We were lucky to catch up with Patrick Stern recently and have shared our conversation below.

Patrick, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

At Broderick & Co. (the holding company DBA Uncle Tim’s Cocktails) we are very new in the category of Distilleries. We have had a learning curve on what the regulatory elements are vs the tech/restaurant/eCommerce world that we come from, providing much larger hurdles for us to overcome to get our playbook in place. However, we see each time that we are able to overcome these we have furthered our competitive advantage in the market place from others in the space, but any new competitors coming in as well.

I biggest divergence though has been to focus on direct to consumer, allowing us to develop a following quickly through activations and leveraging our “hospitality first” mindset to activate that community putting us in league with other distilleries that have taken 10 years to grow to the same annual revenue.

We also have taken a more tech oriented approach to fundraising and working with our initial investors, allowing us to move quickly, adapt our playbook, and take the revenue that we find and drive growth into the flywheels that are beginning to spool up. And this is turning heads in the industry as others begin to see what we are doing and adopt it for themselves as they struggle to drive growth in the traditional distribution model, which is a struggle if you don’t have a certain level of brand awareness.

So, in summary, I think our more modern approach to starting a company in the industry certainly has been turning heads.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

For enthusiasts of craft cocktails, there always exists that iconic moment where a bartender introduced you to the world of unique flavors combined with high quality spirits. For founders Tim Felkner and Patrick Stern, that was San Francisco’s restaurant renaissance starting in 2008.

Inspired by the diverse landscape of options out there, they found themselves hosting a wide range of events and found a need for ready made cocktails that provided the same caliber of unique flavors we found across the city’s greatest bars and restaurants.

Over the last decade, we developed the recipes what came to be called Uncle Tim’s bottled cocktails, most of which you will find in our collection today. The tradition of unique tasting cocktail experiences is what we love, and hope that you find inspiration in these bottles to share and enjoy with the company you keep.

https://www.uncletimscocktails.com/pages/about-us
https://www.broderickand.co/about

Have you ever had to pivot?

In the first 2 years of operations we were really focused on following “where the cashflow is coming from”. When you go to market with a product or service your original thinking of how customers might use or interact with you changes as they begin to interact with it. One of these ways is seeing how our cocktail sets or “tasting experiences” really have become our number 1 sellers through our direct to consumer activations. We have seen this as the best way to drive growth organically as our buyers are “sharing” this experience with others, and this in turn drives new customers that want to share that experience as well.

In addition, we realized that providing more curated experiences for private events in the context of our brand has allowed us to market to hundreds of people at a time without the expenditure that other brands have… this cashflow has become critical for getting us in front of new customers elsewhere all the while exposing our brand further.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Oh man, so many. But really understanding your zoning codes and working with your local inspectors to make sure that you are in compliance is critical. This can be hard when you don’t have a space yet, but it really helps to have a relationship built with inspectors because they can give you insight into the horrors that they have seen and what to generally be aware of.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.uncletimscocktails.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uncletimscocktails/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uncletimscocktails/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/broderickandco/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@uncletimscocktails https://maps.app.goo.gl/wtFt3VGnB5DWD1oW7

Image Credits
Credit: Broderick & Co. (DBA Uncle Tim’s Cocktails)