We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Katie Morgan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Katie below.

Katie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Boy meets girl. Boy makes cider to woo girl. Now he’s right beside her. Right Bee Cider. What started as a romantic gesture grew into Chicago’s first cidery. Small business, small batches, and a ton of love sent your way with every sip.

Charlie Davis and Katie Morgan met in Chicago in 2011. After noticing Katie’s affinity for hard cider, Charlie used his passion for fermentation and professional experience to make her a hard cider as a surprise for her birthday. His efforts to woo her were successful, and the rest is history.

Right Bee Cider officially launched in 2014, six months after their wedding, and after two years of planning and preparation.

In the beginning, with just two people in their company, they worked tirelessly to bring Chicagoans the best cider possible by creating, packaging, and distributing the cider themselves, as well as hand painting tap handles, loading their equipment, and everything in-between. Much has changed since the early days of the business, but one thing remains the same, Right Bee Cider is truly a labor of love.

“We are passionate about the art of cider-making, made by hand with natural ingredients and sustainable practices. Our cider brought us together, and we hope it continues to bring others together as well.”

Katie, 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?

I fell in love with cider while studying abroad in the UK. I loved everything about it – the process, the history, and the flavor, of course! When I returned home, I couldn’t find anything like the dry unique ciders I enjoyed overseas. I mentioned this to Charlie, and when he made me a surprise cider for my birthday, I was pleasantly surprised that it was exactly how I liked it, perfectly balanced and beautifully dry! When we started Right Bee Cider, we knew we wanted to make our ciders light, crisp, refreshing, always gluten free, and never too sweet. We first started with one flavor in one keg size, and we self distributed out of the back of a bright yellow pickup truck we bought on craigslist. From there, we were able to grow into a new production facility, sign on with eight distributors, and we now produce 10 flavors plus rotating limited releases. Our cider appeals to wine, beer, spirits, and seltzer enthusiasts! It’s perfectly balanced and has considerably less sugar than most ciders on the market.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The COVID pandemic caused the world to pivot, and our industry was hit particularly hard. Our taproom was suddenly forced to close and the bars, restaurants, and events we supplied kegs to were closed or cancelled. We had to adapt to survive so we created online ordering with safe curbside pickup, we bought a canning line and changed our packaging to 12oz cans instead of bottles, we launched new flavors, and did everything we could to stay afloat. I am proud of our resilience during that challenging time. I had also just had our second baby as the first lockdowns started, so it was overwhelming!

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

In 2019, the annual ‘Cider Con’ conference was in Chicago and we hosted a tour for the guests. We were lucky to meet Lee Reeve from Japan, who wrote for a bilingual cider magazine called InCider Japan, and we became fast friends! We kept in touch over social media and when he started an importing/distribution company during the pandemic we thought, “How about Japan!?” We started the extensive process of international approval and now we’re so proud to have 5 of our flavors in bars and restaurants from Kyoto to Tokyo! We were lucky enough to attend the first Japan Cider Cup this past April and were honored to win 4 awards, including 2 gold medals, and International Best in Show for our Clementine. It was a dream trip, and we’re excited to grow our Japanese footprint this year.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rightbeecider.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rightbeecider/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rightbeecider
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/rightbeecider

Image Credits
Right Bee Cider