384: Ghia’s Got Flavor with Mélanie Masarin

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0:31We did a big survey last year of our customers and it turns out that 85 % of the Kia customer identifies as an alcohol drinker and is seeking moderation. And to me, that's like, that's the best thing that I could hear from customers is that we've successfully blurred the lines between alcoholic and non-alcoholic and that they get that same ritual feeling.

0:53This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. It's a simple promise in a land of broken ones. No booze, no added sugar, no nasties. Guia, founded by a French former investment banker named Melanie Mazarin, has played the NA Spirits game straight. And we find out so much about the brand in this great interview. We hear about Melanie's journey from banking, to working with brands Dig and Glossier, to working in the world of spritz. It's such a fun talk, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:37Melanie Mazarin, welcome to This is Taste. How are you? I'm good, how are you? It's good to have an in-person interaction with you. So fun. Yeah, it's great. Thanks for coming to New York all the way from LA. I'm so excited to be here. We were just talking about Palm Springs food off mic, and you know, it could be better. It could be better. Yeah, but honestly, we celebrate Bar Cecil and Paul and places like that. I feel Ghia is the product. We're going to get into the history of the brand. And really, I mean, the name alone is a real one-of-one. I love it so much. It's so memorable. But it's that kind of drink you're going to find in Palm Springs, I feel.

2:10We have a lot of accounts in Palm Springs, for sure. Yes, it's very thirst quenching. So it fits really well in the desert. How do you describe the flavor profile from the jump? just for listeners who haven't actually cracked a can or had the large big boys and made their own drinks with it. For sure. So it's the cans are a derivative of our first bottle, the original bottle. So technically, it's as if you were making a cocktail by mixing them with a sparkling of your choice. I would say it's very fresh and kind of refreshingly bitter, like definitely still has that dry feeling. But you can really sense that there's yuzu, rosemary and all of those herbal notes in there.

2:48So it is really meant to taste like a traditional Amaro, simply non-alcoholic. Yeah. And it's absolutely firmly square in the NA category as the big boy, as you mentioned, the original product made it as a mixer. But then you crack the can and, you know, I've enjoyed the chili sumac flavor, which is kind of taking spice to the edge. Probably not for everyone, but that's okay with you. It's okay with me. We were just talking about this because I came here with some cans of sumac and chili. And I think you said the very spicy one. Mine were very spicy. And I think, you know, we really always take the stance of making flavors that are very polarizing, but that whoever likes them will really love them.

3:30And, you know, if the chili is too spicy for you, then surely we make another flavor that you may like. So trying to expand the world of Ghia without doing anything that's mid. Exactly. Mid is not where you want to be in anywhere in like media, in products, but we want to be extremely specific. right and really promise something clear I want to talk about when you launched Ghia you know it it seems like you're maybe pushing back against something and I want to know what because when you when you launch this very aesthetically pleasing bottle but it's like ethnically ambiguous which I think is interesting that because it's my read of it but it's always memorable and we'll get to my interact my first interaction with it which is a little funny story and I just feel like you clearly had a vision that you needed to not be a bunch of things is that right yes definitely so So first of all, when I started working on Gia, none of the brands that we know today had launched in the United States.

4:23There were only some brands that had launched in Europe that I knew of. And while we were working on it, you know, Kin launched, which is very different from Gia and obviously done a great job trailblazing. And Adaptogen though. Yeah, it's very functional. The founder is incredible. But it's completely different. And for us, like what I wanted was not a drink that was functional and specifically not a drink that was a lesser version of an alcoholic drink. I didn't want to be the sans and the non and like all of those, the zero, zero something. I wanted it to be its own thing. I wanted it to be something that in 20 years would feel like it could be its own thing if the world shifted how we think about drinking.

5:03And so, you know, I didn't want it to feel overly modern. I did not want the name to not have vowels and just like mean some fruit name. You know, there was just like, there were so many things that I didn't want and I was pretty specific. And once I started working on it, I never thought like, oh, I want to be a founder. I just, I just had this idea for this drink and then I became so obsessed with it that it sort of became a necessity to bring it to life. So the drink started with the drink. And so did you invent the drink? Yes. That's amazing. So you invented it in your kitchen. We'll get into a little bit more of that, but I want to hear the name itself.

5:33You had the product, you had a team. You went to a Team Impala concert and you were, you know, is this like this history? I read this there. I feel I'm bringing this up. And like you enjoyed Team Impala, this experience that you were inspired to reach out to a creative director. Is that right? Yes. So basically we worked on Gia for almost eight months before we had a name for it. And my business partner, Henry, who's still with me today. And we were like looking at the name, trying to find a name. We just couldn't. Everything was either like had already been registered and was defunct, but we still couldn't use it because it was this category or anything.

6:11And, you know, we were working and I was like, oh, my God, I forgot I have tickets for Tim and Pala tonight. And we were like, let's take a break. Let's go dance. And it was such a fun concert. One thing led to another. And my friend happened to know someone in the band asked them, like, who did the concert? I was like, this is the feeling of the production, like the lights, the visuals, the fonts, like the creative. Yeah, the creative. Yeah. and I was like this is the feeling that I want the brand to have that feeling when you're like you're you know just like it's like drunk in other ways the music makes you drunk there's like there's that feeling of being super alive in aberration and it's a feeling that I often compared to when you're driving in an old car like you have to be extremely present but you're feeling a lot of things and it's a very joyful feeling at least for me and the guy was like, oh yeah, it's this guy Brian and Willow in LA.

7:00And I was like, oh, I'm moving to LA next week. So I'm sure I'll find them. And I, you know, obviously like got to Google and found these guys and we had three mutual friends and I texted all three of them and asked for an intro to Willow. One of them said yes. And Willow was like, I'm actually in New York right now. I'm at the Bowery, but I'm busy. I have meetings. I was like, I'll be at the Bowery in five minutes. That's the greatest thing. You texted and you were there and then you pitched him on the idea and they ended up. I was like, and I knew at the time I only knew him as being the creative director for Kanye West, obviously.

7:29Oh, that's a different client than Tame Impala. Yes, exactly. I mean, he was doing a lot of music stuff and I just begged him. I was like, we didn't even talk about price, but I was like, I don't have a lot of budget, you know, but he was like, just come to the studio next week. We'll make it work. I think in a way I must have like charmed him with my enthusiasm because he said, why not? But he had not really designed the product before. so the name itself i first heard about guia um from my dudes at how long gone chris and and uh the trolls at how long oh my god dude i mean jason is not the troll chris is but they both are trolls but it was like it really made me think about influencer marketing because clearly you had sent them a bottle they start shit talking the bottle and the name but they kept doing it and clearly something was working because if it was a bad product they just would have clearly just made one joke and moved on.

8:21But it was like a bit. And I felt like clearly there's something happening here with this influencer marketing. They did it in a way, those guys are funny. So it was like a cool way for them to interact with your product. It was clearly a great product because I believe it's a great product and they probably acknowledged it's a great product. Did you like set that up? Because I'm very curious. So it's so funny because actually, I think we must have had a lot of friends in common. And, you know, we launched in the depths of COVID and I had asked people that I knew to give people because, you know, I worked a normal job before.

8:50I'm not like an influencer. Like I just didn't, my network's only so broad, right? And so I don't know if someone had sent them a bottle or if they're just seen it on all of their friends' Instagrams, but it just became one of their favorite topics to talk shit about, which is something that they do professionally pretty much. And then a few of my friends would be like, how long gone? Minutes, like three, you know, 40. And Gia would keep coming up. And so then I reached out to them. and send them some bottles. And then they actually started talking about it in a more positive way. And recently we actually sponsored their podcast.

9:25I was wondering if money ever changed hands. Okay. Just last month's January. Oh. Yeah, for the first time because we never really did these sponsored things before. And so we said, okay, we have a little podcast budget. We're really trying to kind of expand our reach. It's right. January, can we sponsor the pod as like a full circle? Do pods work? Like when you sponsor pods? It is hard to attribute, you know. I don't know 100 % of it, but I think people definitely hear it. Yeah, I think people engage it, especially when the hosts are actually behind the product. This is a shout to our advertising.

9:55You can each shout to Peter Romero in our partnerships department. Just kidding. I had to give it a call. But I think it's cool because how do you think about influencers? Because your brand has, like at Grazzen, we've had Andrew on a couple times. It seems like it was everywhere and important places in mainstream places. And really, it's a credit to you and not a large team. How do you think about that? Because I'm curious, you know, is it just sending free bottles? Is it like honestly doing some payment? How does that work? Well, when we launched, because it was COVID, we couldn't sample the product anywhere.

10:24And so that's very limiting when you're saying we're doing our own thing. We taste so different. And it's like people have to commit to a 30 something dollar bottle that they have to buy on the internet also because we were nowhere to be found. And so we shifted 100 % of our marketing budget, which was very small when we launched, to just gifting because we wanted people to try it for themselves. and people were at home really exploring what to eat and what to drink. I mean, like, you know, eating fancy groceries was like a sport during that time. So like it just became a thing that we realized people responded really well to until, you know, the world sort of reopened.

10:57And so for us, like we've never paid people to post about the product. I think, you know, candidly, we're sort of at the stage where we'll probably need to start doing that soon. Not just paid to say like, we love Ghia, but just to introduce it to their community. like real facts about the product. Like, you know, it's this and that. But we always say like we basically will only work with these partnerships when we know that someone's already a customer, basically. So we're working on some things now to support, you know, we're launching in Target. It's obviously like reaching a lot more people and we have to figure out how to get in front of more people.

11:32Well, how many stores are you in right now? What's your count? We're in 2 ,000 stores still. Yeah, that's amazing. What do you look for for 24? How many do you want to be in? We're aiming to double that. Yeah, of course. Double, double, double. But we have the little hop of launching in 700 Target stores at the end of March. Absolutely. So check out your Targets. I really do love the cans. I think I crush those at the end of the day. I think it's good midday. It's a palette refresh. And I like that. Do you think about other products all the time? All the time. It's all I do. We're launching a new and exciting product this year that will be like just a different SKU completely.

12:08Interesting. A different SKU. Is it liquid? Can we just go a couple? It's liquid. So yes, we also have a Nutella, which is very delicious and I'm always buying it, but it's a very small part of our business. It's delicious. It's made with olive oil instead of palm oil and half the sugar as real Nutella. But we have a crispy version now, which I think is so, so good. But that's never like a core focus. We'll always focus on liquid. And so that will be a new liquid product. Interesting. I can't wait to hear about it. I hope you send me something early. Okay, so you worked at Dig. You worked at Glossier.

12:40But I'm gonna go back even further. You worked at Goldman Sachs, which, you know, is a real sure experience. I don't want to, you know, dig into your personal history about working at this place, which I'm sure was a toxic man, man, boy show, putting words into your mouth. But let's talk about food. Closing dinners. Were there some epic closing dinners? So funny enough, for the first year, I had dinner at my desk every single night. That's how it goes. That's how it goes. And that's actually how I was introduced to Dig because we used to get discredit on the seamless web, you know, every night.

13:13And it was pretty much the only healthy option at the time. We're talking about a time when, I mean, I'm not that old, but Sweetgreen wasn't even in New York, right? And so, but I remember going to Texas once and we had a closing dinner or like a side visit dinner. And it was my first time in an American steakhouse. Wow. They do it right in Texas. They do it big in Texas. Yeah, it was pretty crazy because I grew up between Leo and the south of France. So there's a lot of, you know, nose to tell animal cooking. And I've eaten like every single bit of every animal, like force fed from the age of six years old.

13:44So I'm good. But I definitely was like, this steak is incredible. And like the way that it was just like a big platter, like shareable. I loved it. It actually felt closer to how I grew up. Did you have any wines to close that meal that were of your homeland? Because I feel like obviously in a closing meal, you're the French individual at the table. Are they looking to you to make the order? Yes, definitely. I remember them putting me on the spot. And you know, it's funny. I don't know much about wine except for like the regions. My dad knows a lot about wine and I grew up, you know, like near wine region.

14:18But I was definitely on the spot. I had no idea what I was picking. But like what kind of work were you doing at Goldman? What was that job like? I was an investment banker and I was in the natural resources group. So basically, I was at Brown University during the financial crisis. And so it was very hard to get a visa afterwards. And, you know, a lot of my friends in France were going into finance. It seemed like a pretty general track. And so I was very lucky to have a job where they offered me to sponsor my visa. And I really wanted to stay. I used to work at dining services at Brown. I was always kind of like around food.

14:50I saw that you were a manager of the dining services for like four or five years. Yeah, I joined at the big shop because I wanted to make money on campus. And then I ended up running all of dining services, which was like 10 restaurants, 400 student employees. It's the job that taught me everything. As a student, I mean, clearly you had a food in your future, but I'm just stunned. Not stunned, but like this pivot of careers from iBanking and clearly spreadsheet world, quant world, to like becoming the creative director at Digg and working with a brand. I mean, you clearly have a lot of talents here.

15:21I mean, how do you segue from a hardcore financial services industry job to dig? Well, I feel like I was always a very creative kid, but I had good grades and I was good at math and I was just precautious in general. And so I was force fed math forever. Like my parents, you know, my parents didn't graduate high school and they were so proud to have a daughter that had great grades. And they're like, you're going to do the scientific track in France. And I hated every minute of it. And all I wanted was to dance. I was a ballerina when I was younger. And so when I left Goldman, I randomly had a meal at Dig and that meal was kind of terrible.

15:59I'm so glad you said that because there were some terrible meals there. Well, okay. I love Dig. I think that I'm like pro Dig forever. I think that they've done just an amazing job with the supply chain and whatnot. It's been an evolution. Exactly. And so I emailed them and I said, I love Dig. I eat Dig almost every day. here are five things you could have done better yesterday when I came for lunch because this was a bit of a miss. And the CEO, it turned out they had changed the plate from like, do you remember the plate that had the separations between the sides? It was like, it looked a bit like school plate or prison plate.

16:31Yeah, it was like a segmented plate, right? Exactly. And they'd moved to the bowl or maybe they'd moved from like three sides to two sides. Something happened, it was a disaster. And the CEO was watching the emails come in for customer service and he asked me to get coffee. And so I got to dig as director of strategy after we had a really nice coffee and he offered me a job and he said, they were really small. They had four restaurants at the time. And we opened a ton of restaurants over the following few years. And I always had these marketing ideas. I was like, we're going to Boston. We need to reintroduce ourselves.

17:00And I always was thinking in terms of the consumer, I think, or the customer in this case. And then, you know, I was like, I think we should design the restaurants like this and like that. And I always loved design. And he was like, okay, great. You can do all these things. And that's sort of how I got to become a creative person in real life. You learned on the fly. You got budget. There's definitely some money there. What I really liked about Digg is more about the back office. They had a farm up near where I live in Orange County at the Chester Ag Center. And I loved that they had this farm there.

17:29It's not there anymore, unfortunately. But they were thinking about local agriculture in a cool way. They were really thinking about supply chain in a way that was really interesting. And that's why it's like, no matter what, I always eat big food because I just know how much they cared. And it doesn't always translate. That's a good learning, actually, you know, but it the food was really great. How did it feel once you found a guia to cross the aisle and move over and do some work with Sweetgreen? Because clearly Dick versus Sweetgreen. Yeah. It's a real rivalry or it was at least. It was a real rivalry.

17:59And it's funny enough, actually, I was completely frenemies with the Sweetgreen founders. Like one of them specifically really didn't like me. It can't be Nick. It can't be Nick. It can't be Nick who's the nicest guy alive. Exactly. It can't be Nick. So then I moved over to work at Glossier and I became friends with the Sweetgreen founders more socially. And then when I left Glossier, like the day after I left Glossier, Nick texted me and he said, if you're looking for freelance work, we have some work for you. And I had no idea what I was going to do. I was honestly so burnt out I needed a little break.

18:33And I started working for Sweetgreen. and I worked for Sweetgreen for the following two years while I was starting Gia and they were kind of the ones that like pushed me to do it and really supported me. So there's like a beautiful story there. I love that. And now I walk across the street, I had lunch on Tuesday and then I had it washed down with a Gia and I loved that part of the meal. And you're now in a lot of Sweetgreens. We're in Sweetgreens in New York and LA. That's really neat. So let me, is that working for you, that partnership? Yeah, it's interesting. It's like, you know, we're next to soda alternatives like Olipop, which are much more affordable.

19:10And we've always marketed ourselves as being more of a dinner product. And Sweetgreen naturally has more of a lunch product. So it's been a more challenging channel for us. But I think that the people that love Ghia already love to have to add Sweetgreen. They're not looking at the price tags. They're not looking at the price tags. You know, it's like there's a less. But on the daily kind of lunch routine, people are a bit more price sensitive. So we're trying to kind of introduce it to more people in the next year by doing some sampling and stuff. Let me ask you, are you focusing most of your energy on RTD and ready to drink versus the big boys?

19:40Because my assumption, this is great, you're shaking your head, because my assumption is that you're trying to be more of an RTD company, but that clearly is not the case. So you'd be surprised to hear that in January we sold more bottles than we sold cans. Wow. No, actually, that's in terms of dollar contribution. We made more money selling bottles than selling cans. The rib bottle is amazing, by the way. Thank you. Willow designed it. Actually, Willow and Brian designed it. I mean, it's still with us. The open ribs. It's like, you know, I'm thinking Deco. I don't know. I'm just like throwing out terms, but I love it.

20:11And you need to also, we need to talk about the name. Yeah. We didn't cover that. But so obviously, December, January, it's more giftable. It's a perfect introduction to our brand. And so we have a lot of people that really love the bottle. and every customer demographic and every channel has its own like purchasing pattern. So on Amazon, we sell 80 % bottle. But of course, our growth now is really coming from, you know, retail. And so a lot of supermarkets don't have room to take our bottle. So yeah, Target's taking your cans. Exactly. Yeah, so you're going to really see it just shift. But we're focusing on both, I would say, equally.

20:45We love them equally. You know, we just launched Berry. We're going to kind of develop this world around Berry, but then we're launching a completely different SKU. It may be tall and it may not be tall. Well, yeah, you're hinting at it. Are margins around the same for both products or does it vary? No, it varies. The cans are more expensive to make, but we're going to be moving to a printed can because we're big enough now that we can. Versus striping a label over aluminum. Exactly. The big issue is we have to take the cans from the co-backer, move them to a labeling facility, move them again.

21:16And so now that we've reached the point where we can order cans a million at a time, which is crazy, we can print them. When you do that, you also want to make sure you're not going to change the recipe. Well, yeah, exactly. You're talking in millions. That's a lot of cans. I love to hear that. Hi there. It's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on three things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair?

21:53You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey link in our show notes. Let's talk about the name. It rolls off the tongue. It's ethnically ambiguous. Where does it come from? So for forever, we did not have a name. It was nearly impossible to find a name. And I really wanted a name that didn't have a meaning, but I wanted a name that was really joyful. I think when you say Gia, it sounds really happy. And that's exactly what I wanted.

22:29It sounds like going to a Tame Impala concert. It's fun that you say that. And I, you know, going back to that feeling, Willow found a name for us. And we were looking at Italian fonts because, you know, my dad's of Italian origins and a lot of the inspiration obviously is this kind of Amaro aperitivo life and I was looking at some Italian fonts that I really love and there was this car designer that was born in the late 1800 called Giacinto Ghia and he started this car manufacturer company called Carotzeria Ghia which doesn't exist anymore but he made a lot of really famous cars in collaboration with other car brands one of them was the Carmen Ghia which is a very iconic car Yeah, of course.