We were lucky to catch up with John Burns recently and have shared our conversation below.

John, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

For us it seems like the biggest risk was making the decision to start the business in the first place. We had a fairly comfortable life and jobs that many people would be happy about. At the time we had four children, with three in their teens. They were all involved in youth sports, trying to succeed academically, and had active social lives. (Little did we know that kiddo number five was coming right about the same time we were going to take this leap.)

My point is that life was already busy enough and the bills were getting paid. Why take any risk at all?

So, the risk for us was to take our personal savings and double the work on our plate in order to create a business that we could be passionate about and have some fun with.

We were also taking control of our own futures (career wise), and finding a way to do something together. So much of our lives have been spent moving in different directions. I would be off on a business trip while Katie was working and managing the kids. Or she would be driving to soccer practice while I was picking up from dance. Taking the risk to start Slalom Fox Cocktails was our opportunity to work together.

John, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Slalom Fox Cocktails are small-batch, craft cocktails delivered in the convenience of a can. Our cocktails use real ingredients (Real Juice, Real Spirits) because we feel that convenience doesn’t mean we need to sacrifice quality. We started the company because we felt that this market was full of opportunity, but that it was lacking premium options that focus on taste.

For hotels and resorts our cocktails provide an easy way for people to enjoy a drink rather than waiting in line at a bar.

For consumers, Slalom Fox gives you the option of a craft-cocktail whether you are out camping, on a river or ready for après ski beverage.

We are a proud Colorado company.

One of our favorite things about this business is getting to meet so many fun and interesting people at the events we participate in across the state.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

For Slalom Fox the best source of new clients is to be out in front of consumers. The term that I hear people throwing around in the industry is “liquid to lips”. Basically, we are a smaller brand that people may not be familiar with. Since we don’t have a brand reputation quite yet people don’t know what to expect with our products. The more time we can spend out at events getting people to taste our products the more success we have.

One example would be at Left Hand Oktoberfest a couple of years ago. This is a pretty big event in Longmont and Left Hand Brewing had brought in Yonder Mountain String Band to play for the event. We were all set up at our booth and probably had 20-30 cases of cocktails on hand to serve. As people were walking around Roosevelt Park wondering what they wanted to drink they were curious about canned cocktails. (It’s a simple concept, but hadn’t caught on back in 2019 like it is now.) We found that many people were still reluctant to purchase a canned cocktail until they were able to sample a drink, so they knew what they were getting.

We also participated in an event called Denver Beer Fest at Mile High Station in January of this year. There was a great turn out and we were able to sample our products to hundreds of people. Throughout the event people ask us where they can purchase our cocktails around the state. We let them know that we try to be available at all the major liquor stores, but the best way people can support any of the businesses is to ask their local stores to carry their products. We generally see a spike in new stores buying our products after events like this.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think for most start-ups life is about being resilient.

When we first started coming up with our recipes we did it all in our kitchen with juices and extracts that we could pick up at the local grocery store. Once we got the recipes how we wanted them our next step was to source our ingredients in bulk so that we could obviously manufacture in higher volumes. Seems like a simple step, but none of the brands we were using from the stores sold in bulk, so we had to go back and reformulate our recipes based on the ingredients that were available for production.

Little things like this just add to the amount of work that needs to be done and set the timeline back for many months.

Once we had our products out in the market, we really started to gain ground and have a presence in quite a few stores around the state. Unfortunately, this is right about when things started to shut down because of COVID-19. Earlier I mentioned that getting out in front of consumers is really the best way for us to grow the Slalom Fox Cocktails brand. Well, in-person events were the first thing to get cancelled. That was a huge hit to the momentum we had gained.

On top of that, there was a shift in the beer industry to cans versus kegs (as restaurants were closed to in person dining) and a shortage of aluminum cans. We didn’t have access to cans for about 4 months and therefore unable to keep our products on store shelves.

Fortunately for us we had spent quite a bit of time focusing on larger accounts, ski resorts, etc. They purchased enough of our products to keep things moving in the right direction.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.slalomfoxcocktails.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slalomfoxcocktails
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CannedCocktail

Image Credits
Image credits: Greg Lipinski, Zane Wilson