Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stenovic on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: It's after five o'clock Thursday Thursday.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that that was a thing, Okay, Thursday
Speaker 3: Thursday here in New York City and elsewhere, so we
Speaker 3: thought it might be nice to sample a whiskey.
Speaker 2: But we're going to get into that in a moment.
Speaker 3: Amana McCauley, Amani McCauley, and Schima Bury is here with us,
Speaker 3: so the co founders of Duke and Dame. It's an
Speaker 3: award winning salted caramel flavored whiskey here in our Blueberg
Speaker 3: Interactive Broker studio. So welcome, welcome, Nice to have you
Speaker 3: both here with us. But what's interesting too is also
Speaker 3: your background. You both come from finance, so money start
Speaker 3: kick it off with us. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 3: about your background.
Speaker 4: Well, I started my career at Lehman Brothers many years ago, remember.
Speaker 2: Them, drink I do, I do, I do?
Speaker 5: And uh.
Speaker 4: You know, after about eleven years on Wall Street doing
Speaker 4: investment banking, got to a point where I realized it
Speaker 4: was time for change.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I wanted to go work different parts of my brain.
Speaker 4: I wanted a different type of adventure and challenge. I
Speaker 4: wanted a new life.
Speaker 1: So I left.
Speaker 4: Investment banking behind and packed up all my stuff and
Speaker 4: went traveling for a little bit, and then ended up
Speaker 4: in Miami hanging out with Chima. And you know, we'll
Speaker 4: get into we'll get into that point.
Speaker 2: And you have a finance background too, talking about.
Speaker 5: Be a commodity and currency trader for many years as well,
Speaker 5: so we both loved finance. We actually met through a
Speaker 5: mutual friend at her going away party who also worked
Speaker 5: in finance. So I had recently moved to New York
Speaker 5: and the MONI was here working and she's like, you
Speaker 5: guys are similar. You guys should definitely connect. And so
Speaker 5: not only you know, obviously working in finance, but socially
Speaker 5: we had a lot of similar interest and ugly yep yep,
Speaker 5: a lot of that, and it let it and traveling
Speaker 5: traveled out a bit, and we definitely honed in our
Speaker 5: ability to notice great spirits. So we decided to make one.
Speaker 6: That's pretty cool. I mean, how do you make that
Speaker 6: leap from we like to travel and we like to.
Speaker 3: Drink Because I like to travel and I like to
Speaker 3: drink and I love my job.
Speaker 6: I mean, it is it is, you know now, I
Speaker 6: guess in twenty twenty three you could look back and say, man,
Speaker 6: people are making so much money in liquor. Yes, but
Speaker 6: that wasn't the case then that was it. So how
Speaker 6: did you decide like we could do this better or
Speaker 6: there's not you know, I like this whiskey and that bourbon,
Speaker 6: but there's nothing that really hits it for me, and
Speaker 6: I'm gonna need to make it myself.
Speaker 4: By the way, it's not the case now like some
Speaker 4: people are making money in liquor, but it's a it's.
Speaker 7: A yeah Ran, Yeah, Ryan Reynolds and yeah, definitely definitely celebrities.
Speaker 5: And if you've got a great product like we do,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean, you definitely have the potential to
Speaker 5: make a good amount of money. So the idea to
Speaker 5: answer your question, we I was at dinner one night
Speaker 5: when I was working and with a bunch of buddies
Speaker 5: and this was when Fireball first came out, that whiskey and.
Speaker 1: I've done a shot ski.
Speaker 5: We all we all have, we all know it very well,
Speaker 5: and it had just come out. So it was the
Speaker 5: biggest craze and we're at dinner and when my buddies
Speaker 5: brought around for the table, so we take the shot.
Speaker 5: Starts well, it starts a conversation. If you could start
Speaker 5: your own flavored whiskey, what would it be. Conversation comes
Speaker 5: to me and I say I would do something reminiscent
Speaker 5: of a Werther's original sugar Sugar Daddy's candy. And everybody's like, wow,
Speaker 5: what a great idea.
Speaker 1: But of course we all went back to work.
Speaker 5: Nothing happened. Many years later, I had left New York,
Speaker 5: moved back to South Florida, whe I'm from. As a
Speaker 5: money mentioned, he had quit, traveled around the world, came
Speaker 5: to hang out with me in Miami, and hey, remember
Speaker 5: this idea, Well, let's look into it. He went back
Speaker 5: to New York. Our kitchens look like chemistry labs, you know, beakers,
Speaker 5: pipettes and things like that. Come You're playing in the kitchens,
Speaker 5: literally sampling with our friends. Everybody's like, what is this
Speaker 5: and why is this amazing? We met and a couple
Speaker 5: of distilleries and left saying, wow, we could do this.
Speaker 5: Now we've won ten International Spirit Awards, right, a third
Speaker 5: best flavor wisky in the world.
Speaker 2: How difficult, though?
Speaker 6: Was it?
Speaker 3: From taking it from your kitchen coming up with something
Speaker 3: that everybody's like, hey, this is really cool, then to
Speaker 3: actually the bottle you brought in and the kitchen, how do.
Speaker 1: You do that? That's anytime you.
Speaker 4: Have an idea and you're considering, you know, taking it
Speaker 4: from the idea stage into something actually actually tangible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it feels difficult.
Speaker 2: But do you just play around with the recipe? Is
Speaker 2: it literally?
Speaker 6: It?
Speaker 4: So? Yeah, And even when Shema first proposed the idea,
Speaker 4: I was like, huh, that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, salted caramel whiskey.
Speaker 4: But I think you know, one of the first things
Speaker 4: we did we found a distillery, as Juma mentioned, and
Speaker 4: went to go hang out there. We spent four hours,
Speaker 4: they opened their doors to us, spent four hours, asking
Speaker 4: every question under the sun. I remember walking out of
Speaker 4: that building. We looked at each other like, hmm, this
Speaker 4: might not be as impossible as it might have thought
Speaker 4: a week or so ago. And so that's really when
Speaker 4: we started thinking, all right, let's let's keep exploring. So
Speaker 4: we started doing research and then we started prototyping. So
Speaker 4: we had an idea of what we wanted to create,
Speaker 4: right because at the time a lot of the options
Speaker 4: in the flavor whiskey space. You know, consumers felt where
Speaker 4: overly sweet syrapy, you know, had an artificial element and taste,
Speaker 4: the after taste, and we thought, you know, if we're
Speaker 4: gonna do this, it has to be a whiskey first
Speaker 4: that happens to have amazing a Roman flavor. It has
Speaker 4: to be one natural, right, nothing artificial at all. It
Speaker 4: has to be it can't be sweet like you're drinking
Speaker 4: cough syrup or something like that. And so Duke and
Speaker 4: Dame has only one gram of sugar per serving.
Speaker 3: I was shocked when I read that, And that's amazing, right,
Speaker 3: and it's in.
Speaker 4: How we formulated it really kind of leads to how
Speaker 4: we're able to accomplish that. And you know, to put
Speaker 4: in perspective, Jack Daniels, Tennessee, honey has five grams of
Speaker 4: sugar preserving five times.
Speaker 3: And the world is aware of it. And then and
Speaker 3: then I'm going past the body. I'm going to open
Speaker 3: it up and start.
Speaker 6: But so money, what you're saying is initially it's daunting,
Speaker 6: but you put one foot in front of the other.
Speaker 4: And so by the time, okay, you can tell so
Speaker 4: by the time we started playing around in our kitchens,
Speaker 4: and you know, we weren't, you know, just full disclosure.
Speaker 1: We were not breaking the law.
Speaker 4: We did not have little this, you know, little distillery
Speaker 4: sets in our kitchens. But we were sampling different types
Speaker 4: of whiskeys, different types of flavorings, kind of formulating what
Speaker 4: we imagined our whiskey would be.
Speaker 1: We did it, but he constructed.
Speaker 5: Not officiently.
Speaker 4: But a couple of a couple of months later and
Speaker 4: I'm in New York teams in Florida, we were taking notes.
Speaker 4: We're like, all right, man, try this one milli liter
Speaker 4: of that one middle of this, and then eventually we
Speaker 4: got to a point where we're like, oh, I think
Speaker 4: that's it. Then you know, we took some old whiskey bottles,
Speaker 4: scraped off whatever label was on there, made of batch,
Speaker 4: filled it up, and then we run around and have
Speaker 4: people sample. And so it was at that point when
Speaker 4: our friends are sampling and our family sampling it, that
Speaker 4: were getting this feedback that blew us away, like wow, man,
Speaker 4: this is amazing.
Speaker 1: Dude, you made this in your kitchen. Dude, you have
Speaker 1: to make this.
Speaker 4: And we get on the phone We're like, waitmen, you're
Speaker 4: getting the same feedback, well, what do you want to do?
Speaker 4: And and it was at that point that it actually
Speaker 4: became real.
Speaker 1: All right, it smells delicious.
Speaker 2: Money, we're smelling it to tell us.
Speaker 1: Okay, before.
Speaker 3: You walk you through the give about a minute and
Speaker 3: a half and then we're gonna take a break and
Speaker 3: then we'll come back.
Speaker 5: So the nose you're getting that really robust came. You
Speaker 5: want to describe it a little bit.
Speaker 2: It does smell like camera.
Speaker 6: Really smells delicious. And by the way, this this flavor
Speaker 6: has gotten very big. Also, probably wasn't as big when
Speaker 6: you started as it is now because now the caramel.
Speaker 1: Is a thing. It's a thing.
Speaker 2: So your first cameral.
Speaker 5: Alright, let's take the first step.
Speaker 2: Very smooth, very smooth.
Speaker 4: There you go, getting that harsh whiskey. A lot of
Speaker 4: people to whiskey.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I was actually worried that I was going to look
Speaker 6: a little bit more feminine because I have a difficult
Speaker 6: time drinking whiskey.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I always tell people. Notice you just
Speaker 1: took very soon. You're smiling, and yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, not like you don't get that bike exactly.
Speaker 5: So take your second ship and we'll talk about it.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm. Less sweet. You're getting more tenants from the
Speaker 5: from the bourbon that we use, so we don't hate me.
Speaker 2: But this would be great. All support over vanilla ice.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, we have a lot of customers that love it
Speaker 5: over and an old fashioned Yeah. Well, actually one of
Speaker 5: our many of our accounts are switching from using vodka
Speaker 5: to us in the espresso martini.
Speaker 2: It has such a nice like after feel and warmth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like it.
Speaker 5: I forgot this.
Speaker 1: Are you okay? I like it now?
Speaker 4: Are you getting the oakiness and a little spice on
Speaker 4: that second ship?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was definitely a little different.
Speaker 4: So it was this beautiful layer taste profile that really
Speaker 4: makes Duke and Day unique.
Speaker 3: I want to get right back to our guest Amani
Speaker 3: McCauley and Jima Bury.
Speaker 2: They are co founders of Duke and Day.
Speaker 3: It is a salted caramel flavored whiskey which Matt and
Speaker 3: I can contest to. We have tried it and it's
Speaker 3: really lovely. And they are here in our Interactive Brokers studio.
Speaker 2: So one of the things we.
Speaker 3: Wanted to talk to you about. We had a great
Speaker 3: conversation off air while we were doing.
Speaker 2: Some news funding. You guys bootstrapped it yes, yes, talk
Speaker 2: to us about that.
Speaker 1: How hard was it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well our plan was to you know, you know we're
Speaker 4: not seck right, But in the VC world nowadays, no
Speaker 4: one's just giving you a check.
Speaker 1: For one idea, right, they need proof of concept.
Speaker 4: You have to go build it first, show that it works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the income ask for money. So we took the
Speaker 1: same approach.
Speaker 4: Let's you know, we didn't feel comfortable asking our friends
Speaker 4: and family for money on just some crazy idea. Okay,
Speaker 4: let's go build it first. We created this great product.
Speaker 4: We you know, we got some validation from the market
Speaker 4: that it was good. Just wasn't us that thought it
Speaker 4: was good. And we created a business and a few
Speaker 4: years later we were able to go to friends and
Speaker 4: family door a raise and it was much more successful
Speaker 4: than we thought. But because we could show hey, first
Speaker 4: you can touch and feel and taste the product.
Speaker 2: It's good because the two of us, like shooting the breeze.
Speaker 4: We can show the retailers that we got into whether
Speaker 4: it was Total Wine, ABC in Florida, Mark Classico at
Speaker 4: the time, right, So we could show that, hey, look
Speaker 4: at what we've done a cruise. So that made the
Speaker 4: raise easier. It happened a little bit later than anticipated
Speaker 4: because of COVID. Right parts to ask people for money
Speaker 4: when this stock before you.
Speaker 2: T twenty seventeen. Was that when you guys, we.
Speaker 1: Started a business in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4: We launched a product in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: And then during the pandemic, did you think, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this is it, We're going to be killed.
Speaker 3: No, everybody was drinking well or was that a boom?
Speaker 5: Well, the global brands and the big guys were doing great, right.
Speaker 5: The lifeline of smaller companies were craft spirit companies like ours,
Speaker 5: especially just a year and a half in, is what
Speaker 5: we call liquid tilips. So when you go into liquor
Speaker 5: store and you see the brand ambassador giving you samples,
Speaker 5: that shut off. We couldn't do events and activations because
Speaker 5: that shut off. So people couldn't sample this new bottle,
Speaker 5: this spirit. If they knew Tito's, they would go and
Speaker 5: buy it because they just knew it already. But we
Speaker 5: definitely did some creative things that where we actually grew
Speaker 5: during the pandemic. Most brands that started off actually fell
Speaker 5: off or folded because they didn't have that already brand recognition.
Speaker 5: But we pivoted We did some things within our supply
Speaker 5: chain which mattered. We really used our connections, our network
Speaker 5: where everyone was listening to streaming radio. We networked and
Speaker 5: found a whole bunch of on air DJs, had them
Speaker 5: wearing Duke and Dame shirts and bottles and giveaways and
Speaker 5: things like that.
Speaker 4: It's really forced us to transition to digital.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome, which we had.
Speaker 2: Not done or now that was a.
Speaker 4: Part of it, but really just how do you reach
Speaker 4: the consumer?
Speaker 6: Yep?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we had to pivot and do that instead
Speaker 5: of relying on the traditional way of introducing customers through
Speaker 5: experiential marketing, and that was the big thing. So for us,
Speaker 5: we could tout the awards. We won a bunch of
Speaker 5: awards actually before we launched, so in fact, we had
Speaker 5: this great product, but we had to compete against Tennessee
Speaker 5: Honey and Crown Apple and things like that. Now I'm
Speaker 5: on and I we were talking.
Speaker 1: We're like, all right, we need to.
Speaker 5: Hang a medal on the bottle similar.
Speaker 1: To this, you know.
Speaker 5: So we applied to four contests. We actually won were
Speaker 5: placed in all four, which was insane.
Speaker 1: We actually got the top award at the.
Speaker 5: Consumer Choice Award, which is the SIPs Award and when
Speaker 5: we hit the market right away, within two weeks we
Speaker 5: got in the total wine.
Speaker 2: That's pretty cool, which is huge.
Speaker 6: Did you apply for any funding, I'm a small business,
Speaker 6: loans or anything like that.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, no, we we.
Speaker 1: Had a couple of.
Speaker 5: Right, so we were fortunate that we were able to
Speaker 5: do something while we were working.
Speaker 2: And say, can I ask you are you profitable?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 6: Not yet?
Speaker 1: Okay. Liquor industry is.
Speaker 5: Very tough, as we as we continue to expand our distribution. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: but but the model will prove yeah that way. But
Speaker 5: right now, when five market is Florida, New York, Michigan, Maryland, DC,
Speaker 5: as I mentioned, and we shipped the thirty eight states,
Speaker 5: seven Caribbean markets, every corner of a.
Speaker 1: Cruisiro in the world. We just started with the Woryal Caribbean.
Speaker 2: They drink a lot.
Speaker 1: Yes, we like the fact that they drink. It helps.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what's next?
Speaker 3: Do you expand the line or how do you think
Speaker 3: about it?
Speaker 4: So I think we're at a point now where we're
Speaker 4: really ready to invest in that next stage of growth.
Speaker 4: So we were able to bring in a large investor
Speaker 4: earlier this year and so we're really now starting to
Speaker 4: do all the things you wish you could have done
Speaker 4: that you couldn't do BEF for so investing more marketing
Speaker 4: and promotional activities. Of course, Chiem and I have done
Speaker 4: everything from day one. Staff sounds like we have zero
Speaker 4: full time employees other than us, but we're actually now
Speaker 4: starting to, you know, think about building the staff where
Speaker 4: we're interviewing for a marketing role and for sales roles
Speaker 4: on the ground. So we're really trying to kind of
Speaker 4: take Duke and Dame to that next level. So that's
Speaker 4: what we're focused on now in terms of portfolio and
Speaker 4: brand extensions. You know, let's just say we're in the lab.
Speaker 2: You're in the kitchen.
Speaker 6: To find a distiller or did you have to go
Speaker 6: through many.
Speaker 4: Or well it was funny, so before we started on research,
Speaker 4: you know, you think it's hard, right, but then once
Speaker 4: you get into it, you find out that, oh, you know,
Speaker 4: buy versus build. You can go build your own, but
Speaker 4: there's a lot of capital investment required for that if
Speaker 4: you wanted to work with a third party distiller. We
Speaker 4: were very surprised to learn that, oh, some of our
Speaker 4: favorite brands actually don't distill.
Speaker 2: Their own whiskey is amazing.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, what you can do that?
Speaker 4: So were we were able to find We spoke to
Speaker 4: a few and we found one who was actually based
Speaker 4: in Florida that they make amazing whiskey, and they make
Speaker 4: amazing whiskey for us.
Speaker 2: Well, we've got to wrap up. I'm Czechoslovaki and Slovan.
Speaker 3: So I have a good holiday and good luck and
Speaker 3: let us know how things are going.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, what do you say?
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, I would definitely what I just say, cheers.
Speaker 2: Cheers, I have to say really lovely cheers.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 2: It's a great way to what is this Thursday? Thursday?
Speaker 1: Thursday Thursday. It's a great way to bring in the
Speaker 1: holiday of the course.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm definitely. I mean, I'm going to bring a
Speaker 6: bottle of this out. I have four brothers. They're going
Speaker 6: to be out on the beach with my parents this weekend.
Speaker 6: I'll bring this bottle. I'll be gone and it will.
Speaker 3: Disappear rather Amani McCaulay, Shima Bury, co founders of Duke
Speaker 3: and Dame.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Look forward to hearing more in the future. Carol Mass
Speaker 3: Matthew Miller, And this is Bloomberg,