"Make friends with bartenders," They Told Me.

📌🥃 Join 1,300+ Drinks Builders on The MAFFEO DRINKS Guides on Substack!

I've written a recent post on Substack called "The Bar Mapping Blueprint: The 5 Steps to Find The Right Venues for Your Brand in a City." where I share how to do it innovatively instead of a Useless List All Your Competitors Googled.

These posts are usually paywalled, but I left this free so you can benefit from it.

If you'd like to dive into more about building Drinks Brands from the Bottom Up, check out my recent post on Substack below 👇

>> Read The Bar Mapping Blueprint - The 5 Steps To Find The Right Venues for Your Brand In a City on Substack <<

"Build relationships with bartenders." That's the advice I heard at every brand training I attended. It seemed like a simple recipe for success: be friends with the right people, and your brand will thrive. Having been an on-trade salesperson myself, I embodied this idea.

I based my strategy on a hypothetical version of myself.

When hiring people in new cities, I looked for clones - salespeople who could replicate what I had done successfully in Rome. I wanted an army of ambassadors and salespeople, each one the life of the party, able to charm their way into any account.

For a while, it was working. I watched as we poured resources into these charismatic individuals. They were the ones who could walk into any bar and make friends with everyone, from the bouncer to the owner. Our brand's presence was growing, and everyone was happy.

But then, the unthinkable happened. A few of our star players left, and just like that, all those relationships they'd built vanished overnight. It was like watching a house of cards collapse in slow motion.

Sure, we had a CRM in place, so technically, the contacts were still there. But we had made the cardinal sin of building our brand around individuals rather than a team.

That's when it hit me: relationships without systems are expensive illusions.

They might feel good in the moment, but they don't create sustainable growth. We had put all our eggs in the baskets of a few "Ronaldos," and now we were paying the price.

I realized that I needed to change my approach to create real, lasting success. I couldn't just rely on the magnetism of a few star players. I needed to build a system that could outlast any individual, a framework that would allow my entire team to thrive, even when our Top Players were off the field.

It was a humbling realization. Over the next few years, I became obsessed with discovering what drives sustainable brand growth. I worked across dozens of markets, observing, learning, and testing.

Slowly but surely, I identified three principles that separate the brands that skyrocket from those that stagnate.

1. Rotation Before Distribution. It's not just about getting your product on as many shelves as possible; it's about creating value in every venue. It's about getting consistent reorders, building genuine demand before fluffy advocacy, and making every listing work hard. It's about proving your concept in core venues, understanding what drives reorders, and scaling from that foundation of proven performance.
2. Trade Networks Before Consumers. In the drinks industry, influence and demand don't flow straight from brand to consumer. It's a complex web of B2B2B2C dynamics, where trade networks and industry credibility are everything. The brands that succeed are the ones that focus on creating value for venues and distributors and growing through these trade networks, city by city, following the natural patterns of the market.
3. Systems Before Relationships. Don't get me wrong, relationships are essential. But they can only take you so far without the right frameworks to support them. The brands that achieve sustainable, scalable growth are the ones that prioritize creating repeatable processes, developing scalable systems, and making success transferable. They're the ones that use systems to enhance and support their relationships, not replace them.

Implementing these principles isn't easy. It requires a fundamental shift from our industry's top-down, distribution-first mindset. However, the rewards are immense for brands that commit to this bottom-up approach.

So, here's my challenge to you: Take a hard look at your brand's growth strategy. Is it focused on rotation before distribution, trade networks before consumers, and systems before relationships? If not, it's time to make a change.

In the coming weeks, I'll explore these principles in greater depth, sharing stories from the front lines and practical strategies you can implement.

But for now, I want to leave you with this: In today's market, a bottom-up approach isn't just a nice thing to have. It's necessary for any brand that wants to survive and thrive.

Brands are built bottom-up.

If you liked this post, you'll enjoy my discussions with Drinks Builders on The MAFFEO DRINKS Podcast , where I learn about how brands succeed in the market.

You can listen to it here

📌🥃 Join 1,300+ Drinks Builders on The MAFFEO DRINKS Guides on Substack!

I've written a recent post on Substack called "The Bar Mapping Blueprint: The 5 Steps to Find The Right Venues for Your Brand in a City." where I share how to do it innovatively instead of a Useless List All Your Competitors Googled.

These posts are usually paywalled, but I left this free so you can benefit from it.

If you'd like to dive into more about building Drinks Brands from the Bottom Up, check out my recent post on Substack below 👇

>> Read The Bar Mapping Blueprint - The 5 Steps To Find The Right Venues for Your Brand In a City on Substack <<