🍹 "Cold Pressed Cocktails That Will BLOW Your Mind! 🦙 Fresh Victor Mixers Taste Test & Entrepreneur Story

📢I talk🎙️with Ken MacKenzie Founder & Owner of Fresh Victor!  👏🍷 🎇 🎉 ✨ 👏 🥂  😁

Join Caleb Foster 🍇, winemaker at Gunpowder Creek Winery, as he shares his epic journey from Connecticut to Washington wine country 🍷. Innovation, Syrah secrets, & digital pivots await!  @CalebFoster-Winemaker  

Watch now! 🚀✨ @ThirstyThursdaysat3PMEST

https://youtu.be/VaUy0fa-q6Y

🎥 In this video, you’ll learn:
✅ The story behind Fresh Victor and its founder, Ken MacKenzie.
✅ Why cold-pressed mixers are revolutionizing the beverage industry.
✅ Taste-testing 4 unique flavors: Pineapple Ginger, Three Citrus Mint, Grapefruit Sea Salt, and Cactus Pear Pomegranate.
✅ How to use Fresh Victor mixers for cocktails, mocktails, marinades, and more!
✅ Tips for entrepreneurs on building a brand and overcoming challenges.

🍹 Ready to elevate your drink game? In this video, we dive into the world of Fresh Victor, the revolutionary cold-pressed mixers that are changing the way we think about cocktails and mocktails. Join us as we sit down with Ken MacKenzie, the founder of Fresh Victor, to uncover his inspiring journey from tequila entrepreneur to creating one of the most innovative mixer brands in the industry.

From understanding how cold-pressed mixers are made to tasting four delicious flavors—Pineapple Ginger, Three Citrus Mint, Grapefruit Sea Salt, and Cactus Pear Pomegranate—this video is packed with insights for both cocktail enthusiasts and entrepreneurs. Ken also shares his tips for building a brand, overcoming challenges, and staying true to your passion.

Whether you're a home bartender or a seasoned pro, Fresh Victor is your go-to for fresh, high-quality ingredients. Don’t miss this behind-the-scenes look at how Ken is revolutionizing the beverage industry, one mixer at a time. 🦙

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Transcript

Jessie Ott (00:29)
Hello everybody and welcome to Thursday Thursdays. I'm Jessi Yacht and I have Ken McKenzie here, founder of Fresh Victor. I'm super pumped to have him here. He's got a great story. I can't wait to unfold it. And we're going to have a tasting today of four different flavors. So super excited about that. How are you doing today,

Ken MacKenzie (00:49)
I'm fantastic. Thank you so much for having me on, Jesse. I really appreciate it.

Jessie Ott (00:54)
No, thank you for sitting down with me and sending product to try. This is one of the most favorite things in life that I just love to do is meeting people and their passion, their passion projects that they've been working on. I've had several entrepreneurs on here and people just love to hear the story of the overnight entrepreneur and that's just not the case at all.

Ken MacKenzie (01:17)
No, we call

it the 10 year overnight success.

Jessie Ott (01:20)
Yes, the 10 year overnight success. mean, Tito's, you know, Tito's wasn't overnight. He had to work hard too.

Ken MacKenzie (01:23)
Yeah?

That's right. That's right. We're all in that boat together. And so for me, I really look at this as it's a marathon by no stretch of the imagination or brands taking off year one.

Jessie Ott (01:38)
Right, 100%, 100%. So where are you calling from, Ken?

Ken MacKenzie (01:43)
So I'm in Northern California. I'm on the peninsula. We're just about 20 miles south of San Francisco.

Jessie Ott (01:49)
okay, okay. Nice, are you getting all that rain?

Ken MacKenzie (01:54)
buckets. It just was pouring down yesterday. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (01:55)
Ugh.

wow. Yeah, I talked to someone yesterday and they said it was 60 degrees and raining and I think they're further south than you are, yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (02:06)
Yeah,

it, you know, we've gone through great periods of not having rain. And so in a lot of ways it's kind of welcome, especially when you're reading about all the fires and the different things that are happening in Northern and Southern California. But at the same, by the same token, when it really comes down, it comes down. And yesterday was a great example of that.

Jessie Ott (02:23)
Yeah.

Well, I hope everybody's okay and there's no, no, no mudslides or anything. Okay. Good. Good. Good. And so are you from that area, Ken?

Ken MacKenzie (02:29)
We're all good.

I am. So I was born in Pauato at Stanford, born and raised here. I was really fortunate enough to fall in love with a girl from Guadalajara, Mexico. She was up here studying. Funny enough, it was strictly a friendship. I never held her hand. I never tried to kiss her because we knew that we always knew she was going back.

Jessie Ott (02:38)
Okay? Okay.

Nice.

Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (02:58)
And so I knew it was a finite amount of time that I had, you know, 10 months of this amazing friendship. And the second she left, I that same weekend, I remember distinctly feeling like I want to marry this girl. I want to spend the rest of my life with this person. I couldn't imagine we were spending all of our waking moments together. We were taking walks. We were conversing, you know, all this wonderful stuff. And I called her.

And I said, hey, I don't know how you feel, I'm just, I feel a complete void. I want to be with you. And she said, how soon can you be here? And I bought a one way plane ticket and went down to Guadalajara. And I remember my parents calling my parents and them saying, did you say Guatemala? And I said, no, Guadalajara. And they were like, this is not a left field.

Jessie Ott (03:33)
Hahaha!

Wow.

Ken MacKenzie (03:50)
When I got there, I was just looking really for reasons beyond, know, of course, love was the main reason, but wanting to stay, giving myself for economic reason. Like, what am I doing here? How can I rationalize staying beyond just dating? So I was really looking for investment opportunities like a lot of entrepreneurs are. And this was in the mid 90s. So I'm going back. We've been married 25 years now.

Jessie Ott (04:03)
Right.

Wow, that's great.

Ken MacKenzie (04:15)
And luckily for me, not initially, the first two or three weeks was very stressful because we all go through this kind of series of thoughts. Can I do this? And can I do it better than somebody's already doing it? And whether it was jewelry or textiles or art or tech or you name it, Jesse, it was all being done. And I didn't have the expertise. Luckily, I was introduced to

Jessie Ott (04:28)
Right.

Ken MacKenzie (04:40)
really wonderful, like amazing 100 % agave premium tequila. And growing up in Northern California, I was exposed to white and gold shots of tequila in that mirror of I can't smell it ever again. And everybody in Guadalajara looked at me like, were you raised by wolves? are you talking about?

Jessie Ott (04:53)
Right. Yes. Yes.

Hahaha!

Ken MacKenzie (05:05)
I was going, know, and they were saying, we don't drink that. We pander to what you guys want. I quickly was schooled and found myself in this situation where I was able to identify the opportunity within the US and Mexico treating business very, very differently. Mexico's very relationship driven. Do I like you?

Jessie Ott (05:07)
you

Ken MacKenzie (05:30)
What are you going to do for me today? It's a cash based society. What are we doing here? We don't want to see seven year pro forma's of what you're going to do, you know, four years from now. We don't care. We want to know what your business goals are in the immediacy. Whereas the U S is very credit based and planning and Hey, you know, what's the long-term outlook on things. And so with really not.

Jessie Ott (05:52)
Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (05:54)
In the mid 90s, there wasn't really a tequila saturation here. It was pre-patron and all these different things. It was really rewarding to be able to not only learn a tremendous amount about the space, but look at the vertical of the three tier system here, how we were set up, the exportation, the importation, the wholesale distributorships, the retail, and what consumers want.

And I know I've been talking a lot, so I'm going to stop in a sec. But yeah, the real, the real, I, I think the real fortunate thing for me was Mexico, was treating tequila very much like we treated vodka back then. Hey, Blanco tequilas are magical in the sense that they can essentially be mixed with anything or just consumed by themselves.

Jessie Ott (06:25)
No, don't, please.

Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (06:46)
Whereas up here, we were only conditioned as Americans to shots and margaritas. That was it. There was no in-between. We didn't want to talk about in-between at the time. And so that became a tremendous, that became a tremendous lifetime opportunity of, let's figure this out. And as I was consulting and kind of figuring out how to position things between agave as an ingredient,

Jessie Ott (06:57)
No, Cristalino.

Ken MacKenzie (07:17)
exporting from down there, importing up here and really explaining the many multifaceted uses of tequila as a category. my then wife said, why are you showing everybody how to do this? Why aren't we doing this? You have to now you have the knowledge of, Hey, this is the vertical all the way through the distribution and sale of tequila.

Jessie Ott (07:33)
you

Ken MacKenzie (07:40)
Let's start doing it ourselves. And we've had a really rewarding career of doing that for about 22, 23 years.

Jessie Ott (07:47)
Nice, that's amazing. And so, do you still have that tequila?

Ken MacKenzie (07:49)
Yeah.

No, so we cycled through, I'd say over 22 years, we did four brands. After the four, she said, please don't do the fifth.

Jessie Ott (07:59)
Okay.

It's a lot of work!

Ken MacKenzie (08:04)
You

know, it's not only is it a lot of work, but it's kind of that culture of just having like point of sale materials in the garage and neon signs and just all sorts of stuff. And she equated it to Ken growing up in Guadalajara and talking about tequila all the time is very akin to somebody growing up in Napa. And then when they finally get out and start visiting the U.S., all people want to talk about is wine.

You're saying, hey, give me a new experience. So it was kind of, we were really lucky in the sense that this last tequila portfolio we had was in Austin, Texas. We were there for about five years, six years. And we built this organic tequila portfolio. And to the right of it, we launched a fresh mixer brand. And we realized really early on,

that if we're crushing fresh citrus and organic agave nectar and only natural ingredients, that it would not be to our advantage to call it a margarita mix, because if you have fresh ingredients, you can essentially mix it with anything. It's really a spirit blend. So vodka, rum, gin, tequila, whiskey, mezcal, sparkling wine for fresh mimosas, beer from geladas. But more importantly, Jesse, over the course of my career,

What I've really seen over the decades is a lot of people either don't drink or stop drinking along the way. Health reasons, pregnancy, never started in the first place, overindulgence. There's a myriad of different reasons that at some point in your lifetime, you may say, hey, I don't really want to drink the typical offerings at this point.

Jessie Ott (09:26)
Mm-hmm.

Ken MacKenzie (09:43)
And what I found, especially in the nineties and mid-2000s was people were relegated if they didn't drink to a bottle of Coca-Cola or water. And they were kind of ostracized in a way because everybody was talking about the experiences they were having with the new brands and the new outlooks on cocktails and cocktail development and craft segment. With this, one of the most rewarding things for me by far.

Jessie Ott (09:53)
Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (10:08)
is not only the broad market opportunity of being able to work with everybody because it goes across all sectors, but also seeing my friends and family and people that don't drink, being able to use our fresh mixers with tea or sparkling water or just still water for agua fresca and drinking the same ingredients I'm drinking so we can compare notes.

Jessie Ott (10:31)
Yeah, that is really cool. Yeah, that is really neat. what made you, what was the defining moment where you said, this is what I want to do?

Ken MacKenzie (10:41)
That's a great question. And something that doesn't come easily. I wish I was so intelligent and so insightful that I could just say, hey, man, I came up with this over a weekend. It doesn't usually happen that way. But for me, I was traveling all over the country for a number of years just doing kind of tequila education with distributorships, mostly kind of wine and spirits distributorships. National accounts.

Jessie Ott (10:51)
No.

Ken MacKenzie (11:05)
kind of the big restaurants and casinos and cruise ships and the amusement parks and resorts and hotels, the kinds of places that you would drink a margarita or a daiquiri or a Mai Tai there. And as I was doing that, I noticed that especially early on, I'd say, you know, late 90s and all the way through 2010, 12, when doing tequila education,

people were really absorbing it. Like they were hearing it a lot of the times for the first time. Like tequila is good. And you know, I can come back to it. I've been off of it. Yeah. I haven't touched it for 15 years. Yeah. A hundred percent agave tequila is highly epicurean. It's super complex. know, Cognac may have X amount of characteristics because the grapes are in the ground per year, but on an annual harvest basis. But tequila, blue Weber agave,

Jessie Ott (11:41)
It's shocking!

Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (12:02)
can be in the ground anywhere from eight to 12 years. And the amount of mineral content and complexity behind that, you're looking at 300 plus characteristics in like a single glass of Blanco. So they were fascinated by the tequila educational, know, facet of what I was talking about. But as I was entering into kind of the more broad market ways to use tequila in drinks, because, you know, a lot of Americans are going to want to have them in cocktails.

I was building and squeezing and shaking and doing all these things. I noticed a lot of my friends and a lot of my associates would say, hey, the drink was incredible. Well done. The three citrus margarita or the fresh paloma or whatever I was doing that day, it was really, really good. But have you ever timed yourself? Have you ever really taken a moment and

Jessie Ott (12:55)
Yeah, it's...

Ken MacKenzie (12:58)
really

thought about how long it took you to make that drink. And I thought, well, I've missed plenty of dinner parties. I've been behind the bar whenever he's eating and continuing to make these scratch drinks one after another. So I kind of get it from that standpoint, but no, not really. And they say, well, we did. Four minutes and 42 seconds. An account is not going to take almost five minutes to make a scratch cocktail.

Jessie Ott (13:05)
Yeah.

No.

Ken MacKenzie (13:24)
What's the cheat code? How do you do what you just did, same quality, but in 20 seconds?

I don't know. If I knew that, I'd never be there. And it was a real challenge. And it was an interesting challenge, Jesse, because it really made me not only think critically about it, like, wow, this is a real opportunity, but address it. And I think the cool thing about Austin and being there at the time was we were right across the street from Whole Foods corporate.

Jessie Ott (13:34)
Right.

Ken MacKenzie (13:56)
And I can see the need both on premise for kind of the consumer that's drinking at an establishment, as well as the home consumer that just wanted ease of use, but maintaining a high level of quality. So important. And as we've watched this, as I'm watching my kids grow up, one of the things that fascinates me is the absolute insistence on full transparency.

Jessie Ott (14:09)
Yeah.

Yep.

Ken MacKenzie (14:23)
You know, when I'd walk into my grandparents'

houses, do you want a Coca-Cola or a Hawaiian punch? wasn't, you know, we weren't thinking like, hey, how many calories is that? And where are the ingredients? No, I didn't hear that.

Jessie Ott (14:32)
Right? We didn't care.

Ken MacKenzie (14:35)
It was basically like, hey, know, convenience and what kids like and what they're attracted to. I wasn't thinking let die number five, but any stretch of the imagination with my kids, which is absolutely just I'm taking it back every time this happens. Where are you getting it? Is it fair trade? You know, what where?

What are the quality of the ingredients? How are you putting it together? Is it kosher? Is it non-GMO? Is it preservative free? Is it all natural? What is the caloric intake? All the different questions that you get. And so for me, really, what I learned very quickly was if this full transparency is going to be a generational thing where it continues, they want to know all this.

And I want to make something really, really exceptional or good, much like the tequilas. I was stuck to the premium space as opposed to the easy thing to do. The only way we could do this property was, I'm sorry, properly is to have a cold chain product, not a shelf stable product with preservatives, like kind of those neon green cloudy mixers that you see that are separated, but something that actually had a code date on it that said, hey, you should enjoy it by this date.

And man, the resistance to that within the industry itself, like the distributors, the vertical of, if we have to distribute this and it's going to go on a supermarket shelf or a liquor store shelf, how is it going to be merchandised? How are you going to move it? is the consumer going to learn about it? There was a myriad of different questions. And so we really tested that against our tequila brand and created a fresh mixer.

Jessie Ott (16:07)
Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (16:28)
And man, it got a lot of attention very quickly. We saw people light up and go, this is really good. This is something that we can get behind. let's say that a lot of times people, couples at home or whatever, one person will like whiskey, one person will like tequila, one person will like gin, one person will like vodka. They're all different tastes. You don't necessarily always drink the same thing.

It was really easy with these freshly, you know, cold pressed mixers to be able to say, you can use the same mixer with both things. You know, suddenly you have a way to do this at home very easily. Same with the restaurants and you know, the accounts. And that's where our, our passion really lied was, Hey, we've we're onto something here where we can do this in a way that isn't really being done right now.

And it makes people really happy. They want to share it with other people and celebrate with it. And as that company was acquired, one of the things that occurred with the fresh mixer was the acquiring company made it shelf stable in order to have wider distribution net, which was OK with us. One of the things about Pauline and my wife saying, please don't do the fifth tequila was, think about

Austin, think about what you really had the passion for and what was making a material difference, both in homes and in bars and restaurants and, et cetera. And so we decided to kind of the 2.0 version of the Fresh Victor version. We wanted the first name and the title, the first thing that you read to say fresh to just scream it. And then the Victor, it's a victory for you. You win. You're actually making something good and fun.

Jessie Ott (18:13)
I love that.

Ken MacKenzie (18:17)
The llama is a really and you're going to laugh at me because this is so immature and pure. I know, but I can't help myself. I'm I'm a real brand guy. Tony Tiger as a great example, doesn't matter if you subscribe to it and you love it or you stay away from it completely. You know what it is. You can recognize that from across a grocery store and know exactly what that is.

Jessie Ott (18:40)
Yes, everybody knows that. That's for sure.

Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (18:44)
Even if your parents have said you will never try this, you know what it is.

Jessie Ott (18:48)
Yeah, for sure. Excellent branding.

Ken MacKenzie (18:51)
That's iconic. That's something that I grew up like thinking, you know, there's so many different brands that are so iconic that are burned into our memory as far as like, hey, this creates, you know, feelings. I wanted something like that for Fresh Victor where people could say, hey, I identify with that because of the mascot, because of the branding, because of whatever else. And in Peru, we went to Machu Picchu and then

Jessie Ott (18:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (19:17)
spent time in Lima. There's Michelin star restaurants, there's 13 course meals that are three and a half hours. It's this beautiful experience and the mixology matches the culinary experience. They really take mixology and crafting cocktails very seriously and what we actually witnessed was llamas bringing in fresh hand-picked fruit.

in leather bags on their backs. And as they took the bags off at the restaurant level where you're just sitting. Yes, you're just sitting right there outside. They're washing the fruit and it's going into your drink like right in front. And I was just enamored with this. Like I was like the greatest thing ever. And, you know, you think, hey, a llama is it's become kind of in vogue. It's become kind of on trend. But

Jessie Ott (19:49)
the restaurant?

My gosh.

Wow.

Ken MacKenzie (20:10)
A llama is a social animal. It's a pack animal. It's a fun animal. You just kind of identify with it that, this is really cool. It's been really good for us because if nothing else, it lends itself to where you'll come to me if you know nothing about Fresh Victor and say, hey, what's the deal with the camel? What's the deal with the llama? What's the deal with the alpaca? It starts a conversation and suddenly we're dialoguing about it.

Jessie Ott (20:32)
A conversation. Yeah.

That's awesome. That's really funny. Wow. They had llamas going and getting fresh fruit for dinner time.

Ken MacKenzie (20:43)
Yeah, it was like a regular occurrence, just like a distributor coming to a restaurant and unloading lettuce and tomatoes and, you know, mushrooms, fresh citrus and all stuff I hadn't even seen before. I was saying, what is that? And they were going, we'll make you a drink with it.

Jessie Ott (20:44)
Wow.

Wow.

For those of you in the audio, there's a llama on all the bottles and so on YouTube you can see it. yeah, that's definitely a big part of the design of the label. It looks awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Well, should we, I have some more questions. So maybe we can go through those questions as we taste these.

Ken MacKenzie (21:16)
Thank you. I really appreciate that very much.

Please.

Jessie Ott (21:29)
I've had several different guests over the last three years or two plus, guess it is really, but not very many that have products that are cold pressed. And I feel like cold pressed cocktails are RTD 2.0 because they are so fresh and they are so delicious. I don't know if it's how they're made. don't know how...

And I haven't tried these yet. but we had, I had a, a team on they, they're, they don't, they don't exist anymore. but their drinks were the best drinks I've ever had that came out of something that was pre-made. And it tasted literally like you had received a cocktail from a bartender. And I think it's that cold press prop properties. And I think that that is just really key.

to the next level of beverages and containers.

Ken MacKenzie (22:26)
lockstep with you.

I'm absolutely 100 % with you. you know, there's a lot of different ways to do things and we default to what we know and what's easy and what doesn't go against the grain. I'm kind of the opposite of that. Like I, I love.

Jessie Ott (22:40)
Yeah, that's called an

entrepreneur. You're a leader, not a follower.

Ken MacKenzie (22:46)
If somebody across the table for me doesn't look 100 % distressed, I know I'm not doing my job. So I want to make sure that we all feel that level of discomfort like, hey, I'm going to do this the right way, even though it's the hard way. And cold press is a real part of that. What you just described is exactly the feeling I want to generate out of people, is that when

Jessie Ott (22:53)
Hahaha!

Ken MacKenzie (23:11)
You have the holidays when you have events or gatherings within your life. I want you to actually go to people and say, have you seen this stuff yet? It's enhancing my party. It's something that I'm really excited to share with you. And you just don't get that with mundane product offerings that are full of preservatives or can be kept in a warehouse for two or three years.

It's not the same. I often also say to people, hey, there's nothing in our mixers that's not, that was not on your grandmother's shopping list.

Jessie Ott (23:46)
I like that. For sure. Well, they also mentioned the particular type of bottle was very specific to being cold pressed. I can't remember if it's because they were shipping them over here from Mexico. What they they explained to and I don't know if you experienced this, but when they were in Mexico, they were looking for companies to to put both tequila.

because they had actual cocktail, but tequila and they called it food, which is like your fruit. And so it was really hard for them to find someone that could actually bring kind of those elements together. Did you experience anything like that? I know you don't have the alcohol in these, was there any, I mean, is it that kind of particular or is that specialized?

Ken MacKenzie (24:18)
Mm-hmm.

Well, so you have a real degeneration when you add alcohol to something, it starts to eat away at it. And so you have a finite half shelf life, if you will. Right. And so the only way to counteract that is to add preservatives. So the typical RTDs that we're familiar with that we can just grab off the grocery store shelf.

Jessie Ott (24:45)
Interesting.

Correct. Okay, gotcha.

Ken MacKenzie (24:56)
are going to have preserves in them or the carbonated offerings with whatever, you name it, gin and tonic or any fruit-based margarita or something along these lines. Because otherwise, it's going to go bad relatively quickly. And that's why whenever you have fresh drinks or even you'll notice at the bar level, when you're talking to somebody and you're holding it in your hand, the ice is melting and it's diluting.

Jessie Ott (25:25)
Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (25:26)
processes here that you have to maintain. And so by separating it, what we really wanted to do was create something that was cold pressed and fresh, but actually allow you to mix it with whatever you want to mix with at the moment. So while RTDs are really popular thing right now, because it's ready to drink, it's ready to go, the one facet that you'll notice with RTDs is they're not fresh. It's a very difficult thing to do.

You gotta kinda keep the two portions separate and put them together.

Jessie Ott (25:58)
Well, getting the flavors right are hard. You know, they like to use lot of mint and lime and other flavors and those are hard to put in a can.

Ken MacKenzie (26:09)
It's difficult. you know what, Jesse? The other thing about this is that people drink differently. They have preferences, right? So like, you know, you may have somebody, we may put on our bottles, hey, do two parts, fresh victor to one part spirit. Well, I may be in Texas and they're going to say, hey, it's one to one, you know, hardcone 50-50, my friend. Okay. Really prodigiously changes the profile and how you're, you know,

Jessie Ott (26:28)
Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (26:35)
how you're actually drinking it. And so you'll get a lot more out of the fresh victor bottle because it's going to go further because you're actually doing a one to one ratio. But I don't want to make an assumption like with an RTD where it's already prepared and you're going to drink it the way we formulated it. In this sense, it's all up to you. You get to decide the ratios.

Jessie Ott (26:57)
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, let's start with one. Should I shake it? Okay, so pineapple, ginger, should we start with that one? Okay.

Ken MacKenzie (27:02)
Shake it? Yeah, please.

Perfect. So

these are pineapples that we're getting from Costa Rica. And then we're doing fresh ginger juice. what really, do you, okay, so I'm excited for you right now because a lot of things are going through my mind, but a fresh pineapple ginger mule is amazing.

Jessie Ott (27:16)
I love Ginger.

Ken MacKenzie (27:26)
with vodka. Hopefully you get a lot of the ginger properties right there. Sparkling wine for a fresh pineapple ginger mimosa is also a lot of fun. But any neutral based spirit, whether you like vodka, rum, tequila, mezcal, gin.

Jessie Ott (27:30)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I'm getting the freshest pineapple flavor ever right now. I'm not getting a lot of ginger yet on the nose.

Ken MacKenzie (27:49)
It's a lot.

Not on the nose. You're going to have to.

Jessie Ott (27:55)
that is so good. It's almost like you smell the pineapple, like true form, great pineapple. And then the ginger kind of comes in and it's not overbearing or it doesn't bite, but it kind of cuts the sweet. And so it's this layering effect of this kind of sweet pineapple deliciousness. And then that...

of ginger creeps in and it's not spicy like a lot of times it can be. It's not at all. I could see where you could, you know, like you were saying with the mule, you could add the ginger beer, but it was a real fun experience to have this sweet kind of come in and then the ginger to come behind it and take over and just kind of cut right through it. It was delicious.

Ken MacKenzie (28:40)
And thank you. And I want you to experiment with it. You know, that's the this should be fun, right? At the very least. And it should be culinary. And so like with a ginger mule, there's a lot of different ways to do it. The default way, of course, is the ginger beer. But you could technically with the way that we formulated this, just do that with club soda or tonic or there's a lot of different ways to get there. And so I say I always say have fun with it, you know.

Jessie Ott (28:48)
Yeah.

Yeah. I can't wait to, you know, I'm not, I'm not like you can, I am not a mixologist. And from the podcast and just combining both households, have different flavors of different things. And sometimes I'll be like, okay, let's just have some fun and I'll pull some stuff out and I'll just stare at it. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. Well, with these, I don't have to worry about it. I could just try the different bases with the different flavor profiles. Cause

Ken MacKenzie (29:26)
Yeah, yeah, that's me.

Jessie Ott (29:33)
Some of the non-alch stuff that we have has their own flavor. So I'm curious to see how they could mix with these. So that'll be fun.

Ken MacKenzie (29:40)
You hit the nail on the head and that, you know, that's my default. You can't be in the spirits industry and just be drinking all day every day. You know, it doesn't work like that. That's not real life. And so for me, yeah, no. So for me, one of the, you know, most fun I have is I oftentimes mix these like what you're doing with different flavors of sparkling water.

Jessie Ott (29:49)
Right. Well, last one.

Ken MacKenzie (30:05)
And whether it's blueberry, lemonade, or cherry, or orange, the list goes on and on and on. It's for yuzu. It's forever. It really marries beautifully with these flavor profiles we have. as you probably noticed, most of them are this with that. So Mexican lime, anagave, lemon, sour, strawberry, and lemon, all these different flavors that we have. It's really fun to experiment with.

Jessie Ott (30:06)
That's so good.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, this is really, really cool. All right, let's try the next one. Three citrus and mint leaf.

Ken MacKenzie (30:39)
So these are equal parts fresh cold pressed lime, lemon, and orange. And then we're emulsifying fresh mint leaf into it. So fresh mint leaf is actually floating in it.

Jessie Ott (30:47)
Okay.

There's the color.

Ken MacKenzie (30:55)
And this will do everything

from like a beautiful fresh three citrus mojito or three citrus and mint margarita with whiskey or bourbon. It'll make a really good smash or julep.

Jessie Ott (31:06)
Mmm. Yeah, with the mint leaf, with the mint. Yeah.

That is delicious. It's making my, it's a little bit tart on the end, so it makes you want more. But it's a perfect blend of citrus. there's not one that's more overbearing than the other.

Ken MacKenzie (31:16)
Yeah.

And I know that you're going to cut it against something. So my assumption is probably not necessarily you don't have to, but if you shake it, you're going to get an ounce or sorry, a half ounce to an ounce of ice solution of ice cold water. So that's going to marry with it. If you don't shake it, regardless, if you stir it or you're even just pour it over ice, I know it's going to dilute to a certain degree, depending on what you're cutting it with. And so these are really made knowing that

once it goes with something, it should be just about balanced.

Jessie Ott (31:55)
Yeah, no, like, yeah, a hundred percent. these, are, Ken, seriously, this is very high quality. Really. You know how you drink wine and you're like, yeah, this is really well made. Like the winemaker really knows what they're doing. Yeah, that's the experience I'm getting with these.

Ken MacKenzie (32:02)
Thank you. really appreciate it. It means the world to

That is awesome.

Jessie Ott (32:17)
do you, where did you, do you source the fruit from anywhere in particular?

Ken MacKenzie (32:22)
We do. And so just like anything, you want to go to the source where we feel it's done best. And a great example of this, like with the Mexican lime and agave, the US kind of gave up a long time ago on growing limes as, you know, mash crops.

And so we source all the limes, all the Persian limes from Colima, Mexico, from Tecumel, Colima, Mexico. With the pineapple, we get it from Costa Rica. The prickly pear, we get it from Arizona. It just, we want to make sure that not only is the supply insulated and in place and of the highest quality,

Jessie Ott (32:45)
Okay.

Ken MacKenzie (32:59)
And then you want to have like a B and C option for sourcing, but you want to remain with it. It's just like any ingredient or any dish that you make. You want to try to do it the same way each and every time. And so that's what's so important to me is, is, is knowing that I trust the actual ingredients that I have. And I know that it's going to come out exactly the same way week over week.

Jessie Ott (33:27)
Yeah, no, that's a hundred percent. You got to keep that stability and that continuance of flavors and the supply chain. You got to be able to trust the supply chain.

Ken MacKenzie (33:36)
And the supply chain,

that's absolutely true. And we're featured out. And so that's one of the best things about this is we launched in 2017, still the same ingredients, the same consistency, the same pricing. What we really want to do is insulate people from commodity fluctuation. When you're dealing with actual citrus

Week in and week out, one of the things if you're not contracted out is Limes can be $18 one week and $180 the next. And you're like, what is happening here? And so that's totally scary. So that's part of the operational facet of this where when you deal with the industry long enough, you want to make sure that the business proposition for both the account on-premise as well as the home consumer

Jessie Ott (34:08)
Yep. It's scary.

Ken MacKenzie (34:27)
is one where you know that Fresh Frichter is going to cost X and you can depend on

Jessie Ott (34:32)
Yeah, that's great. So should we go to the third one? All right, grapefruit and sea salt.

Ken MacKenzie (34:36)
Sure.

Yes. So this is very reminiscent of fresh Palomas, you know, and the way that it's done in Guadalajara. And so you want that sea salt element to really elevate it. You want the grapefruit to be very bright and pop. It's also brilliant for like a salty dog with vodka.

Jessie Ott (34:59)
yeah. Yeah.

definitely get the obviously the grapefruit.

Yummy. my brother-in-law was helping me on the podcast for all. like, can you please think of another name other than yummy? And I'm like, no, I can't because that's just what instinctively comes to my brain. Yum. Yeah. Yeah, no, this is great.

Ken MacKenzie (35:05)
Isn't that fun?

Go with

These are really easy to use, Jesse. you know, people often think, OK, what spirit do I need to run out and buy? But nine times out of 10, if not 10 out of 10, I don't want to be 100. You know, I can't say it's 100%. I like to think that you will have a lot of the stuff that you need to use with fresh liquor at home already. So you have that bottle of Prosecco or champagne. You have that bottle of white wine for sangria.

Jessie Ott (35:44)
Okay.

Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (35:52)
Like with the grapefruit and sea salt, it's so bright. You do like a nice crisp white wine with that. It's this beautiful sangria and you can cut fruit into it. You can, you know, do all sorts of bright things.

Jessie Ott (35:58)
Yeah.

Even something maybe even a little sweet would be great.

Ken MacKenzie (36:08)
Yeah. And you know, we

Jessie Ott (36:10)
Like

a white sweet, like just a hint of sweet.

Ken MacKenzie (36:13)
Thousand percent and we actually use these believe it or not a lot for marinades and salad dressings because of the acidity

Jessie Ott (36:20)
yes!

I put citrus on my salad dressing all the time.

Ken MacKenzie (36:25)
You know, whether you eat meat or you don't, when I talk about like chicken or shrimp or anything like that, I just do an hour in a bag with pineapple and ginger. Or we've got a killer jalapeno and lime. I mix a viche with that. We do all sorts of grilled fish with it. Mexican lime and agave for carne asada. It's a lot of

Jessie Ott (36:36)
I bet.

I'm

in. I love Ceviche. I haven't made it in a long time. I gotta get back on that Ceviche train. That would be amazing.

Ken MacKenzie (36:55)
That fresh citrus, the fresh cold pressed juice will cook it off. The acidity in the juice cooks it off. so, you know, I like the jalapeno because I like it to be a little bit spicy like that. But the other thing that we like to do with the jalapeno so regularly is mix it with one of our secondary flavors. So whether it's the cactus pear and pomegranate, the pineapple and ginger, the three citrus and mint, we say that it's kind of sweet heat. Like, you know, you're getting that

Jessie Ott (37:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

sweet heat. I like it. All right, should we try the fourth one? This is the Cactus Pear and Pomegranate.

Ken MacKenzie (37:27)
Perfect. So this is just prickly pear and pomegranate. These mixers, a lot of them are designed because we're thinking of the mixologist or bartender behind the bar as well as the home consumer. We're thinking about ingredients like jalapeno, ginger, mint, prickly pear that they don't necessarily like to deal with as a static ingredient.

Jessie Ott (37:50)
I think that's my favorite.

Ken MacKenzie (37:52)
beautiful.

Jessie Ott (37:54)
I don't know. They're so good. That's just, I think it's cause it's the last one I tried. that is really, really good. These are, these are, have great structure, well balanced. They're, they, don't want them. they're emulsified perfectly, I guess. I don't really know how else to say it, but like there's this great balance of different flavors and they're different.

Ken MacKenzie (38:02)
Thank you,

That's what we practice.

Jessie Ott (38:21)
I guarantee

you're not gonna see grapefruit sea salt anywhere on any shelf.

Ken MacKenzie (38:25)
That's what we try to pride ourselves in. Really the flavor combinations that there's so much that you can do with them. We tried to kind of touch every corner of the business as far as, hey, let's say, you know, just the cactus pear and pomegranate was the last one you tried. Let's say you wanted to do that with gray goose and Patron Citron.

You can do that in a rocks glass. You can do that in a tall glass with a little soda water You can do that shake it and do it like a martini up, you know You can probably make five six seven cocktails from the same ingredients

Jessie Ott (39:00)
yeah!

That sounds really fun. I love these Ken. So can you give us a little bit of background into how you came to these flavors? Do you have a team or was it based on some research or just kind of your gut and trying these different things with your team?

Ken MacKenzie (39:23)
Yeah.

It's us being in the tequila space for so long, you really see cocktail trends. And so I know living in Texas, living in California, spending time in Florida, spending time in New York, Chicago, you look at tequila on the whole, margaritas, palomas, these sorts of things, prickly pear comes up.

the citrus comes up. Like one of our most popular margaritas on menus in Texas 10 years ago was a three citrus margarita. So you know that profile works. Jalapeno, it's something that's spicy, whether it's a margarita, rum rita, or anything else that you're doing with it. You're using it as a base for a Bloody Mary or anything else. You know that that's something that's not easy to get.

Jessie Ott (39:57)
Interesting.

Ken MacKenzie (40:12)
right each time, especially if you're slicing the jalapenos, taking out the seeds. You want consistency. And so what I really tried to do was formulate these to say, here are fresh, bright ingredients that people want in their cocktails, but aren't necessarily easy to put together, aren't simple.

Like, I'm just going to run out to the store and nail this in 10 minutes. It's like, hey, if you're going to balance the pineapple with the ginger, the three citrus equal parts with mint, if you're going to do the prickly pear and the pomegranate, these are things that you want to be able to depend upon. with nine flavors, we originally were looking at four or five, but you wanted to have a portfolio that kind of encompassed something for everyone.

Jessie Ott (41:02)
Yeah. No, I think you've done that. And what do these retail for?

Ken MacKenzie (41:07)
So if you're at a store, can be anywhere from, usually you'll see them at $7 or $7.99 per 16 ounce, and you'll get a solid five to seven cocktails out of it. So the proposition really is you should be able to have a fresh cocktail for $1, $1.50 at home. That's at the $2.00 range.

Jessie Ott (41:26)
Gotcha. Okay. And are they sold?

Sorry?

Ken MacKenzie (41:29)
That's at the two to one ratio. And so, you know, like I said, if you go one to one, that five to seven is easily going to become 10 to 12.

Jessie Ott (41:31)
Okay.

Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so are they sold singly or are they sold in packs?

Ken MacKenzie (41:44)
They're sold as single bottles. We have two bottle sizes, and this is kind of a funny thing. For the food service, for kind of the restaurant industry or the bars, we do a 64 ounce handle bottle. And that'll make anywhere from, you know, let's say 21 to 30 drinks. So a batch. When the pandemic hit, drinking in home was up 420 percent.

And so people didn't want the pints anymore. They wanted the handles in their backyard. Hey, there's going to be six of us out here and we're probably not going to have just one. OK, so those two sizes are available both in retail and on our website. You go to the 16 ounce bottles and you can mix and match, which is a lot of fun. can say, hey, I want a big grapefruit and sea salt and a small cactus, parent pomegranate, or however you want to do it.

Jessie Ott (42:18)
Right.

Right.

Okay.

That is fun.

Ken MacKenzie (42:43)
And so we'll usually see it for seven to 799 at retail. The larger bottles are probably kind of in that 20 to 22 range. know, again, we're trying to zero in. There's no way to control retail. Once I sell it, they're going to do what they want as far as markup and everything else. And so it's a variable cost. However, I'd like to think that we're somewhere in that dollar to dollar 50 kind of range per pour.

Jessie Ott (42:59)
Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (43:11)
and that you guys are getting a real benefit out

Jessie Ott (43:14)
And how long does each bottle last once it's open?

Ken MacKenzie (43:19)
That's the one of my favorite parts of this. So we do all of our shelf life studies at UC Davis. It's so close. And so for us, I knew coming from the tequila industry that all we were working against was fermentation. So assuming that you keep it cold, you keep it in the refrigerator. We launched in 2017 and I have not had an account or a consumer write into me or call me and say, Hey, this stuff went bad.

Jessie Ott (43:25)
Okay.

Ken MacKenzie (43:45)
me. Like dairy or like something. Why? Because it's so acidic. You know, a fresh pressed citrus is so high in the acidity and then you add the bricks with the organic agave nectar kind of as a natural preservative. This stuff is very stable cold. You can't, you know, if it was in the sun, if you're in Florida or Texas or somewhere and it's really sunny, it'll expand like fresh citrus does.

Jessie Ott (43:46)
Great.

That's great.

Ken MacKenzie (44:14)
and it will ferment. so you just need to be cold. So what ends up happening is we mark the small bottles at 120 days. And so you have a good three to four months on it unopened. Once you open it, it won't go bad, Jesse, per se. It's not like it goes rotten or anything. But what I find, and this is just me being fully transparent, is I feel like after three or four weeks, the citrus

Jessie Ott (44:16)
Interesting.

Ken MacKenzie (44:44)
fades. Like it doesn't not as bright and it doesn't pop as much. And for good reason. It's a fresh product. And so it's not supposed to be. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (44:45)
Okay.

Right. It's a fresh product.

Yeah. No, a hundred percent. Was it hard to find a manufacturer to do the cold press?

Ken MacKenzie (45:02)
I really appreciate you asking that. So I had been through this once before in Austin, where we had done this before. And so I was under the impression, and so wrongly, like I can look back now and laugh, but it wasn't so funny at the time. I thought, hey, I've got this. Give me a little time, and I'll get all my ducks in a row. Well, the company that I was producing with for the Austin product was in Southern California, and they were acquired and closed.

Jessie Ott (45:05)
Hehehehe

Ken MacKenzie (45:31)
that would have been my first call, right? And there, they were eventually no longer there about a year or a year and a half after I, flying around the country. I realized relatively quickly that people, there's not a whole lot of options for doing fresh cold press products. just, it's everybody defaults to shelf stable. Everybody wants to make sure that you have optimized shelf life of a year or two.

And so when I would inquire about it, I was met with a discussion or a conversation around, you make it shelf stable? It was their default thing to say for a second. well, if you want to have a mixer with us in distribution or you want to manufacture it, why don't you just make it shelf stable and we're ready next week? Well, that's not what I wanted at all. And so

I was really discouraged, much like when I first got to Guadalajara. Like I was feeling like, no, I'm not going to be able to figure this out again. Like I, I, but we had it. Like we were so close. there were some options, but when the first year or so, what I found as a sweeping generalization was they were really nice facilities, but they weren't doing exactly what I wanted to do. Like they were cold pressing fresh apples.

And, know, they did really good apple cider. And I was like, yeah, but how about lemons and limes? know, yeah, those aren't in the building. you know, we were going to. Now the funniest part about all this, I, know, me stressing out, me feeling like, my stomach hurts and how am I going to do this? And I'm stuck is it turns out that the best facility by far was in my own backyard. Yeah. Right.

Jessie Ott (46:50)
That lies, which are completely different.

Hehehehe

No way. That's

Ken MacKenzie (47:16)
I'm

Jessie Ott (47:17)
awesome.

Ken MacKenzie (47:17)
all these years later, I'm still saying no way. How is that possible? And so we produce with a family that is an equity shareholder in Fresh Victor. So we're actually completely aligned. We're partners in this. They have a 90 acre facility right outside of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra foothills. And it's all solar run. There's no preservatives allowed past the gates. So it's all fresh.

Jessie Ott (47:31)
That's great.

Wow.

Ken MacKenzie (47:44)
And they've been doing it since 1976. And so they're very adept at understanding fresh, know, all the things that have to be blended and all the things that have to be done. And so for me to take my formulas and be able to say, this is where we need to get normally, Jesse, it may take. A year, 18 months, whatever with this family, I was able to nail these formulas in three to four weeks. Like, yeah, they.

Jessie Ott (47:47)
Wow.

Ken MacKenzie (48:13)
We spoke the same language. So it wasn't like I was trying to explain, this is how you produce something. They were like, yeah, this is what we do every day. So just tell us the recipe. And so when we got into it, was really, it felt like a natural fit with the glove. It just worked right away. There was no, you know, there was a complete understanding. So that was the best part about this. My home.

Jessie Ott (48:15)
Yeah.

That's awesome.

Ken MacKenzie (48:38)
to the production facility door to door is two hours and 40 minutes. So I can be there any given day. It's really been a very rewarding experience.

Jessie Ott (48:43)
wow. That's close.

well, that's when you know it was all meant to be. Where do you sell this Fresh Victor at?

Ken MacKenzie (48:53)
There you go. I like that.

So where are you?

Jessie Ott (49:03)
Orlando.

Ken MacKenzie (49:04)
or that, okay. Epcot, you know, that's one of the great places that we're at. But for us, we have a fairly good footprint in Florida on premise. So we sell to restaurants, to bars, to hotels, to resorts, to, you know, these sorts of places. But really, just like the tequila business, and this is very akin to it.

Jessie Ott (49:07)
Okay.

Okay.

Ken MacKenzie (49:26)
The general rule of thumb is 70 % on-premise, 30 % off because you want to try it. Like you go out on a weekend and you have it at your local watering hole and you go, Hey, this was really fantastic. Where can I get this? And then you start looking for it at your neighborhood grocery store. This is a little bit different because it's cold chain. That's how spirits generally we kind of try to blueprint it. It's not totally different.

Jessie Ott (49:49)
Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (49:54)
But our best path is on-premise because the industry understands we're solving a problem operationally. We're giving quality and consistency and price installation. So they understand it and they use it the same week they get it. I don't have to educate at all. We just launched with Total Wine and more like here in my home state in Northern California. We're spreading, you know,

Jessie Ott (50:10)
Right.

Ken MacKenzie (50:18)
Epicurean markets like Whole Foods and Central Market in Texas, like these sorts of places. I think what you'll see, Jesse, is over the next year to two years is we're hyper-focused kind of on California, Nevada, Texas, and Florida as far as penetrating on-premise so we can be strategic with Epicurean off-premise grocery and high-end liquor stores.

Jessie Ott (50:42)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (50:44)
As we continue to spread out that footprint, we'll add more and more accounts. In the meantime, what the great thing is at this production facility, we have a fulfillment center that ships anywhere to the 48 states. And so to you within 48 hours, much like it got to you. We curate whatever you want to buy online on our website at freshvictor.com. You just put in what you want in that box.

Jessie Ott (51:00)
Nice. Okay.

Ken MacKenzie (51:12)
One of our great people will put that box together for you and ship it out cold with ice packs and you'll have it within 48 hours on your doorstep.

Jessie Ott (51:20)
Yeah, that's pretty cool. It was pretty cool to open up. Yeah, for sure. So where in Total Wine are they merchandising it?

Ken MacKenzie (51:26)
It's fun.

So that's a great question and a very insightful one, quite frankly, because you don't know where Fresh Victor would end up in any given building. Oh, I've been through all of them. So here's what we try to stay away from. We don't want to be perceived as just another juice. If you go through the organic juice aisle and you're like, oh, why is this juice so much more expensive?

Jessie Ott (51:38)
Yeah, I'm trying to think of where.

Ken MacKenzie (51:56)
Well, it's because it's a mixer. It's an ingredient for cocktails and mocktails. And so for us, if we're going into a market or a liquor store, we want to be associated first and foremost, kind of with adult beverage. So if they don't have a capacity, let's say it's a supermarket that doesn't carry spirits, we'd want to be kind of in that wine and beer section, refrigerated, you know, with the chilled Chardonnays and champagne.

If they do have more capacity, every time, 10 times out of 10, I want to be in the liquor aisle with the spirits, with tequila and mezcal and vodka and gin and rum. And the way that we do that so effectively with a total wine and more is we drop a Fresh Victor branded refrigerator into the spirits aisle, whether it's grocery stores or liquor stores.

Jessie Ott (52:40)
Nice.

Ken MacKenzie (52:44)
And then that way there's a direct association. And what is so rewarding for me, kind of like a secret Santa scenario is I'll stroll in there on any given Wednesday, just to kind of hear what people are talking about and to hear the management staff and the sales people, the spirits buyers relaying this to consumers and saying, have you seen this stuff yet?

It is all natural. It's low in calories because they're not putting preservatives in it. It's fresh. It blends with anything. So whatever you have in your shopping cart, goes perfectly with we've got, you know, nine flavors, you know, all these different things. It's really rewarding because then we know that we're really onto something. It's just not a me too product. something that people are actually talking

Jessie Ott (53:28)
Yeah, no, hundred percent. That's a big feat because I know being on the retail side for the last 10 or so years, trying to get iPads and refrigerators and the Jaeger shop machines and not really, but that kind of thing. Merchandise in stores is not easy, mostly because of electrical outlets. And so the fact that you're able to do that is pretty awesome.

Ken MacKenzie (53:53)
We share that pain. Yes. We've that conversation more than a dozen times. Yeah. It's not, it's so funny because you think on the surface, Hey, I'm giving you a brand new branded refrigerator that costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Yeah. They're excited about that. But then they're like, Hey, then there's logistics of this. We're set up in a way where our electric was done in the late fifties and we just don't, we can't plug it in anywhere.

Jessie Ott (54:14)
Right.

Ken MacKenzie (54:22)
And so what we're really lucky with like a central market is where we can be on like end cap Like if we're at the end cap of wine and beer aisle. At the liquor stores with Total Wine and More here in Northern California where I am, we've placed our refrigerators at checkout.

So and what I really hammer on, which I think is so, it's huge. what we have to, what my responsibility and my team's responsibility is, is we're in there on the weekends doing demos and tastings. You have to, right? got, you got to get it. Cause you didn't know what to expect before you tasted them in the glass. You could have been terribly disappointed and gone, no, this will never air. But.

Jessie Ott (54:44)
That's huge.

Yeah, that's so important. You really have to. Nope. Not at all. I can't wait to drink them.

Ken MacKenzie (55:09)
It's the same for consumers. have to be able to display not only do we have these flavors, but here's what you can do with it. And once that light bulb goes off, it's like, hey, this is what I'm going to do with it for Super Bowl. This is what I'm going to do with it for my family gathering, you whatever the occasion may be, they get excited.

Jessie Ott (55:16)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, this was great. Is there anything else you want to talk about? We're about an hour in and we haven't even talked about you. So is there anything like a website that you'd want to mention?

Ken MacKenzie (55:39)
Yeah,

sure. You know, we're just, it's so simple. It couldn't be easier. We're at www.freshvictor.com. So it's just all one word, Fresh Victor. On our site, we have a ton of recipes. We have an amazing mixologist that's here in San Francisco that owns the second oldest bar saloon in the city that's been in continuous operation since 1858.

Jessie Ott (56:05)
Cool.

Ken MacKenzie (56:06)
It's called Elixir

Jessie Ott (56:06)
That's awesome.

Ken MacKenzie (56:09)
and it's on 16th and Guerrero in the Mission District. he, his name's H. Ehrman and he's known for just stellar, fresh cocktails, building from the ground up. He's really globally renowned, but he's been able to take Fresh Victor and really amplify it in the way where he's saying, hey,

You know me by reputation. All I do is fresh and I love using this stuff. And so he creates the recipes on our website where you can just go and get a ton of different ideas there. You can look at all of our flavors and ideas as far as how to curate your own tailored pack. We don't tell you how to buy. We just say, hey, here are our offerings. Go to town and just have a lot of fun with it.

Jessie Ott (56:43)
Nice.

That's awesome. So shifting over here, do you have any mentors that you'd want to mention that have kind of helped you to? Too many, too many, okay. That's okay.

Ken MacKenzie (57:04)
Too many

Yeah.

I mean, the quick elevator pitch, my father, first and foremost, has believed in me from God day one. He taught econ and he was the first person to teach me, is somebody doing it? are they doing it better than you and stick to quality, stick to premiumization? I have a ton of mentors here that I came up with that have been just instrumental in the tequila business, you know, down in Guadalajara.

But also up here, know, Scott Barnum, it comes to mind. He's actually PT Barnum's great nephew. A huge consumer guy here in the States that did everything from Frito-Lay to, you know, Pete's Wicked Ale and Crave Jerky and a bunch of consumer brands. Blythe Jack, know, at TSG Consumer has been one of the biggest supporters I've ever had in my life as far as business and being able to

Jessie Ott (57:42)
cool.

Ken MacKenzie (58:03)
to help us get to where we need to go. She is almost clairvoyant with picking the winners. She knows what it takes to build a brand, to exit on a brand. Her belief system keeps everybody going as far as you're going to go through a lot of rough times. You're going to have low lows as well as high highs, but persistence is the key. And if you have something this good, it will work. You have to figure out the puzzle pieces. And Dom Plumlee.

Jessie Ott (58:22)
Yep.

Ken MacKenzie (58:32)
from Sage Partners has been instrumental in how we work corporately and from an organizational facet. These three people have been huge with Fresh Victor as well as H. Ehrman. I mentioned him as a mixologist. Him giving his support to this and saying, hey, you know me as an industry person that doesn't

Jessie Ott (58:54)
Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (58:57)
settle that doesn't compromise. This is just fine with me because it's doing all the right things. All these people kind of make this rich tapestry of you need to be able to rely on these kinds of people to take you through that 10 night over overnight success. It doesn't come quickly. And so you need these types of people to support you. And I've been really, really lucky.

I'll also say the Barsotti family, the manufacturers, the producers here outside of Tahoe and the Sierra foothills. They didn't have to roll the dice on this. They could have said, hey, we're not interested in doing a project like this. And they did it because they saw an opportunity to do something different and to approach a space that people weren't approaching. And by doing that, we're kind of pioneering a category.

Jessie Ott (59:48)
You are. Yep. Yeah, for sure.

Ken MacKenzie (59:51)
I have nothing but gratitude.

just exhumed gratitude like seven days a week. And my family, you know, I would be so wrong not to say Paulina, my wife, has been by my side through 26, 27 years now of building these companies and taking enormous risks. I mean, not just like, hey, but like, hey.

Jessie Ott (1:00:11)
Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (1:00:14)
We're all in a thousand percent in there's no way to get away from it, but this is exactly what we want to be doing. And my kids, you know, they Mila and Mara love Fresh Victor and the llama are sharing it with friends are all the time are going into the garage fridge and taking them out and mixing them with sparkling water and using them in punch bowls at their parties. You know, when you have that level of support, it's happy. It's a good place to. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:00:37)
Nice.

It is.

Ken MacKenzie (1:00:43)
So that's what I would probably say about that.

Jessie Ott (1:00:46)
That's great. I love that, that your kids are really behind it and helping you out. It takes all hands on deck, right?

Ken MacKenzie (1:00:54)
It totally

does. And you know what, Jesse? I couldn't do that the same way with tequila. I didn't have my nine-year-old merchandising in the back cooler and putting new bottles out into our fridge. People would be tackling me. So it's really nice to share this experience with everybody.

Jessie Ott (1:00:59)
No, yeah I know, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's very, very good point. I like that a lot. What about any resources? it, is there anything that any industry resources or leadership that you want to share that kind of helped you along your journey?

Ken MacKenzie (1:01:23)
Yeah, I think it's the belief system, you know, for any entrepreneur, you want to do it as long as you can alone. Like, you know, figure out. I think one of the things my father taught me at a younger age was don't take investors money to learn. It'll be a mistake. You'll always be on the eight ball. You'll always be trying to catch up. that money is gone because we were trying to figure this out or we didn't have the formula right or whatever.

So you need to take it upon yourself to struggle and to figure out like, hey, let's figure out the mainstays of the business. Let's figure out formulation. Let's figure out distribution. Let's figure out consumer. Let's get to a point where we're actually more or less in market and need to scale in order to, you know, find these resources and these types of mentors. And so for me,

When you're a small, when you're an entrepreneur and you're a small or mid-sized business, you don't want to be taking institutional investment like a tech company. You know, I'm not looking to raise $60 million over a weekend. I'm trying to do this incrementally, but the thing that you do want to do is really show this to kind of the best of the best in the consumer space. Like, hey, are we on to something here?

Do you and Blythe Jack was at the top of that list, you know, at TCG consumer here in San Francisco. But you go out to people that are probably institutional consumer investors and you say, I don't want to talk to you about your fund or your institution. I want you to love this so much or to believe in it so much that you want to write a personal check to the company and say, I want to take the ride. Yeah. And, you know, the tough part about this.

Jessie Ott (1:03:01)
Yes, I like that strategy.

Ken MacKenzie (1:03:09)
is you have to have the wherewithal to say this isn't going to happen quickly. You're going to want validation points and benchmarks all along the way. And so in this scenario, you're actually playing off of other people saying, this is the best thing since sliced bread, or hey, this is working really well in this channel, or we're getting attention for being premium, or whatever.

where you have enough data points behind this or enough accolades where people are like, hey, I'm pretty comfortable with this. This makes a lot of sense.

Jessie Ott (1:03:41)
Yeah. Yeah, I know that's a great, great idea, great strategy for sure. What, what do you feel is your biggest pain points with Fresh Victor?

Ken MacKenzie (1:03:54)
Distribution, I think, is probably the easiest one to identify. I think when you have a cold chain product that actually has code dates on it, much like dairy or yogurt or fresh OJ or anything along those lines, the industry that we have pinpointed or that we're focused on aren't used to that. They're used to shelf stable. Hey, I can have this out in the middle of the aisle. I can keep this in the back room.

Jessie Ott (1:04:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (1:04:20)
This isn't something that I have to actually focus or think about. It's just something that's just automated. And we're really changing the way people think about, know, changing the way people drink. We're saying, hey, if you want better, if you want quality, if you want to be proud of what you're serving your guests or anything else, you are going to have to take a level of care with that.

You know, we're making it easy and we're making it convenient for sure, but there's going to be a facet of something that you're not used to. And so for a while there, and you know, I'm not saying that we don't experience it anymore, but there's kind of a pushback of, man, that's not what I signed up for. And I'm not used to this. And why do I have to pay attention? So.

We take it upon ourselves to merchandise our products to go in and look and make sure that it's moving correctly and everything else. But when you're dealing with large national distribution systems, we've added a whole layer of complexity to the cold chain aspect of this. So it's really hard.

Jessie Ott (1:05:18)
Yeah, because

it is hard. And so you can't really use the traditional RNDC or Southern, right?

Ken MacKenzie (1:05:29)
Wow, you're so far ahead of me. You're absolutely right. by experience and tradition and everything else, the way Southern and a lot of the large three-tier distribution centers, the wine and spirits distributors are set up, it's not necessarily cold chain, it's climate control.

Jessie Ott (1:05:29)
Cause they don't...

Right, climate control.

Ken MacKenzie (1:05:47)
So what they're used to is, spirits, easy, super easy. Wine for the most part. But they may have certain wines that they want to be climate controlled, or even, let's say, beers at times that they say, hey, if it's in the keg, it needs to be refrigerated. But they're not generally set up the same way a food distributor is. And so there's a whole layer of complexity to that, too. While these are stellar.

you know, Fortune companies, these are huge companies. They're salespeople in their management and their logistics aren't set up for it. So where you may be distributing to casinos in Las Vegas, it may be 118 degrees outside. They'll leave your cold chain product on a dock outside because they're used to people just grabbing it two hours later or whatever else and bringing it into the warehouse.

Well, we can't do that. We need the expertise of a food distributor where they're used with like produce, walking the product into the cooler and actually stocking it on the shelves. And so it's refrigerated and cold chain all the way through custody.

Jessie Ott (1:06:43)
Mm-mm.

All the way through. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. Because the general three tiered system that we know from our side, they don't have the technology, they don't have the understanding or the means really to be able to execute that. So I think that's perfectly done. So are you using like PFG or? Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (1:07:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So we're really fortunate that like the top three in the country have us. it's a unique enough item where it's interest, but it, know, Jesse, it's like anything that you've seen in our industry, right? When you have these enormous distributors, it's like the death star. Like you're just like, you're this little rebel force. We're 10 people and we have these

Jessie Ott (1:07:24)
Okay.

Yeah.

You're Luke.

Ken MacKenzie (1:07:48)
huge entities where I've been with some of them for five or six years and they're like, what is it? What do you have? Do we have that in our system? You know, it's a continuous cycle of build. And the fortunate part is I'd say, you know, we're getting relatively enough attention where the accounts are going for pull through. So we're starting to really change the outlook of where

When we grew up, or at least when I grew up, I'm sure I'm older than you, but the thing being that mixers had a really negative assignment to them. They were seen in neon green, high fructose, corn syrup, cloudy. Like, how long has this been here? Oh my God. And you could never like anchor a party with it. Like it was just a, this is all we have.

Jessie Ott (1:08:32)
Yep.

Ken MacKenzie (1:08:45)
Like this is what we're gonna use. And so I never name by names, but I will say that was kind of the standard. And so for the industry on our side, what people look at is like, well, you know, we highlight the spirits, we'll lead with, hey, it's Ocho tequila, or it's, know, whatever's on the menu for the margarita or for the daiquiri or whatever. But we're not used to psychologically giving credit to the mixer.

Jessie Ott (1:09:13)
Right.

Ken MacKenzie (1:09:13)
Now, you know what's kind of changed that? Like just as we've come up is like Fever Tree is a great example of a company that went premium, didn't apologize for it. And, know, in London, they were saying, you know, years back, are you nuts? You're charging four times more than the average competition. This will never work. Well, look at their valuation now. It totally worked. And they didn't apologize. And so the cache of that kind of

Jessie Ott (1:09:20)
Great example. Yep.

Thank

Yeah, totally worked. Nope.

Ken MacKenzie (1:09:41)
premiumization is there people are proud to put Fever Tree on the menu. It's becoming the same thing with Fresh Victor. When we launched, people were like, we don't know who you are. You know, we don't want to lead with this on our menu. Well, now they're realizing, hey, they can superimpose our ingredient panel that you have in front of you. Just take the ingredients and put it on our menu. We're OK with saying a Fresh Victor Mexican lime and agave margarita. A Fresh Victor three citrus and mint mojito.

Jessie Ott (1:10:10)
yeah,

they can make so many more cocktails.

Ken MacKenzie (1:10:15)
Yeah, so that brand recognition for me is really, really important. It's what I take so much pride in with my family. It's why we did it, right? And so I get it. I totally get it that it's an evolution, that it didn't happen overnight. It didn't happen in a year or two. What ends up happening is me imploring them, I'd like some level of credit for this. I'd like you to be proud to be serving what we have. And I know you're not used to being proud, but now you can be. And that's starting to work fine.

Jessie Ott (1:10:20)
100%.

Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (1:10:43)
It took a number of years. Now we're seeing it more and more. And if we can get that brand equity, a recognition on premise on menus, and then off premise with consumers where they have it in their fridge, like you will this weekend, your in-laws can see it in your fridge. That rills me to no end. This was not something I was thinking about last night. But yet here we are. It's the same thing to see. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:10:59)
Yeah.

Here we are.

What's your outlook? What do you think about the next couple of years?

Ken MacKenzie (1:11:13)
I think we have a real window to make an impact. I really do. And I don't say that lightly. I know it sounds like, man, that's a strong statement, but there's very few touch points, I think, in our industry. And you're right there in it. So you know this. Man, if I on this podcast with you and I told you, hey, I have a brand new 100 % agave tequila, great. You you could taste it and you can go, hey, man, this is really good.

You've seen that before and you've seen a lot of it. It's the same with vodka, it's the same with rum, it's the same with gin. With this, we're in this kind of what I'll call white space where it's not an ocean of other players, it's more of a movement.

Jessie Ott (1:11:42)
Yeah. A lot.

Yeah, movement. And that's harder.

Ken MacKenzie (1:12:00)
It's much harder. I'm seeing, you know, we're seeing a general movement where spirits had a real Renaissance resurgence, where it's like people are proud to mix good, delicious drinkers, delicious, delicious mixers make delicious drinks. So they're proud to use delicious ingredients to make really good high end drinks with spirits. You know, for a long time, I was hearing for years, maybe decades.

Well, I don't want to buy a premium product and mix with it. That's a waste. said, aren't you still consuming it? Isn't it still going in your body? It's the exact same thing if you save it or if you take it in a mixed drink. It's just the quality level of the benchmark. So we've gotten to that point. But then also with younger people, there seems to be a little bit more of what I'll call a temperance movement of we're not drinking as much alcohol. We're going low alcohol or no alcohol.

Jessie Ott (1:12:32)
Right.

Ken MacKenzie (1:12:58)
We're able to play in that playground too, just as effectively. And what I say is you don't have to emulate perfect, mirrored non-alcoholic options the same way we do cocktails. Take ingredients that you're really into and just play around. what I mean by that, shrubs, using vinegar as a substitute for alcohol. It has that same.

Jessie Ott (1:13:00)
Yep. Yeah.

Ken MacKenzie (1:13:23)
acidic crisp snap to it. And so you're getting that burn a little bit. And when you mix it with our citrus based, you know, mixers, it's fantastic for shrubs or for anything else. And so there's a lot of ways to use fresh fricter. I infuse our stuff a lot with green and black teas. You do all sorts of carbonation. I'm doing everything from Fever Tree of course, to Q to Liquid Death.

Jessie Ott (1:13:41)
yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ken MacKenzie (1:13:49)
has a ton of stuff where I'm able to take the tall boy cans and mix in some carbonation. But there's a lot of ways to use our stuff. And so I'm excited for this next two to three years to see what kind of impact we can make on changing the way people drink on premise, changing the people drink off premise, and really making sure people are sticking to quality.

Jessie Ott (1:13:50)
Yeah.

Nice.

Okay. I love it. Well, I think you've nailed it. I think these products are amazing and you're on a mission. You're passionate, obviously. It sounds like you got a great team behind you. You got great partners. You got great leaders and your adjacent mentors that seem to have been really impactful to really help you to get to where you are today and will help you get to where you want to be tomorrow.

Ken MacKenzie (1:14:19)
We do.

Jessie Ott (1:14:34)
Thank you so much, Ken. This was been such a great experience for me. Really, I'm all in on these flavors and 100 % behind the movement of cold press because I think it's essential to get it to be really fresh and hold this flavor.

Ken MacKenzie (1:14:51)
Thanks.

Thank you so much, Jesse. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you having me on this morning.

Jessie Ott (1:14:59)
Well, I really appreciate it. I guess we will go back and forth. No, no, no, I appreciate it. No, no, you appreciate it. But it is kind of like one of these mutual things where we just really have a great discussion. I love learning about people's stories and their journeys and like you have an exceptional product and an exceptional company and I just wish you all the best.

Ken MacKenzie (1:15:02)
Yeah.

Thank you so much for the kind words. means the world to us.

Jessie Ott (1:15:24)
Good. Yay. That makes me feel good. Yay. All right. Well, I will let you get back to it and I will report on the success of the cocktails I make tonight. If the hardest thing is a garnish, I got it.

Ken MacKenzie (1:15:33)
I can't wait. You have my email. Yeah. You have my email.

You have me text, email, call, whatever you like to do, whatever is easiest.

Jessie Ott (1:15:43)
Okay. Well, what's, what's kind of cool too, is that you started out your journey with your love story and we are recording today, which we were supposed to do last week, but it happens to be Valentine's day. So I thought that that was kind of a neat little intro. Yeah. Happy Valentine's day. Have a good weekend and we'll be in touch.

Ken MacKenzie (1:15:54)
It does.

Monday's day Paulina.

You as well. Have a great weekend.

Jessie Ott (1:16:07)
You too. Okay, bye.

Ken MacKenzie (1:16:09)
Take care.