We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stephanie Houston. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stephanie below.
Alright, Stephanie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One deeply underappreciated facet of entrepreneurship is the kind of crazy stuff we have to deal with as business owners. Sometimes it’s crazy positive sometimes it’s crazy negative, but crazy experiences unite entrepreneurs regardless of industry. Can you share a crazy story with our readers?
November of 2019 was a pivotal moment for our distillery. We had recently agreed to buy out one of our founding partners. Our closest friends had agreed to invest in the distillery, and we were set to start with a new distributor just after the first of the year. We started our distillery with $61K and had basically been running on fumes for almost 4 years – struggling each week to make any kind of headway.
So we were coasting into 2020 with a bit more direction and some cash in our account for the first time ever. In January of that year, I flew to LA to visit my son, who was living there at the time. We drove the short drive from LA to Santa Barbara and noticed smoke coming from the side of a mountain. We found out about an hour later that it was Kobe Bryant’s helicopter. We were really kind of freaking out, and I mentioned to my son that, even crazier, I heard there was some kind of weird virus that may cause a pandemic. He and my friend with us had never heard of it. We went on about our weekend, and I returned to Austin the next week.
March 5 came around and our new distributor picked up their first load of rum. We were excited to finally end our distribution rut. The alcohol business is an interesting one, and in Texas, our success relies heavily on a great distribution partner. Everything is finally moving. There are some whispers about shut downs, but no one ever thought that what could happen next was even possible. A week or so later, the state of Texas shut down completely. Busy highways were now empty lanes with no one going anywhere.
I quickly saw many friends in the industry worried about revenue. On or about March 15, I started a petition to ask the state for relief in the form of delaying our alcohol taxes, which were due just 5 days later. I sent the petition to all of my industry friends and it went viral. 100,000 signatures in a few hours caught the attention of the state and also local news agencies. A local crew contacted me directly and asked to come to the distillery to talk about the petition if they could get clearance to go anywhere in person.
In the meantime, I saw on CNN that a local distillery in Portland had turned some of their high-proof alcohol into hand sanitizer. I called them and they were happy to give me their recipe. My business partner, James, said we had enough high proof to make about 70 gallons of sanitizer, so we made a small batch. Before we knew it, we had lines of farmers, wineries, and more lined up in our parking lot for sanitizer, which we donated to them or traded for food and other staples for our staff. Then the news crew arrived. Our story about the petition quickly changed narratives to our community effort of providing hand sanitizer. The story went viral.
Before we knew it, our phones were ringing 24 hours a day with calls coming in from federal agencies, state agencies, and first responders from all areas asking if we could provide sanitizer. It was unreal. Somehow, we had gone from being a tiny rum distillery to a hand sanitizer manufacturer – a completely different business than we had ever imagined. A very special call came in from our favorite grocer, and I boldly told them we could make more, but would need to bring in a tanker from the midwest. We found a source, got a price, and within a few days had a tanker with some of the last ethanol in the US delivered to our distillery. Randomly, a friend was buying PPE from China and was able to order 4 oz spray bottles, which were not available in the US at all. They were able to send 100,000 spray bottles on a plane that were in our hands within a few days. Somehow, our tiny distillery had pulled off the impossible.
Over a period of a few weeks, our tiny team of four plus a few relatives manufactured 52 tons of hand sanitizer. 28 tons of that were donated throughout the state of Texas to first responders.
In order to keep our doors open and compliant with state mandates, we had to become a sanitizer manufacturer, a drive-in theater, and a restaurant all within the same year. I started and ran four different businesses in the same year, which is a feat I would not recommend to any entrepreneur.We moved mountains that year and somehow managed to stay afloat.
Stephanie, 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?
We started our rum distillery in 2016 in a little town called Hye, Texas. Naturally, we called our brand Hye Rum. When we developed our coconut rum in 2020, we launched it as Island Getaway Rum. The “Island Getaway” was a cocktail on our original menu. Earlier this summer, we merged our two labels into one and relaunched all of our rums under the Island Getaway label.
“Island Getaway” is significant for me because, in my mind, rum is that vacation spirit that you enjoy when you are taking that vacation or getting time away from the daily grind. I mean, we all want to end up near the lake, pool, or beach with an umbrella drink in hand and our cell phones as far away as possible, don’t we?
We make our rum from Louisiana molasses. We ferment and double distill the molasses in a copper pot still to create a big, bold, medium-bodied white rum that makes fantastic cocktails. This white rum is the basis for our lineup. Our dark rum starts as white and rests on French oak staves and is finished with molasses. Our spiced – a full spice infusion for bold, vibrant flavors.
One of my favorite things about our flavored rums in particular is that we do not back sweeten them. This means they come off the diet at zero carbs and zero sugar and they stay that way. We work with a large extract company to distill our flavors that are 100% all natural and not sweetened. Rum plus extract minus extra sugar equals a rum that gives you a balanced cocktail every time. To our knowledge, we have the only 40% ABV, no sugar added, coconut rum in the marketplace. I think that is significant.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
2020 demonstrated our resilience and determination to stay open. We had to do whatever it took on a day to-day basis to navigate new territory each and every day.
Many people struggle with just one business model; four in a single year was impressive.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I think this is something we are still “learning” today. A narrative exists in the US spirit world that rum is irrelevant and whiskey and vodka rule. There is no other spirit with the historical significance or complexity that rum has. In particular, rum has over 550 possible aromatics, compared with just 260 for whiskey. So reproducing a specific rum profile comes from skilled distillation.
We deal with this on a day to-day basis, and I think for a while, we had that chip on our shoulder. We are shaking that off and proving that our little Texas rum can have a big impact and staying power. At least, that’s what I’m choosing to believe now.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.islandgetawayrum.com
- Instagram: @islandgetawayrum
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrdhrefXOv_0QF8yoLDqklQ
- Other: We are still working with Facebook to update us from Hye Rum to Island Getaway Rum
Image Credits
Stephanie Houston Photo Credit: Oscar Valdez Other photos are from: Nick Fichter & Matt McHan