048 | Stephanie Jordan | Building with Purpose: Recruiting People into New Categories Through Flavor (Avallen Calvados)

Welcome to the Maffeo Drinks Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Maffeo. In episode 48, I had the honor to talk to Stephanie Jordan. She's the co founder of B Corp, Avalon, Calvados. She brings fantastic insights as she also ran her sales and marketing consultancy, Drinking Out Loud.

Before that, she has run sales and global advocacy for HC Serra Rum and was the global brand ambassador for tanker eGene after starting a career in drinks on the global Diageo graduate scheme. I hope you will enjoy our chat. Ciao, Stephanie, how are doing?

Ciao, Marcel, good, thank you. How are you?

I'm good. I'm good. It's nice and, pre Christmas, I'm I've set myself up with a nice avalen and tonic because the recipe you gave me, I was a little bit understocked for for the appletini.

Fairness. It's a very simple recipe. Apple juice, avalanche, lemon juice, and a little sugar. However, I approve of the avalanche tonic.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And, yeah, the issue was that my daughter finished the apple juice and then I I ran out of apples because there's been a bit of a apple, you know, strudel done in the family It's from my

the season and apple a day keeps the doctor away, but you're right. Especially around Christmas, you start seeing so many Christmas recipes trending on Pinterest and Instagram and beautiful, beautiful hot malt ciders. So I'm happy you're out of apples. It means they're being consumed.

Definitely in in this house, they are consumed. It's a great honor to have you. Finally, managed. We still have never met in person, which is another things. I managed to meet Tim at least, but I mean, know each other for now, what, five, six years probably.

And I've been following your journey with Avalen and your transition from, you know, big corporate to smaller entities with your consulting and and your finally your brand. We had a session already with our friend, Filippo back in the days and I guess a lot of things have changed like the market has evolved. Think it was I think it wasn't even COVID. I think it was pre COVID when we we spoke. I think it was 2019 probably.

What a magical world, sort of optimism. But yes, we've been following each other a while. I remember being introduced to you by our friend who now is the CEO of Campari. Pretty impressive. You were hustling beer and, looking into brand advocacy at the time, which was really interesting because that had been my background at Diageo.

Yes. Yes. Exactly. So let's start with, you know, with this excuse that I'm finally sipping your brands because I often don't have at hand the brand that I'm talking about during this episode. So now this is one of the lucky ones in which I'm actually able to drink it.

Let's start on the actual bringing a category that is not trending at, you know, per se to the market and what are the challenging on doing that? So let let's start. Let's start with that.

First of all, I think you've just created a business idea for yourself and you should probably set up a distributor there in Prague to bring in some of these brands if there's a lack of the craft and independence. We don't have route to market there yet. So, Hey, if anyone's listening, love, I love that you do have some Avalyn and so you are drinking a Calvados and tonic in fact. Right. And so we created a brand which we actually considered to be an the dental Calvados.

Why accidental? Well, we just set out to launch what we believe to be the most sustainable planet, positive and delicious spirits. The science, the research took us to the orchards of Normandy. And we ended up down this rabbit tunnel that told us that we needed to invest our life savings and convince a few other 100 people to invest a 100, hundreds of thousands of euros into bringing Calvados back from the debt, which is actually, I honestly wanna say more challenging than we thought it was going to be. And there's many reasons for this.

Right? We have come to understand upon reflection, and this is we're five years down the line, which is crazy. And five years from inception, right? From the idea to the launch, we've probably been in market before, but nonetheless, when this accidental Calvados idea became very apparent to us, We were so excited to look at the competitive landscape and realize that not one global spirits group had invested, or at least they had not invested in the past couple of decades. So it felt to us like there was a huge commercial opportunity considering the fact that our background was, of course, on trade and that we were gonna target some of the best initial bars around the world.

We thought, oh, how fantastic there is no competition for these menus. No one has bought the Calvados category. Right? No pan. No, no Diageo, Campari, no Constellation, no Brown Forman, no Bacardi, no one at all.

So even if they have contracts for gin and whiskey and rum, we can slide under the radar. It's going to be easy. Except for that's not the case.

It sounds very much familiar. Like you, we just were commenting my latest newsletter or where I set up my own company and I thought I had tons of contacts that would give me work and wasn't the case. If I remember right, like what we were discussing previously and through the journey, you wanted to create something sustainable. I usually ask the question like, it start with the brand or with the liquids? And it was almost like, you know, you started with a with a purpose first.

So you want it to be sustainable and it happened to be apples as the most sustainable choice. Am I am I right in this?

That is correct. So apples grown in traditional orchards in these mosaic habitats, which, not only are regenerative, but are incredible places for absorbing carbon dioxide and also require very little to no water intervention. So it was really the agriculture around how these apple trees are grown in Normandy. That for us was the starting point. Unlike what marketeers would like us to say, which is that we identified a problem and came with a solution.

The problem we identified, no one in the industry had really, really a few, a few, but not very many had actually gone. This is a problem and we should highlight it to our consumers because drinkers, unfortunately, haven't quite got to the point of understanding that all industries have impact. So when they're eating their veggie burger, because they've understood the impact of the meat industry and the environment, very hard somehow for this to translate into their gin and tonic.

So the category happened to be calvados. And so this category story about menus not being or contracts not being blocked by huge companies and so on was more like the, let's say the second stage in which you came up to, you know, it wasn't like I identify that there is an big opportunity in Calvados and let's launch a Calvados brand. It was more like, okay, we we want to create something that is sustainable, apples, Calvados. Oh, by the way, Calvados is actually a category that nobody talks about, so probably there is an opportunity. So that that was the the flow.

And we were excited that there was not this big competitive set because of course then we thought it's right for innovation. And it was very easy actually, early doors to pick up a lot of this things in the on prem with all the cool independent cocktail bars, indie places, you know, some of the 50 best bars in the world because they understand great liquids and very quickly these kinds of high end bartenders and chefs understood the sustainability. The problem is now scale. And in order for us to scale, and if we look at a key market for us being The UK, you need to get national listings. And I'm talking about, you know, big on prem accounts, be it ones or some of the pub groups like sellers where you're entering 40 to 200 venues that are high volume venues, you know, after work mixed drinks, with beer and cider, etcetera.

And these places work with tenders. And when they put that tenders out, they will say, Hey, we're looking for a premium vodka, premium gin, pouring vodka, pouring gin, premium rum. And they'll go all the way down the list. And now of course there is tequila and mezcal, but there is barely a section for brandy, let alone cognac. And certainly none of them are saying, by the way, come for this tender, we guarantee 6,000 bottles of Calvados.

That is now our problem.

In many of the episodes, I'm I'm playing with categories and cross pollination. I mean, we always talk about bees and always send you the the the pictures of bees when I bumped into them in some in some orchards. How does it work from a target occasion kind of perspective? Because using the Avalon and Tonic as an example, you know, it's something that you are trying to steal from gin and tonic in the mind of consumer. So to say you are substituting the gin with the planet positive tonic drink.

Do they look at that from a target occasion kind of perspective rather than a category perspective? Is there, is there an opportunity to actually say you're not actually looking for a gin, you are looking for something that works in the occasion of a gin and tonic. Here we go. This is my Avalon, which happens to be a Calvados, but it's actually a great choice for a gin and tonic like occasion.

First of all, just to say to those listeners that may not know, the bees are an essential part of our brand world and of our company ethos. So we are a 1% for the planet member in addition to being B Corp certified and donate revenues to the bumblebee conservation trust for every bottle sold. So bees are crucial pollinators and pollinate every single one of our French apple blossoms into the delicious, crisp, pesticide free apples that go into our liquid. Now getting into the drink strategy. I wouldn't say that we stole per se the Avalon tonic or the Calvados tonic from the gin and tonic because Calvados tonics have been drunk since the seventies in France.

And we have some kind of nice vintage retro posters to prove that the Calvados tonic is certainly not a current day top of mind trait. And yes, given my time on gin, it felt to us. And again, we're speaking about four years ago that the first approach should be an Avalon tonic or an Avalon ginger. My business partner, Tim was also global brand ambassador for bullet bourbon. His handle on Instagram is ginger bitten.

So it was, it was the tonic and the ginger and that felt really right at the time. Why? Well, we knew that again, thinking about The UK specifically, that UK drinkers were tiring of gin and it was the first time in recent years that we've seen that kind of saturation and actually the growth curve start to flip the other way around. But what we also knew is that there was still a lot of investment in innovation from the mixer brands. Let's say, you know, double Dutch, for example.

So you've got the mixers who are super active, the gym category starting slow down. And so yes, you want to come in and say, Hey, really simple as you would make a G and T have an Avalon and tonic. It's aptly. It's just as refreshing. It's actually fruitier, less sweet, and it's great for the planet.

And so an ideal case scenario would have been to find one or two large national venues to work with, to put the alternative A and T planet friendly Cavodos and tonic on a menu. In fact, we haven't really seen that work. So yes, for at home consumption. So Avalon, for example, is listed with a lot of e commerce sites or Ocado, for example, in The UK, some really lovely retailers like Fortam and Masons, Harvey Nichols. And again, I'm keeping this UK specific because as some people have said as well on the previous podcast, drink strategies, you want them to be global, but that doesn't always work, you know, and a really interesting place for Avalon and Calvados is The US.

And we all know that tonic is still and probably will never be a thing there. So just to to kind of end on this, why is maybe this Avalon and tonic not the right drink? Where we've got to is that it's not a category play, and we need a category. And every other drink, every other category has a drink, whether it be tequila with the margarita and now the Paloma, whether it be something like scotch that still continues to push things like old fashioneds or whiskey sours, rum with daiquiris and mojitos or Cuba libres. I don't think anyone could tell me one drink that is famous with Calvados.

And that is the thing that we are now trying to resolve. And we have decided upon much reflection that we believe the winner to be the apple teeny. So a big part of our 2024 strategy and beyond would be this apple teeny. Why? Because Calvados tastes like apples because it's made from apples and apple teenies were really, really famous drinks in the naughties, quite retro featured on some series like sex in the city and scrubs.

And again, like everything is cyclical. So we're seeing all these retro disco drinks come back around. And so we're really excited at the prospect of this really simple, refreshing and delicious apple martini and trying to bring it back into the twenty first century.

It's very interesting what what you see because last time, probably, we were talking, we were still talking about a Valen and tonic. No? That's why, know, it's stuck in my in my mind because actually I like it. And my my wife likes it as well. So, like, when whenever, you know, like

It's a delicious drink.

It's it's But can't

own it. But we can't own it.

But I'm also a bit of a fan of being flexible now because I always have this conversation with with guests. It it's good to have a focus on one cocktail, but then it's probably like a more of an an wider occasion. I always have the example of the the Campari as an example. I mean, as we we discussed about the hi, Matteo, if you're listening. They've got the Negroni as a hero drink, but then, I mean, if you go to Italy when come going going back to the localization of the strategy, there is also the Campari Spritz as something that is very widespread.

It's not as widespread as Aperol Spritz elsewhere, but in Italy, Campari Spritz is a big drink. So you can allow some flexibility despite being focused on most of the communication is about Negroni and Americano, for example, when it comes to Campari. I'm curious to know, like in your discussions with the trade and all these, you know, buyers and tenders and stuff, do you see a change in their mindset in, in stop seeing it as a category only and it's like, yeah, but sorry, you are Calvados, so I cannot put you into any box or there is something like, I mean, technically there was no box for apparel until a few years ago and now all of a sudden, you know, it's a it's a big box, you know? So like do do you do you see that evolving with some more, let's say, forward looking buyers and and players or is it still very much like a category play?

Great question. And I think depending on which geographic base we we answer from, it would differ. What I would say is that we a 100% agree that it's about occasion, not about category. We also believe that it's about flavor and not about category. Now, as a small independent startup, I will point fingers to some of our bigger players, which make up more than 90% of all global volumes.

So always fun to think that this is an industry sort of fun, craftsman, independent spirits brands, but in actual fact, not so. And had a really nice conversation with the editor of just drinks. And he also edits just foods. And he was sort of saying to me, it is actually crazy how consolidated the global drinks industry is. And so much more consolidated than food, which I think is a really important consideration because these conglomerates currently segment spirits based on categories, not on flavors, not on occasions, and they influence the buyers.

And consequently that will impact what we're seeing on shelves and in bars. So it's not how I would do it, but it is how the industry operates. So it's a big thing to try and change. And it involves really exceptional individuals who care a lot about the consequences of the world. As soon as you have buyers who really genuinely have this care around sustainability, understand that they're in a kind of position of power where they are gatekeepers to change and transformation, When you empower these buyers, then yes, they, they will absolutely go beyond category and they will look to the brand ethos, the liquids, and they'll make exemptions.

But this is unfortunately still not the rule. So there are many opportunities that we have felt that we've been really great matches for, and they have not come to fruition again with this category as an excuse. And that is something that I think we all need to overcome.

And now we've got the Muffer Drinks podcast, which is speaking about target occasions and flavors and not thinking categories. So bit by bit and episode by episode, we'll we'll try to to change things. And and to be honest, like, you know, the more I speak to people, even like senior people in the podcast and in meetings and everywhere, like, you know, they they get it. It's just that categories, I feel it's easier to manage than flavors, you know? So from, I understand it from a corporate perspective, it's quite simple because then it's like, is it rum?

Is it vodka? Is it gin? Okay. Now you are the gin category brand manager, you are the rum category, dark spirits, white spirits and so on. But it doesn't work anymore because people think in flavors and occasion nowadays.

This is where it gets really interesting and we're about to see and witness some innovation that has never quite been quite as fast and agile as companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi get serious about investing in the alcohol space. And by the way, they are. They're not approaching this from a category perspective. They look at flavor. They look at textures.

They look at format. The way in which they innovate around drinks is completely different to the old guard. So I think it will be interesting to see how our more established spirits players respond.

Yesterday, I was having a Christmas lunch, and I was talking to a bartender, and we were talking, for example, whiskeys. You know? And then I was was thinking like, I I used to not like whiskey, you know, until a couple of years ago. And then I'm I'm trying to think back on how I got into whiskey. And I got into whiskey through a drink that, you know, I would have never thought of having, which was a boulevardier because I'm a Negroni fan.

So for me, the easy entry was a boulevardier. This is by the way, what I'm using when I'm trying to sell a whiskey into an outlet because I I visit distilleries. I work with whiskey brands and so on. And and I and I want to get more people into the whiskey category. And everybody says to me, I don't drink whiskey.

Sorry. You know? And then I'm always saying, okay, what do you drink? And then for example, do you drink Negroni? And this is the conversation I was having yesterday.

And I said, do you do you drink the Negroni? If you drink Negroni, just swap the gin for whiskey, whatever if it's a bourbon or a scotch or an Irish whiskey or world whiskey or whatever that is, you know, and then basically two out of three, you know them already, you're familiar with that taste and then you just have to get used to the third one. For example, because I like bitter and I don't I don't like sour. If somebody introduced me to whiskey with a whiskey sour, I would have said no, no, no, no, no, no, for example. Now so I think there's a lot of things to play with, you know, flavor to, to transition people into different categories because then it's, it's more like, okay, do you like sweet flavors?

Do you like, you know, bitter flavors? Do you like citrus? You don't like it? You know, what kind of fruits do you like and so on. And then based on that, you can take different angles to the to the messaging that you're using with a certain person.

Agreed. And here's the really crazy thing. Ask somebody if they'd like to try some Calvados. They'll say, probably not. Ask someone if they love apples.

Nine out of 10 say, yeah. Do you wanna try a delicious apple y cocktail? 10 will say, yeah. And then all of a sudden they love Calvados. And this is the extra, extra weird thing.

Most of us are trying to just drink things that taste like fruit. Anyway, if you look at some of the big innovations, they've all been flavored with apples, whether that's, you know, a Snurl or vodka apple or a Crown Royal apple or a Jack Daniel's apple. And here I am wondering why we can't just drink the darn thing in the first place. But no, I think for us, the early mission was about sustainability. And of course it is, we're sustainable to the core.

We were sustainable by design. We continue to innovate in pack and, you know, moving into sort of circular formats for the on prem, but now that a we've established that and be a lot of other brands have started to make proactive decisions and really try, as you said, sort of before, when we were chatting retro fits and sustainability, that is not a competitive advantage. And even though we're still well ahead of the pack, your average drinker, your average bartender doesn't understand the details around global climate impact and biodiversity loss. So it's very hard for them to understand why Avalon might be more sustainable than this said vodka or this said whiskey. So basically that leaves us now with one, one advantage that we have left, which is apples.

What we have to go with, this is our next sort of port of call. All we'll do is talk about apples. If anyone answers the question, we'll say apples.

That's, I mean, the power of consistency is there.

And so let, let, let's clarify

this one because this is very interesting for me and for our listeners. So you started from, from a sustainable purpose now going back to what we're discussing in the beginning. I'm curious to know like what is your messaging corporate people talk about messaging hierarchy now. Know, what is the first thing you talk about and blah blah blah. I think it's happening more as a compass thing.

It depends which side you come in. You know, you come from East, west, north, south, and then, you know, northeast, northwest, and, you know, you could be talking about sustainability. You could talk be talking about apples. You could be talking about a drink or anything. So how do you usually explain it nowadays?

So it sounds like despite you were, you know, one of the I would say first brands, you know, having really like carrying the the sustainable flag as the main flag that you were carrying. Now all all of a sudden sustainability is not ownable that much anymore because there's a bit of greenwashing left and right. And, you know, some people are just like ticking the box of sustainability. So the average Joe doesn't understand what you do sustainably more than a big corporation that pretends to be sustainable. So how do you how do you explain that?

So for example, when you are talking to a consumer or when you're talking to a bartender, what are the messages that you play with apart from, of course, the apples there, which is the

The Swiss the Swiss nice of Avalyn messaging.

I like that.

It's a real, it's a, it is a Swiss nice because we have so many that many friends of ours have come in and said, should we do some brand architecture work? And we're like, yeah, okay, probably. And we do it and they're right, but we're like, but we wanna talk about all these things. Some of these things are important to us. So again, it really depends on the day and who we're talking to, but essentially it could go anything from, Avalon is made of nothing but apples, water and time.

And did you know, water is actually one of the most precious resources and ingredients we have on the planet. We use up to 20% less than most other spirit brands. Can I tell you a little bit more? We could talk about being positive has never tasted this delicious. Did you know that every single one of our blossoms was pollinated by a wild bee, and we donate revenues to ensure the safety of their habitat?

We can talk, of course, about delicious cocktails. Like, do you love do you love apples? Do you love drinking apples? Would you love to try an apple teeny? And did you know it's actually made of calvados, which is French apple brandy?

And it's not just delicious, but it grows in these beautiful orchards and, you know, trees. They actually are carbon sink. So for every cocktail you're drinking, you're helping the climate crisis. Probably my favorite one is do you want a great tasting drink that doesn't give the planet a hangover? But, yeah, there there are loads, many apple puns, many bee puns.

But again, the reality is and where we're getting to is people just wanna have a great tasting drink. And if you can add a couple of, oh, and by the way, check out this really super light recyclable paper bottle and there is people obsessedified and, oh, yeah. And it's female founded. Fabulous. After four.

And I wish it maybe wasn't. And I wouldn't say that Tim or I were naive, but we're definitely true believers. And him and I care so much that sometimes it's hard for us to realize that others don't. And it's not because they're bad people. It's because people are busy and they're just trying to survive and get on with their lives.

And they just wanna have a great burger and a great cocktail and be left alone to enjoy themselves. So we have to find a way to make it super, super simple for them to do that whilst having positive impact and feeling good about the choices they made on menu that day.

Yeah. I'm really happy to hear this because it's really, you know, it's bringing it down to make it bulletproof for the average person that doesn't care or doesn't have the time or is busy or or cares but doesn't care in that moment or

But the average person is the mass. Right? The average person, the average it's like, I love listening to the the podcast with Tom a few a few days ago because he's talking about that not too good pub with a sticky carpet. And average people make up the majority of our population globally. And it's only if average people can make conscious decisions that we're able to transform business and society.

We could get into a whole spiritual conversation for why Avalon exists, but we truly, truly believe that we need to completely transform this industry and we can. But we only can if we can convince average Joe and average Jane to come along this journey and make it simple for them, not because they're stupid, but because it's incredibly hard to just get through life. So if we can make sure that, you know, it's delicious and they can make the right choices and feel good about them, then I think we're winning. And that's that's hard to do.

That's very crucial ultimately because that's how we make sure that everybody gets it and we really make it, you know, like a sell in story for dummies kind of thing because ultimately we tend to live in big cities and we tend to surround ourselves with, you know, what agency would call urbanites and, you know, like people living in cities and so on. So we also tend to forget the majority of the people that live everywhere, you know, they are not so aware of the 50 best bars and best cocktail bars and top bartenders and what's trendy and what's not, you know. They ultimately want to have something with a flavor based on what they like as a flavor. And that's the foot in the door to that point.

That's all for today. Remember that this is a two part episode forty eight and forty nine. If you enjoyed it, please rate it, comment, and share it with friends, and come back next week for more insights about building brands from the bottom up.