer behavior at USC. We had had actually a class project where it was to create a ready-to-drink. For the class, we had to have it be wine-based, but we still got our hands on all this really interesting market research where gin was primed and ready for a renaissance here in the U.S.

12:08And in the white spirits category, there was a lot of opportunity. And I thought to myself, well, I have a really great gin recipe that I bring everywhere with me and people really seem to love. On top of that, you also saw the rise of the ready to drinks and the canned cocktails. And so we thought to ourselves, what if we just combined the two and had this family recipe put into a can? So instead of doing the responsible thing, which would have been putting money into a 401k or high yield savings account, we hired a company to commercialize the family recipe. It took about 13 months end to end.

12:43And the can that we had at the end, we were super excited by. We had kind of watched the market trend over that time, too. And it still felt like it was the right time to go into the marketplace, even though canned cocktails are so saturated because we were a higher ABV. So with that 10 percent and because we were gin based, it ended up that a lot of these distributors had a gap in their portfolio and were willing to take us on because they didn't have anything like us. So that's kind of when we started to realize, OK, we might be on to something here.

13:16Kara Goldin:How did you figure out manufacturing? Because this obviously is a totally different manufacturing than what you were accustomed to and maybe even that you had contacts in. But how did you find that original manufacturer to help you get the original Southside started? so we have moved we're actually on our third contract manufacturer now and the first one we found because we had just some very specific product guidelines so for us the three main things that were the most important were number one being certified organic number two having access to tunnel pasteurization because we don't use any artificial preservatives we just use citric acid so i don't know the magic behind citric acid plus tunnel pasteurization but we want it to be shelf stable and, you know, be as good as possible for as long as possible.

14:10And then the last part was the MOQs. Because we were so small starting out with and these beverage contract manufacturers were so busy, it was kind of a fine line that we had to walk between who could take us, what was available and what fit all of our kind of product needs. So when we first got started, we actually produced in Missouri and they said that they were a certified organic facility. Turns out they were not. So when you see the product that first launched, it does not have the USDA certification seal on it. It's the exact same recipe, like nothing changed. We just weren't able to have it be certified.

14:47So that's actually when we moved to Vermont to get that organic certification and work with a partner that better understood our needs and kind of go from there. But to kind of answer your first, the first part of your question was, we used contract manufacturers at several of the beauty companies that I had worked for. And so because I had had kind of an eye on the product innovation piece, I was familiar with the process there. And so it wasn't too dissimilar in terms of securing the raw materials, doing a check on the partnerships, being there for the production day, but the after the fact with the bonded facilities for alcohol, the federal excise tax that you pay, All of the other really fun details were things that I learned on the go.

15:36And so it was definitely trial by fire at first. I'm a lot more confident now than I was a couple years ago. So that first production run of ours would have been in late 2023, early 2024 before we launched. And it's like a night and day difference with what I know now versus then. But really just, you know, a lot of research, a lot of due diligence and a lot of trust yet verify because the tunnel pasteurization machine, for instance, is a really expensive machine that a facility will know if it has or not. And so that's one way for us to kind of narrow down, okay, is this going to work or not?

16:11Kara Goldin:How many SKUs did you launch with initially and how has that changed today? So we launched with one SKU and we are actually still only one SKU. and it was very purposeful. I had seen a couple other examples of launches with multiple SKUs and I only really had my family recipe to get started with. It's not like I had anything else to bring to the table. And so I had also seen just in my beauty background, several examples of some failed multi launches. And so I really wanted to make sure that the money we were fundraising and the time and the strategy was all focused in on this one SKU, especially because this was our first foray into an unknown industry.

16:58So we've stayed super focused and we are just now kind of going through the last half of the research and development process for three potential new SKUs, but it's taken us a while to get there.

17:14Kara Goldin:So go-to-market strategy. You're part of the three-tier system, of course. And I think we've talked to many, many manufacturers, many brands on the show about that. But what was kind of the first place that you showed up when you were getting launched in the marketplace? And I mean, what do you think, what has been surprising, I guess, about that for you? Because you were not obviously in beauty dealing with that? You know, you pretty much have to scrap your whole, I had to scrap everything that I learned from beauty in terms of how to get to your consumer. And so the earliest places that we popped up were Florida, California, and New York through Park Street.

18:01We had the goal of proving the concept. So making sure that it wasn't just us that believed in the product, that we could get distributors, retailers, and consumers behind us to, to upgrade that distribution network. We had a theory based on the product that the Southeast would be a great place for us to start. And by that, I mean, this is not a low calorie or low carb play at all. So we do have that real cane sugar. We are at 10%. It does have more calories than other RTDs out there. It's also double the alcohol, but really making sure that we set ourselves up for success by finding the consumers and geographic areas that would be more receptive to more of a cocktail in a can.

18:50And I'm grateful that our hypothesis paid off. So Florida is one of our leading states. It's also where we have our partnership with the Florida Panthers. And that That has been a huge piece of the puzzle for us in terms of, A, scaling to other states and kind of showing how legitimate we are, but also B, proving the concept and getting those cans in hand. Once we were in those first few states, all we did was spend all of our time just making sure that consumers could sample the product because once they were able to try it, they were able to buy it. And that is what allowed us to expand so quickly over the last, you know, a little less than 24 months.

19:33And how many states now are you in? We're in just over 20. So we are opening up Michigan here soon, which is really exciting because we're also moving our production to Michigan. And yeah, so a little over 20, which is great.

19:49Kara Goldin:Was there a moment when you thought, this is a lot harder than I imagined? And how did you push through when you had those doubts? I would say sometimes every day felt that way during the build phase. And I'm super open and transparent about it. And the three tier system, to your point, you spend so much time taking your communications to the distributor. And then once you land the distributor to the consumer, that everything in between, you still have to focus on. And so I would say that having a little bit of, you know, just delusion and faith in yourself is how I've made it this far. I wake up every day and I'm like, you know what, this will succeed, whether the day that I have actually proves that or not.

20:44But I think if you can kind of keep that mentality, it helps because no one is going to believe in your product like you do as much as you'd like to think if you're kind of in the earlier stages that your friends, your family, your colleagues will support you. It's you out there and you alone. So you need to make sure that you have a really good understanding of you're in it for the long haul. There are no overnight successes and you signed up for the rodeo. So buckle up and keep your head down and keep going. That's kind of how I operate. And it's what's gotten us this far.

21:19Kara Goldin:So especially with the three tier system, I feel like I've talked to a lot of founders who are just getting their product out there. And, you know, when you've got these big distributors, it's great, but you're still doing the work, whether it's securing partnerships with incredible partners like Blade and the Florida Panthers or getting your product into Whole Foods and Total Wine. Do you feel like, especially as you're growing in a bunch of different states and really continuing to land retailers and grow your business overall, do you feel like your job has gotten easier or do you feel like it just keeps piling on?

22:07I do feel that it does get harder and harder. But at the same time, because you go through so much, and it's such a continuous learning process, you are more and more able to deal with and understand what's happening to you. And so I came in at a disadvantage, which I acknowledge, which was I did not have any beverage, let alone beverage alcohol experience. And so my learning curve was a little bit steeper than some of my other colleagues in the space. That being said, I think that level of naivete was a little bit of a superpower. At least that's how I would describe it because it allowed me to create something that was different in the space.

22:47It had the higher ABV. It is certified organic. We do disclose all of our ingredient lists in our nutrition facts panel. And that went over so well that that did propel us into some of these partnerships and some of these additional states. With that, you hit the nail on the head. Just because you land a bigger and better distributor doesn't necessarily mean you're in a better spot. We kind of have a mixed network of independent distributors and larger, more multinational distributors. And you're still doing all of the legwork. Just because you open a market doesn't mean you can just set it and forget it.

23:21the way that I describe it is, you know, every new market is like a new kindergartner in my class. There's always going to be a problem child and there's always going to be a star child. And so how I split my attention amongst those states, you can't do everything yourself. So as we've grown and as we've scaled, we've brought in more and more, you know, kind of part-time help, boots on the ground, things of that sort to help in those markets as well to just kind of test and learned.

23:46Kara Goldin:So consumers today are incredibly ingredient conscious. How do you educate the consumer without overwhelming them? I mean, you've created this incredible product that tastes good and you've put so much effort into making sure that you've got a manufacturer that is organic or can certify organic and all of the, you know, really all of the points that differentiate your product. But does the consumer, what do you think today the consumer really cares about and how do you educate them without overwhelming them? What we find is alcohol is a pretty easy category that gets cut first when consumers are economically stressed.

24:43The landscape of the spirits industry is rapidly shifting, as you've seen with the changes coming from Breakthrough and RNDC and just brands moving all over the place, acquisitions. So when you kind of zoom out, what I see and what we saw was, A, there was such a lack of transparency for ready-to-drinks specifically. There were a number of ingredient horror stories. And then you also just kind of saw, and these are just my opinions and observations, but you see this uninspired innovation from these larger companies. And so for the consumer, because beverage, as you know much better than I do, is such an exploratory category, giving people something, A, that they could be proud of.

25:34So all the cocktail, none of the compromise, kind of some of those key pillars we lean into on the brand side. But also using this as an opportunity to lead the conversation in terms of education on what you're drinking, understanding that that modern consumer is drinking less but better, having the higher quality, all natural, high ABV option, and really leaning into that and not overwhelming them. because everyone can agree that healthy drinking is an oxymoron. There's no amount of alcohol that's good for your health. But the way that we approach it is that doesn't mean that you don't deserve to have the highest quality ingredients I can get my hands on understanding modern manufacturing capabilities and the fact that some people still want to take the edge off, but without the titanium dioxide, red 40, carrageenan, you name it.