095 | Chris Maffeo | Scaling the Unscalable: The Bottom-Up Approach to Brand Building by MAFFEO DRINKS

Welcome to the Maffeo Drinks podcast. I'm your host, Chris Maffeo. Today, we reach listeners in more than 100 countries, and I want to thank you for being one of them. Before we dive into today's episode, a small reminder to hit subscribe and leave a review to get more drinks builder discovered the show. The podcast is free, but if you want extras like downloadable transcripts and exclusive insights from each episode, visit mafeodrinks.com.

So of course, we're talking to Chris Mafio from he's the bottoms up drink builder and host of the podcast, Mafio Drinks. If you are a small brand, whether you're a bar, a restaurant, a small craft distillery, a brewery, a winery, anything this man's gonna be able to give you some really good in-depth knowledge on how to build your brand up. I've been following for a long time on LinkedIn. We don't actually have a prior relationship before this. I just love how inspirational his LinkedIn and his posts are at all times, really breaking down how to build a brand properly and being quite raw and honest.

Yes. You got that one sale, but how do you make the second one? So I'm really looking at having this conversation with Chris. Welcome, Chris. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. Thank you for having me, Sean. Pleasure. We've been following each other for a while and now finally we are speaking to each other.

Well, funnily enough back in the pandemic days, don't think it's an app that sort of came and went and I don't think money on us to use it, but like during the pandemic we had nothing to do. We connected through Clubhouse.

Exactly.

And we were listening to some rooms and we sort of put out two senses. Anyone who doesn't know what clubhouse is, it's still around. It was a chat room that was verbal and kind of fun at the time. We had like a good three to six months of clubhouse relationship there. So that's where we saw it.

Like, because when I messaged you on LinkedIn, the last message was the clubhouse days.

Exactly. I thought we had spoken more recently and then I was like, what was it 2021 as a

Yeah. Was 2021.

Thanks for accepting my connection, Sean. 2021.

So for everybody listening, give me your 2¢ on where did you get your start? How did we get to the stage of Bottoms Up Drink Builder and Maffeiro Drinks podcast and stuff like that? Where did you get your start?

I mean, it comes from, from this actually I show you like, this is my great, great grandfather and grandfather shop. He was a wholesaler in the South Of Italy. The business was open for one hundred years. And then when I died, I was six years old, the shop closed. That has left me with this thing.

I thought about it in hindsight, all that knowledge of one hundred years of knowledge got lost because nobody in the family wanted to continue the business. And then I wasn't, I was a sales guy in Rome, selling to entree, on premise and bars and restaurants. And then I started my career agencies and then SAB Miller for those familiar with that, it doesn't exist anymore, was swallowed by AB InBev and then was purchased, you know, the European business was purchased by Asahi breweries. So I stayed in the beer world. Then I went into Carlsberg.

My career in the corporate world, never really felt a corporate type of guy, especially because I was always working for the export departments of these big giants. I was always the small guy in the big room, launching brands with very small money in countries where nobody knew them. And that has changed my perspective. So in a nutshell, my thinking is driven by starting in beer. That is very much a velocity game.

You don't just put a bottle in the back bar. You're putting kegs. If you open that keg and if that keg doesn't rotate, the product goes off. And then the bar owner shouts at you and delists you. So I've always thought grow rotation before distribution.

This is my first thing. The other thing was that I was working with exports. So it's always like working with wholesalers, third parties. And I've always been thinking all these beautiful messages that the marketing department global teams are making and doing. It doesn't resonate.

You know that game like the phone game that you know you pass the, you know you whisper the word in the year of the next one. It gets lost throughout this third party. So you have to keep it really simple because otherwise everything gets lost. All the message gets lost. These two things are the biggest things that brought me where I am.

And funny enough, the global, you know, the clubhouse thing was the way I entered into the spirits world because, you know, I still remember Paul Letko from Few Spirits asking me a question one day and I was like, oh, there's nobody else called Chris, so it must be me. And then I answered and I was like, do you mean me? And then he started pulling me in these questions and it was all these spirits and North American driven craft spirits producers. And and that was the eureka moment for me. I was like, I really love the spirits world and I want to start working with it.

And that's where I am.

So when it does come to brand building and like Few Spirits is an amazing craft distillery, it's still like it's very well known and still very well distributed, but it's still small in comparison to the big guys. When it comes to brand building in the craft spirit movement, do what you think the key pillars that the brand owners should be focusing on?

The main thing is fixing the fundamentals. The old thing about brands are built bottom up that I'm always talking about is the fact that you should focus first on the unscalable things so that then you can scale. If you don't master how to sell the first bottle, how to empty that first bottle, how to sell the second bottle, how to sell the first case. If you don't master all the dynamics of rejection from bar owners, from bar staff, people that don't know you and they want to list your brand, people that deny themselves and they say, I'm not the owner. I'm the staff.

I will talk to the owner. If you don't understand those dynamics, in my opinion, you will never succeed. There's too much thinking about raising funds. You know, I want to raise 1,000,000. I want to raise half 1,000,000.

And then you will just burn that money because you will start hiring people without knowing what to tell them, where to focus on. You will start to buy some influencers, you start to do some Instagram advertising, you will start with looking for a distributor that just signed a contract and then doesn't reorder and you will get stuck. If you don't understand the fundamentals, the boring stuff before the sexy stuff, choosing the packaging to choosing the design of the bottle, the cork. Those are the sexy things. Those are the things that wake you up and you know, and makes you excited.

I was a marketeer. I started in branding agencies. I started like that, you know, but then in the end it's just like the rubber hits the road and what happens next?

Do you think that's a like, cause I work with all the craft distilleries, I've helped develop a lot of spirits, like just the juice in the bottle. I've had my 2¢ on the bottle design and a few other things sometimes get listened to, sometimes don't. Do you find that a lot of the, well, think any section, like it's very passion versus business and they're very passionate about and this goes down to restaurants, comes down to bars, comes down to everything. Oh, I really love making wine or I really love wine country or something like that. How do you sort of broach this with ownership when it comes to being, you can see this so passion driven, but the business side of their brain is sort of like empty.

That's funny because a couple of days ago I had an exchange with someone on LinkedIn. I had written one of my posts that I repurposed because I liked them. I say 99% of drinks builders that I speak to, brand owners I speak to, they don't like to sell. They don't want to sell. And this guy replied to me and he said, I'm a creator so of course I don't like to sell and I don't want to sell.

And I said yeah but then you should have someone in your ownership, know partner, investor or whoever that goes out there. So you can stay at home while this person is going to go out because you cannot just create in a kind of like alchemy. I'm based in Prague so in Osseiva Way with alchemists in the castle without going down into the city and selling your potions. So this is the biggest challenge because it's a passion industry. You enter to make money, but most people enter because they love their, you know, they either work in big companies or they're passionate about gin or whiskey or tequila or whatever that is.

So it's natural to be pulled into this craft and creativity, but then you have to understand that nobody's waiting for your product. Nobody's waiting for that. So either you just go and really understand and build these relationships or you don't succeed. And the other thing, to close the loop, is that relationships are overrated in this industry, in my opinion. Everybody thinks, well, I've got a lot of contacts and I've seen it myself.

I had the thousands of connections on LinkedIn when I started my own consulting and the phone was not ringing. In spite the fact that everybody said that they were loving working with me, nobody called me. So nobody's waiting for that. You may have a lot of bartenders on your Instagram, but nobody's waiting for the product unless you solve a problem for them.

Yeah. I've had a lot of friends get from the bar side of things and become reps for distribution companies. And they're like, oh, it's gonna be easy because I got tons of contacts. I'm like, yeah, you got tons of contacts. You're gonna call on those contacts.

Are they gonna buy anything from you, or are they just gonna do you a favor and buy something from you once? Now I'm curious if the person that called you out on LinkedIn go, oh, that makes sense, and actually take your advice or he was or they were like, nope, I'm just gonna be the creator and that's it.

No. I mean, like he he put a hand clapping sign under that, so I guess he got it. But I mean, like, it's also sometimes, you know, especially because I don't own a brand. Let's say my brand, you know, Maffeiro drinks, that's my brand. And it's funny how similar building a podcast and a consulting business is to building a product because the dynamics are the same.

And so when I'm shouting out there, I'm shouting to the mirror. I'm shouting to myself. You know, when I say get out there, brand owner, I'm actually saying it to myself, you know, so I don't want to be perceived as the smart guy in the room that knows it all. It's just that I'm pushing myself and I hit that wall all the time. And that's how I know.

There's no right or wrong first of all, and there's no silver bullets. Otherwise we would all be millionaires by now.

No, won't be going on 400 episodes of the podcast. So you've seen, since you've started focusing on Crossroads, you've seen the tail end of their increase and now we're starting to see leveling out. I'm seeing this very big time in Canada, especially in BC where at one stage we had 87 distilleries in BC, we've seen a lot of those close and shutter over the last couple of years. What do you think this craft spirit movement in North America or in your area in Europe is going to look like in 2025?

That's an interesting one. I don't have the crystal ball. I'm always skeptic in giving these kinds of views, but from what I see and who I'm interacting with the brands that are succeeding are the ones that manage to create demand. Those are the ones see them all the time. I go to Barre Convent.

I'm a speaker there for the last three years in Berlin. I walk around the aisles and I see the stands. I wrote a guide about how to do Barre Convent because, you know, it's very simple to say, okay, I've got some money. I buy a booth and people will pass by and I will talk to them. No.

It doesn't happen like this. Know, I've seen so many people on their phone, empty booths, you know, drinking a glass of water and reordering the bottles for the seven hundredth time because nobody's going there.

If Barcon you Van, just for everybody who's listening, is an absolute beast of a show. Like, it's not like a lot of little shows that you can sort of go to and sort of make a little bit of penetration by having a booth. Like con bar convent is a massive show. So as you were saying, the booth might be small and in the corner, but you really need to do something special to make it pop.

Absolutely. And what I see and thanks for clarifying The, what I see is that, you know, people that have built demand before going there, they are the one that succeed. Are the ones with the full stand. When you see a crowd of twenty, thirty people around that bar, those are the people that I know them from Instagram. I know them from LinkedIn.

I know them already because I've seen them repeatedly. Now it's not a matter of Instagram or LinkedIn, but it's a matter of building that demand before capturing that demand. You cannot capture it if you haven't created it before, because nobody knows you before.

So let's bring up that point. Think, and you brought it up before, as an entrepreneur dealing with the ask I find is always the tough thing. I promote myself a lot. Like I've got Instagram followers and all that sort of stuff. But when it comes to sealing the deal and dealing with the ask, I find it the hardest thing to do.

I'm not I'm not really a talker person. I've got a podcast and I'm not really a talker, but I'm not really a talker per se. When it comes to when I'm consulting, it's more of like wind me up and let me go and I'll show you what I do. I can show you what I can do instead I'm not gonna sweet talk. You find brand owners, they want to take a bottle into a bar, do a tasting, but it's that last step.

Let's talk about a cocktail. Let's talk about a listing. Let's talk about how we can move more of this product.

I think it's twofold on this one because you need to master this unscalable thing that I discussed before, but then you have to scale it, you know? And this is where it's tricky because it's important to do this one, two things. Know, I say it all the time on my I sit in bars and I say all the time I have a podcast and I literally, I think half of the followers, I mean the ones that I've interacted in Prague or wherever I was travelling, I clicked follow on Spotify. Can you spell it for me? Yes, sure.

So you have to do these things. And that night I gained two followers, two, you know, on the thousands. So should I say, oh, whatever, two followers. I don't even bother. I need thousands.

People rush into the thousands without doing the one, two, three. And this is the biggest problem. They think that they can just pass the ball to the next tier in the value chain. So whether it's an importer, a distributor, a wholesaler, however we want to call them. I created the product.

I give it to Sean. He will buy pallets and he will sell in Canada. It doesn't work like that. Either I have my man or woman in Canada to help you sell and deplete that pallet or it will just sit next to your other zillions of pallets in your warehouse. The misunderstanding in this industry is that it's not a B2C industry, it's a B2B2B2B2C industry.

You know, so people talk about building the brand with consumers, but then they get lost into the details of there is an importer, this importer have got sales people, they will sell to wholesalers, these wholesalers have got sales people, and then in the meantime maybe I have a person there like a brand ambassador or a sales guy myself. So there's all these little pieces and if they don't own the narrative, it gets lost. Because even if the consumer has seen that Instagram adverts, you know, they will never find the product. If I haven't signed a deal with a wholesaler, the wholesaler doesn't bring them the bottle, that person doesn't create that demand to do the transfer order so that my brand ambassador passed that knowledge and they actually order through the wholesaler. You know, so there's so many moving parts and this is why it gets lost.

A lot of people just think that they can sit at the bar and just sit at Sean's bar and navigate you through that cocktails and get you interested. But then in your bar, you have 10 people working for you. So even if you bought that bottle, is that in the cashier system? Can you actually sell it? Is it in the warehouse?

Is it in the seller? Is it in the back bar on the third line, you know, that nobody sees and when you're not there, nobody knows that it's there. There's so many of these parts that you need to master and you don't have to study 1,500 bars and you can study 15 bars and you will understand the dynamics of what happens. And then you can start to have a conversation with importer distributors and scale that brand.

What's your biggest piece of advice when it comes to brands that are scaling and they're looking for distributors? I've seen a lot of smaller craft distilleries here in BC and in Canada sort of partner up with the three tier system that most of The US has. And it has been good to a degree, but also bad to a degree because sometimes you completely are disconnected. Like, it's not like you're doing trips to California or trips to New York on a regular basis to be able to check-in with distributors. What's your biggest piece of advice for when small craft brands are trying to find distribution?

First of all, win in your home turf. That's the first thing, because if you're a Canadian spirit or wine or whatever, you have to be known where you're from. Because otherwise if I sell an Italian gin and nobody knows it in Italy, you know, it's a gimmick. The second thing is that when you open markets, open them one by one. Focus on the first one, you've got your home turf and the first export.

Then you've got the first export and the second export. But a lot of people, they want to open many export markets just to put it on a PowerPoint deck for investors present in 15 markets, in 25 markets across five continents. It doesn't work because if you don't have the money to actually do advertising and promotion budget and fuel that growth, you cannot do it. So either you fly there or you have that person there doing it. And if you didn't have, you know, lot of people say, but it's expensive.

I cannot go to bars and ordering drinks at the bar. I mean, wherever it's legal and, you know, caveats that depending on the states and so on, but you can order a drink for yourself. I mean, that's legal. And they say, yeah, but I cannot do that. I cannot spend money like this, but you can spend money on a booth in a conference.

Right. Or you can spend zillions creating your fantastic packaging. So it's this kind of dichotomy of where do you put, if I give you $50,000 where do you put them? That's ultimately the, you know, the litmus test. And then from that, you understand where to go and how to grow there.

Because if you cannot go to California, don't look for an importer into California because it would just sit.

So there's always this sort of tension between staying small and independent and then also scaling. Like I'm sure you've seen the conversations always like, oh, they used to be small and independent and then they sold to XYZ big company and now they're not the same and so on and so forth. How do you get your clients to balance their authenticity while also seeing that growth in the brand? Because it goes back to passion versus business. If they do have a good business acronym, they sort of go, okay, well my goal is to sell.

That's what you should be building your brand to eventually do so you can retire. You don't want to be doing this till you're 105 years old. How do you get your clients to balance wealth intensity and growth in the brand when it comes to that next big step?

That's the million dollar question, Sean. The first thing for me is it's like in life, it's about walking the talk. If I build my brand and I'm always talking about the legacy of my family and my great grandfather, my grandfather, then if I were to sell Mafayor drinks, people would say what the hell is this guy talking about? He was talking about his family all the time. He sold it to a conglomerate.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is about the brands that are succeeding for me when they do that shift is first of all, is the one that get the stay involved into the business. So if the new owner is wise enough to actually keep them in the business as the face of the business, first of all, most of the consumers, they won't even notice that that brand was bought by someone. And then if they keep that consistency of liquid product, the narrative messaging, then it stays consistent. It doesn't matter who's put the money behind If that helps me grow my scale, it means that I will bring this product to a lot more people.

I'm actually doing something nice for everyone, not only for myself. You know, it just like disappeared because it disappeared in a portfolio of one of the big top 10 BREST producers. Then all of a sudden it's just like, yeah, you know, whatever. They changed the recipe or it's not as it used to be. And then all this kind of like conspiracy theory about liquid, you know, kick in and it's like, no, they removed the botanicals and, you know, like, they removed 10 of the botanicals, you know, like, all these kind of stories that sometimes are true, sometimes are just BS.

Yeah. So that's what I would say.

I think we talked about in the green room, like, the last episode I did in 2024 was Fords with Simon Ford. And then I think he's a perfect example of that scalability while still having very, very strong grasp on his brand.

Absolutely. I mean, I see many brands that, you know, don't even notice or maybe when I tell someone, you know, it's owned by this company now. Really? Is it? I know.

And

people don't care in the end. Now I want to have that bottle and that liquid and do a gin and sonic or a boulevardier or whatever. If it tastes the same, I don't care who sold it to me. If there's economies of scale and maybe it's even a better deal for me because the production is getting cheaper or I can get it in a more effective way, so be it.

So with there being so much competition, we've talked about a bar and brand owner and that sort of thing. How do these small brands carve out a niche, especially in The US market? I'm not sure about the European market when it comes to kickbacks and stuff, but in The U S big brands go, I'll give you money back or I'll give you 13 plus like 13 on 12. That sort of thing. I was in Singapore for six months and everything's a deal in Singapore.

Like everything can have a deal. How do the smaller brands compete against that?

That's a challenge. First of all, because I've been working for more than 30 markets in the world on beer first, and then now on spirits. Ultimately there's always this dichotomy of big and small brands. In many cases, these big brands, when they are global giants, you know, they actually strong in a handful of markets. But the handful of market like three, four, five markets make 90% of their sales, you know, which means that all in the other in the all other markets, are actually small brands.

So now they've got money more than you as a small producer. But if you are well funded, I wouldn't bet my money that they are better off in terms of money than you are. If you are in Belgium or Germany or whatever that is, you know, that small brand that maybe you're challenging, It could be like a 2,000 cases brand in that market and you are already at 3,000 or 1,500 and probably you are funded. And if you use that money wisely, you can challenge that brand. I see this all the time.

I mean, my market here in Czech Republic, but you know, as well. And this is a mindset shift people should have because they always this kind of like, oh yeah, you know, I'm small and poor and these guys are big. It's not always like this. I'm not denying that, but it's not always like this. You have to carve that place on that shelf by solving a problem for that bar owner.

And that problem should be a problem that, you know, other brands cannot solve, you know. And if, if that's the thing, then it's easier because you're not challenging one to one. You bring them on a different kind of path. I'm always saying like, you are, you are, you are on a motorbike and you're the small guy, you know, and the big brand is on a truck and the truck is chasing the bike. Where do you go?

You go into a small alley, you know, where the truck cannot get, you don't go on a highway where the track can sidetrack you. It's also like going places where you can have that kind of conversation with the bar owner and you get off that play of kickbacks and rebates and things because you are different enough and differentiated enough and distinctive enough to actually play that card.

What's one piece of advice for someone selling a craft brand in 2025 that you would give them? And what do you see as the common mistake that most brands make when they start up?

I'm trying to think of something I haven't said yet.

You've covered a lot.

The main thing is take ownership of that journey. You know that game, like we used to call it hot potato.

Okay. Yep.

You know, like you just like passing in not to get burned in your hands. No. So very often it feels like these bottles are like that, you know. I want to give it to the importer. It's yours now.

No, no, no. It's not mine anymore. Now it's up to you to do it. So take accountability for that. If you send that email, if you ship that palette, if you ship that case, don't think that the invisible hand will sort it out.

The visible hand doesn't sort anything. You have to take that hand and show them where to go. This is the biggest mistake I see all the time. That is like, oh, I thought that, you know, like the Romans used to say, you know, it's stupid to say I thought, you know. It's a 2,000 years old saying, so I guess it has some traction there.

It's like you just go and follow-up what you're doing.

And

then you will understand so many things that you're taking for granted.

In North America, we say, when you assume you make an ass out of you and me.

That's fantastic.

So on a personal entrepreneurial level, what's your big plan for 2025 for yourself?

My big plan is I'm working on digital courses.

Nice.

So I want, I want to really offer a solution because until now I've been mainly talking about generating content, but then I really want to create solutions for people like how to get on a cocktail menu, how to sell the first bottle to the first bar. You know, these kind of things that I can package and then people in forty minutes of me talking and going through some slides actually click and buy without having to read many newsletters or listen to many podcasts. This will go in tandem with what I'm, what I keep on doing, which is the podcast and all the other things that I'm working on.

Nice. At the end of every episode, I always do five deep questions for every entrepreneur and every guest that I have. What is one lesson or experience that shaped your perspective the most and how do you carry that forward in your life?

I would say the big learning in the last few years is really this focus on the trajectory rather than big dreams. Go step by step and focus on the trajectory and then make the first step and then grow step by step. In the past, I've been too much of a dreamer often dreaming about things changing my mind going through things getting stuck and then restarting. The big learning was it doesn't matter if I go a little bit left and right, as long as the actual trajectory is correct. I love the book Atomic Habits.

Fix the system and the output will fix itself if you fix the inputs.

If you could leave one lasting message or piece of wisdom for the world, what would it be and why?

That's a big one. I would say never take things for granted and always check. Even if you blindly believe it, always check. And you don't make a scene if you're checking just to be sure.

Looking back on your journey, what is something you wish you understood earlier in life?

It would be about keeping things simple. Sometimes I'm overthinking all the stuff that I'm discussing here. And then I go back to my computer and then I found the document from five years ago and that's exactly what I had as an intuition today. And I'm like, what the hell have I been doing for the last five years? I knew it all.

Sometimes it's like, don't second guess yourself, trust your gut. And if it's simple enough, just go for it and then fix it as you go rather than waiting for perfection and not starting.

How do you find success and has that definition of it changed over time?

When I was at university, think it was making a lot of money. Now success is really doing stuff you're obsessed with and passionate about and focusing on the lifestyle, bridging that passion with a lifestyle and scaling that rather than scaling money. If you can make enough money to live, but doing what you love, which I guess it's what I do and what you are also doing, otherwise we wouldn't be talking to each other tonight, then it's fine. I see so many people craving money and doing a job they hate just because it brings them money. And this is one of the decisions that I've done to live corporate life because it wasn't making me happy.

And then I decided, let me jump off the rail now that at the good level, but not at a crazy level where I need to fuel that machine. And I've got already, like, two villas and five cars and one boat. And then I cannot leave this job because I have to maintain all those fixed costs.

Yeah. What do you hope your legacy will be and what steps are you taking to build it?

My legacy is really about keeping things simple and building brands from the bottom up. I love when people stop me and say brands are built bottom up. I know that I'm going the right direction and it's about making people, you know, I wouldn't call it like, it's not only like the solving issues for people, but it really like when I get a message on Instagram or LinkedIn by someone and say, man, you know, a lot of the stuff I know about this industry is thanks to you, thank you podcast, you're doing great. Often that person hasn't paid me anything. They haven't bought a subscription.

They haven't bought a course. They haven't bought a consultancy, but those are the people that give me feedback and tell me that I'm going the right direction, that I'm changing the life of someone in a small sense, but I'm actually doing something. The steps that I'm taking is basically keeping on sharing my knowledge so that knowledge doesn't get lost. And I don't end up like I was when I started, when I lost a hundred years of knowledge of my great grandfather and my grandfather, and I had to rebuild it.

Look at that. We literally started with that comment and we've gone all the way around back to the exact same comment. That was the perfect way to end the podcast. Chris, it's been fantastic talking to you. As I said in my introduction, I got you on LinkedIn and the stuff you say, I do agree that you put that stuff out in the world and it for free, the people aren't necessarily paying you for or anything like that.

And people are actually taking a ton of value away from that and hopefully put it into play for their brand themselves.

Fantastic. It was a great chat and a pleasure to finally get to spend a little time together.

Let's like in 2025, let's try and meet up face to face and have a coffee.

I would love to.

Okay. Well, thank you for your time. Cheers. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Sean. Thanks for listening to the Maffei drinks podcast. If you enjoyed it, please hit the subscribe button. Also a small ask, please leave a review wherever you listen. Reviews make such a big impact and help other drinks builders discover the show.

Feel free to contact me for feedback on LinkedIn at chrismafeo or on Instagram at mafeodrinks or at mafeodrinks.com. And remember that brands are built bottom up.