We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Whit Rigali a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Whit, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

Trials and tribulations not only make great bar stories but are how we grow and mature as humans. Obstacles were thrown in our path early on in our business. How we got under, around or through them made us who we are. Originally we wanted to make whiskey and put it in reused wine bottles. We spent 2 years learning the trade and developing recipes. When we went to raise outside funds we had a reality check. One, no one wants to wait four years while your whiskey ages to see any returns on your investment. Two, because there is no CRV for wine bottles we would have had to make our own recycling system which was way out of our financial means. Instead of folding up shop we took stock of what we had and decided to find a spirit that took less then 10 days to make (vodka, rum, gin). During that search the National Resource Defense Council come out with a study showing how much food we waste globally (40%) and the severe environmental impact that has. Armed with the years of distilling knowledge we asked ourselves if we could use some of this waste and turn it into alcohol. Two years later we released our first product. Misadventure Vodka, the world’s first spirit made from surplus baked goods we get from food banks.

We embrace the name Misadventure as it is a constant reminder of where we came from and to always look for opportunities in the roadblocks thrown in our path.

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

Nearly have the food grown in the United States remains uneaten and ends up in landfills. This food not only emits massive amounts of greenhouse gases when they decompose but if there are not eaten then we have also wasted all the land and water used to grow the crops, leached nutrients from the soil and sprayed pesticides unnecessarily. Misadventure & Co. rescues baked goods and up-cycles them into sustainable high quality ethanol. Our first Product Misadventure vodka has over 20 medals from blind spirits competitions. We have begun to venture out into specialty liqueurs, canned cocktails and have other sustainable spirits being experimented on now. Our beautiful speakeasy-style tasting room in Vista makes delicious craft cocktails using local or up-cycled ingredients.

Have you ever had to pivot?

During Covid all of our paths to market dried up. After a stressful 24 hour gut check we decided to make hand sanitizer. Withing 10 days we had a website up were people could buy for themselves and became the first distillery in Southern California to offer hand sanitizer to the public. The revenues we earned from that helped us purchase equipment that makes our company most resilient to the curve balls the modern world throws at businesses.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We have been lucky enough to start an alcohol business in San Diego where there is a thriving community who support each other. After working in a garage for years we were able to help start an incubator program at a local distillery. The lessons we learned there were invaluable. Because our process was so new we were strongly encouraged to not use some of their expensive machinery. This forced us to build our own still which ultimately became the prototype for still we built and use today. By building our own still we saved the company over 500K.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.misadventure.co
• Instagram: @misadventureco
• Facebook: @misadventureco
• Twitter: @misadventureco
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/misadventure-and-company-vista

Image Credits
Romi Rossel @Rosselmedia