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

Alright, John thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, let’s start with trends – what are some of the largest or more impactful trends you are seeing in the industry?

1. Celebrity driven alcohol brands – you see it all over tequila especially (the rock, george clooney), Ryan Reynolds with Gin and now Nelly with Moonshine. But there are a ton out there and it is definitely making it harder for smaller family brands or craft brands like us when they have the ability to grow so fast behind their celebrity status. But there is hope we have a similar story to Skrewball that has blown up in the past couple years. My co founders are a husband and wife who owned a bar where they made the shot and it became popular. So we bottled it and it has grown very fast. It just makes us work that much harder to put out a great tasting product and compete with them. I love going into a bar or liquor store and seeing The Original Pickle Shot featured and not some celebrity brand that is likely overrated.

John, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a 41 year old former college athlete from Philadelphia area who went to school for exercise science and trained athletes for a living. That was until I decided over 5 years ago that I wanted more and another challenge. So I regrouped with 2 good friends who owned a bar and had a crazy idea of bottling a popular shot from their bar. So I found myself in a completely new industry of being a liquor supplier which is extremely difficult to start, continue and succeed in.

The spirits industry is a 3 tier system, we are the supplier who sells to the wholesaler/distributor and they in turn sell to the retail store or bar, who then sells to the consumer. Being the supplier we are responsible for the manufacturing, licenses both state and federal. A lot of people think we can just sell our brand online or ship ourselves, we cannot do that.

The Original Pickle Shot brand is a fun brand that started as a popular pickle shot in Ocean City Maryland. It is a beach town that enjoys nice cold drinks and of course nice cold shots to go along with it. It obviously appeals to all the 21+ pickle lovers out there. It also is a great option for some delicious cocktails especially a Bloody Mary.

The problem we solve: I have done it and I believe everyone has done it. You get the idea with your friends at a bar to have a shot. You walk up to the bar and the bartender asks you “what kind of shot do you want.” Then you blank, maybe ask for suggestion and then you end up panicking and ordering the same old shot you have been doing for years and don’t even enjoy. We think shots should be fun and enjoyed! So we provide a great chilled and ready to pour shot and focuses on flavor. It also happens to be gluten free, sugar free and under 40 calories per shot.

The response we have got to our brand has been incredible and that’s why we want to bring it to every state by the end of next year and I want to see it in every bar. I am most proud of our organic growth and hard work, we went from selling in about 75 locations in 2019 to over 10,000 locations and 25 states today.

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

All I can say is this journey has not been easy and there is still a long road ahead. When I tell the story or sales pitch to people about the very beginning you don’t always go into the details where you really struggled. But I always do mention that we should have been out of business at least 3x in our first two years and it was close. We had our very first distributor lined up and ready to go sell our product but we could not get the proper license in the state to be able to sell to them. Despite talking with the state, spending money on lawyers and asking questions no one seemed to give us an answer. So in the meantime, I had to continue to self distribute which means I would drive around and open up accounts, take orders and then also have to deliver to them. This became a lot after opening up over 75 accounts and having to drive sometimes 14 hour days to deliver. It took its toll on me and the business and we would not have lasted much longer. I decided to stop focusing on opening new accounts and fix this problem. There was a simple solution but it was never presented to me which is why you can’t rely on that. I researched and asked questions to people smarter than me and found our answer. By 2020 we were launching with our first distributor and second distributors. Oh yea and this is all happening as covid is just beginning.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

We are in such a saturated market with alcohol and there are so many choices for consumers. It is not easy to compete with the big boys who have almost unlimited spending budgets. So we have focused on our niche and have said that no one is going to do it better because this is all we do, we are The Original and we have been doing it for a long time. In saying that we have tried to take a smart approach to our growth and do it responsible. We still grew very fast going from 2 states to 12 states, to 22 and now 28. So obviously we can grow our clientele by increasing the number of states we can sell in and opening new markets. But I think the best strategy has been just focusing on brand awareness. We are a big believer in getting as many people to try our product as possible at one time. So events like The Worlds Greatest Pickle Party by The Big Dill have been huge in that sense. We also have focused on social media channels that tie into our niche of “pickles” and that has been a huge success as those are organic customers. We have seen a huge increase of organic posts of our brand and we love seeing it and all the great responses.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theoriginalpickleshot.com
• Instagram: @theoriginalpickleshot
• Facebook: The Original Pickle Shot

Image Credits
Alex Ashman