Why Bottom-Up Drinks Building is Crucial
📌🥃 Join 2,000+ 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 👇
Traditional Brand Building Often Fails in the Drinks Industry
Most brand failures aren't due to poor products or bad ideas—they stem from fundamental misunderstandings about how the drinks industry operates. Before diving into strategy and tactics, let's understand the critical realities that shape success in this unique space.
The Multi-Layered Reality: B2B2B2B2C
There is too much focus on Consumers. Yes, I said it. Unlike direct-to-consumer businesses, your brand must navigate multiple layers before reaching the consumer's glass. Each handoff—from you to distributors to venues to servers to consumers—represents both a challenge and an opportunity.
This means your carefully crafted brand story gets simplified with each transition. By the time it reaches consumers, your beautiful narrative about botanical sourcing and artisanal production methods might be reduced to "It's the one with the cucumber."
Action point: Map your entire value chain and understand what matters to each player—they all have different priorities that determine whether your product moves forward or stalls.
The Relationship Glass Ceiling
Early success often comes through personal relationships—that bartender who loves your product, the distributor who took a chance on you, the venues where you're a regular.
This works brilliantly...until it doesn't.
Relationships don't scale. When expanding beyond your home market or reaching a certain volume, you hit an inevitable ceiling where your personal network and founder charm can no longer drive growth.
Action point: Start building systems alongside relationships from day one. Document what works, create replicable frameworks, and develop training that anyone can deliver.
The Dark Social Reality
The most powerful brand influence happens invisibly—in conversations you'll never hear and recommendations you can't track. While you're posting perfectly styled content on Instagram, the real action is happening in bartender group chats, customer-server interactions, and private recommendations between friends.
These "dark social" channels drive more trial and adoption than your visible marketing efforts, yet they can't be directly controlled or measured.
Action point: Create a system that generates demand. Elements that are worth talking about when you're not in the room.
The Dust Collector Reality
Distribution without demand creates "dust collectors"—products sitting untouched on shelves and back bars. Securing distribution isn't a victory; it's just permission to prove yourself. Without pull-through, those bottles become expensive shelf decorations that damage your reputation with every day they sit untouched.
Action point: Create genuine demand before pursuing broad distribution. When consumers and trade partners actively request your product, distribution becomes a service fulfilling existing demand rather than a speculative bet on future interest.
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 2,000+ 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 👇