We recently connected with Sam Madani and have shared our conversation below.

Sam, appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

Turning thoughts to things is a beautiful accomplishment. The process, on the other hand, is far from pretty.

The idea for BOMANI came from a simple place: we loved enjoying our drinks with some caffeine before going out. When we spoke to family, friends, friends of friends, etc., we found out that it was a near universal experience – either synthetic energy drinks mixed with liquor, or the beloved espresso martini. The former is sure to deliver a multi-day hangover, and the latter is inconvenient for both the customer and the bartender (and not to mention, highly inconsistent from a quality perspective). We realized customers were craving a cold brew coffee cocktail that they could enjoy as the perfect first drink – the perfect pick-me-up to electrify your Friday after work, your pregame, your concert, and so much more.

So, we begun experimenting with ingredients in our kitchen. Cold brew tasted much better in a can than espresso did, and the fact that cold brew is significantly less acidic created a more balanced taste profile. Thankfully, we had plenty of friends who happily played guinea pig for every concoction.

We eventually landed on the perfect cold brew coffee cocktail: a flavor profile that was high quality, yet not overpowering. Since having a clean nutrition label has always been important to us, we formulated BOMANI Original Black to have only 110 calories, 0g sugar, and 0g carbs. We designed BOMANI to include ½ a cup of coffee’s worth of caffeine and 5.7% ABV to make sure it was sessionable.

We really thought we had cleared a massive hurdle at that time – but in reality, we only saw the tip of the iceberg. When we begun to build our supply chain, we realized our skills as apartment bartenders had not prepared us to bring a first-of-its-kind product to market. Commercializing BOMANI required professional formulation, intense tenacity, and the detailed organizational ability to make sure that all parties involved were as in sync as the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Throughout the process, we learned that there were some shortcuts available to us: we could add an artificial ingredient or drive up ABV to mid-double digits. But, our focus was, and continues to be, delivering genuinely high quality caffeinated cocktails for our customers. We found that both the shortcut options made the product less than incredible from a taste perspective and from a nutrition label perspective, so we decided to steer clear of those options, even though it required us to get creative in how we could put together our supply chain. After nearly a year of commercialization efforts, we were finally able to deliver the long-awaited product to customers!

When talking about idea to execution, it’s mission critical to remember that there’s a lot more than meets the eye. To execute on an idea, you need to have clarity on the vision, creativity in the process, and a whole lot of persistence to get past the finish line.

Sam, 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?

BOMANI Cold Buzz is a cold brew coffee cocktail. We created BOMANI because we were aiming to electrify life’s celebrated moments. We were tired of turning to lab-made energy drinks or having to go to bars to get espresso martinis of inconsistent quality, so we created a cold brew coffee cocktail that was clean label, easy to drink or customize, and absolutely delicious.

At 5.7% ABV and half a cup of coffee’s worth of caffeine, BOMANI is only 110 calories, 0g sugar, and 0g carbs. Designed to be customizable, BOMANI is delicious ice cold out of the can or as the base of a long list of cocktails, including the BOMANI-tini (also known as “The Espresso Martini’s Sexier Best Friend”).

Today, BOMANI is available in Southern CA at iconic bars & restaurants, select liquor stores, and select chain grocers, including Ralph’s and Whole Foods.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

While we could talk tactics all day long, the most successful strategy for us has been building a culture where all of our decisions orbit around creating passionate customers. When I say passionate customers, I mean real fans. This is an area where many startups fumble and fail – all founders set out to sell a million cans, but those who fail sell those million cans to a million people; our focus is to sell the million cans, but sell them to a thousand people. We believe in creating customer-centric fundamentals, and relentlessly executing on those fundamentals to offer your customers a consistently amazing product with a clear functionality.

In our case, we’ve learned customers love enjoying BOMANI as the perfect first drink to kick off any celebration. So, whether it’s a sampling at a grocery store or a party at a club, we insist on making sure the experience is memorable and meaningful. In other words, make it absolutely electric!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

The good news is that after overcoming countless hurdles to build our supply chain, we finally launched BOMANI! The bad news is that it was on the day that COVID shutdowns begun. We essentially spent 2020 and 2021 without being able to capitalize on liquid-to-lips opportunities – we couldn’t pour our liquid during grocery store samplings or key industry events. In this same vein, bars & restaurants were totally shut down. We always believed that bars & restaurants would generate serious demand for BOMANI, and the entire channel was effectively unavailable for years.

I’m so proud of the resilience our team showed during that time. We would stand in stores and literally describe BOMANI to passersby because we couldn’t pour the liquid! On this note, we begun building relationships with key players in the bar & restaurant space, and we put together cocktail recommendations for when they would reopen.

Though we couldn’t execute on so many of our tactics during COVID, I’m thankful to say that we dedicated ourselves to putting together the infrastructure for our business that we could execute on once COVID regulations subsided.

Today, I’m proud to say that all of that work from COVID paid off. Our demo program at grocery stores has led us to substantially outperform industry expectations thanks to the marriage of the balanced, refreshing liquid that customers love and the ironclad demo pitch we put together during COVID. Let me dive deeper into that second point: we built our demo pitch during the era of COVID, and since we couldn’t pour samples, the pitch was our only tool to succeed – so as a result of that trial by fire, we were able to develop the highlight reel that most naturally resonated with new customers.

On this note, we put together a bar & restaurant launch program after developing BOMANI cocktails and recommending them to our first group of customers for feedback. As a result, we were able to narrow down the most well-received cocktails and recommend them to our bar & restaurant partners. I’m thankful to say this channel has been extremely successful – even though we’re in major chain retailers like Ralph’s and Whole Foods, half of our revenue still comes from bars & restaurants!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.drinkbomani.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drinkbomani/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-madani-58b054a1