what upcoming expos and markets that Kinsip will be attending. JS: I’m exaggerating when I say that we don’t have to market the brand; we’re just very cautious of how we go about doing it. In terms of the festivals we attend, we align our- selves very much with food and drink festivals – but not all of them. We align ourselves more with likeminded people within the OCDA, the Ontario Craft Distillers Association. We’ve certainly connected withdifferent distilleries around the province that share similar values. And sometimes it’s not necessarily distilleries that share similar values. We’ve made connections with businesses that are making small-scale cocktail syrups, cordials, that sort of thing – and there’s a new Caesar mix out there called Walter, which is the craft answer to Caesar mix. We partner with them because they need spirits to sell their products and conversely, for us, we don’t just show up with a bottle of gin or vodka. That’s not to say that our spirits can’t stand alone, because they can, but that’s not what the name, the brand, represents. The ‘Kin’ in Kinsip speaks to the idea of family and friends; the ‘sip’ speaks to cocktail culture and enjoying fine spirits with friends and family. It’s kind of the antithesis of the bottoms-up culture. We took a long time to make it; we’d prefer that you took a bit longer to drink it. So interacting with the cocktail culture, the mixolo- gists out there, is an integral part of your business plan moving ahead? JS: It is, but we don’t have the licensing to be full-on serving cocktails here – yet. But the province is still relatively new to the craft distilling scene. We’re just getting Direct To Licensee in Ontario, which means sales directly to bars and restaurants for spirits. It also means that as a craft distillery, you need to have your products on the shelves in the LCBO for a bar to buy it. Why I say that is simple: for a lot of small craft distilleries, being out there and repping your product is hard to do. There are only a very small handful of places that have spirits reps, people for whom that’s their fulltime job. We don’t currently have that as a fulltime position, but we’d love to get to that point. It would really help influence and market to the bar and restaurant scene in addition to our LCBO listings. They’re a couple of years old and they’ve basically gone coast-to- coast with distribution.
tend to pop-up on the radar quite frequently in this part of the province. That’s the cool thing with craft products right now, there’s such a demand for them that people are actively seeking them out. In terms of networking with the mixology side of the spirits world, we’ve had some pretty colourful experiences. We’ve hosted, and are hosting more in the future, mixology work- shops. “We’re so close to Lake Ontario and to New York State, so you can imagine this was a pretty busy county during Prohibition in the US.” There’s a couple out of Ottawa who’ve taken an old RV – a cool, funky 1970s model – and made it into a mobile bar and we’ve hosted them. They travel where they’re needed and do mixology workshops. They get a group of ten or so to sign-up – I believe it is around $50 for two hours – and you get a real hands-on workshop. You learn proper techniques and presentation – it’s really well-rounded. Opportunities like that really show us that we’re making good, versatile products – including our line of cocktail bitters.
We have an LCBO listing and we’ve certainly been picked- up by a lot of bars and restaurants.
The sectors of the service industry that are interested in craft distillery products are constantly scanning the isles everyday looking for what’s new, what’s local – so you
57
NOVEMBER 2017 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog