Kimberly LaRose on Crafting a Premium, Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, and Vegan Vodka

Hi, happy to be here. I’m Kim LaRose. I’m the co-founder of Wisher Beet Vodka. I guess Wisher is a spirit born out of a necessity and crafted with care during our entire process. From the start of the goal was to create a premium vodka that people could trust and enjoy and just know that it was made with the highest standard and every bottle and that it was gluten -free, grain -free and vegan began with my diagnosis with Crohn’s and sparked a realisation about the importance for knowing that what we put in our bodies and knowing exactly what the ingredients are. So that’s what the inspiration was behind Wisher and the start to our brand.

Well, we definitely target people who love a great high quality premium vodka. It is a really specialty vodka that I’ll tell you more about, but also people that have different dietary restrictions like gluten or corn or other grains that really need to know what’s in their product.

Well, I think there’s a few things. So first of all, obviously we’ve mentioned that we’re gluten -free, grain -free and vegan, but Wisher is distilled from sugar beets. So that alone is really unique in the industry. It creates a really different flavour and we chose it because it really truly tasted the best. It had the best quality of vodka. Wisher is also small batch made. A lot of vodkas are made from mass produced neutral grain vodka. And we make ours from small batch from the ingredients from the start to finish. So it’s ours is made with water, yeast and sugar beets. And we monitor that whole entire process. So we’re not using mass produced products out there. So you get a different quality. And it’s also made in the USA from beets to bottle. And we’re also woman-owned for people who are interested in that as well.

We just have the one skew. It’s all about making one really great vodka that everyone can enjoy and have a nice cocktail.

Well, you know, right now we’re in the process of expanding. We currently offer Wisher in stores and restaurants in Maryland and DC. We do ship to 42 states but we’re looking ahead, looking ahead, we’re obtaining our licence in the Illinois market, which we’re hoping to launch very soon. And we just obtained our licence in Florida. So we’re hoping this year to build a team there and partner with a strong distribution team as well as building our own team on the ground.

Yeah, we ship to 42 different states right now out of DC.

Yeah, wishervodka.com. I was just going to say wishervodka.com.

Well, you know, it’s interesting. So in our marketing strategy, we started out a very unique way that has never been done before and during that process, we sold hundreds of cases in our first hour of launch and we hadn’t secured distribution yet.So, we didn’t know how we were going to be able to provide our product to our customers.

We were able to obtain distribution. We found a local distributor out of Maryland and DC who can ship to all of the states that we needed to reach and get our product out to our customers. But we launched in a very unique way. So you don’t usually have this mass cross nationwide attention or draw right off the bat.

So we were wishing we could be together during COVID. And so we live in different states. My co -founder, Emily Gillis, Terry and I. So this was our way of staying connected. And it also has the words she, her and we in it. So we’re, as I mentioned, we’re a woman owned brand and we were just bringing people back together, uniting them and connecting with them where they were. So whether that they were home and not comfortable coming out yet. We hosted online parties in the metaverse and shipped vodka to our customer. And then we were also in the real world throwing parties, connecting people, getting people back out there and enjoying life again.

Well, distribution is always the biggest challenge for us. You have to kind of prove yourself before you can get distribution, but you need distribution to get your product out there. So its balancing that, I think, is the biggest challenge. But we’ve been lucky to find some unique avenues, but also some really quality distributors. And we are looking for more distributors today as we grow our footprints.

I think, know, just doing the research, know what you’re getting into and testing it. Make sure you know that people want what you’re selling because nobody is going to be more excited than yourself about what you’re selling. So take that time. Don’t rush in. Make sure that you’re talking to all the right people and all the different avenues upfront, which I think has led to some of Wisher’s success.

Well, I think that we just want to know, we’ve done a lot of different exciting things. We’ve really supported different communities. We like to do a lot of charitable work as well. We’ve partnered with, primarily we focus on the arts and music world and spaces as well as local initiatives. We like to be part of the community and not just offer something to somebody and try to sell it.

We just want to be part of something. We want to be inclusive and really bring communities together and diversity together and just create some really unique communities that of people who may not necessarily have come together otherwise. And, and of course we’ve focused on the Crohn’s and colitis and the, and other gluten -free and grain -free communities as well.

I think that is a long -term goal for us. Yes, absolutely. If the right partners came along, I think we would consider it. But right now, it’s challenging enough in this industry to expand to 52 states with individual licences throughout the country. That’s our main focus right now is expanding to our local US customer because Wisher is made in the USA from beets to bottles.

Well, thank you for having me. We’re excited to be part of it. Nice to meet you. Cheers.