Real Cocktails, Real Ingredients 🍋🌿 Owl’s Brew Story with Co-founder Maria Littlefield

This week 📢I talk🎙️with Maria Littlefield, Co-founder of Owl's Brew made with only premium clean ingredients! 👏🍷 🎇 🎉 ✨ 👏 🥂 😁

Explore how Owl’s Brew is reinventing RTD drinks with real tea & botanicals 🍋🌿 and transparent labels that consumers love. 🍹💥 Clean cocktails explained + brand story!  ⁨@ThirstyThursdaysat3PMEST⁩  

In this episode of Thirsty Thursdays, Maria Littlefield, Co‑Founder of Owl’s Brew, shares how they built a clean‑ingredient RTD brand long before it became a trend. 🍹 From brewing tea in buckets at events to scaling canned cocktails in 22+ states, Owl’s Brew stands out in a crowded market by choosing real tea, botanicals, and juice instead of artificial flavors and lab compounds.

🔥 Key Takeaways:
• 🧪 Clean Ingredients First: Real tea and botanicals create authentic flavor.
• 📜 Transparent Labels: They fought to list sugar & nutrition — most spirits don’t.
• 📊 Consumer Shift: People now read labels and demand real food quality in drinks.
• 🛒 Retail Noise: RTD shelves are crowded — deep consumer pull is bigger than shelf presence.
• 🤝 Brand DNA: Authentic stories and community build loyal drinkers.

Buy them today! https://www.theowlsbrew.com/

NOW ON YOUTUBE!!! Thank you for Listening! Join us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter!

Host Jessie Ott's Profile on LinkedIn

Chapters

• 3:20 Life in New York City: Community and Experiences
• 6:05 The Impact of Studying Abroad
• 7:04 Transitioning to New York: Career Beginnings
• 8:22 The Birth of Owls Brew: From Tea to Cocktails
• 10:55 Crafting Unique Beverages: The Process and Inspiration
• 13:34 Health Benefits of Tea and Botanicals
• 16:11 Personal Health Journeys and the Power of Tea
• 18:32 Owl's Brew Mission and Community Engagement
• 21:33 The Journey of Brew Lab and Drink-Wise
• 24:01 Collaboration with Chelsea Handler
• 31:31 Building a Network of Mentors
• 35:03 Navigating Challenges in the Beverage Industry
• 37:38 Tools and Resources for Success
• 43:18 Creating a Positive Company Culture
• 45:54 The Rise of Non-Alcoholic Beverages
• 54:51 Consumer Trends in Alcohol
• 1:03:24 Future of Alcohol Industry and Personal Insights
• 1:04:41 Introduction and Tasting Overview
• 1:05:04 Exploring Sutton Teas: Nostalgia and Flavor
• 1:07:26 Diving into Blueberry Lemon and Strawberry Basil
• 1:11:29 The Benefits of Tea and Botanicals
• 1:14:25 Introducing the Variety Pack and Pricing
• 1:15:54 Collaboration with Chelsea Handler
• 1:18:40 Classic Vodka Lemonade: A Nostalgic Twist
• 1:22:47 The Importance of Feedback in Product Development
• 1:23:36 Exploring Boozy Teas and Their Popularity
• 1:25:05 Anticipating New Product Launches

Transcript

Maria Littlefield (00:00)
everything we do, use 100 % clean ingredients. We believe that even if you're drinking, you should still know what you're putting into your body. you're like, real ingredients actually taste real. They taste better. They don't taste like some chemical compaction in a can. And so that's the premise of everything we do that kind of carries through line,

Jessie Ott (00:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly.

Maria Littlefield (00:18)
we had to literally fight with the TTB to put sugars and nutrition panel on our cans. It is not something that you're required to put on at all, which is mostly why most vodka, bourbon, no one has nutrition panels. It's not a requirement. It's the only thing that you consume that you don't actually have to label what's inside, which is crazy.

Jessie Ott (01:06)
Hello everybody. And welcome to Thursday Thursdays. I am Jessie Ott and I have an exciting guest today, Maria Littlefield, Co-Founder of Owls Brew. Welcome Maria.

Maria Littlefield (01:17)
Thanks, so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jessie Ott (01:19)
⁓

Yeah, of course. I'm super pumped. This is an awesome product. There's a big story behind this brand and I can't wait to dig in. But first and foremost, where are you calling from?

Maria Littlefield (01:30)
I am calling from New York on this Thirsty Thursday. ⁓ Yeah, I live in New York City.

Jessie Ott (01:33)
Yay!

Nice. I lived there for a minute. you know, let's see. had, I had 9-11, the blackout. what else? Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (01:45)
And then you were, that was good, you were done.

You know, New York, I think it's like a place you either live for a few years and leave, or it's like, you're like, I'm never going to leave. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (01:56)
Yeah, I

agree. I agree. I enjoyed it. It was kind of lonely because it was kind of hard to meet people. But then once you kind of met people, they're kind of friends for life. You know?

Maria Littlefield (02:06)
Yep, it's,

yeah, 100%. New York has this amazing way of making this huge city feel very small when you build your community. It's like, we all live in this gigantic city, but it's crazy how much I run into people. It's like a little neighborhood that you just, I know spending a lot of time in your neighborhood versus this big, it's not like Times Square, right?

Jessie Ott (02:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I went to BC Brooklyn and stayed in, Sunnyside. And I forget how pretty that neighborhood is. It is so nice there.

Maria Littlefield (02:31)
yeah. Yeah.

pretty. Yeah. Parkside Brooklyn don't

feel at all like a city. I mean, they're just beautiful. Even the parks out, it's all just so pretty. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (02:39)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I was like, okay, Jes, you need to make a lot of money and buy one of these houses out here. There's my goal. I got a bucket list. Yeah. Vision board. There you go. I lived in an apartment in Queens, when I lived in New York and I lived there for like three years. The blackout I was.

Maria Littlefield (02:52)
Yeah, board, bucket list, whatever.

Nice.

Jessie Ott (03:04)
I was in the Empire State Building on the 69th floor working for a magazine, had my rollerblades. And so we had a rundown, literally rundown, 69 flights of stairs. And I rollerbladed up to 54th and had a few drinks with the coworker of mine. And then I literally rollerbladed home to Queens.

Maria Littlefield (03:19)
You as you deserve, yeah, you deserved a few drinks and anything else. Honestly, that's really impressive roller blade. I don't think I could roller blade like more than two blocks, so, amazing.

Jessie Ott (03:20)
I was so hungry, I everything in the refrigerator and then went to the bar.

We were playing pool by candlelight. It was great.

I don't know that I could anymore.

I kick em around in the garage a little bit, but I haven't dared to put him on.

Maria Littlefield (03:44)
Were you like a roller blader though? That's so cool. ⁓ I'm like a-

Jessie Ott (03:47)
No, no,

I don't even remember why I had em at work. It's just really weird.

Maria Littlefield (03:51)
Yeah, okay. Fair.

Well, they were good for that moment.

Jessie Ott (03:55)
Yeah, they were, they were perfect. I didn't have to walk like everybody else did. But you know, in times like that, New York is, it was awesome because everybody was cooking food outside and it was like, you know, community and that was really cool.

Maria Littlefield (03:57)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. A little faster. Exactly.

⁓

Yeah, New York really comes together. ⁓ I was here for this big hurricane, what was that, Hurricane Sandy, I guess, which was also crazy. Yeah, like half of it was all, yeah. But it was amazing. People were taking each other in, bringing each other food. It was like, we lived in the Upper East Side at the time, and we were basically running a hotel. Our friends were sleeping on the floor. ⁓

Jessie Ott (04:14)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. That was bad.

So are you from New York?

Maria Littlefield (04:37)
I'm not originally. I was born on Martha's Vineyard, actually. ⁓ Little island off of Mass, yeah. And then I moved to Connecticut, went to school there, and then school in upstate New York, and then I moved here after college. Yeah, so like this area, but ⁓ not New York City.

Jessie Ott (04:41)
Nice.

Okay. I... Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So I saw on LinkedIn that you went to school in Italy.

Maria Littlefield (04:58)
I went abroad in Italy, yeah. That was super awesome. I went to school at Skidmore in upstate New York, but then I did an abroad at Lorenzo de' Medici in Italy. And I always tell everyone, I was like, even my brothers, I like basically forced them to go abroad. I'm like, it was the most incredible experience. Yeah, did you go abroad? Yeah. Yeah, amazing.

Jessie Ott (05:15)
Most it is. I did. I lived in France for a year. Yeah. It

was incredible. They were, and I'm still friends with these people today. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (05:25)
It's like,

I just feel like at that time in your life, like you grow up so much in that experience too, right? You're like navigating a foreign country on your own, learning a different language, or most places, right? Like, I mean, France and I wouldn't speak Italian. And I don't know, it's just like, it is such a core memory in my life. ⁓ Yeah. And traveling, shapes you like just like.

Jessie Ott (05:34)
Yep.

It was... Yeah, it shapes you too.

Maria Littlefield (05:50)
It's also amazing to travel around Europe with a couple of your friends. So yeah, that was.

Jessie Ott (05:55)
I

remember seeing these, I was in Amsterdam visiting a friend and I was on a train and they're like, are you American? I'm like, yeah. And they're like, you Americans, you just get out and travel everywhere. I'm like, well, why don't you? It costs nothing. Yes.

Maria Littlefield (06:06)
Yes, it was.

were always calling on, what was it, like Ryan Air or something, and they didn't have,

remember they didn't have like seats, was like, you'd like, the door open, you'd like sprint to the plane to try to get on.

Jessie Ott (06:19)
Your suitcases can be this big.

Maria Littlefield (06:21)
It was

like Wild West when the doors opened, everyone was piling on these orange, they were like some crazy color, I don't know, anyway. I don't even know if that's what I was but I very, very distinctly remember that sprinting onto Ryan Air Flights.

Jessie Ott (06:28)
Yeah

Yeah.

Yeah, I've taken many of those flights. Yeah, it costs nothing. If you can plan it ahead of time, it's a great way to get several places. The trains just aren't cheap. But air is for some reason. But it does kind of suck because sometimes the airports aren't very close to the city center or whatever, but cab right away. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (06:39)
Yeah, they were like, for 50 bucks or something, right? ⁓

Yeah, yeah, no.

More adventure, yeah.

Jessie Ott (07:05)
All right. So you went to college in New York you Upstate New York.

Maria Littlefield (07:09)
Upstate New York. Yeah. Saratoga.

went to Skidmore, which is up in Saratoga Springs. ⁓ Great little town if you've never been. Yeah, it's super fun.

Jessie Ott (07:15)
Gotcha.

Alright, well, I'd like to get up there. I'd love to

get up there and drive around and see the foliage at some point. know it's...

Maria Littlefield (07:26)
yeah, it's beautiful. And they obviously like up to Vermont too, like all New England is very, we're good at leaves up there. But also Saratoga has this, they have a racetrack for horse racing. And so in the summer, it's just like a super vibrant, very lively town. Tons of like live music, tons of like cool outside bars, restaurants. It's like a little, I don't know.

Jessie Ott (07:28)
Yeah, I bet.

Yeah.

That's fun!

Maria Littlefield (07:50)
little hub in middle of upstate New York. It's very cool. My friends and I used to go back, every summer. Now we all have like little kids and the logistics of it have been a little more challenging. But yeah, no, I would say probably about once a year we go back up. Yeah, it's a cool spot. And yeah, it's not too far from here. Yeah, yeah.

Jessie Ott (07:54)
That is so cool. Do you get up there?

Yeah.

that's good. That's nice.

that's good.

Yeah. I'm from Iowa, so it's always far. Wherever I am.

Maria Littlefield (08:16)
That's a plane ride.

Yeah, you're pretty central there. ⁓

Jessie Ott (08:19)
Yeah,

definitely take to plane for that one.

Maria Littlefield (08:22)
But also I've heard it's

beautiful.

Jessie Ott (08:24)
think it is. The rolling hills and the fields with the big red barns and silos and stuff. Yeah, I mean, I'm from there, so I think it's beautiful. It's not mountains beautiful or anything like that, but we do have hills and cliffs and, you know, farms. Lots of farms. A lot of hogs. A lot of corn.

Maria Littlefield (08:24)
Yeah.

Awesome. Farms. People farms, yeah.

Great, love it.

Jessie Ott (08:44)
Yeah, pork fed.

So how did you get, make your way to New York City then?

Maria Littlefield (08:50)
I mean, honestly, I always wanted to move to New York. spent a lot of time, I mean, I didn't live too far from the city, so I spent a lot of time coming in as I was younger. And when I graduated, I was pretty much had a one way track to New York. I didn't have a job, but I was super determined to move to New York. So, yeah.

Jessie Ott (08:58)
coming in, yeah.

Yeah, it was

kind of intimidating when I got here. It's like, okay, where do I start? I'm here!

Maria Littlefield (09:16)
No, no, totally. like,

yeah. I had a couple girlfriends at the time who one really wanted to move. And the other one was like, I don't know, maybe I'll like, she's from Vermont. like, maybe I'll go to Vermont, like hang out for a little while, then we'll move. And my other friends and I were like, no, we're moving now. We went to New York and we signed a lease. at that time there was a docusign. like FedExed her the lease and I was like, you better sign this. And she did. And she moved and she had a lot of fun with us.

Jessie Ott (09:39)
hahahaha

Maria Littlefield (09:43)
She still lives here. But no, that's I literally moved. It's funny. actually I moved here without a job. I was just like I'm gonna hostess or waitress or something. I'll figure it out. And the first day I moved to New York, I got an interview for an internship at

this boutique marketing agency. somehow, I still don't even remember, someone connected us somehow anyway. My couch was being delivered, I was like super stressed out. ⁓ Anyway, I ended up getting this, yeah, I ended up getting the internship. ⁓ But the point of that entire story is that, so my co-founder, Jennie, was actually who hired me at the internship. ⁓

Jessie Ott (10:09)
Ha

Wow, that is cool.

Nuh-uh.

Maria Littlefield (10:24)
Yeah, and we have been working together ever since. It's actually really funny, I was the first person that she ever hired, and so she was super late for the interview, and then she came in, we had a really great chat, and then she left the room.

but she closed the door, it was like a sliding door, but it was like a French door, know, that was like all glass, like I could see through. And she was just like pacing back and forth in front of the door for like 10 minutes. And then just came back and was like, you're hired. I was like, what?

Jessie Ott (10:52)
Hehehehe

Wish you meditating.

Maria Littlefield (10:57)
She

was like, so now obviously when she tells the story now, she was like, I was like having an internal like conundrum. Like I couldn't figure out, she's like, is this the first person I've ever interviewed? This is my first hire ever. Like, do I just like her that much? Or do I just like anybody? What should I do? Like, yeah, so then yeah, we worked together for a couple of years at the marketing agency before starting, obviously, Alice Brewer, but that's how we met.

Jessie Ott (11:11)
Hahaha

That's pretty cool.

What kind of products did you market? Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (11:24)
at the marketing firm.

So we worked in a, so it was a boutique agency, was very much like on the celebrity side of things, and then Jennie and I were on the, like it was, they would do like appearances or, you know, celebrity endorsements or, you know, at the time there was like gifting suites and things like that. And,

Jennie and were on the brand side, we would actually activate the brands at a lot of these big lifestyle events. So we would do Axe Lounge in the Hamptons, or took the Axe Astronauts to the Derby one year. So things like that. So it was kind of bringing brands. It's called integrated marketing, but it's kind of a fuzzy term. But it was really just bringing brands to life.

Jessie Ott (11:57)
That's cool!

Maria Littlefield (12:06)
kind of in those like culture spaces. Yeah, yeah, was super, it was great. It was really awesome, first job. I like learned so much. And it's interesting so much about that side of things was such a good foundation in a weird way for what we do now. Of course, like on the marketing side, but also like on the production side and like putting things together. It's really very similar to like actually putting a product together, right? If you're putting an event together and you're like, okay, the table needs to arrive, we need the.

Jessie Ott (12:07)
Have fun.

Maria Littlefield (12:32)
display, we need the backdrop, we need the lighting, need this. It's like very similar to making a product, right? You're just like coordinating all this stuff to come together at one time. So anyway, yeah. yeah, that's it. then during that time, Jennie had a family that was sick. And she was looking for ingredients that could help them and kind of came up on the whole world of like tea and botanicals and plants and was like amazed that you could drop something in water and have all these amazing benefits.

Jessie Ott (12:34)
Right. Yep.

Maria Littlefield (12:54)
And so she started blending for function. like, you know, looking at things that have anti-inflammatory properties or immune boosting properties. And when we were in the office and you were like sick, like you should make use some sort of like immune boosting one. Like for a long time, actually we had a tea company first and there was a blend called the Little Field that was like fennel and stinging nettle and all these like incredible properties from when I was sick one day. Like all the restaurants, yeah, it was really funny, like restaurants and the same thing. my gosh, yeah, it was amazing.

Jessie Ott (13:15)
Hehehe

That's awesome. Did it help?

Maria Littlefield (13:22)
Tea and botanicals are like amazing healing properties. Truly. Yeah. ⁓ amazing. true. I have some spiked tea on me. That's how we start, Radhya. ⁓ But anyway, yeah, so we started like, she would like blend for like people in the office. I mean, she had all these like different bags of concoctions in the kitchen.

Jessie Ott (13:26)
Yeah, I love tea. I'm drinking some right now, actually. Yeah.

There you go. That's we're we'll get to that soon. Hopefully. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (13:48)
of this, like we worked out of this like old brown zone and we started hosting tea cocktail parties. So we were very social at the time and going out a lot and hosting clients a lot and we're like, hey, why is this margarita neon green? Or why when I have like one sip of whatever that is, do I have an immediate headache? Like what's actually in these cocktails? Like what are we actually drinking? And just started peeling back the layers a little bit of the alcohol industry and realized that like,

nothing is as it seems. It's all like bunch of slogan mirrors and a lot of really like fuzzy labeling that's intended to be fuzzy because they don't want you to know what's inside. And so we just were like, we don't want to drink that way. And honestly just started spiking all this tea and botanicals and that she had in the office and like recreating some of like, first was super basic, like, oh, let's make like a cranberry vodka, but we'll make a cranberry to tisane instead. It's sort of recreating. And then we just realized that like,

the world was kind of like endless with flavor and you could do so many incredible things and they were amazing and you also felt so much better. And you got this delicious flavor without like the weird aftertaste and like the stickiness and all that kind of crazy stuff. anyway, a lot of story but yeah.

Jessie Ott (14:51)
Yep.

That's really cool. I would love to have some of those tea

concoctions that I'm feeling under the weather today. I'm feeling this today. You know, like that would be so cool.

Maria Littlefield (15:07)
You can go,

you can have caffeine, you can go up, you can go to go to sleep. Like there's something for every time.

Jessie Ott (15:09)
Hahaha.

Well, I'll tell you the power of tea from my experience. I had breast cancer last year. was stage zero because they can catch it so early. We have another friend that got pre-cancer. I don't even know what that means, but yeah. So anyway, they're just getting so good at it, right? Yeah, it's amazing.

Maria Littlefield (15:16)
Wow, I'd love to.

guess we're gonna get it. That's the best time to get, yeah. ⁓

my god. Yeah, no, it's amazing, I mean.

Jessie Ott (15:36)
And one of the first things my doctor told me was that I had a pretty aggressive type and so they recommended radiation. And so I did that for like 21 days or whatever. And she said the really cool thing about, it's not cool having radiation, but she said, one of the things that you'll do is you'll have a cream that they want you to use, but then you put on a, spray, can even put,

green tea in a spray bottle and you spray the area where they're radiating because that has so many antioxidant properties that that's what they use for radiation. That's powerful to me.

Maria Littlefield (16:11)
That's so powerful. like, honestly gives me chills. mean, obviously tea is powerful, but that's incredible. It's incredible that, and what an amazing use of like tea, right? The healing power and.

Jessie Ott (16:18)
Yeah, so.

Yeah. And they're like, don't get

the fancy crap, just green tea. So I still use it today. Sometimes. Yeah. And I'm like, well, if I should be putting this on, you know, where I got radiation, shouldn't I just be putting it on my face? Yes. So like for two weeks, I did it. did it. I did it for the, took the tea bag and took, just sprayed everywhere. It was like,

Maria Littlefield (16:29)
Yeah. Yeah. Great.

put on everywhere, my face, my, yeah, everywhere. Drink it, bathe in it, yeah.

Jessie Ott (16:46)
meditating and I'm like, this is awesome.

Maria Littlefield (16:49)
Maybe we shall be taking like green tea baths. mean...

Jessie Ott (16:52)
Yeah.

I mean, why is, why is green tea not in more cosmetics? I suppose it probably is. just don't buy them.

Maria Littlefield (16:57)
Stupid.

I mean, it probably is, but it's not like talked about and I mean, new business venture. But wow, I'm so glad you're okay. And that's amazing, but I'm so glad you're okay. So that was it. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (17:03)
There you go. I have, I have enough.

yeah, thank you. No, it was,

it was, it wasn't bad. It just, you know, the, mental part of it kind of got tough. Like just processing it honestly is, is it, that's where I kind of got caught up. And between, between that, the estrogen blockers I have to take now, perimenopause, like losing weight is, is so hard.

It's thing. mean, there's a reason

Maria Littlefield (17:30)
Well, listen.

Jessie Ott (17:35)
the GLP-1 drugs are being used.

Maria Littlefield (17:37)
I mean, just, yeah, I can't believe I mean, a mental load, after it, I mean, yeah, probably changes who you are in a lot of ways, yeah.

Jessie Ott (17:43)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I think, I think that, you know, it's so common now, you know, my wife had breast cancer, my mom had breast cancer. Yeah. I guess they say, and I read this in a book in the doctor's office that one in eight women will get breast cancer. So, you know, I know everybody's busy, but it is so important that you get your breast examined every year. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (17:54)
⁓

So we actually

we partner with a charity called Keep a Breast. They're every year we're like five days or so we're kicking off our campaign with them in October. But it really is just about that. Like just a reminder to there we do this whole campaign that is a QR code that links to their app and it's a self check app and it just like it's like alerts you every month. It's like reminders. It's like how to check.

And anyway, every person that downloads app, we donate a dollar. Yeah, I mean, it's just, again, so important to take care of ⁓ and self-care. Not just in October, but all the time.

Jessie Ott (18:38)
that's cool.

Yeah. It is self-care, especially as entrepreneurs. Right.

100%. 100%. Get your teeth cleaned. You know, just get it done. That's awesome.

Maria Littlefield (18:51)
Get your teeth cleaned, go to the doctor, take your green tea baths.

gonna

try that, it sounds very relaxing actually.

Jessie Ott (18:59)
Yeah, it does. I also heard apple cider vinegar in a bath. Have you heard of that one?

Maria Littlefield (19:04)
Not as a bath. I've certainly, people certainly drinking it. But you know, if you put it inside, I guess why not outside? Yeah.

Jessie Ott (19:10)
I

don't know. I don't know anything about it. just, you're talking baths and I'm like, yeah. So you're in the office. She's, Jennie's mixing all these cool teas and you're making now cocktails with these botanicals and teas and whatnot.

Maria Littlefield (19:13)
Cool. Cool.

Yeah.

So honestly, we started hosting, we called them tea cocktail parties, which just were pretty much that we were brewing in buckets. After we were like, wait, these are so good. So all sorts of things we, I mean, even now we use, we use every like botanicals and teas and really across our line things are very, it just depends on the flavor. Jennie along the way became a tea sommelier. ⁓

Jessie Ott (19:33)
What kind of tea?

Okay.

That's cool.

Maria Littlefield (19:49)
And

yeah, so she she handcrafts everything we make in her kitchen still. We don't make anything in like a lab or anything like that. It's truly like literally handcrafted by her. And so, for example, like this is a I'm one of our flavors right here. I have a sun tea and vodka and this is vodka with rooibos, there's a little black tea, lemon and blueberry. And then I have the Chelsea Handler vodka lemonade, which is our

like spin on a lemonade that we made with Chelsea. it's like vodka, there's lemon verbena, there's a little bit of cranberry juice and rose hips to give it a little bit of pink. So everything is a little bit of a spin, but we use botanicals and teas in the base of everything that we do. But anyway, we were hosting these tea cocktail parties and then we were in the event where all this I mentioned before, so we were like, well.

Jessie Ott (20:24)
Cool.

Mm-hmm.

Maria Littlefield (20:38)
pop up and do this at Superbowl or our puzzle or dance or we're flying around the country with like tea in our suitcases. TSA like thought we were definitely up to no good. We always had like those tags. They're like, what are, what is this? This bag of herbs. And yeah, we looked like so sketch. And anyway, so we were like, you know, we would show up at events and literally brew in buckets for like hundreds of people.

Jessie Ott (20:52)
Uh-huh. Herbs.

Wow.

Maria Littlefield (21:03)
When

we, yeah, we did like an Art Basel event and like all we ever wanted was like water, a water source. We're like, so can we like use the kitchen? They're like, the kid, they're like, no problem. Of course we get there. Like the kitchen's too crazy. You guys can't come in here. We were like, what? okay. So we brew, yeah, we literally brewed in our shower for like a thousand people. And then we all did on this like rickety cart over to the event and out of our room, our room looked like it was like a.

Jessie Ott (21:18)
You got a hose? ⁓

Maria Littlefield (21:30)
So it's like something bad happened with tea. But anyway, so lots of funny stories about that. But long story short, we geared up. launched a, so we had the Tea Company, which we sold. then we had a mixer product, which we still have our mixers. And then in 2020, we launched our canned version, which is what I was just showing you. So those are spiked. So we a non-alcoholic mixer. And then we have a line of handcrafted cocktails. So there's vodka, we have rum, tequila.

Jessie Ott (21:33)
You

Maria Littlefield (21:56)
of line of hard seltzers. And yeah.

Jessie Ott (21:58)
Wow. So did you, so did you guys, so you kind of have jumped together. So you were with the marketing company, then, then you went to the next place with her too. And that's where you were doing the.

Maria Littlefield (21:59)
Yeah, journey. A boozy journey.

So while we were at the marketing

firm, yeah, so Jennie I met and at the time, as I said, she was starting to get really into tea and botanicals and we started a tea company called Brew Lab that was all really B2B. There wasn't too much of a consumer aspect of it, but we did all the teas for like Sweet Green, if you know them, like a lot of like the fast casual places in New York and then like

Jessie Ott (22:32)
Okay.

Maria Littlefield (22:33)
So how, Sumomabuku, like really awesome, awesome places, but very New York based. And Jennie would literally work with like the chefs or the owners and like come up with a custom tea menu. then, yeah, which was super cool. And like, so, I mean, I think they still are carried if you, like, we don't, I was like, we sold the company, like all the like tea dispensers at Sweet Green, we would do all their iced teas and stuff like that.

Jessie Ott (22:44)
Wow, that is cool!

that's cool. Have fun.

Maria Littlefield (22:57)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. then, yeah,

and then we, then we did the mixer. Yeah. So then we sold that and then we had our mixers. And then we, after we BrewLab, we geared up and launched our canned spiked versions. But that whole idea, I just, I said, just to tie it all together, the whole idea with everything we've always done is this idea of drink-wise. So really going back to like how we got here, right, is we...

Jessie Ott (23:12)
So.

Maria Littlefield (23:22)
everything we do, use 100 % clean ingredients. We believe that even if you're drinking, you should still know what you're putting into your body. you're like, real ingredients actually taste real. They taste better. They don't taste like some chemical compaction in a can. And so that's the premise of everything we do that kind of carries through line,

Jessie Ott (23:29)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly.

Maria Littlefield (23:41)
whether it's like our sun tea and vodka, our vodka seltzers, our vodka lemonade, our rum mojitos

It's all made from fresh brewed tea and botanicals and only like clean ingredients or real juice, premium spirits, etc.

Jessie Ott (23:52)
That's cool. Cause I see hashtag drink wise here on your, on your website. So,

What is the wise, the owl, the wise and the owl kind of go together? Okay. So that's cool. That's really cool. how. Yeah, that's really cool. so talk about, or can we switch over to this Chelsea Handler Baca that you made? Like how did.

Maria Littlefield (24:01)
Yes. The wise owl, yes, yes. He's very wise. Yeah.

Yeah, Owls

Yes, of course.

Jessie Ott (24:22)
How did that even happen? Like how awesome is that? I mean, that's really cool. She's hilarious, man. We love her.

Maria Littlefield (24:25)
my god, it's been such a blast.

He, as you know, she is literally one of the funniest people and she's just funny all the time. No, it's so awesome. so, I mean, basically their team reached out. She had like a huge, still going. had a huge year this past year. And then it's like ramping into another huge year this year, but she, she turned 50 and she had this book that came out called, I'll have what she's having. If you haven't read it, you definitely should. It's historical. ⁓

Jessie Ott (24:35)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Okay. I have, it's me, vodka

or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

Maria Littlefield (24:56)
Chelsea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, about cuts me Chelsea. Yeah.

Anyway, all of her books are amazing. But the new one is awesome. And in it, there's a story about a lemonade stand that she had as a kid. Yeah, and he wasn't making enough money. So she started taking vodka from her parents and spiking the lemonade. And yeah, it's a good story.

Jessie Ott (25:10)
That's right! Yes.

I don't remember, I didn't know that.

Hahaha!

Maria Littlefield (25:22)
like hired

a neighbor for a few dollars a day and they started a very lucrative business. And anyway, long story short, she started to make enough money that she started like flying first class on her family vacations and the rest of her family wasn't coach. So that is how this Vodka Lemonade came to be. So it we

Jessie Ott (25:27)
You

Yeah, I remember seeing something about that. It's hilarious.

Maria Littlefield (25:44)
It's been so fun. We were part of the book tour. We were at the Vegas residency shows with her. And obviously, it's just been a really fun collab to bring two lives together. actually, she handpicked all the flavors. So we sat down and had a boozy brunch, if you will. We brought like gazillion and samples. And she picked the, we have a pink lemonade, a classic lemonade, and a mint. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (26:05)
Nice, mint

is hard to nail. Mint and lime, feel like they're very hard.

Maria Littlefield (26:10)
Well, so a lot of the reason that they're hard goes back to like how people, not them saying what we do is so easy, like it's very hard to produce because the industry is not set up to do things like we do. a lot of people, but everyone's, yes, exactly. It's not hard to make something that tastes like mint if you use real mint. It's hard to make something that tastes good if you don't use, like mint if you don't use mint, right?

Jessie Ott (26:23)
Yeah, you gotta stand up to these guys and tell them that, no, we don't want to cut corners and do all the things you know that...

Right.

Right.

Maria Littlefield (26:38)
or lime

if you don't use lime. so, I mean, a lot, so much of our brand is like trial and like having people try it and try it and try it and try it because it is hard to explain the difference until you taste it.

But yeah, in our mint, it's literally, it's real lemon juice, it's vodka, it's fresh-brewed mint leaves, and a little bit of lemon ravina. And so it's just this like super fresh, really refreshing vodka lemonade. It's very, that one's like very nostalgic to me. It feels like something like my grandmother would make. It's you know.

Jessie Ott (27:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. I'm a big lemonade fan. I love lemon.

Maria Littlefield (27:15)
my god, well, if we didn't, if these aren't on their way to you, we'll make sure you get some. Yeah, if the truck ever decides to come to your street. ⁓

Jessie Ott (27:19)
Okay. I see his little truck, the little FedEx man.

Yeah,

he's on country club road, is right. I mean, we're, we're a block from that road. So, so he's, he's, he's headed in the right direction.

Maria Littlefield (27:32)
Okay, all right, we're getting closer.

We obviously ship a lot of things and sometimes I just wonder how anything gets anywhere.

Jessie Ott (27:41)
I know.

Well, you know, we have a cousin in Japan and they just had their baby girl, her name is Momo. And we learned that they don't do baby showers over there. And so all of us over here, all of us ladies are like, what? And so each family got together and shipped a box over there. it must have taken only like 10 days.

Maria Littlefield (27:49)
so cute.

That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

Jessie Ott (28:05)
I was pretty impressed. She's like,

thank you for your, for thank you for everything. I'm like, wait, they got it already? How did it happen so fast? I know. I know. Yeah. was, I was.

Maria Littlefield (28:10)
Wow, I feel like it takes 10 days to ship to California sometimes. That's pretty good. Maybe international

shipping is what's up.

Jessie Ott (28:19)
Maybe? Maybe? I don't know, it's funny though.

Maria Littlefield (28:23)
Yep,

well, I'm sure she was appreciative. That's impressive.

Jessie Ott (28:26)
Yeah. I mean, we had so much fun. We had a busy summer because we were in Kentucky for a wedding. We went to Montreal. We went to Daytona. We went to St. Augustine and you know, we just, looked for little baby stuff everywhere. So she's got a little hat and a swimsuit and onesies with Montreal on it. She'll wear it for like five minutes, you know? Yeah. We found these really cute stuff.

Maria Littlefield (28:43)
And so.

what a little well-traveled baby. Yeah, that's so sweet. I love that. So thoughtful.

Jessie Ott (28:52)
socks in Montreal that have little reindeer on the bottom of them. So fun. had blast. ⁓

Maria Littlefield (28:57)
Baby clothes have

gotten so cute. I mean, totally digress. I have two little kids and sometimes I'm just like, my God, I have to stop. But they're so cute. They've gotten so cute.

Jessie Ott (29:07)
So cute. Like it was a whole new re renewed energy that we had to to to look for stuff, you know, because we haven't had a baby in a while.

Maria Littlefield (29:17)
Well,

now it's just the beginning. Now everyone's like, my God, we need that because now she doesn't fit in the other stuff.

Jessie Ott (29:23)
Yep. Got to keep the train rolling. Yeah, kids are pretty awesome. We just, in Wild, yeah, and they change you, I'm sure. We just have fur babies.

Maria Littlefield (29:25)
You've got to keep it going. exactly.

Awesome and wild, yes.

Those are honestly sometimes I think our fur baby is more work than the regular babies.

Jessie Ott (29:40)
I could see that because they want snacks all the time.

Maria Littlefield (29:41)
Yes,

it's like, they're just sometimes I'm just like, you're, you're so needy right now.

Jessie Ott (29:47)
Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (29:50)
Like my

kids are fine doing a little project or something and then it's like the dog. But we love the fur baby of course. But I'm not, it's hard. It's not just fur baby, yeah.

Jessie Ott (29:54)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, for sure. mean, the little the little the little people keep you on your toes for sure. We'll call my my my my god, my godchild, Marissa. She's my cousin. And we'll be on FaceTime and her kids are climbing like literally just climbing all over her.

And I'm like, my God, I don't know how you stand that.

Maria Littlefield (30:22)
I'm like if anyone's ever see chaos, I just record my house from like 6 to 730 Everyone's tired the wheels are falling off Everyone's wild someone's crying the dogs barking

Jessie Ott (30:30)
hahahaha

They're fighting and running around and...

Maria Littlefield (30:37)
It's fighting, it's just like so heightened.

Someone took my toy, it's like the world's ending. It's just, you know, it's a special time. It's a special time for parents.

Jessie Ott (30:43)
The world's ending.

Yeah. So, so that's really cool that someone reached out to you guys and did she have some, some criteria that she had her team kind of look for and what brand she wants? I mean, obviously she could have created her own, but she didn't, she partnered with somebody.

Maria Littlefield (31:01)
Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I mean, think first and foremost, like the product had to taste great, right? Like I think she really wanted something that she believed in. And I think she really also wanted to work with a female founded brand. I know she's a big supporter.

Jessie Ott (31:10)
Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (31:16)
of female founders and women in general and female empowerment. And so as far as I know, those were kind of the two criteria. And obviously we just like had the best time with her and I think we all really hit it off. So it was all fun and games after that.

Jessie Ott (31:31)
Did

you guys get on a call and just kind of get to know each other a little bit?

Maria Littlefield (31:35)
We

actually met at a breakfast. We had a literally a boozy brunch together where we brought all this stuff.

Jessie Ott (31:38)
Okay.

So you did the tasting

and the meeting all together like the first time? wow. You moved fast then.

Maria Littlefield (31:45)
Yes, yes,

yes, we are very fast. Maybe too fast, but we move fast. ⁓ We run with them.

Jessie Ott (31:50)
That's awesome. Well, think, yeah,

so I'm sure Chelsea was happy about that because I don't know when she reached out, but I mean, when did she turn 50?

Maria Littlefield (32:01)
Yeah.

Her birthday was February. We actually did like a super fun like boozy cake where we like had the can and like dripped alcohol down it. We did it with her publisher. Yeah, it was super fun. It was like, I'll have what she's having. But yeah, no, was all it everything launched in February. And yeah, yeah, it's not even a year old.

Jessie Ott (32:11)
that's cool.

Okay, so it's fairly new then.

Maria Littlefield (32:23)
and hit the market literally in February when her book launched.

Jessie Ott (32:27)
Nice. That's really cool. how many states are, or do you have distribution on both brands equally at this point or you still pretty much?

Maria Littlefield (32:28)
Yeah.

Yeah, pretty much. ⁓ I

mean, the laws per state are always a little bit funky, so pretty much is the answer. But we're in about 22 states, so really like coastal. And then in the center, would say like, you know, we're Texas, we're in Illinois, Chicago, the Midwest. And then we're in like Colorado, and then California, the Pacific Northwest, and then pretty much along the East Coast, we're like Massachusetts down through Florida.

Jessie Ott (32:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, nice.

Maria Littlefield (33:00)
So

kind of working on filling in now. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (33:03)
That's great.

That's, that's awesome. 14 states is good. Or 22 states is good. Sorry. I don't know why I said 14.

Maria Littlefield (33:07)
22 22. Yeah, yeah, No, no, you can find

us like, this Chelsea's vodka lemonade actually just launched at Whole Foods. So you can find us there. They have almost all of our skews.

places like Total Wine, Trader Joe's, Jewel Oskow, HEB. And then we just launched in a ton, a lot of venues. So you can also find us like if you're going to a game, like actually the Tampa Zoo just picked us up. We're at Disney, thinking of some Florida places for you. Yeah, yeah. ⁓

Jessie Ott (33:19)
Okay.

Great idea!

Disney. That's awesome. I've been

trying to get in contact with him for a while. They're tough. Yeah, that's great.

Maria Littlefield (33:47)
Yes, they're

awesome. yeah, Yeah, Total Wine in Florida, Sprouts in Florida. Anywhere in your hood, yeah.

Jessie Ott (33:56)
Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. We were about 20 minutes away from Total Wine and Whole Foods. So yeah. Yeah. When we, when we lived in Texas, we have so many grocery stores there. I don't know why, but in our neighborhood, we had three Tom Thoms, a Whole Foods and a, and a, Central Market. Yeah. Central Market. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (34:02)
there you go. Perfect.

Probably an HEB, right? Oh, essential market, HEB.

Those stores are, I mean, they're just Texas, but they're amazing. But they're also everywhere, yeah. I was like, oh god, I would spend so long wandering.

Jessie Ott (34:22)
They are. Yeah. And, and so you

find what you need at all these different locations, right? Yeah. They don't carry that yogurt there. So I have to go here. So while I'm here, I'll get it, you know, it's funny, but yeah. ⁓ yeah. So we have fresh market in Lake Mary is where I live. And that's where we ended up kind of going. And those are.

Maria Littlefield (34:28)
Yeah, you know you need a little something here.

But I to go over here.

Might as well pick up that. Yes.

Let's greet them. Welcome.

Jessie Ott (34:49)
Those are very similar experiences to Whole Foods and HB. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good start. Yeah. We're talking about all kinds of random stuff today. Well, do you want to switch over into, your, any mentors that you want to talk about?

Maria Littlefield (34:52)
Yeah, those are beautiful. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Good store.

Oh, sure. Yeah, it's such a good question. mean, I was trying to think if there was like a specific one. So I always say like, I think we built like a network of advisors, mentors and peers, some like more formal, some more informal. And then honestly, like our network of peers has also been really instrumental in figuring out, you know, there's so many things when you start a brand or you want

you launch into a new category or even going from like the non-alcohol side to the alcohol side, like there's just the regulations and like the layers. ⁓ get, you end up with very like tactical questions that you cannot Google, right? And so I would say there, there isn't like one person in particular who I would say like, we went to for everything, but we really did was we built.

Jessie Ott (35:40)
Yep.

Right.

Maria Littlefield (35:55)
legal mentors, someone who scaled a CPG brand, someone who was great at the ops side of things, someone who was great at the finance side of things. Because when you start a brand, sort of get thrown into kind of having to be pretty good at everything, right? Like you're like an expert at none, but pretty good at understanding how everything comes together. And so that for us was honestly the most valuable thing.

Jessie Ott (36:16)
Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (36:20)
again, like you're even if you're filling out like a new item form for sales team, it's like sometimes they're speaking a different language. You're like, what is that even mean? What am I doing? What are these prices they're asking for? What's an off invoice discount like? And so yeah, I would say like overall that that really was kind of the most instrumental thing. And as we've grown, like different people have plugged different holes for us. Whereas we've changed categories or evolved or like structured deals like

Jessie Ott (36:27)
Right.

Maria Littlefield (36:44)
There's just so many little facets of how it's come together that I think that the wider you can cast your net with people who are in the space or very good at a single space can really help propel you and avoid some mistakes. Yeah, so.

Jessie Ott (36:58)
Yeah.

Yeah. They're very important and you're wise to find those people that can help because operations and finance are two very, very important parts of the business that if you want to scale up to 22 states, you got to have all that in order. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (37:16)
you need inventory, yeah exactly, how

are we getting it there, yeah. Yeah, all the pieces of the back end have to be really strong, but otherwise the front end doesn't really matter, ⁓ Sales side and the marketing side, if you don't have the back end in place, that's pretty much possible.

Jessie Ott (37:27)
Right, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. What about any resources that you'd like to share?

Maria Littlefield (37:38)
Another good question, resources. So I mean, again, like I think that's like, there's no like one platform that's changed us, I don't think. It's a series of things. Like I don't, I'm not sure, at least in this world, if there's like a single, single like silver bullet, right? There's one thing that you're gonna snap. It's hard, it's a grind. It's like you fight it out in the streets pretty much.

Jessie Ott (37:57)
Right.

It's a grind.

Maria Littlefield (38:04)
But I do think there's certain like pla I hate to say it, but like Slack has really helped our team. A lot of my team has a love hate relationship with Slack, but it does help you like organize your conversations. And it really gives you all like people, whether you're in the street as like selling, you know, that's your role. You're like selling in the street or your marketing person in the office or whatever. It's just a really simple way to connect.

Jessie Ott (38:12)
yeah, okay.

Maria Littlefield (38:29)
Ask quick questions. It brings you together as a team a lot, you know, even like some we have like a wins channel where people can share wins from their market. People can share wins from operations like, hey, this all got here on time or you know, there's finance wins, there's marketing wins. So it's fun. It's fun to like, you know, have those moments to kind of bring everyone together as a team because the nature of yeah, the nature of our business is very spread out. Like we do have a couple people in our office, right? But most of it's in the fields.

Jessie Ott (38:36)
yay!

Yeah, for sure.

Maria Littlefield (38:56)
Like so much of our team is sales team and they're spread out around the country because they need to be in their markets. So I would say in terms of like actual tools, like Slack has probably been the most impactful, at least for our organization, but there's plenty of other like, you know, things that we use. We have Mondays, which is like a project management. What else do we use?

Jessie Ott (39:12)
Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (39:18)
G sheets, know, all of the normal things. ⁓ And then, I'm trying to think, the other thing that I think was for the sales team was using, we have like a, I don't know, CRM essentially for the field, and that has been instrumental in helping them in terms of actual tools, giving them a centralized place to.

Jessie Ott (39:21)
Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (39:41)
to use everything and to have their follow-ups and their information and all that.

Jessie Ott (39:44)
What tool do you guys use?

Maria Littlefield (39:45)
It's called Karma Yeah, exactly I was like that's like very and inside or you yeah it integrates Before that was like supposed to integrate but didn't quite this one this has been like a real lifesaver, but it's been really great It's an it is important yeah ⁓

Jessie Ott (39:48)
yeah, okay, so you use VIP?

Yeah, I'm actually gonna build one.

good. I'm glad to hear that. It's important. It's very important. Yeah, for sure.

Maria Littlefield (40:09)
And then, yeah, also, you said like any other podcasts or anything. I mean, like I listen to a bunch of stuff. I read a bunch of stuff. But I do kind of feel like at the end of the day, I don't know, following your gut, like listening to your business, like trying to get above your business has really been like the best for us. Bringing in really smart people. We just hired a COO president.

to who's like scale businesses before. like, he's just like, I just feel like surrounding yourself with really smart people, like it's such a good use of your money. So you're not constantly reinventing the wheel. ⁓ And so I mean, that someone who's like really great at operations, kind of what I was saying for the mentors, that's we started to do on our team. So you, you can get at least for me, I can get kind of above and you know, where are we going next versus like, it's very easy to get into the weeds.

Jessie Ott (40:46)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah, my wife always says that she hires people smarter than her.

Maria Littlefield (41:05)
100%. Higher, like everybody says, higher, slow, fire, fast. Hire people smarter than you. It can, at our stage, and this is something that our COO says, so I can't take credit for this, but he's like, this business can be built by the people, right? So, you're hiring him.

Jessie Ott (41:05)
because it, yeah.

Yes. Absolutely. And

I love hearing about that when channel on Slack, like that just, goes to show that's part of culture, right? And so when people are, I think, I think a lot of times these companies that have been around for a long time and have leaders that have been around for a long time, their, their mindset is, different than some of the new entrepreneurs that I'm,

Maria Littlefield (41:25)
Yeah.

Jessie Ott (41:44)
you know, that are out there because they, they think things differently and it's not necessarily the fault of one or the other. It's just, they're doing things as things used to be. And, you know, I went to, when I went to St. Michelle, I was so impressed because people at the top were sending emails to the whole company. I'm like, Whoa, companies do that? You could do that? Because there's always so many layers, you know, and having that open communication, whether it's just a wind channel or not.

You're all, you're lifting everybody up with those small wins. And that creates a culture.

Maria Littlefield (42:15)
100%. Exactly. you have to, and you know, like I said, like it's hard, like we, have to be able to celebrate the wins, right? Like it's a, it's a very competitive space. And so the more that we can kind of raise each other up and celebrate the wins that we all have together, um, just kind of creates more momentum going into the next win. Right. Um, so everyone on our team really loves the wins channel. We do have other channels, but the wins channel is by far the most popular.

Jessie Ott (42:29)
Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I could see why. It's always uplifting.

Maria Littlefield (42:46)
Yes, very fast responses, lots of like dancing emojis and stuff.

Jessie Ott (42:50)
In my wife's company, they give out tacos.

Maria Littlefield (42:52)
Well, that's fun.

Jessie Ott (42:53)
Yeah. So my wife's like, Ooh, I got five tacos today. Yeah. It's just something cute and kind of fun, but building culture, building camaraderie, know? Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of cool.

Maria Littlefield (42:56)
I like the food reward. Okay, all right. In slow for next time.

No, so cute. I love it. No more! 100

Like I said, we, yeah,

we like one team, one dream, right? Like you need to make sure that you all, you all kind of see the vision of where you're going and everyone wants to help each other get there.

Jessie Ott (43:14)
You

Yep. think that's really cool. So is there a particular pain point that you've overcome that you want to share with everybody that may learn from an experience?

Maria Littlefield (43:27)
So many,

I mean, what, yeah. A production, no. ⁓ Like every day there is something new. That's like, you know, the fun of it. I mean, I would say, like outside of like the challenges of kind of like breaking into the space, like I think obviously,

Jessie Ott (43:31)
They're every day, right? You're putting out fires.

Maria Littlefield (43:42)
I think one of the biggest challenges for brands like us in this space right now is literally shelf space. It's changed so much noise and it's changed so much from even like five years ago, 10 years ago, it's like a different industry, right? ⁓

Jessie Ott (43:49)
So much noise.

Totally.

Maria Littlefield (43:58)
And

there's just, there's so much innovation coming from the big brands who have a lot of control over the shelf space, right? And there is just so much noise generally. Things are here today, gone tomorrow. It's like, I'm in it and it's hard to keep up. And so I really think, I think that

truly is the hardest thing. think there's like, honestly, also like a lot of confusion on the consumer side as to like what things are and why things are this or price this or this, you know? And so for, mean, we just did like a funny Instagram thing where like, Shell's face is like the Hunger Games, but it kind of is. Honestly, like getting, yeah, there's only, those stores haven't gotten bigger, but there are,

Jessie Ott (44:15)
Yeah.

Yes.

It is. You're fighting out there for the same space.

Maria Littlefield (44:39)
well, I would guess 25 times as many brands as there used to be with, I don't know, a million times as many SKUs.

Jessie Ott (44:42)
Yep.

Maria Littlefield (44:47)
And so, yeah, so I think for us, it's like getting in, and then once you get in, that's really just the beginning, right? It's like you now need to maintain your shelf space in a way that I don't think you had to fight for so much in the past. And so I don't know if that's necessarily, I don't think that's unique to us. I think it's kind of across the board. But yeah, just you have to be so dialed on these counts.

Jessie Ott (44:54)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (45:10)
Is it filled? Is product there? What's the turd? How are we promoting? What are we doing? What are the next lovers? ⁓

Jessie Ott (45:14)
Yep. That direct to consumer

awareness and that interaction is so powerful because you got to get that pull off the shelf. I remember somebody on LinkedIn posted a picture of some store in California. I don't remember which one it was. And it was a whole like aisle of just cans. And I don't know what they were, if it was

Maria Littlefield (45:24)
100%. Yeah, you got it.

Jessie Ott (45:40)
non-alcoholic beer, like wine, I don't know. But if I were in a store and I saw that, I'd be so overwhelmed. I'd be like, let's skip this one. You know?

Maria Littlefield (45:48)
No, like literally that's what mean. Like as a consumer,

feel like it's so overwhelming. You're like, what's like, ah, like I said, like I'm in the industry and so like I can like understand, you know, I can read an ingredient label and understand what's happening, but like, the average consumer is not expected, should not be expected to do that, like suss their way through.

Jessie Ott (45:55)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, and you think about, you know, the rise of non-alcoholic ⁓ in the space. And we had our quarterly review for Q2 and Kate, with Uncle Nearest, was with a retailer. And he said that he's getting rid of half of his selection of non-alcoholics because they're expiring. And that's going to be a huge problem. And he said they're just not turning as fast as we had hoped.

Maria Littlefield (46:12)
Yeah.

for you.

Jessie Ott (46:31)
And that's where I think having alcohol actually in the product that does make it more shelf stable. So that does, that helps. I don't know, you know, what your experience rate is, but, I think that the all natural, you know, piece that you guys are really, that's the forefront of in driving, you know, a lot of the brand awareness I think is, the winning ticket, on

Maria Littlefield (46:51)
Yeah, thanks.

Jessie Ott (46:53)
reaching consumers because that's what consumers are looking for. They want real ingredients. They want it to taste good.

Maria Littlefield (46:57)
No, they, I mean, that's like that we've just kind

of, we're like, of course, we're going to innovate. want to meet our consumer where, where she or he is. and we want to have options for like any occasion they're trying to fill. But for us, like, we aren't going to like skate to the puck of whatever thing is hitting here or here. Like our, we're our brand.

Jessie Ott (47:13)
Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (47:16)
is about drink wise, right? The idea, like we want to offer things that consumers will enjoy and have fun and don't need to worry about what's inside. So that's why we're here and like that's the pillar and that's a stake in the ground and that's what we're going to keep building from. But yeah, no, there's, mean, there's, there's a lot going on in all of that world. And I don't know.

Jessie Ott (47:36)
Yeah. And it's not going to last forever. I mean,

it's, you know, I remember when Ole Smoky came out, which is a moonshine. ⁓ and then they started getting popular really fast and then everybody had a moonshine. Guess who's left. Ole Smoky You know what I mean? So I think, I think brands are, you know, people that don't have a plan, don't have financial backing that.

Maria Littlefield (47:45)
Mm-hmm. I remember that. Yeah, yeah.

Ha ha!

Jessie Ott (48:02)
that can withstand getting through this competitive point. Not everybody's gonna make it, unfortunately. And it just depends on what your strategy is. You can't go too wide before you go deep. You gotta really build that awareness one community at a time.

Maria Littlefield (48:17)
And it is, in this, I feel like in alcohol in particular, is so.

It's so crazy, like when I explain to people who aren't in this space, I'm like, they're like, oh, what if you just go national? I'm like, no, we can't. The amount of stuff that happens locally. We could be at your local bar, we could be at your local liquor store, we could be in your local grocery store, we could be at the bodega on the corner. We have to penetrate all of that first and then we can talk about.

Jessie Ott (48:37)
Yeah.

Yeah. you know, national chains isn't something you want to mess with until you got that. That's like a progression, right? Of, mean, obviously Total Wines, have regionals, you know, they have just states like I have, I have a client, Trendsetter Spirits, he's a rum, a veteran owned brand. And he get, he's in like four states with Total Wine. So they turn on states, you know,

Maria Littlefield (49:08)
yeah, no,

a lot of the, yeah, a lot of the partners like that have been really amazing about kind of like meeting brands where they are, right? Like activating States as they expand. Cause I think they, know like the challenges of kind of forcing someone to go into every state, like almost just like, just as like impossible in the way that distribution is structured these days. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (49:14)
Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah. Well, we're seeing a movement too, where the big aren't working. The big distributors aren't necessarily working that great because they can't be everything to all people. And the smaller distributors are picking up the wins. It's hard. Some people aren't making it. Again, you got to have that backing for that to get established and get it rolling. But it's a big opportunity for people who want to...

want to do that sort of thing that I am not included in that. But, you that you still have to fight the same brands, whether you're in the same house or not. Right. You're still you're still fighting that.

Maria Littlefield (50:01)
Totally. Yeah, totally. That's where we're joking

about the shelves.

Jessie Ott (50:04)
Yeah. You know, the big boys have owned a lot of space for a long time and the industry is shifting. Innovation is really important. you know, they innovate. They come out with peach. They come out with vanilla. They come out with the, know, but not like all these new brands.

Maria Littlefield (50:05)
you

Yeah.

Not, yeah, no, totally. You're just saying the industry is shifting and I just, I had the most, it's so interesting to me, like, because we started so long ago talking about clean cocktails and like, even when we were brewing in buckets, we're like, oh, it's all real ingredients, oh, blah, blah, blah, and everyone would like look at us like cross-eyed, like, what do you mean you're drinking anyway, who cares? And we'd be like, no, it's better to just, you know, have good stuff when you drink.

Jessie Ott (50:23)
Nothing like that.

What are they putting in my drink?

Maria Littlefield (50:44)
And the last year I've been at a bunch of different trade shows and events and the amount of people who've come up to our booth and picked up the can and read the ingredients, I was like, my God, times are changing. ⁓ It's happening. And they're like, you have such clean ingredients. I'm like, we do. And I'm so glad you noticed. But it really is, it's crazy. The consumer is getting trained to look. And in spirits.

Jessie Ott (50:56)
It's happening. It's happening. We're going to win this fight.

that's cool.

Maria Littlefield (51:10)
You don't even have, I mean,

we had to literally fight with the TTB to put sugars and nutrition panel on our cans. It is not something that you're required to put on at all, which is mostly why most vodka, bourbon, no one has nutrition panels. It's not a requirement. It's the only thing that you consume that you don't actually have to label what's inside, which is crazy.

On the FDA side of things, you obviously do, and the sugar, on our seltzer line, which is that side of things.

but in spirits.

Jessie Ott (51:37)
It's true.

Maria Littlefield (51:38)
No, you can say like natural flavors, me with natural flavors and that's like your whole ingredient statement. Which is just like chemicals in a lab with other chemicals.

Jessie Ott (51:42)
Ha ⁓

Yep.

Yep. Yeah. No, I truly believe that we are getting trained. People are learning. know, sugar is a big one. In particular,

Maria Littlefield (51:57)
Sugar substitutes

have been a big one, so we don't use any of that either. But also recently I've heard so much feedback like, my God, you guys don't have any like stevia or sugar substitutes in your products and seems to be something that people are very, like very aware of now. That's definitely also been a shift in like the last year or two.

Jessie Ott (52:14)
Yeah, they want, they want real sugar. If they're going to have sugar, want it. And quite frankly, those make the best drinks. I had a podcast with a bar and restaurant manager and we made a vodka drink, vodka lemonade drink. I think it was. ⁓

Maria Littlefield (52:16)
Yeah, they want real. They prefer a few grams of real. Yeah.

We gotta get you some

of our Chelsea's lemonade.

Jessie Ott (52:36)
I know,

I love it. and, he's like just a pinch of sugar. And I'm like, why am I, do we have to? And then once I experienced that as someone mixing a cocktail, you're like, it, brings all the layers of the flavors together. Yeah. It just, just a little something to kind of just, yeah. And,

Maria Littlefield (52:50)
like a light like pops. Yeah. Yeah, you don't need a lot. You just need a little sweetness to like brighten it up.

Jessie Ott (52:59)
I've noticed that those, the cocktails that I've seen in cans, those are the best, those are really the best ones. And that's really the where a lot of the, the bar, that bartenders like there's like craft cocktails is another one I interviewed Charles Jolly. don't know if you've heard of that one. He uses sugar and he's not, he's not afraid of it.

Maria Littlefield (53:16)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jessie Ott (53:21)
It's part of, you know, when you were really coming down to being an artist and bartender and a real cocktail, you know, guru, I don't, I don't know what I'm trying to say here, but, when, when you're really serious about making a really good cocktail, you got to keep true to what, what is a really good cocktail. And

Maria Littlefield (53:21)
No!

Yeah,

anything you're trying to substitute, you're ultimately that's what you're doing, right? You're like substituting, like sugar substitutes have like a weird aftertaste. Like you're not going to have that like layer of complexity because you're just at, you're like just tricking your mouth basically to taste something sweet. No, we, I mean, we very much stand by that. I just like, Jennie personally just don't, aren't like into sugar substitutes, never happened. And we just use a couple of grams of regular cane sugar.

Jessie Ott (53:52)
Right.

Maria Littlefield (54:05)
if we use sugar at all. But it just like helps, you know, brightens it up or use like a fruit juice to kind of get that little splash of fun.

Jessie Ott (54:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I know keto and you know, I've got some good friends that are really into keto. So it's funny how different groups of people come to visit. have to change the, we have to change the recipes and plans. But yeah, mean, right.

Maria Littlefield (54:22)
Mm-hmm.

Good hosts.

Jessie Ott (54:33)
and I think that has been sort of the challenge with non-ELP too is there's a lot of sugar in, in some of them.

Maria Littlefield (54:40)
Yeah,

totally. Because a lot of times they, I feel like sometimes they like try to look overcompensate a little bit for not having a spirit with the sweetness. And they become like, yeah, some of them become really sweet.

Jessie Ott (54:47)
Yeah.

So what is your outlook, whether it's, know, Al's Brew or just the industry in general or the category?

Maria Littlefield (54:59)
I'm

Well, I'll answer the category first. That's easy. I mean, I truly believe across consumer categories, but alcohol is going to be next in terms of people really going for things that are real. We saw it happen in non-alcoholic. Alcohol is always a little bit behind non-alcoholic. I mean, we have healthy soda. People want things that are made from real ingredients that do something for them. Food is fuel.

of day for our bodies and people are getting really educated about what to and what not to put into their body. And I think that's going to transition over to elk. It already is like I just told you that example of someone picking up a can and looking for the ingredients.

Jessie Ott (55:39)
Hehehehehe

Maria Littlefield (55:40)
And for me, obviously we believe this for a long time, and so it's really awesome to kind of witness that consumership, but I think in the next couple of years, it's going to be a drastic change. I think this younger generation also really cares about brands. They're very conscious consumers, right? They do a lot of research. They love to find out the story. They love to know why they're buying a brand, to believe in the brand. And so I think you're gonna see a lot more shift in that.

side as well. And then for Owls Brew, like I said, we have some kind of fun stuff. We have two big launches in 2026. New products, super exciting stuff, similar category, it's all like adjacent. But we're gearing up for that now. So you're going to see some really, really, really fun from us.

Jessie Ott (56:16)
Alright.

Cool.

We'll come back on when you're ready to launch and we'll...

Maria Littlefield (56:28)
I

need some samples and we can try those too.

Jessie Ott (56:31)
Yeah,

yeah, maybe Jennie will join us that time.

Maria Littlefield (56:33)
Yes,

we could do a live tasting or something.

Jessie Ott (56:35)
Yeah.

And it could just be a quick segment. It doesn't have to be. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That'd be fun. Yeah. Okay. Is it Chelsea stuff or is it separate?

Maria Littlefield (56:38)
No, we love to, let's do it. Why not? They're really good, trust me.

It's, I can't say what it is yet, but it's all gonna be good. And Chelsea, there's a lot more coming with Chelsea to all say, how's that?

Jessie Ott (56:48)
Okay, okay, okay, all right. It's liquid, okay? Okay.

It's liquid in a can, Jessie. That's all I got.

Maria Littlefield (56:57)
It's gonna be good.

And they're always cute cans. that's, you know, all our cans are cute. So be cute cans.

Jessie Ott (57:04)
Do you have any major passions outside of work and being a mom?

Maria Littlefield (57:07)
Oh, well, most of my free time is moming. I have two, yeah, two little kids, like I said before, they're two and four. So we go on lot of adventures together. But that's really little, yeah, no, they're little boys, they're little, like little buzz ball, a lot of energy.

Jessie Ott (57:12)
Yes.

that's little. Yeah.

Yeah.

boys. Boys, boys, boys. They are active.

Maria Littlefield (57:31)
Oh, they're

active. And when they're together, it's like there's 10 of them.

Jessie Ott (57:35)
I bet.

Maria Littlefield (57:37)
One, you're like, oh,

this is so peaceful, it's so sweet. And then together, you're like, what is happening? They doubled. But no, yeah, I mean, we spend a lot of time outside, going, we do a lot of adventures, a lot of kid-centric things right now. I would say it's kind of my other children outside of The Owl's Brew.

Jessie Ott (57:40)
What happened? They doubled.

Yeah.

So we could play a game if you want. Okay. It's just, it's kind of like a rapid fire game. It's kind of fun. just, I just ask a random question.

Maria Littlefield (58:00)
Sure, let's do it.

And I like say what comes to mind or something. Okay, great, I got it.

Jessie Ott (58:10)
All right. If you were a cocktail, which one would you be?

Maria Littlefield (58:12)
Okay, either a Margarita or a Bloody Mary. I don't know. Those are my two favorites.

Jessie Ott (58:15)
nice. Good choices. Not lime ones. ⁓

Maria Littlefield (58:17)
Depends what time of day. Depends what time of day. Morning, or

brunch, Bloody Mary, night, or margarita. Or a martini. Oh my God, I don't know. Three. Those are my three.

Jessie Ott (58:24)
Yeah.

man, a martini sounds amazing right now. I haven't had one those in a minute.

Maria Littlefield (58:29)
I might,

if I'm like going dinner with friends or whatever, dirty Ketel One martinis my go too.

Jessie Ott (58:35)
Uh, we're, we're with you on that one. We have a restaurant here that's like a burger kind of seafood place, whatever. Anyway, they have, I think it's Ketel it's Ketel Grey Goose, I don't know, but they have $10 dirty martinis. And we're like, yes. But I'll make one.

Maria Littlefield (58:50)
That's so dangerous.

Because after you click one or two,

you always think it's a good idea to have more, and it usually is not. Never works out. Seems like good idea in the moment.

Jessie Ott (58:56)
Never is a good idea. Yeah. It never works out. Yeah.

Yeah. Same with old fashions, you forget that. Yeah. There's a lot of booze in there. Yeah. Yeah. Once in a while I'll make them for my wife and I, and we'll just chill and it's just kind of fun.

Maria Littlefield (59:05)
Yes. That is just a basic glass of straight alcohol. Yeah.

Oh yeah, listen, all about it. Love a good dirty Ketel, martini, and I also love Bloody Mary or Bloody Maria. I also make those with tequila sometimes. Or margarita Something, those are my three. Yes.

Jessie Ott (59:18)
Yeah.

oooo

Are you in to michelada's?

So maybe.

Maria Littlefield (59:32)
I, you know what the best, not like a specific beer, but the best type of beer to mix with a Michelada is? A sour beer. If you make a like a really good Clamado type base and then add a sour beer, I got that hack from a restaurant here. I was like, what is in your Michelada? It is literally the most delicious one I've ever had. And they were like, we use sour beer. And after that, I

Jessie Ott (59:38)
Yeah?

Really?

Yeah. ⁓

Maria Littlefield (59:56)
always use our beer. I have to say it is.

Jessie Ott (59:59)
Interesting. I might have to go to our local brewer. He's got like 14 on tap at all times, but his lager, it's just the classic lager. ⁓ It's just so refreshing and crisp and cold and yummy, but he makes a bunch of sour beers. ⁓ I had Momo's michelada mix on. He's a veteran. He and his wife. It's actually his wife's name.

Maria Littlefield (1:00:07)
Amazing.

Get, a few.

Yeah.

So,

Jessie Ott (1:00:22)
There's there, this is made with lemon. There's no tomato in this and you can use it for Bloody Marys, but you know, yeah, if you, if you want to go in this direction on your, in your can or an ingredient, I'll connect you up because it's, I, I don't drink a lot of beer. I, yeah. And, we were at the state fair and we were,

Maria Littlefield (1:00:26)
wow.

Yeah. Yes.

You don't have a Mitchell

Jessie Ott (1:00:47)
I was just, I had, it's fun to drink a couple beers, right? I just, I'm, I tend to eat gluten free and so like, I can only have a few beers. So I was like needing something else. So I went to this other area where they had wine and like maybe cocktails or whatever. And, this guy's like, no, you should really try this michelada. This, brand is made in Austin and the owner's here somewhere. And, I'm like, I just don't want another beer, but okay, I'll try it.

Maria Littlefield (1:00:49)
Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:01:10)
blew my mind away. It was so good. I was like, my gosh, this is, I can't put this down. And he had gone to Central America and El Salvador, I think. And it was a big deal down there. And so he started researching recipes because a lot of people can't handle the acid with tomatoes.

Maria Littlefield (1:01:12)
So, so good.

So interesting. So it's like a various, it's various like spice based, yum. Sounds delicious. All right. Gonna have to try it.

Jessie Ott (1:01:30)
And so, yeah.

Yeah, vegan and lemon based, tomato free. So anyway, yeah,

I think that could be a fun little, you guys could do some fun together. ⁓

Maria Littlefield (1:01:41)
I'm all about it. Let's do something,

at least something like something on social. Yeah, I'll write it down.

Jessie Ott (1:01:46)
Yeah. And they're, they're, they're cool. I didn't, I didn't meet his wife, but, but yeah, he's, he's a, former bartender barman and veteran and good people. They're in Texas. his, recipes got so well known near Austin that the Whole Foods buyer came in to buy it from him.

Maria Littlefield (1:01:48)
So cool.

was awesome.

Jessie Ott (1:02:03)
Who could say that?

Maria Littlefield (1:02:04)
You know you made something good, yeah. Good for them, that's great. Maybe we'll have to mix up some tea micheladas or something, I don't know.

Jessie Ott (1:02:04)
That's... Yeah. Anyway, so...

Yeah. I think you could have a lot of fun with it because it's all natural. I think it's all, it's all natural ingredients in here. anyway, I don't know why I thought about that. Yeah, but that could be fun. ⁓

Maria Littlefield (1:02:17)
We'll check.

That's our standard. Yes, look at that.

Jessie Ott (1:02:28)
It

Maria Littlefield (1:02:28)
Let's no problem, we can jump back on.

Jessie Ott (1:02:30)
Yeah. Okay. let's finish the game We start. don't, I don't know where my head is today. I'm all over the place.

Maria Littlefield (1:02:33)
was like, I did a bad job with my one

answer. I sent this on a tailspin. OK, I'll try to have one answer. I couldn't decide. I don't know. It's a lot of pressure.

Jessie Ott (1:02:37)
Okay, no, it's okay.

It's a lot of pressure. What's your favorite type of food?

Maria Littlefield (1:02:45)
Okay, my favorite type of food is either sushi or I love a New York City bagel.

Jessie Ott (1:02:52)
There you go. Two very good choices. We had sushi this week in honor of Momo, our Japanese baby. Yeah. And our waitress was Japanese. And so we told her the name, her name is Momo, which means peach. I guess that's pretty common in Japan. And she's like, I love the name Momo in Japan. So it was kind of cute. Yeah. I have a story for everything today. Geez. ⁓

Maria Littlefield (1:02:58)
What better way to celebrate?

So cute, there you go.

I love it. Isn't the thing you just showed me

called Momo?

Jessie Ott (1:03:18)
Yes. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Yep. Her, I think it's Nate.

Maria Littlefield (1:03:20)
There you go. Something about MoMA meant to be today. ⁓

Jessie Ott (1:03:24)
What's your favorite place to travel?

Maria Littlefield (1:03:25)
Hmm. Okay, my favorite place to travel. Well, in the US, my favorite place to travel is probably Martha's Vineyard. I was born there and it's just really special place. ⁓ We go yeah, we go back there a lot. But like, if we're talking in the world,

Jessie Ott (1:03:34)
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:03:44)
I probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. My husband and went to French Polynesia for our honeymoon. It was insane. I've just never seen anything like it. We went to some of the more populated islands, we went to some of the more off the map islands, and it is just beautiful. It's just like untouched world. Do you know what I mean? The water is so clear.

Jessie Ott (1:03:51)
I bet that was amazing.

I bet.

Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:04:09)
Like snorkeling you just see like, like it's insane. You're just like, these are not fish like we have in the US. It is a bucket list trip. Like, for sure. It's breathtaking. Like it's just the water, if you like Google a picture and then you get there, it like actually looks like that.

Jessie Ott (1:04:15)
So I need to put that on my bucket list to dive. Okay. It sounds amazing.

Wow, that's cool. I'm glad that there's still places like that on earth.

Maria Littlefield (1:04:31)
⁓

Yes, that's why I like I gotta think of like a...

Jessie Ott (1:04:36)
Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:04:37)
bucket list. That's a bucket list.

Jessie Ott (1:04:39)
Bucket list. I like that.

we

Jessie Ott (1:04:42)
Hello everybody. I'm Jessie and I have Maria Littlefield here, with Owl's Brew. This is our tasting segment. So I'm super pumped that we get to do this again. So I really appreciate you, Maria, making more time for me to get on the podcast again and just do this little tasting.

Maria Littlefield (1:04:58)
Of course, I'm jazz. Thanks for having me. Time's up.

Jessie Ott (1:05:00)
All right. Cool. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:05:04)
Yeah, let's jump in. Maybe we'll start with the Sun Teas if you have those in front of you. Those are some of our new things. Awesome, Ooh, even better.

Jessie Ott (1:05:04)
Thanks.

Yeah, let's do that. I've got the blueberry lemon. Ooh, these are nice and cold too. Got the strawberry basil.

Maria Littlefield (1:05:16)
Silence.

Jessie Ott (1:05:16)
and the half tea half lemonade.

Maria Littlefield (1:05:20)
Perfect. You can start with that one. The half tea half lemon is kind of like our classic like spin on an Arnold Palmer. It's one of our newer products. Yeah, it's just like super, I mean, you have talked about it. I think it's super delicious and very clean. It's like black tea. use, I know we talked about this, use like all real lemon juice, a little bit of sugar and it's spiked with vodka. It's kind of like the scent. yeah, go ahead.

Jessie Ott (1:05:21)
that's coming in or not.

I love that sound.

You know.

No, I just, I love that you call it sun tea because it reminds me of my mom growing up. Did your mom make those great big glass jars of, with all those bags? Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:05:46)
Yes, that's literally where we came in the like big box. Yes, we were literally

trying to come up with for it. my mom and my grandmother both made sun tea and it just felt like very nostalgic. Like you just wanted to crack open a can and I was like, my God, how good would it be if you spiked ⁓ it? My grandmother and she used to make like these huge pitchers.

Jessie Ott (1:06:07)
Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome.

Maria Littlefield (1:06:14)
of tea and like literally make them in the sun outside.

So this is my version of that. then the different flavors actually are kind of like reminiscent of some of those things like she would put in basil or strawberry, you know, so we kind of played off the flavors that have like a little bit of a garden vibe.

Jessie Ott (1:06:32)
That's cool.

That's a very cool story. I guess I got it. I'm at the age where I know what sun tea is.

Maria Littlefield (1:06:37)
You got it. I'm listening. And

if you don't, just, you know, it sounds like a cute name, I guess.

Jessie Ott (1:06:43)
Yeah, it sounds like a cute name. It's good. It's really good. That's, that's, that's really good.

So real vodka, lemon juice and black tea, nice. 5 % alcohol. Very cool. That's really good. Simple, classic. Yep.

Maria Littlefield (1:06:52)
Yep, yeah, that one's good. Super simple, really refreshing,

classic, crushable. It's like an elevated Arnold Palmer, basically. I also love the sweetness level on those. Yeah, there's a nice hint of sweetness, but it's not overpowering. Sometimes I feel like things are super sweet in that space. ⁓

Jessie Ott (1:07:02)
Yeah, I really.

I agree. It is not

super sweet. It's like the perfect balance because you've you really get a nice lemon, you know, that lemon flavor. It's just it's blended very, very nicely, actually. It's very I'm going to drink drink this whole thing.

Maria Littlefield (1:07:21)
Yeah.

And that's what it's for. mean, it's Thursday. We basically need that. Cool. Okay. So let's do up to you and maybe the blueberry lemon next. Great.

Jessie Ott (1:07:27)
I mean, we got six more to go.

Okay, yummy.

Very good. Yes.

This is so fun.

Okay. I will pour a little bit less this time.

Maria Littlefield (1:07:41)
You have a really

Jessie Ott (1:07:43)
Woo!

Maria Littlefield (1:07:43)
So this one, again, Robaka, beautiful colors. That one has a little bit of, it's black tea with a little bit of green rooibos, which is actually, it's an African bush. Obviously you're drinking, so it's different, but it's super interesting. It's like as a tea itself, it's called nitrous gatorade, super hydrating. And then there's lemon, there's blueberry juice, and a little bit of

Jessie Ott (1:08:03)
I didn't know that.

Nice. Isn't Ruabooze, isn't that also good for allergies? That's what I thought it was. I don't know. It's been a minute since I studied tea. I mean, I haven't, ⁓ cause I used to drink a lot of it. And you know, when Tavanya was kind of big back, like, I don't know, 10 years ago, eight years ago, we would go in and, and it'd be like, this cures my allergies.

Maria Littlefield (1:08:05)
⁓ yeah.

I'm sure. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Totally.

Jessie Ott (1:08:27)
I don't know. couldn't remember the wrong thing.

Maria Littlefield (1:08:28)
She was like, I think you're

out. I mean, I think I told you this, but that's like honestly how, so Jennie, my co-founder is a tea sommelier. And that's how she got into this whole world was just, she was looking for ingredients that could help her dad and like stumbled upon the whole world of botanicals, teas, plants, which is amazing. You could like drop something in water, like rooibos, right? And have like antioxidants and all this like hydration properties, you know, put something like green tea, which is like.

Jessie Ott (1:08:36)
That's right.

Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:08:55)
So anti-inflammatory, like everything. I mean, there are just like so many incredible benefits ⁓ by using like trans-continuos. Yes, and tons of like allergy benefits, like immune boosting benefits. mean, everything, you name it. Matcha is like incredibly, incredibly beneficial. mean, you like drink antioxidants, basically matcha, like because it's actually the tea leaf that's ground. You actually drink the tea leaf. So it's like one of the most beneficial teas. So anyway, yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:08:59)
That's so cool.

That is

⁓

I didn't know that either. I think.

Maria Littlefield (1:09:24)
That's obviously drink

wise. That's like really, yeah. It's like you still get good stuff. You're spiking it, but it's still good. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:09:27)
Yeah, that's so, yeah, you still get the fun. Yeah.

Yeah, that's really cool, but I love this color. It's kind of like a mauve, like a rose almost.

Maria Littlefield (1:09:36)
God. Yes.

Jessie Ott (1:09:38)
Yummy! I say that, I can't help it. It's so childish, I can't help it. It's good. It is... I like the... It must be the green riobos. Am I saying that right? Riobos? Riobos. Royobos. Royobos. Whatever. Anyway...

Maria Littlefield (1:09:41)
No, it's good. Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:09:55)
The aftertaste, think it must be that because it's not the blueberry lemon or the black tea. It's like a herbal sort of...

Maria Littlefield (1:10:04)
Yeah, it's like very like, I don't know, melo. Yeah, yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:10:05)
PRONT

chicory, cura, really unique flavor. it's, you can, you taste through the layers of it. And then that's sort of like the finishing flavor, which is excellent. It's something I've never experienced before. It's fun.

Maria Littlefield (1:10:22)
No, that's awesome way to describe it. I love that. Yeah, no, it's like, like a, they're, you know, classic, but have layers. They're like more interesting than if you just, a lot of the other hard teas, particularly like in this category are made in, you know, with natural flavorings or artificial flavorings. They just kind of like one dimensional, a little bit like overly sweet. And that's why I just find these so fun that we made them, but I find them so fun to drink because there are layers to it. It's like you're having kind of a complex cocktail, but it's really.

Jessie Ott (1:10:43)
⁓

Maria Littlefield (1:10:51)
easy to drink and light and refreshing.

Jessie Ott (1:10:53)
Yeah, they are very light and refreshing and these are super cold because we have them in the garage fridge, which is kind of the beverage fridge. And so we have it super cold and yum. It's really good cold. Yeah. And I'll be honest with you. Like I've tried other tea things out there. I'm just not a black tea person.

Maria Littlefield (1:11:02)
fun.

Jessie Ott (1:11:10)
but I love green and I love white. I don't know what it is about black tea. I know it's really good for you and I should drink it, but I don't know if it's some extra bitterness that might be in it. But I don't get... Yeah, okay. But I don't get any of that in these drinks.

Maria Littlefield (1:11:22)
Yeah, it's more like an astringent thing.

Jessie Ott (1:11:29)
at all these tea drinks and I would

Maria Littlefield (1:11:31)
I mean, I have the

credit for any. Yeah, she does an amazing job. So she actually handcrafts all these in her kitchen. I think she's a tea somm. She does this for restaurants for years in the city. ⁓ yeah, she does an amazing job of balancing the flavors. So you get notes of all the flavors, but I totally know what you mean. Sometimes black tea, or even if you have a cup of black tea, it's like.

Jessie Ott (1:11:42)
That's amazing.

Maria Littlefield (1:11:54)
super astringent, you almost like have to add sugar or citrus or something to like mellow it out. And you get that here that she does a really amazing job of like balancing the flavors where you get the notes but not that like bite.

Jessie Ott (1:12:05)
Yeah, a hundred percent. Like you can tell that it's black tea. And I guess for me, that part of the experience with black tea, I like it. Like I like having to taste, you know, the flavors that are in it. And there's obviously black tea, but it's so well balanced with all the other elements. And the citrus is perfect with it.

It's like a hug. Yeah, boozy hug. like that.

Yeah, that's really fun. I love the ending on that.

Maria Littlefield (1:12:31)
Cool, you have tell me what your favorite is after all this. All right, we want to do the strawberry basil. This one reminds me of a true sun tea that you pick some herbs from the garden and put them in a pitcher and put on the sun. But yeah, this one is strawberry, there's brewed basil leaves, lemon, and a little bit of arugula as well just to of mull it out.

Jessie Ott (1:12:32)
Yeah. that's going to be hard.

strawberry basil.

Yeah.

Okay. It's kind of like a dark tangerine, like a blood orange maybe.

Maria Littlefield (1:12:58)
Yes.

Yep, yep, and the strawberry juice color,

Jessie Ott (1:13:03)
Zero bubbles. I like that. There's so many things are bubbles.

Maria Littlefield (1:13:06)
Yeah, this time.

Yep, we have, we do a mix. We try to keep that, we, you know, like we have a mojito that's bubbly. Like if the classic drink is bubbly, then we tend to do a bubbly. But if the classic drink is still, we tend to go, you know, no bubbles.

Jessie Ott (1:13:20)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, mean, Sun Tea. Sun Tea didn't have bubbles back in the day. that's really good. I'm not tasting much of the basil on this one.

Maria Littlefield (1:13:24)
Bye!

⁓ interesting. feel like most people are like, ⁓ basil. It's mellow. mean, it's like, it's really basil. So it's not going to be like overpowering. It's like we actually like bruise the actual basil leaves. But yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:13:35)
That's so funny. Yeah. Yeah.

⁓ cool. Yeah, but

the strawberries, the strawberry is excellent. And of course the, I don't get the aftertaste, not that I mean that in a good way, the finish, don't, I'll call it a finish. I don't get the same aftertaste with this one as I did with the other one, but it's similar.

Maria Littlefield (1:13:52)
Great.

Yeah.

Yeah, this one, I don't know, this one is more a little bit more like herbaceous to me, I guess. The other one's like lean a little bit more kind of traditional. Yeah, this one tastes more a little bit more like fruity herbaceous. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:14:08)
Mm-hmm. It is.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's fun. That was really good. All right. Well, we crushed it.

Maria Littlefield (1:14:18)
Cool, yay. Yeah, those are our sun teas. They come in this awesome

variety pack. Crush them. All right, should we?

Jessie Ott (1:14:25)
And is that the only way to get them is

in the variety pack?

Maria Littlefield (1:14:28)
So right now they just come in the variety pack. Yeah, we will have them coming out as singles soon and you can get them like at bar by themselves. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:14:33)
Okay.

Okay, and then are they packed six?

Maria Littlefield (1:14:39)
These are a variety of eight packs. there's, yeah, you'll get four half and two strawberry basil, two blueberry lemon.

Jessie Ott (1:14:39)
Six, eight packs.

Gotcha. Okay. And what are those retail for again?

Maria Littlefield (1:14:48)
They're usually like $21.99.

Jessie Ott (1:14:49)
Okay. Oh, that's good. Cause the alcohol is 5%. So.

Maria Littlefield (1:14:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, like a little boozy, you know, it's perfect. Yeah. Good for the beat, cool hangout, yard.

Jessie Ott (1:14:54)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I could definitely see me drinking these at the pool for sure.

Maria Littlefield (1:15:05)
Mm hmm. Yeah, have

that like refreshing nerve to them.

Jessie Ott (1:15:09)
Makes me want to make sun tea.

Maria Littlefield (1:15:11)
If you do, send me a picture.

Jessie Ott (1:15:13)
Okay,

maybe I'll ask for a glass jar for Christmas.

Maria Littlefield (1:15:18)
Those are like the little like waves, you know?

Jessie Ott (1:15:20)
Yeah.

Oh man. Bob's on the set. Yeah. I wonder if they make up anymore.

Maria Littlefield (1:15:22)
That's like a little bumsum. See that? It looks like a beehive, kind of.

⁓

You know, I bet Amazon or something like that has them. I like you're gonna find any. Yeah. With all the weird photo shoot props we've ordered on Amazon, I'm sure we could dig up some.

Jessie Ott (1:15:30)
Somebody does. ⁓

Some things never grow old. Maybe.

Maria Littlefield (1:15:42)
What do you to do with

an old, teal phone? And it's like, here you go. perfect.

Jessie Ott (1:15:48)
Yeah, Amazon does have everything, doesn't it?

Maria Littlefield (1:15:50)
Yeah, most random things you can think of. But anyway, okay, should we move on to the next one? Let's do, you have Kelsey, right? Kelsey Hanlon, you have classic.

Jessie Ott (1:15:54)
Okay, yeah, yes.

I

do have her classic. I'm super pumped about you guys getting together. When I saw that, I was like, what? That is so cool.

Maria Littlefield (1:15:59)
Okay. Perfect. Awesome.

It's been so fun, so much more fun to come. She also just announced she has a tour coming up in February that Alice Brewery will be on tour with her so that should be super fun as well. Come check us out. Have an Alice Brewery with us. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:16:11)
Okay

That's cool. That is cool. I will. My

wife and I are huge fans. We love comedy, but we love women and business. She's just so fun and just so honest about everything. Her books are so well done.

Maria Littlefield (1:16:37)
Yes, amazing.

Well, no, seriously, check it out. It's called the High and Mighty Tour. All the dates are, they just announced on her website. So I'm sure there's some close by to you.

Jessie Ott (1:16:44)
okay.

Yeah. I hope cause well, you know, being in Orlando, a lot of times people will go to Tampa or Miami, but hopefully they come to Dallas and it just is the timing. I've, I've never seen her, so I think it would be really fun to go see her. So maybe, maybe I'll get my wife some tickets for Christmas. She doesn't listen to this podcast. I, yeah, not going to ruin the surprise.

Maria Littlefield (1:17:00)
think so. ⁓ Yes! my god, so fun. And then order. What's the

We'll tag her

Jessie Ott (1:17:10)
Yeah,

that'd be fun. That's actually a really good idea.

Maria Littlefield (1:17:15)
See, you're welcome. ⁓

Jessie Ott (1:17:17)
Thank you, Maria. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Okay, so tell me about you are you are Amazon.

Maria Littlefield (1:17:20)
I'm full of good ideas. Okay,

our vodka lemonade. Yes, so we have a whole line with Chelsea. We have a classic, which I you're gonna try. Then we have a pink lemonade, and then we have a mint. And this was inspired by actually one of the stories in Chelsea's most recent book called I'll Have What She's Having. And one of the stories as a child, Chelsea had a lemonade stand.

on Martha's Vineyard and she wasn't making enough money just selling lemonade. So she started like basically taking liquor from her parents and selling spiked lemonade, started making a fortune. And she like hired a neighbor to help. She's like, you know, it was a big business and she started making so much money that she started like flying first class on family vacations while the rest of our family wasn't coached. That's like the punchline of the story. ⁓ Anyway, it's amazing.

Jessie Ott (1:18:09)
Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:18:14)
And yeah, so she reached out, got together, she wanted to bring the actual black lemonades to life. So of course we were like so excited about it. So we actually sat down with her and like had like a boozy brunch essentially and just brought a thousand different samples for her to try. And so she actually hand selected all of these. So they're amazing. They're all done like the Al's through way, all 100 % clean ingredients. They all have like a little bit of a botanical spin, but they're, know, modeled after kind of, again, like nostalgic classic lemonade.

Jessie Ott (1:18:29)
right.

Maria Littlefield (1:18:40)
⁓ And the one you're, so the classic that you have is again, real vodka, lemon juice, and this one has a little bit of lemon verbena just to kind of give it again, like a more like full kind of more interesting complex flavor. But again, super, super light and refreshing.

Jessie Ott (1:18:54)
What is Verbena? Is it like a flower or leaf? Okay.

Maria Littlefield (1:18:56)
It's a leaf. It's like a leaf. Yeah,

Lemon verbena Yeah, yeah. Has like a really mellow... we'll try it. You tell me.

Jessie Ott (1:19:05)
Are you

gonna try it with me?

Maria Littlefield (1:19:06)
Yeah, I'll do it with you. have that one with me.

Jessie Ott (1:19:08)
That's delicious.

Yeah, that is so good. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:19:09)
That's not good.

Okay.

Jessie Ott (1:19:17)
This is really, really good. It's well balanced. There's an element of sugar that combines the ingredients together to just make it so smooth. I assume there's some sugar.

Maria Littlefield (1:19:28)
Yep, use a little, so in any, we don't use any sugar substitutes. So if we do use sugar, it's just a little bit of cane sugar. This one, these do have a little bit of cane sugar, just like kind of rounds it out a little bit. But yeah, you get, cause lemon by itself would be super tart. So it's a little, it's, you know, balanced with a little sugar. And then the lemon verbena helps kind of like mellow the flavors. Yeah. Yeah, no, I love, these are.

Jessie Ott (1:19:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, so it's not, you know, like tart

as lemon can sometimes be.

Maria Littlefield (1:19:52)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got the notes of lemon, but it's not like sour.

Jessie Ott (1:19:54)
B O

It's not,

it's not at all. From what I'm gathering from really just from this podcast and the guests that I've had, the cocktails that are the most classic have a little sugar in them

Sugar is really important to...

Maria Littlefield (1:20:08)
Yeah, it just

lightens up everything a little bit, gives it like, it like pulls it all together somehow. ⁓ And that's why you see, mean, yeah, almost everything. There's like a race, a race to the zero, I guess, in some of these canned cocktails, but they still need sugar, they would taste awful. So everyone just using sugar concoctions, basically. Like, don't, that's like, yeah, just, you know.

Jessie Ott (1:20:12)
Yeah. It really does.

Yeah.

Right. Just use the real sugar. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:20:35)
let's just use a little bit of real sugar and it's okay. It's better, in my opinion, it's better to have a little bit of real sugar than whatever weird mixtures are being had otherwise. ⁓

Jessie Ott (1:20:38)
It's okay.

Yeah,

no, I'm with you, I get it. ⁓ But this is fabulous. I didn't show the color. It's pretty clear. ⁓

Maria Littlefield (1:20:51)
Mmm. Just looks like a delicious

classic lemonade. Let me see. can actually, I know you saw that, let me pour this one out for you too. Let me just grab a cup. on.

Jessie Ott (1:20:54)
Yep, little lemon colored.

Maria Littlefield (1:21:02)
The, just because we're showing colors, the pink, ⁓ you'll just have to imagine, have to send you one, but the pink is just this like super pretty light pink that I'm obsessed with also.

Jessie Ott (1:21:05)
Yeah.

yeah! That is really

pretty.

Maria Littlefield (1:21:15)
⁓ This one is very similar, but it has a little bit of ⁓ brewed rose hips and cranberry.

Jessie Ott (1:21:15)
I like that.

Yeah.

You know, I could totally see you mixing these on ice and just pouring martinis. It would be like a lower alcohol martini, but the color is so great. You know, stick some fruit in there. get, you know.

Maria Littlefield (1:21:28)
Yeah.

100%. Yeah. Oh my

God. You can take them. always, you can also like, people do funny things. Like I've seen people use like, because it's all like good clean ingredients, you'll be like use them to cook. Like people will use them to like layer, you know, you can use this as a base or almost like a spritz and like add, you know, more, you could do like a little extra booze. If you want to make like a more traditional martini, you could add vodka, more vodka to these and shake it up. You like a twist on a Cosmo or something like that. So yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:21:59)
Yeah. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:22:02)
Oh, you just drink

out of the can and keep it simple.

Jessie Ott (1:22:04)
Which is what I'll do in the pool. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that was so, so how many different samples did you take when Chelsea did the tasting with you guys at your boozy brunch?

Maria Littlefield (1:22:08)
Sometimes simple is best.

Oh my God, what a good question. I mean, I'm sure I have pictures. Like, I mean, honestly, I think for each flavor, we probably had like four or five, probably 30 or something, maybe more. It was like we a table.

Jessie Ott (1:22:29)
Wow, okay.

Yeah. wow. Fun. That sounds like a... Did she have some of her crew kind of go with her and taste them too or was it just her?

Maria Littlefield (1:22:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, we, yeah, her and a couple of other people that she works with, yeah, got to be part of our official panel, lemonade tasting panel.

Jessie Ott (1:22:46)
Your

tasty middle. That's cool. That's awesome. Because I think having extra opinions is helpful if you're going to do it all in one sitting.

Maria Littlefield (1:22:50)
Thank

totally. Yeah.

and if we've learned anything, it's like other opinions are, ⁓ are the way to go. Even when we like launch our own flavors, we always like do like informal focus groups, like pull, pull different groups of friends, stuff like that. Cause I don't know. It's like something that you think it just be like something that I'm like laser focused on at the moment. But it's like, does that actually make sense? Like, do people understand that? Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:23:13)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. That's fun. That's fun. All right. So we have more.

Maria Littlefield (1:23:26)
Okay, what's next on your docket?

Jessie Ott (1:23:26)
to try. Should we

do the boozey? So we got boozy teas. how are the Chelsea's sold?

Maria Littlefield (1:23:31)
Okay.

a box in front of me. But they're sold in a similar way to the Suntis. They come in a variety eight pack with two classic, or four classic, sorry, and then two pink and two mint. Also $21.99.

Jessie Ott (1:23:36)
Okay.

Okay. All right. So same price. Okay. So you want to do the white tea and watermelon?

Maria Littlefield (1:23:46)
Yep, yep, same price.

Let's do that one. Perfect.

So this is part of our, called our Home Crafted Hard Salter line. Again, like all fresh brewed teas and botanicals. This one is super, one of our best sellers. They also carry this at like a lot of venues. Comes in our 19.2 ounce size. It was one of our original flavors. But yeah, brewed white tea. This one, these are sparkling, this line. Yep. Yep.

Jessie Ott (1:24:07)
Okay, this one's got bubbles.

These are sparkling, okay.

Maria Littlefield (1:24:12)
And yeah, this one has a little bit of watermelon juice, a little bit of lime, and white tea is the base of this one.

Jessie Ott (1:24:19)
Nice. That's good. That's really refreshing. Lighter, yeah. A little bit lower alcohol.

Maria Littlefield (1:24:20)
Yeah, so these are lighter, really refreshing. Yeah. These are

kind of more of like in the seltzers. Yeah, exactly. What you'd expect from like a seltzer, but super clean aftertaste. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:24:28)
Yep. So which.

Yeah, very clean. These are super clean drinks. Which line did you do first?

Maria Littlefield (1:24:36)
⁓ The boozy tube was our original actually. Yep.

Jessie Ott (1:24:39)
Okay. So the boozy tea, then the sun

tea, then the Chelsea. And you know, you've got more stuff coming out next year.

Maria Littlefield (1:24:43)
⁓

Yep, we have a mojito too. ⁓ All sorts of fun things. But yeah, the boozy teas were first, we called them again, like our heart seltzers. And then all the spirit based ones we launched more recently.

Jessie Ott (1:24:48)
nice.

Okay. So, when you have this new product coming out next year, are you going to come back on and we'll taste through them again?

Maria Littlefield (1:25:06)
Yes, my God, let's do it. We'll do an early, like, maybe like January or something. Can try all the new ones. Okay. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:25:07)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. And we can, you know, we don't have to

do the whole interview thing. We can just get down to the, to the tasting part. Cause I'm trying to, ⁓ encourage brands to come back on and do that so that people come here, to learn about the, you know, the new products out there. so yeah. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:25:29)
Fun, let's do it. my God, that would be a blast. Those are all, those

are like different. Those are super fun.

Jessie Ott (1:25:34)
Ooh,

at least it's only January I have to wait for.

Maria Littlefield (1:25:36)
⁓

no, it's that it's kind of soon. It's like a little too soon. I have a lot to do. No.

Jessie Ott (1:25:39)
Yeah.

Well, thank you for taking time with me. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, this, is.

Maria Littlefield (1:25:45)
for fun, that's all there is. Yes, no, thanks for having me back. so

glad you, everything finally came, you got to try it.

Jessie Ott (1:25:51)
Yeah, me too. I've been dying, you know, looking at it in the fridge. So

I can say I've tasted it.

Maria Littlefield (1:25:58)
What else do you have in front of you?

Jessie Ott (1:25:59)
I've got green tea, peach, black tea, pineapple, and hibiscus and raspberry.

Maria Littlefield (1:26:05)
Biscuit, honestly, it's up to you. whatever, mean, black tea pineapple here, you're, yep, I have those. Black tea pineapples is fun. That's a little bit different.

Jessie Ott (1:26:08)
Do you have them?

Okay.

Okay, let's do that.

Maria Littlefield (1:26:18)
This one is super simple. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:26:18)
So do you wanna talk, sorry, yeah.

No, was, we'll do that after, but the clean label on there, I think it's cool to talk about.

Maria Littlefield (1:26:28)
Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:26:28)
Look at that color. That's so fun. Look at those bubbles.

Maria Littlefield (1:26:28)
⁓ here's.

You get these really beautiful colors, because again, it goes back to actually the clean label you were just showing. It's all real ingredients. It's all clean. Like if we say there's pineapple, it's just pineapple juice, right? Which naturally has this like nice hue. And you get that like clean finish as opposed to like some of the, you know, flavors where you can, it just kind of tastes like sticky or I don't know. You just, it lingers in a way that you're like, I don't get it. Yeah. But yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:26:35)
Yeah.

Right?

Maria Littlefield (1:26:57)
Our whole platform, we say, say drink wise, and we're committed to clean and using clean ingredients and transparency. mean, this is like very technical, but on the this side of things, you're under the FDA. So you we have nutrition, full nutrition panels. But on the spirit side of things, you probably notice that like your bottle of vodka doesn't have a nutrition panel, right? Or like, there's no nutrition panels on a bottle of whiskey and that's

because it's under the TTP and you're not required. We actually had to fight to add one to our cans. ⁓ yes, it got rejected. It was really crazy. But yeah, I mean, we obviously use real ingredients. So we're happy to share them. We're also committed to transparency, actually knowing what they're drinking when they're drinking. It's really, really important. It's like that. can't think of anything else I like would drink or eat that I wouldn't.

Jessie Ott (1:27:29)
You had to fight?

Maria Littlefield (1:27:49)
don't know what's inside. You know what I mean? It's crazy. Like what? Like, let me tell you, there are lot of crazy things.

Jessie Ott (1:27:51)
Right? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Well, and it's really cool.

Yeah, right.

What I like about it too is drink-wise ties into the owl, which is known as being wise and the whole kind of theme comes full circle.

Maria Littlefield (1:28:07)
Thank

Yes.

That's exactly where came from. You're so smart.

Jessie Ott (1:28:18)
I love it. It's

so cool. You guys are so fun.

That is, these are-

Maria Littlefield (1:28:21)
Well, this has been so, anyway,

so the last one you tried. Yeah, this was black tea pineapple. ⁓ It's really just easy. It's black tea, pineapple. This one actually has no sugar added either. And you know, fun fact, you can actually find that one in your neighborhood Disney World. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

Jessie Ott (1:28:26)
Yeah.

No kidding. Okay.

I'll be sure to, I got to, I'm going to have to go and knock down their doors. So maybe I'll go try one. but, this is my favorite.

Maria Littlefield (1:28:45)
That's how you do it.

Amazing!

Jessie Ott (1:28:51)
I

never ever thought I'd say a black tea drink is my favorite and it is, but I love pineapple. I'm a huge pineapple fan. but the flavor it's very spot on pineapple. You don't get a lot of the black tea flavors that you, normally get, or you get in these other, you know, types. And, ⁓ of course I love pineapple, but

It's well balanced, it's crisp, it's clean, it's got a great finish to it. The bubbles are actually really refreshing. I really, really like it. Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:29:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yay. Well,

no, thank you. Awesome. Yeah, no, this one is great. Just easy, again. They're meant to be easy. Easy flavors, easy to do, but fun, a little bit different.

Jessie Ott (1:29:27)
Yeah.

Yeah, very, very much so. I'm so fortunate to have met you and to hear your story. Thank you so much for sitting down with me in the podcast and going through this tasting. This has been so fun. You guys are so fun. I have to meet you all sometime when I, one of my trips or BCB next year.

Maria Littlefield (1:29:51)
Yes, we absolutely know and thank you for having us. For me, it's been so fun. But yeah, definitely send us a note too if you find yourself up in New York area. It's colder here, but.

Jessie Ott (1:30:01)
Okay. Yeah, I don't, I don't have any, yeah,

or hopefully you'll be, I'm sure you traveled quite a bit, but, but I think that, BC Brooklyn was a good thing. I almost thought about going to Berlin, but it was just too much this year. But it was, yeah, it was a good event.

Maria Littlefield (1:30:15)
Cool, no, that's awesome. That's so good to hear. We haven't been. Go check it out.

Jessie Ott (1:30:18)
Yeah.

you haven't been there. Sorry. I was thinking that you went last year. No, you haven't. ⁓ okay. Yeah. No, I, ⁓ met a lot of interesting people and, was what was interesting about it is I ended up running into like five people I interviewed on the podcast. I didn't know they were going to be there. Yeah, that was really cool.

Maria Littlefield (1:30:25)
I've heard of it, but I haven't been.

It's gathering of,

Jessie Ott (1:30:41)
It's a small world.

Maria Littlefield (1:30:42)
Well,

mean, perfect. Yeah, small. I find this space, it's funny. It's like, you know, so big and spread out, but it's also very small. I feel like we run into people all the time. Yeah, it's kind of funny. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:30:49)
Yeah.

Yep. Yep. 100%.

All right, well, is there anything else that, pricing and packaging, is this the same?

Maria Littlefield (1:31:00)
⁓ so those are those kind of, ⁓ in variety of different, ⁓ packages, the most common is a variety six pack. and those were usually like $11.99. they do come in singles kind of depending on the flavor, ⁓ and also like larger format. ⁓ but for the most part, the most popular one that people will be able to find is the variety six pack.

Jessie Ott (1:31:13)
Okay.

Which one of the three would you say are mostly on premise or more on premise than the other? Or is it kind of split even?

Maria Littlefield (1:31:24)
The two most popular

flavors have a lot to do with our larger format on-premise business, which is usually the white tea watermelon and then the hibiscus and raspberry, which we didn't try. But the black team pineapple, as they said, at Disney. So that's a big one as well. So I would say those three.

Jessie Ott (1:31:39)
Yeah.

Okay. Nice. Well, this was so fun. Thank you. Thank you again for taking the time to, to, you know, walk me through these amazing drinks. I love them. I love what you're doing.

Maria Littlefield (1:31:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's all fun. Thanks for joining

us. We went through a lot. So I appreciate it.

Jessie Ott (1:31:53)
We did. Don't

worry. I have my water over here. I won't drink them all tonight.

Maria Littlefield (1:31:58)
What? I'm going to take a little bit something else.

We ⁓

Jessie Ott (1:32:09)
Yeah, well, you know what?

Maria Littlefield (1:32:09)
used to call it.

Jessie Ott (1:32:11)
It should be okay. I mean, the bubbles won't be there.

Maria Littlefield (1:32:13)
Don't

worry. Yeah, they'll just, it'll be fine. We used to laugh when you like try a bunch of things, you're like sampling a new product. It's it's like mouse drug. It's like little tiny steps, but they were like, wow. Yeah. ⁓

Jessie Ott (1:32:23)
That was drunk. Yeah.

That's funny. I get in trouble when I do that with wine. You know how they have those little wine glasses and you're just putting a little bit in there and it sneaks up on you.

Maria Littlefield (1:32:36)
Yes.

Suddenly you're like, ⁓ wait.

Jessie Ott (1:32:39)
Whoa,

slow down. Getting mouse drunk. That's funny. that's hilarious. I love that. I may remember that one.

Maria Littlefield (1:32:43)
Next time

you do it, you're like, I'm not strong.

Jessie Ott (1:32:48)
I was drunk. Yeah. I don't drink wine much anymore, but yeah, it's funny. All right. Well, will, yeah. Yeah. I like wine. actually, you know, have certifications in it and everything, but, there's just, guess, other noise happening. And, and there's, there is, you know, there's also the sugar factor.

Maria Littlefield (1:32:52)
Yeah, like once in a while.

Other things to try.

Jessie Ott (1:33:07)
to some degree because a lot of people, yeah, lot of the wines are kind of sugary.

Maria Littlefield (1:33:07)
100 %

Yeah, and I think I might just like be old, but like some of them just give me like the worst headaches. Yeah, I'm like, I'm just old. I can't handle that.

Jessie Ott (1:33:12)
these days.

Yeah, it's pretty common. Yeah, my, my, it's. Well, my wife.

Do you break out? Because my wife will break out and my friend gets headaches.

Maria Littlefield (1:33:31)
wow. don't, knock on wood, I don't break out, I got like, they're little like split. I could have like a glass, and I don't, because I got like no nutrition panels. I don't exactly know what it is in some of them, but like sometimes I'll have like glass of something and literally have like a splitting headache. ⁓ So I don't that much. But sometimes, like the more organic ones seem to be better for me. ⁓

Jessie Ott (1:33:35)
No, okay, that's good.

Yeah.

that's not good.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would stick with the organic as much.

Maria Littlefield (1:33:57)
Again, this is not based

on no expertise. Yeah, one of my friends also told me like it's out of lines or better, I don't know. This is out of my realm of expertise, but this is purely consumer interest.

Jessie Ott (1:34:00)
Right.

Well, there

are certain rules for certain. There's not so many rules in say California as there are in France and Italy where there's a lot more strict rules than the way that they, yeah. So she may be correct in saying that. I think you.

Maria Littlefield (1:34:15)
Great.

Well, that's a cross.

yeah.

No, that,

I mean.

Jessie Ott (1:34:24)
I think it depends on you. cause you know, my wife will break out to vodka. Well, vodka is, there's nothing in it. It's, it's clean, you know? And so it just depends on, you know, it just depends on the brand. I don't know why it just does.

Maria Littlefield (1:34:39)
Yeah, like it just depends on the way things are made or manufactured. mean, it is crazy, like the difference between in like food generally, like the restrictions in Europe versus like America. Beauty is the same thing. I'm sure it translates to wine. But like what's acceptable and what's not is like there's like a really, really big difference between like what's banned in Europe and what's banned in America. And it's not much.

Jessie Ott (1:34:53)
Yep.

⁓ yeah, huge.

Maria Littlefield (1:35:03)
Yeah, That's like a whole other podcast, but kind of scary. did think it was crazy. I think it's by 2027. Walmart is committed to removing like red dye and I think like a couple other dyes from the product, their products, which is huge. I mean, we should not be eating that anymore. Should not be available for children. Crazy. I see, I see the movement happening, but.

Jessie Ott (1:35:04)
Yeah, yeah, kind of scary. Yeah.

That is huge.

Right. No.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. mean, I can go to Italy and eat pretty much whatever I want. I don't have any problems. But as here, I... Yeah, the gluten here is terrible.

Maria Littlefield (1:35:30)
We're a little behind.

without a second.

everything is so

yeah, it's like not real. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:35:44)
It's not real. It's high yielded, broken down.

Maria Littlefield (1:35:48)
I broke

it down, it around, spun back out. Literally, that's seems to be what we do here for some reason. I mean, crazy. That's, I mean, that's literally, whatever. We can stop talking, but that was literally what was so funny to us when we started in this beverage space. Because it's like, what do you mean? We wanted to make a, I don't know.

Jessie Ott (1:35:51)
Cleaned. All the good stuff cleaned out.

Yeah, it is crazy.

Yeah.

Maria Littlefield (1:36:10)
pineapple black tea seltzer and they were like, okay, so instead of using pineapple juice, we're gonna take you to a flavor lab and we're gonna like use this thing that's not made from pineapple, but it's meant to taste like pineapple. We were like, why? ⁓ Why just not pineapple? Like that's not how we do it in America. We were like, what? Anyway.

Jessie Ott (1:36:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah

Well, we are.

Maria Littlefield (1:36:34)
I'm

like, we're going to do that, but I just can't. I don't understand. I don't understand anything you just said. Basically, it's not pineapple and you spin it around and make it look like pineapple and then pretend it's pineapple. like, I don't, why, why are we doing that?

Jessie Ott (1:36:39)
And I don't want to.

It's kind of like the flavored meat labs. How they... It's gross. Yeah. Yeah. It is very gross.

Maria Littlefield (1:36:52)
Yeah, every.

It's literally gross.

Yay,

so Americano.

Jessie Ott (1:37:02)
Yeah, that's funny.

Maria Littlefield (1:37:02)
I

don't know. A lot of suspicious things, a of questions. But anyway, that's why clean label.

Jessie Ott (1:37:05)
Yeah.

Hahaha!

Yes. Clean label. That's funny. Yeah. All right, cool. Well, I'll let you get back to it. Thank you again.

Maria Littlefield (1:37:13)
Look for that more often. Yeah.

Yeah, all good. Just keep us posted. We'll make sure we share it when it goes up. awesome.

Jessie Ott (1:37:23)
Perfect. Awesome. Thank you. Okay. All righty. Bye. Thank you. Okay. Bye.

Maria Littlefield (1:37:25)
Cool. Thanks, Jessie. Have a nice day spent time with you. Talk to you soon. Bye.