Eoin Bara: Getting Americans to Drink Mór Irish Gin
We caught up for a few glasses of gin and a chat with Eoin Bara, the Founder of Mór Irish Gin, at a pub in Dublin.
Mór Irish Gin is one of Ireland’s fastest growing gins. They started in 2015 at a distillery in Tullamore, continuing the legacy that stretches back to the 1930s when Eoin's grandfather was a master distiller of world renowned Irish whiskey.
They have expanded into the U.S. in 2019, and won some prestigious awards like Double Gold at The Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, and Double Gold at San Francisco Spirit World Competition for packaging.
As gin is not the first that comes to mind when we think of American drinks, we wanted to know how you get Americans drinking gin, and how they got that gorgeously designed bottle of Mór across the U.S.
While we taste Wild Berry Gin, Eoin shares his experience of expanding to U.S. spirits market one state at the time, the legal context for selling spirits in different states, and how they got distributors and bartenders on board with Mór.
“Whatever you think it’s going to cost, it’s going to cost more. If you go for New York first, you’re going to bleed money. ”
Time stamps:
3:00 - What makes Mór Irish Gin unique and the story of Tullamore
5:30 - The products of Mór Irish Gin and why packaging is equally important as the gin
7:15 - The secret of ingredients and flavours and tasting of Wild Berry Gin
9:59 - Why they wanted to conquer American market and which states they started from
11:25 - The laws in different U.S. states related to selling alcohol - open, closed and controlled states
12:25 - What was the setup and research process in order to expand to the U.S.
16:29 - The stereotypes that Americans have about gin and what is American drinking culture like
18:15 - Why they opted for the strategy of conquering U.S. market state by state, despite having a license for over 40 states
20:30 - How Mór Irish Gin carries out their marketing and PR strategy in the States
22:50 - What is the best and the worst state to set up business at in the U.S, according to Eoin
24:30 - Eoin's advice for small distilleries that are considering expanding to U.S.
26:50 - Why going for New York is the biggest mistake that companies make when they start expanding to U.S.
28:50 - How was the reception in the U.S, and what is Mór's business infrastructure there
34:00 - Mór Irish Gin’s training and sales strategy for distributors and bartenders
38:57 - What were the biggest surprises when they expanded to U.S.
42:00 - Whom would Eoin caution against expanding to U.S.
Resources:
Mór Irish Gin
Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America
San Francisco World Spirits Competition
Connect with Eoin Bara – LinkedIn
Email us at – Info@mtbonnell.com
Twitter – @mtbonnell
Connect with Sebastian Sauerborn: LinkedIn
Connect with Nastaran Tavakoli-Far: LinkedIn
Episode Transcript
Eoin: So, I’m Eoin Bara, founder of Mór Irish Gin, one of the Ireland’s fastest growing gins and we make three fantastic products out of Tullamore, County Offaly, and yeah this is my gin.
Nas: You’ve just heard Eoin Bara, the founder of Mór Irish Gin, who we caught up with for a drink and a chat at a pub in Dublin.
Eoin: Yeah, I’ve heard it, it’s very Mórish and I had to drink more Mór more [smiling] there is tons of these things that we’ve all joked about, we’ve tried to get Rachel Stevens to do a video for us but her agent never called us back [smiling]
Nas: You’re listening to Move Your Business to the United States from Mount Bonnell Advisors, the consultants who help you expand state side. I’m Nastaran Tavakoli-Far or Nas in short, you’re listening to the second season of the podcast and this season we’re talking to companies who’ve made the move to the US. We want to hear their experiences, follow their journey and see if they have any dos and don’ts to share with you. We’ll have episodes once every two weeks and Mount Bonnell CEO, Sebastian Sauerborn, will be answering questions about expanding to America. Send to us over to info@mtbonnell.com you can also find that in the show notes.
For this week’s episode we went down the pub for a few glasses of gin. Eoin Bara is the founder of Mór Irish Gin, they started in 2015 and have a distillery in Tullamore which is halfway between Dublin and Galway. They’ve been expanding in to the US and this year they won some awards, including Double Gold and Wines and Spirits Wholesalers of America and Double Gold in San Francisco Spirit Awards for packaging. Now, when I think of American drinks, I don’t think of gin. So we wanted to know how do you make Americans drinking gin. And also how to get that gorgeous bottle of Mór into bars across the US.
Nas: Could you sort of describe what the taste is?
Eoin: So, on the nose you get a very sweet floral, so it almost tastes it almost smells like it has a taste if that makes sense, you can almost taste it as you smell. To taste on your tongue, with the tonic in it, you get a small amount of juniper at first, you get a big spice from coriander, so you kind of get this earthy tone, you get a little bit of smoothness of the floral, so as it kind of comes up as a flavor and it hits a crescendo with the rosemary and slowly like, eases out as you taste it, and then you got a sweet berry finish on the way down, if that makes sense. So it’s quite smooth on the end, just not the sharp or abrupt finish.
Nas: And so Eoin, when did you guys expanded to the US?
Eoin: Just this year, in 2019.
Nas: And I hear you won a bunch of awards, can you tell us more about that?
Eoin: We won Double Gold and the Wines and Spirits Wholesalers of America, couple of years ago we won San Francisco Spirit Awards and we won, again, WSWA just last year.
Sebastian: So why do you, I mean, it’s great that you won these awards, why is that, you think, what makes your gin unique in the eyes of the jury?
Eoin: So it’s very, unlike other gins. So generally gins were made in one shot distillation. So you put all the ingredients and it comes off distilled. And you add some water to it and then you have gin. We do like four part distillation, so we make juniper, coriander, angelica, rosemary, which makes a lovely dry gin base, and then we blend in blackberry, raspberry and cranberry, so distillates.
This is the tale of two valleys, one in the old world and one in the new. As you shall see, this is a story that has no ending and the beginning has been lost, it happens so far away and long ago. So, we’re going to start right here.
Eoin: So the whole story behind the gin is Tullamore, right, I grew up in Tullamore and it was a small town and my granddad was a distiller for a whiskey company so I grew up knowing about booze and kind of like, thinking that, oh, this is all interesting, and it is possible to make it. So, I grew up living along the banks of the canal, and the canal was from Dublin to Galway and if you see our label, it goes from Dublin all the way to Galway, which is there. And what’s in the middle is Tullamore where the mountains are.
So, there’s a whole story about why the company is called Arderin which is the name of the tallest mountain, and I was incredibly, blissfully naïve, when I first set the company, I was like, I’m going to use the sand stone filtered water from the mountains. So, I got into my pickup truck, loaded up an IBC which is a big one thousand liter tank and drove off to mountains to pomp directly from the source in the mountains. Which is what Tullamore do, but they were 14 kilometer pipe line, I just had to hit a pipe deck and a pickup truck [smiling]
So, and that’s where the label comes from, the postal route was the canal, or the canal was a postal route and that’s why these postal marks in the glass so it’s a homage back to that. And you can smell all the florals when hold this to light you can see this through it, which is like a reminiscent of the bushes and things that you’d find in the mountains. So everything is based around the mountains and around Tullamore. So it’s Tulllamore in a glass.
Nas: So this is your Wild Berry infusion?
Eoin: Yeah, so it’s made with seven ingredients, juniper, coriander, angelica and rosemary, and then we blend in blackberries, raspberries and cranberries, to give it a dry gin but with a sweet berry finish.
Nas: Okay, and this is the only bottle you’re selling in the US right now?
Eoin: So this is the only one we’ve put in the US so far, we have a pineapple gin, which was a terrible idea, because pineapples are incredibly difficult to distill, and I lost the bet, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Nas: Does it taste good though?
Eoin: The pineapple gin? Yeah, so it’s not the usual sort of- so it’s not sweet, so we used bergamot orange and that really rounds up the flavor profile, we use a little bit of lemongrass, we use lime, so Persian lime, to kind of just redo round of the flavor and not have a sickly sweet sort of gin.
Nas: So you have that and then -?
Eoin: We have London Dry. And London Dry is a style of gin, so which means that it’s only one shot, so it’s only one of the go of distill, which is unlike the other gins, which are done in multiple parts. And, it has to be over 50% juniper, which means that you get a very dry and refined gin.
Now we put our own stamp on it, in that, we have terrible ideas, it’s like, oh yeah we’ll use these ingredients that only grows one month of the year, which is in September, that’s called ivy flower, so you see ivy that grows along buildings and bushes and stuff it has a really nice flower, and it turns out that flower may or may not cure asthma, but, it tastes great [smiling] So we decided to distill it and put it into our products, that’s why London Dry.
Sebastian: So where does the juniper grow, does it grow in Ireland, where do you buy that?
Eoin: It does, currently we buy our juniper from Southern Italy and the reason for that is that different areas of the world will have different sort of soil PHS level, different climates. And the juniper reacts differently.
So if you get something from Norway, it’s very acidic and it’s a sharp, you can get Icelandic juniper and it taste like pine. It’s really, really great ingredient, it allows a lot of complexity, whereas the southern Italian has like a small amount a spice to it and has a small amount of like, really robust flavor, now if you want lots of spice, you go to Macedonia, or you go to Morocco, these drier climates have different sort of flavors
Sebastian: Interesting, now you have reveal the secret recipe [smiling] now we have to delete everything.
Nas: So we’ve got this Wild Berry infusion, so this is the one you’re selling in the US?
Eoin: Yep, this is our first product into the US and the reason we put this in first is to see how it goes. This is the one that goes with gin and tonics and the States is like slightly behind Europe in terms of gin and tonics, so when you go to the States, you get like- their drinking culture is a lot more different than Europe, in Europe everything is measured whereas in the States the people are pouring, and you get like half a glass of gin and you get like a splash of tonic of the gun and it’s somewhat crazy sweet corn syrup stuff whereas we kind of introduced them to better tonic and better gins and they slowly coming around with. So we’ve seen sales growing by 20% in the last year.
Nas: Can we try some?
Eoin: Yeah, sure. We just need some tonic, nose that neat there and have a little smell of it.
Nas: Okay, so- oh it smells really lovely, it’s very fresh and-
Eoin: So we use an ingredient called angelica and angelica was used in perfumery, back in Egyptian times. So really binds the flavors into the smells and it works really well in that regard.
Nas: It’s just like a- it’s a really subtle, subtly sweet, it’s really lovely.
Eoin: And you, if you could just take a little sip of that, straight, you’ll get a lovely, sort of sweetness to it at the start, and you’ll get a little juniper at the end, whereas when you try these two with the tonic, what you’re going to get, you’re going to get the juniper and the dryness first and it’s going to build slowly and it’s going to fall off and then you got this sweet berry finish. So it’s almost like a crescendo with the gin and then the sweet berry finish.
Nas: I’m not an expert on drink, but when I think America, I think whiskey, maybe tequila, I don’t think gin. So why did you guys wanted to conquer that market?
Eoin: Because it’s just an emergent market, you kind of go like they haven’t got it yet, like it’s a big vodka, it’s a tequila country. But the habits changing, people are slowly moving over, so like, tequila for me is a bit of a party thing, vodka hasn’t- a good vodka doesn’t have a taste, whereas of gin, a good gin has all about flavor. So it’s just about time that our American friends got it [smiling]
Nas: And how has been going down?
Eoin: Yeah, really good so far, we’ve got into three states, so which is Michigan, California and Texas.
Nas: Okay, and why those three?
Eoin: Because Florida wouldn’t take us [smiling] no, we originally planned to go into Florida and Massachusetts to start, but what happened was, Florida is a very competitive market, so, they were like-
Nas: For gin or for new drinks -?
Eoin: For everything, like it’s just a- it’s really competitive. So we met Southern Wines and Spirits, distillery based in the States, and they were really keen to take it on for California which is the third biggest gin market, and Texas which is the first biggest gin market.
Sebastian: Laws in the states, especially like places like Texas, selling alcohol are really complicated, have you been affected by that?
Eoin: Oh, yes, there’s parts of Texas that are completely dry so you’re like, you can be in like, I think Kentucky, where they make Jack Daniels, it is a dry town, so you can’t buy booze, it’s really strange. And it’s all these weird old archaic laws from the prohibition and things like that, as well as the treaty system, so you have to follow these layers and layers and there’s a lot of bureaucracy. So like let’s say for example if you are in New York, and you’re a bartender, you also can’t sell a brand, so, you need something called solicitation license, to go and call to a bar and say, hey you want to try this gin? And if you don’t, there’s a massive fine.
Nas: So you can’t just call up a bar and say, hey I make Mór?
Eoin: I’m not sure about calling, but you can like walk into the place, I mean, who’s going to stop me on the phone? [smiling]
The young man waiting out of the brew house is no ordinary brew master his family goes back as well-known merchants for more than four hundred years. On the royal license as brew master we find this name, Frederick Miller, still in his early twenties, he’s master of seven languages, he has travelled in many countries, studied the brewery art, his father is a brew master of the neighboring city, but Frederick, now pacing the floor nervously is emulating his uncle, another famous brewer whereas come over from the barrier for the festival. Ah at last, the steward returns, will the duke brand his fair reputation? Or won’t he?
Nas: You started selling Mór earlier this year?
Eoin: Yep.
Nas: So earlier in 2019, was there a lot of research you had to do, what was the setup to get to that process, what were you actually doing?
Eoin: So we first went to the States in 2016, we were, okay, the US seems like a great market, it’s a huge country, a lot of drinks are sold there. We got an importer, that was our first protocol, then we needed to get FDA clearance, which basically means that our products are safe for human consumption which was a ton of paperwork, it took like eight months, and we finally got the OK with it. So, we’re now approved and everything is cool. So then we went back in 2017 so in 2016 we got a- we had a little bit of interest, we got an offer for 42 State deal.
Nas: Wow-
Eoin: But our equipment could not support that, my cash flow couldn’t support it, it was like okay, we can’t do this.
Nas: So that would be to launch in 42 States?
Eoin: Yeah.
Nas: Wow, that’s huge.
Eoin: That was massive, yeah. And there was like a huge, big, sort of, oh my God, we can do this, we can be a national brand overnight and we will be ahead of the gin curve. But there was a part of me that was like, something is not quite right here, and then when we check the details we were like, we’re not going to make any money on this deal, so even though it will be a national brand, we’re not going to make any money.
Nas: And why would that be?
Eoin: They wanted so much money for marketing, and like, some things on that, and it’s an expensive market break but it was tying us to five years and making no money, and it could end up costing you money and we just couldn’t take on, so 2017 we went back and it was in Vegas this time, which was absolutely fantastic, we won, actually on our first year there, we’ve only launched the brand about three or four months, and we won Double Gold, at the WSWA which is Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America, and this is like the top prize and then we won best in show, we were like a, this is not- what have we done here, and this is where we had deal for the 42 States.
So the next year we went back, and we’ve made the pineapple gin, and we entered that in and that won, I think a gold, which is good and it was really well received, it was more like, people really interested in this new sort of face, like this isn’t like a typical gin that we’re associated with, and we’re kind of going, well, it’s not your grandmother’s gin, like that’s what people associate with gin, and, or, I hear like, I hear a lot of kind of [sigh] was it myths, or like preconceived ideas, like, oh yeah mascara thinner gin makes me cry, things like that [smiling] so yeah, like we’ve spent three years kind of researching, going to shows, meeting people, going back and forth and kind of figuring out if the market was there, and this year we’re like, yeah the market is there, let’s just do it.
And, it was only when Fever-Tree who are a tonic company, decided they’re going to move their own operations to the States, we were like, okay, cool, we were kind of counting Fever-Tree responsible for a lot of the gin boom, because they made tonic a lot more accessible to people.
Sebastian: Yeah I know Fever-Tree, it’s interesting, they’re also quite big in Europe, yeah.
Eoin: Yeah, they are bigger, they are big everywhere, I think there is something like a five billion evaluation, which is insane.
Sebastian: And you say that they drove the gin sales in the US
Eoin: Well, I think that they drove in Europe, so what happen in 2009 was is they change the law around still size, so you needed a 1500 liter still to make alcohol and 1500 liter still is quite expensive, you’re looking at a 150K. So what they did they removed that still size and allow people to use much smaller stills to sell commercial products. And that kind of went, hey, let’s all make gin, and people did. So we started off with a hundred liters and we ran a business on it for a year and a half.
Nas: So you said, you’re saying, sort of stereotypes Americans had about gin?
Eoin: Yeah.
Nas: What are they saying now?
Eoin: I’m not quite sure, like, as if we find that the Americans are- they love it or hate it, definitely with the brands like Red Hawk Gin there’s a couple of craft distilleries that popped up and so, it’s very big on the Coast. So on the East and West Coast is quite good.
But what we found out when we got the data, some of the biggest places for gin were in Delaware.
And we were like, Delaware, is that not like tax avoidant state, like how does that work, so people setup their companies, and they were like, well, people actually drive from Pennsylvania into Delaware across the state border, and buy alcohol there because it’s no longer a control state.
What happens is, in these states, there is a three types of states, there is an open state, which means that they can pretty much any can sell alcohol, there’s a closed state which means you can only sell to certain brokers, and there is a controlled state, and the control state, you can only sell to the government, which is, like it is in Canada and most of Northern Europe, like Norway, Sweden. So yeah, we found navigating our way around that is, it’s a nightmare, we need to do a control state, in order to get in with the other 18 control states because they all meet at this board and need to figure out what sells and what doesn’t.
Nas: So you got this still in 2017 to expand to 42 states, and instead you decided to expand to five.
Eoin: No instead we decided to expand into Europe, and hold off, because we were like, we’re not sure if the States are quite there yet.
Nas: Ah, in terms of being ready for gin.
Eoin: Yeah. Because, when we were like tasting Mór with like, with American tonics, we were like, this is pretty awful. And it’s just a corn syrup so we were like, okay, what we’re going to do, are we going to reformulate the product for the American market, are we going to wait until there are better tonics there or just what are we going to do.
So we had to think of the strategy, and then also, how do you break the States because there’s so much stuff happening. And, one of the things that we came up was, we should get on Oprah’s Christmas list [smiling] we’re sort of to manage yet, but it’s on the list to do. And, so yeah, we’ve just kind of taking a step back and we actually approaching the States as sort of fresh market, and treating each state as its own country, so like, how we deal in Michigan is different than how we deal in Texas and how we deal in California, there’s laws that we can do, so we can incentivize reps here in Europe, but we can’t do in the States, there’s different intricacies in the laws and different states so it is, navigating is quite difficult.
Nas: So this is interesting in terms of, you have big opportunities in the States and then like, let’s actually not do this.
Eoin: Yeah. I think, saying “no” is probably the hardest part, because you’re going, “this is so much money, this is so much turnover, this is going to slingshot the company”, but there’s a huge risk in accepting something that big, because hey let’s see if it goes well, and then, you’re out of capacity.
So you’re looking at a six-month leap time to get a bigger capacity in order to like scale up with orders. We didn’t- our last company left us without supply for two months and we were like, wow if we’ve taken that States deal, we would be out of business and someone would’ve sued us, so it’s one of those things that we weren’t just ready for it, like, I mean we could’ve taken it, and then there’s this whole, sort of, like entrepreneur thing like, hey, I’m going to jump out of this airplane and put together the parachute on the way down and a lot of it is like that, but it was too big of a risk, to risk our reputation in the States, not be fully prepared and knowing what we were going into. So I think by going at a smaller slower pace it allows us to grow more organic and have more control over our growth.
Sebastian: How do you do marketing in the States and PR so how do people learn about this new gin from Ireland and why they should they try it, why is it better than any other gin?
Eoin: Okay, so the way you build your brand in alcohol, is, first you see the distribution. So you go into the bars, you get into like distributers to go in, get listed in bars and then you do demand generation, alright, so, the demand generation is kind of the step 2 of the process, so, what we do is we do a lot of interact online, all digital stuff.
And that’s all to do with getting eyes to see the brand and getting them to recognize and associate it with something. So, we’ve done online videos, we have made a video about a gorilla where we get our pineapples for our pineapple gin, which is like, we say is the base of the Sleeve blue mountains [smiling] and, thanks to global warming, Trump and Brexit, we were able to grow the pineapples in this gorilla sanctuary and we’re partaking a banana for pineapple exchange, which is culminating in one of the guys dressed up in a gorilla suit swapping pineapples for the bananas in the video.
And that’s kind of being a running sort of gag the man in the gorilla suit and in couple of other videos, there’s one more, like a really sexy scene pouring the gin and it’s the actual gorilla serving the gin, you don’t see it until the end, you only see these little cues like the gorilla but yeah, so videos are really important in what we do, as well as Instagram. So Instagram seems to be one of our big core parts that is growing our brand.
Nas: But do you market differently in the US than how you do it in Europe?
Eoin: Yes, yes and no, right, so as in, over here you can throw out an event and you can get people to come to the event and try drinks and things like that, in the States it’s a lot more difficult to get people to come to an event. So a lot of it, is direct, so we do a direct marketing, so digital straight to consumer and try to get the main generation.
Nas: Hi, you’re listening to Move Your Business to the United States, we’re the Mount Bonnell Advisors, I’m Nas, I’m here with the CEO Sebastian Sauerborn, we’re taking questions this season, so send them to us, it’s info@mtbonnell.com so we have an email from Richard who is based in Belfast. He asks, “Sebastian what’s the best state to set up a business?”
Sebastian: Well I’m obviously biased here, but I definitely think Texas is the best state, it’s a very big state, it’s a very central, has a large population, Texas rent law, red tape law, so if you ask me, Texas is the best state to set up a business in the United States.
Nas: Can I ask you what is the worst state? [smiling]
Sebastian: Well, if you looking strictly from a tax perspective, expensive, red tape and these things, you would have to say New York or California. But of course, that’s never the only question, and not ever the only reasons, I mean there’s lots of reasons like, where is your industry based, where is your market, so, often these factors demand that you set up a business in California or New York for example. These are perfectly fine reasons, I mean, if it doesn’t matter where you are, I guess you just have to pick up a state, I think Texas is great, you might have as well bearing serious reasons to do in a different state.
Nas: And this might sound random but is there a dark horse state somewhere people don’t really tend to set up their business but you think that’s a lot of, a lot of potential.
Sebastian: Well yeah, Wyoming, it’s the mountains, it’s a great skiing, not a lot of people, very low taxes, rather- so yeah, it’s great, yeah.
Nas: Cool, thanks Sebastian, and thanks Richard for that question, keep sending them to us, it’s info@mtbonnell.com we’ve put that email address in the show notes and we’re going to get back to this week’s episode.
I am a brew master like you. –No, not like me, I’m only good, you are the best, you, and your formula.
Nas: Say you’re giving advice to a younger distillery, what would be the dos and don’ts you tell them about wanting to go to the US?
Eoin: Oh, God, make sure you have tons and tons of money [smiling] so like, however much money you think it’s going to take, it’s probably going to take more.
Nas: And why is that?
Eoin: Just- everything is far more expensive than in Europe, like you’re looking at consultants, our US consultants are three times the price of our European consultants, and I don’t know whether that’s with the cost of living or it’s just a bigger opportunity there and people can charge for it. So whatever you think is going to cost, it’s going to cost more. Like, logistics, like getting stuff, we land our product in New Jersey, and then we deal with California and you have to get stuff from New Jersey to California which is the entire land from the States and it has to go by road.
Nas: Which is like as big as Europe, in a sense.
Eoin: I think it’s bigger. I’m not quite sure, I know all those maps as I saw, the graphic maps, really outdated and not in proportion, so yeah, I believe that.
Nas: So you’re going to need a tons of money, what else are things to be aware of dos and don’ts.
Eoin: In the States, everyone will trying to convince you that they are the best, like in Europe we have this sort of, people would undersell themselves, in the States people will oversell themselves.
Sebastian: Yeah, good point.
Eoin: And we find that people are, just so full of shit [smiling] fucking man, there is a- like, I’m great at this, you know, and you’re like, okay, great, just, what are your numbers, I mean, when we deal in data, like a lot of the time we deal in data just show me the data, show me the KPIs and they’re like, no, no, just trust me, and like no, no, this isn’t how we work, we give you the money and you tell us what you’re going to deliver and people are no-
No, I don’t know where do we met just chances, in my career, in the States, but we seem to be, maybe alcohol industry is full of chances. But it’s not. It’s just a cultural difference. And I think it’s maybe it’s the style of parenting or maybe it’s like MTV channels and they can achieve anything, but the Americans are overconfident. Not to generalize or too racist [smiling]
Nas: And so, what do you think the big mistakes that drinks companies make when they try to go to the US?
Eoin: They try to break New York so they start New York, and they go, yeah we’re going to break Manhattan, we’re going to be listed in top 50 bars and they go to New York. And the thing is, you can bleed money, you can bleed money really quickly in New York. I think you’re better off starting with smaller places and kind of working out, kind of figuring out and learning the lessons of the States and of the intricacies of the buyers, you know the States and then working your way back.
Nas: And do your people end up getting into Mór because of word of mouth, what’s the best way of -?
Eoin: It’s quite interesting, a lot of times it’s bartenders. So bartenders go, someone goes, gin and tonic, and they’ll go like, oh, have you tried Mór, and it’ll be, no, so they’ll go look smell this, and they smell it and they go by the smell, is really good and they try it and they like it and people generally stick with it. So we found our brand loyalty is quite good, now we did have a big problem with the name in the beginning, because people go to the bar and say, hey can I have Mór gin, and they’re like what gin you’re drinking? And they’re like Mór gin, and they are like, which gin, this is all the gins that we have-
Nas: [smiling] Give me all your gins.
Eoin: Yeah, it was like give me Mór gin and just back in the beginning and it’s still a problem in new markets, and so in the UK, when we entered the UK, it was Mór gin and it was like, we’ve loads of gin.
Nas: Yes, being from Ireland, doesn’t help that I mean, is it considered a pretty good product like scotch whiskey from Scotland is, this something special, something of high quality, I mean, premium product, is that similar?
Eoin: Yes, the Irish have a great reputation for food businesses and for alcohol. So you know the way I’m stereotyping about the Americans, the Irish have a great stereotype of bad alcohol [smiling] and generally we make fantastic alcohol, so it’s actually seen as a really good thing.
Nas: And when you’ve dealt with your business partners for example, distributers and everything, did they have experience dealing with overseas companies? Or when they come to you, were they critical, were they skeptical? How is the reception?
Eoin: Well, you know, the States has been a market for alcohol for many years. So the people that we deal with- they deal with a lot of international blends. So it was quite interesting, people were like, gin, out of Ireland, we’re like yeah, and they’re like, oh you guys are usually famous for whiskey. And we’re like, yeah, we know that but, this is a really good gin.
And you kind of tell the story why it’s made the way it is, and it’s very different than your usual, like London gins or London Dry gins, or even the gins that you get from the UK.
I mean that’s all basically providence based but what we’ve done is quite different and in the way we’ve done it, it’s not the usual process, it’s a four part distillation, it’s a blending, it’s quite an expensive process but it gives us granular control over the quality of the product that we produce.
Sebastian: And, how does this work now in the US, so you have now a network of distributers? Do you have like staff in the US like sales people or, what’s your infrastructure there that you’ve built?
Eoin: Yeah so we have a country manager, who basically manages our brand ambassador in each state. So we have one brand ambassador for each state and then they will work with our local distributor, so, an ambassador would do everything from marketing events to calling into bars to, just making stuff happen, following up a data and sending it back. So we’re headquartered out of Tullamore County Offaly in Ireland, we would have staff in the UK which is a similar setup with a country manager, brand ambassadors, city by city.
Sebastian: And where are you located in the US?
Eoin: In the US in New Jersey.
Sebastian: New Jersey, okay.
Nas: So actually on that point, so how do you convince American bartenders to get into gin, and to recommend it, do you need to say different things to them than here, given there’s like a different culture around it -?
Sebastian: I know they poured us generously as they pour their own gin.
Eoin: Oh my God, it is crazy, like, I’ve had crazy nights- yeah I have three gins and I’m like, I can’t see- [smiling] so, yeah, they are very generous with the pours but yeah, how do you convince an American bartender, it’s a sense of kind of nostalgia, people love the Irish in the States, they are like, oh my granddaddy was Irish, you know, I know someone who’s Irish, they are the Irish, and the problem is, when you are Irish abroad, you have a reputation to live up to, so they are like, oh I knew this guy he can drink for days, like, okay, well [smiling] I better cancel my meetings tomorrow, cause this sounds like someone laid down the gauntlet [smiling] so you got to keep the Irish international sort of like thing going, yeah so we’re generally very well received, I can’t believe how receptive people were to us.
So, what we did in the States was we’ve started with Irish bars, and we went “oh yeah look you sell these Irish products here’s a genuine Irish product”, not only by multinational, and you stick onto the thickest Irish accent you can, “oh Jesus how we’re going” and they love it, they love the Paddywhackery, and we’re just like, play into it, you know, leprechaun hats, red hair [smiling] sometimes we do that, okay, not all the times, but people love Ireland and they love hearing about Ireland, they love that the fact it’s come over, that’s independent brand and they love that is really, really different than everything else they have on the shelf.
Sebastian: Yeah, I think, we’ve heard this from many entrepreneurs from Europe, I mean, often they are a bit, I think they feel intimidated by the size of the country, but the reality is, if they play it to their strength and not being part of big group or a big corporation that can go really well then. Not just for alcohol but for everything else as well.
Eoin: Yeah, I think people kind of, they respect it, they kind of go, look, you’re doing something we want to support this small, the underdog, and that’s sort of like, what we found in a lot of independent bars that they are like, you know, fair play to you, you’ve gotten this far, you’ve gotten out of Ireland you’re now in the States, we’ll give you a hand.
Sebastian: Thee is also this, I mean I lived for quite long time in Texas, so in the last few years, I’d say the last ten years, more and more of these craft breweries sort of came up and so there’s this whole artisanal alcohol movement, it became very strong and people do these tours than they never did before, you know pub crawls in a way, but from craft brewery to craft brewery. That must certainly also have your product, right, something like a craft gin?
Eoin: Yeah, so the craft, sort of movement, what we’ve seen here in Europe is a little bit of craft fatigue, because there was a lot of “me too” brands that hopped on and started making things that people generally didn’t like. And then like, they were so hit and miss, like, you would get something that is branded beautifully and then you taste it and like wow that’s awful, I’m pretty sure that’s diesel in a can [smiling] so with craft gin, people are like, they’re going on a little bit more wary, because of the whole craft beer thing, and they kind of go, okay I’ve tasted this, I really like it I think that people are going to like it, and that works really well.
We’re here today to make a decision. As you know we ranked twentieth among the nation’s three hundred breweries, we can’t just stay there, same all story, you either go ahead or you slip back, we can’t stay still. And we have the excellent opportunity ahead, the demand for brewery has become terrific, not only we were selling it, but in the areas where would never shift, places like Texas, Louisiana and California, we have applications for three thousand distributorships. Our problem is, we can’t expand like other breweries, we can’t just add more brew kettles, we need to have all the other facilities required
Eoin: You might need some more tonic, yeah, but, It’s pretty strong.
Nas: Got some tonic in there.
Eoin: So that’s one of my pours, it’s like fifty-fifty [smiling]
Nas: So it’s got a really fresh taste very small hint, something quite flowery?
Eoin: Yes, that would be the rosemary. Rosemary adds this lovely, slentest smoothness, that’s like a kind of floral note to it, so it’s not like the rosemary that you have in your lamb or whatever, it’s a really, really nice botanical to use.
Nas: And so when you go to new markets, including the States or wherever in Europe, do you have to do tasting sessions with the locals, cause you know, everyone got different palate, how does that work out?
Eoin: Yeah, so generally what we do- is we’re going to the distributor and we’re going okay guys, let’s sit down and train your team, so we sit down and train the team on what it taste like, what goes into the product, what it works well what doesn’t work well with, how to actually sell it to the bartender and how to make sure that it’s served the right way.
So for example, if you squeeze a lime into the gin it changes completely, cause the citric acid interacts with the gin and it changes the flavor, there is a lot more dryness, so we do all these bartender trainings we would go to cocktail books, and we go, look, if you go into a cocktail bar here is the ones that we recommend, here is the ones that highest gross profit so we put something called a drinks strategy so we’re going okay, these ingredients will cost you a $1,50 and you can sell this for as $10 so your gross margin here is 90% and we’re trying to get them to sell based on the things, one is taste, provenance and then we get them to sell on data. Because we have such a unique product and unique taste that are able to offer a flavor if they cannot get by combining more than one ingredient. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with cocktails-
Nas: A little bit.
Eoin: So there’s one called Bramble which is made of blackberry and raspberry and things like that, now, you have the raspberry in this, or a French 75 is gin, liqueur Chambord and they use Prosecco, so you can use this some Mór with Prosecco and you get a lovely dry gin with the berry finish to it with the dryness of the Prosecco.
Sebastian: But this product, or I mean, I assume, is that targeted at women?
Eoin: No it’s not targeted at women, so we made this gin, so I made this gin for me, I really like the- I like something sweet.
Sebastian: It’s lovely yeah.
Eoin: So something dry that was a bit sweet. I didn’t want the sugary taste, I just wanted a hint of berries, I just wanted something unusual.
Nas: Yeah, it’s really crisp, it doesn’t taste sugary or-
Eoin: It doesn’t taste like, I don’t know if you had those pink gins where is like syrup that’s all fake. So we use real ingredients, like it’s real fruit, which has cost us massive amount of problems in sort of like, we do berry hedging [smiling]
Nas: What’s that?
Eoin: We use real berries so, we ran out of berries one year and we were like, what we’re going to do, so we have to forecast our berries in a year in advance because you only had it in Ireland summer time. It was two years ago, maybe three years ago, we ran short of berries and we had to order berries from Spain. So raspberries come in from Spain, we had 250 kilos and you kind of think 250 kilos is not a lot, it is one with raspberries, how much does raspberry weight so you see it’s nuts now each one of those arrived in a 125 gram plastic punnets.
Sebastian: No way.
Eoin: Yeah, nut idea, so one we pay through the nose further two in the environment.
Nas: Do Americans have specific taste when it comes to gin?
Eoin: A lot of- what we do in America is we do education. So, we’re trying to get people away from vodka, so what a lot of people drink in the States is called Skinny Bitch, which is vodka, soda and lime, and that is what is referred to, in the trade, not me being misogynistic it’s just called like that. So vodka, soda, lime, or they do vodka, cranberry, lime.
And you want to get people away from that, you want go, okay, look, we can give you a lot more flavor in your soda because we have all this botanical infuse, it’s still low calorie, and people are incredibly concerned about calories, so they’re like, oh there is sweetener inside this, no, there’s no sweetener, so a lot of that is education and getting people moving around to it.
Sebastian: I think why women in the States at least, like to drink vodka is that apparently, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but somebody told me that, you know, you can’t smell vodka on the breath, so you can drink a lot but you don’t have, you don’t smell, is that true?
Eoin: It depends on how much you drink of it [smiling] I know this, they say that and there was a great ad Smirnoff did it in the 60s or 70s when the stuff was really politically incorrect, and their ad was Leave you breathless, you know, and this was all, it doesn’t smell your breath and that’s where it came from.
But even with the finest brewery in the world there were still problems. This ancient, treasured formula is so delicately balanced that even smallest deviation as the moving of the process across the street was enough to finish the product ever so slightly of this bold protection.
Nas: So Eoin, what’s been the biggest surprises about trying to expand in the US?
Eoin: There’s been a lots of surprises, yeah we kind of thought it’s going to be a lot easy just one how competitive it is, two, how slowly moving it is, three, how long it takes to take stuff there, four how strict customs are, we’ve had stuff being held up by customs so many times, even though is all paperwork cleared, you have your collar thing, but if you haven’t attached three copies of whatever it is to the palate, you’re going to have problems. So, yeah, how strict their logistics are, quite yeah, quite difficult.
Sebastian: It’s all very rule based, trying to be, one other person who I interviewed said, in America she misses that people often don’t use the common sense, like they’re doing in Europe, you know, I mean they might not have three copies but they realize two might probably be okay this time, you know what I mean.
Eoin: Yeah. And there is that, it’s like, oh yes, so you don’t have three copies but have three copies of one document. So we had a shipment held up because one of the copies, the document, had the invoice on the front, rather than the customs document on the front, right, but there was still three copies, all they had to do is open it up and find it. So they held it up, and we were like, oh, so we had to go to our broker and we need to send over these copies, even though two of the copies were still attached to the palate.
Nas: So given all this, what advice would you give to aid trying to expand to the US, or if you had to give an advice to yourself three years ago, what would you say?
Eoin: Raise more money, so realistically, it’s incredibly expensive, it’s going to take up a lot of time, you’re going to have a lot of time in the States, be prepared for the culture shock, they’re not European, they don’t know how to take sarcasm, we just, yeah- and sometimes they don’t hesitate you can have kind of little bit of fun, what we found is that’s not how it goes in business. They’re very, very serious when it comes to business and when business is done, they’re good fun. But this sort of cultural thing is really different.
Sebastian: That’s my experience as well, yeah.
I see you are overtaking brewery after brewery, 300% increase in only a few years and you’re still building, dedicated this morning. It’s amazing. I had a lot of help from millions of people and folks who create quality by asking for it, you know grandfather rode horseback all over the parts of the country was searching for the best grains.
Our brew master today, still goes out personally, in the difference is farther to go, and faster transportation. He goes right out into the hot fields, no foreign country today can supply us with enough with the top grain so the best was imported and now it goes in California, the rich valley soil there is especially friendly for producing vigorous well packed, springing and aromatic.
Nas: So what’s your favorite state for doing business in the States?
Eoin: I really like California. And if I was to live in the States, I’d live in California.
Nas: Why is that?
Eoin: Well one, sunshine, two, really, really nice like the food is great that was one thing I didn’t really liked about the States, its food.
Sebastian: Yeah, good point.
Eoin: So, like, your grass fed beef here that we’re taking for granted. But Californians are just super chill. Like they’re just like, yeah it’s cool, like they’re most culturally similar to Europeans, than like New York, people are hard, they are like beaten down by the weather, you know, you know they’re like, the pavements, the grayness, California people are happy, you know the sunshine, everyone is good, that’s another generalization [smiling]
Nas: That time you would caution someone against moving to the US.
Eoin: Yeah. So the US is a different piece altogether, right, so it’s like, I don’t think that you would look at the US as a country, you have to look at US as many, many different countries. So, you can’t go like, okay, we’re going to move this and we have one strategy to enter the States. It’s not how it goes. Really need to pick and choose where you’re going to enter, you need to be prepared for cost overruns you need to be prepared for logistical issues, now, where physical products yes, this is an issue but scaling into the US is difficult culturally difficult, sales cycles are longer, everybody is selling, you know, and everyone’s always trying to close, you know, people are professional, sales people.
Be prepared and also you kind of need a sherpa, you need someone to guide you in the US market you need to kind of, hey look, here’s this pitfall that you can fall into and fall into regulatory thing or you can lose your shirt by going into New York. So you do need someone to help you navigate it.
Nas: Why do so many people try to break New York?
Eoin: Well, I don’t know- didn’t Alicia Keys have a song about this [smiling]
Nas: But does it hold a lot of cashew, in terms of the drinks market or what is it?
Eoin: I think it’s very, very close and you can get a flight there in five and a half hours. So it’s, as quick for me to fly to New York as it is to me to drive to Kerrry which is the very South of Ireland. And almost becomes just a western office, okay people will land in New York and there is this huge amount of people, there is like big epicenter of Irish expats, so you kind of want to go, you know if we can make it here, like, fourth biggest city in the world.
Nas: Specifically in terms of drinks, I don’t know if that is a sort of certain list you get on to, and then you break the rest of the US, or anything like that?
Eoin: There is a lot of like the top cocktail bars if you look at the number on best Irish bar or best bar in the world is an Irish bar called the Dead Rabbit and those guys own 17 bars across New York. And the thing is like, there’s a lot of people drink in New York and if you can get into the Dead Rabbit people are copying the Dead Rabbit left right and center, they are looking for the product they have, and trying to, you know, spin off on it.
We’re here today to ask God’s blessing on this new edifice and friends they blessed vineyards, in Spain they blessed the fishing lakes, why not here in America has God blessing on our business. I see God in the miracle of fermentation in the ingenuity. So you see, this story has no end. It’s like a rain net way, you just seen the first hundred years of, the first hundred years of a family and a promise, a promise kept and pledged anew by each succeeding generation and sealed with this ring.
Nas: So Eoin how can people follow up on Mór gin?
Eoin: People can follow us on Instagram, we’re @moririshgin and then we are on Facebook, Instagram and on the internet it’s moririshgin.com Keep up with us there
You’re listening to Move Your Business to the United States from Mount Bonnell Advisors.
I’m Nastaran Tavakoli-Far, and we just spoke to Eoin Bara of Mór Irish Gin, you can find out more at moririshgin.com
Our sound engineer is Emmett Glynn and our podcast manager is Nevena Paunovic. We use some samples of the Prelinger Archives who have some fantastic historical material from the US, we will back in two weeks for more from another company who made the move. Send us your questions info@mtbonnell.com okay we’ll speak to you soon.
