Ship, learn, adjust

Learning from a local whiskey distillery

Hi all —

Last weekend, I got to chat with the founder/owner of American Oak Whiskey. Dave’s an entrepreneur here in the Adirondacks who started out in 2018.

And his whiskey is damn good. Let me know if you want a bottle, and I’ll bring it to you if our travels intersect! Or if you’re around Bolton Landing, let me know and we can grab a cocktail.

Here are two awesome stories about how Dave’s growing his business that you’ll find interesting.

#1 Get customer feedback & quickly adjust

Dave opened his tasting room in Bolton Landing this summer. It’s been massively successful, but has gone through a few iterations to get there.

He had to learn how to get peoples’ attention as they walked down the town’s main street, then convince them to come and spend time and money in his tasting room.

So he started with the “v1” of the tasting room - quickly shipping what he thought people wanted. Then he did something awesome: He gave his friends free drinks to sit outside and observe people walking by. See how people interacted with his sign: What was their first impression? What did groups of people discuss when considering going inside?

He did the same inside his small tasting room. What were people saying at the tables?

And he quickly found the main lever that brought more people in: There are a lot of people who don’t drink whiskey. And if one member of a group doesn’t like whiskey, the whole group passes by.

Dave could have said, “Too bad, this is a whiskey business.” Instead, he adjusted:

• He added gin and vodka cocktails as well as wine and beer, even though they’re lower-margin and not whiskey

• He changed the sign out front to highlight “cocktails”, not just whiskey tasting

• He’s even changing the name of the tasting room - now the “Oak Room”, not the “American Oak Whiskey Tasting Room”

#2 Find the real business opportunity

The alcohol business is a complicated web of distributors, retailers, licenses… and, oh yeah, alcohol production.

Dave got into the business because he liked making whiskey. His original vision was for American Oak whiskey to be in every liquor store in the US.

But as he got deeper into the business, he learned more about the industry’s brutal channel economics. Then he opened his tasting room. And he learned about the economics of cocktails and the opportunities to own the end-customer relationship.

So he’s adapting. He’s now mostly focused on making the Oak Room as awesome as possible, and making legendary cocktails with his whiskey (it’s working - go and try the Maple Old Fashioned). Which tells me that he’s following industry economics and customer pull, figuring out what works instead of pretending he knew from Day 1.

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Three lessons from American Oak:

1. It’s awesome to have a great product, but never enough.

2. Ship, learn, adjust. Keep your ego and your vision in check.

3. If you want to see what “rapid iteration” looks like, talk to your local business owner!