Nick Bodkins: Founder of Boisson

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be I want to be you just want to make sure you will get knocked down but just make sure you don’t get knocked down knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go Let’s go. Hi, everyone, its Kara Goldin from the Kara Goldin show. We’re so excited to have our next guest. Here we have Nick bodkins, who is the founder of Boisson. Boisson is a non alcoholic spirits retailer and wholesaler, we’re gonna get into sort of what that means. Because I think it’s a pretty big undertaking that these guys are have taken on. And it’s pretty incredible. So they launched in major cities across the US, I’m actually based just outside of San Francisco, they have an incredible, awesome location and Hayes Valley here that I’ve been to also one in New York and others too. But what started as a mission to really service the NA non alcoholic customer is now a fast growing, very talked about brands. So we’re going to hear more from Nick about what made him start this and his journey of building this incredible future, basically, for the NA industry. So welcome, Nick.

Nick Bodkins 1:43
Yeah, great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Kara Goldin 1:45
Yeah, totally. So first of all, how would you explain Boisson

Nick Bodkins 1:50
To someone that has, like at least a cursory understanding of the beverage business, I would say that for consumers were like one part Sephora, and one part your neighborhood liquor store without the alcohol. For the beverage side, like the sort of b2b side of the business, we are the southern glacier or rndc distributor with the most curated portfolio of largely import brands of na from around the world. And where we differ is, because there is no three tier system separating us from the consumer market that were actually driving to aid in adoption in the NA category, we’re actually able to transcend all three levels of you know, import distribution, and retail. And we’re actually now using that data on the consumer side to drive better menu selection for bars and restaurants and other off premise by being able to see both sides, essentially of the marketplace between consumers and, and b2b. That that’s, that’s that’s the tightest the tightest understanding of it. But it’s a it’s a pretty, like, wildly ambitious idea. But we’re, we’re, we’re really excited with how things have have gone so far.

Kara Goldin 3:07
I love going into retail locations in general, because I and Hayes Valley is such an awesome little nuk in in the Bay Area for sure to see kind of new and different opportunities. And I’d hadn’t really, I thought it was a cool place. And then I had seen the one in New York, but I hadn’t sort of connected all that you do. And that’s where I think that brands are. I’m so curious about them when I hear that they’re doing a lot more which obviously you have an NA focus. But you’re the data overall that I think goes through your your company, it’s it must be just absolutely, it must keep you up at night, right? Or to say to say the least.

Nick Bodkins 3:57
Yeah, I mean, for for for many reasons. Thankfully, I have a toddler, and she’s a great sleeper, but there are other reasons. Up at Night. Yeah, yeah.

Kara Goldin 4:08
So so how did this all start? So you mentioned the toddler, can you share the backstory? So

Nick Bodkins 4:15
that’s actually the end of the story first, the beginning of the story is that my wife and I were starting our IVF journey. We were actually supposed to start IVF the last week in March of 2020. So that obviously didn’t happen the way that we thought it was going to. But fast forward towards the end, the end of 2020 and she was on our second round of shots. I was not drinking sort of out of solidarity and just sort of being supportive. And you know, we kind of had those like Thursday night, Negroni. Thursday’s just preparing for the last day of the work week that I you know, mix up mix up into granny we have all you know, weird, nerdy collectors of Vermouth and gin and so it always be something a little different. And she looked at me one night, she’s like, I needed a gurney really bad. And I was like, okay, like, I’m gonna find you a non ALK Negroni, which like now, you know, with as much as we know about the category seems like super easy to find. But even in 2020. As a marketer, what I found when I started Googling, the cynic in me was there were like, a bunch of brands that looked like they had been developing liquid prior to COVID. They were going to launch his on premise, like largely liquor replacements COVID hit, and because equity was so cheap, and DTC CPG was seeing so much investment, they were able to flip to being direct to consumer brands, which is great for them and great for like an ability to start to try to figure out product market fit. But like, as a consumer, we were talking before we started recording, just like super briefly about single skews, like a Negroni doesn’t have one ingredient, it has three ingredients, right? And if you go onto a site, and they’re like, by RNA, gin, and you’re like, great, and they’re like, well, we got you here, and we spent $40. So buy a case of our na gin. And I’m like, Well, I don’t know if I like it yet. And then you have to do that same thing two more times. And so, you know, we started to kind of take this step back and go, okay, like, this category is new, I saw a lot of similarities to Sephora, in the sense that I felt like for consumers that didn’t knew it was either a hair or beauty or a skincare product that they were looking for, but not necessarily the individual brand. Sephora has a great experience in store, and even on their site, around education around like, what kind of ingredients you’re looking for, what what kind of hair you have, what kind of outcome you’re looking for, et cetera. And like they genuinely ask those questions, obviously, a much more mature market. But so that was the sort of jumping off point of the first aha, there’s a lot more that kind of came beyond that. And I wish I would, I was like, you know, I wish I had had seen like all of phase three at the very beginning. But like, phase one is like launching omni channel strategy, know that, like, people are going to get out of their houses again, and we’re all going to get vaccinated, and we’re all going to be done with COVID, at some point in the future, restaurants are going to open up. And all these brands, now we have more data about what consumers are buying, and what they come back and buy again, and what they buy with the other products, we should be able to get that into the on prem and help those bars and restaurants make more informed decisions. And then the last piece of that is, if you’re a brand that wants to launch, for example, in the United States, do you want to go and raise money to bring a go to market team and a Salesforce and an E commerce person and then find a distributor, or multiple distributors, in this case, find a three PL to do your D to see all these different things. Or since we’re buying more of your product than any one in the United States. To start with? Do you let us be your go to market launch platform. And the last piece I was talking about the sort of phase three is where we recognize we might not be the last mile. But we partner with some of the best distributors to make sure that as your brand gets scale beyond our core markets of New York and LA, San Francisco and Miami, how do we help you continue to scale and grow on Amazon on Walmart plus into grocery. And so we know we’re not going to have more trucks than ke or or you know, performance food or Cisco, we know that we’re not going to have more doors to call on than any of those, those those brands, but we do know the trucks are going there already. And we have better data as a consumer business than they’re going to have only looking at scans and who’s managed to like wedge their way into a floor set. And so we’ve seen some really good initial traction to sort of the phase three part of the business. But it’s all predicated on building out an omni channel retail and E commerce driven strategy that is symbiotic that drives that the bigger aha was in on prem and off prem.

Kara Goldin 9:11
It’s fascinating. So no, I, I love it. So no, it was a great explanation of that. So do you remember the moment when you decided I got to do this and what were you doing before?

Nick Bodkins 9:25
So I worked? Yes, I do. Remember the moment I worked in consumer data at a company called Simon data, which is a really great customer data platform based here in New York. And Jason Davis, the founder of Simon probably one of the smartest data scientists that I’ve ever met, he was also the person that like January seventh of 2020 was like, I’ve been in my office looking at the our values and we’re not coming back to the office this year. Like he was that prescient to be able to be like yeah, this is this is that bad. It’s going to be that bad. Um, But I worked with so many consumer brands, they’re at Simon, like Simon, you know is powering activation like email and SMS and stuff for TripAdvisor and Wyndham destinations and JetBlue. And like all ASOS, and like all these other consumer companies that what I think was the kind of like singular moment for me is the past is the past no reason to dwell on it, but like, I’ve watched the pitch go by a few times, and I’ve actually watched other people take this thing that like, I got to the point was like writing stuff down and going, oh, yeah, like I should have mailed that to myself on such and such a day. And it was like, Look, you know, I’ve been in, I’ve been involved in venture, I’ve been involved in businesses that are selling like wildly ambitious dreams. But like, I think some time that I spent working in a later stage business that was backed by private equity, also puts getting to profitability and sustainability in in into perspective a little bit as well. And so you spend a lot of your career personally, professionally, on unaware that you’re building a toolkit, a tool belt that like, when when I got to the point where it’s like, well, I mean, I’ve got to put a business model together, and I’ve got to put projections and stuff like that together. It’s like, oh, I actually worked with the CFO at like an old startup. And like, he had an exit, and now he’s doing CFO work, and blah, blah, blah. And so like, I have that tool. I want to build a data platform. Well, when you know, when I worked for a huge one, and like, I know how to start from first principles to make sure that I’m collecting the right information from day one. And I think, sizing up the business, and like sizing up the opportunity and starting to talk a little bit more about like, you know, total addressable market and service addressable market, and really like, showing the size and the scale of what this could become, was something that that time I had spent with like this on the job MBA had really given me these, like, these just, you know, fluttery little inklings of, hey, you might actually be able to get this going. And so yeah, it’s it. It. It was it was relatively quick and

Kara Goldin 12:17
dirty, when you decided so from the from the moment you decided to actually opening I guess, your first store in Brooklyn, is that right? Yeah. What was that time period?

Nick Bodkins 12:29
Oh, my gosh, this is gonna sound absolutely insane. So my co founder, Barry, and I, I basically pitched the idea to him, we decided to go into it together. And we, I registered the domain name. I think, three years ago, tomorrow. So January 18. And we, we started scouting in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, because I felt like if it was going to work, that it was the right neighborhood for us to be in lots of professionals, like people my age group that are changing their relationship with alcohol. And I was like, Okay, well, I’m on the high street, I’m on Court Street, and there are for rent signs everywhere. They were the ones that were like, for rent from Compass. And then there was like, for rent by owner, no brokers, and I was like, bingo, that’s what I’m looking for. And so, so I like I go to this, I go to this guy, and, you know, his, he and his family, his dad owns the building. And he’s like, so you’re a liquor store. We don’t want liquor stores. And I was like, no, no, no, no, we’re like, we’re not we actually don’t sell liquor. He’s like, Yeah, but like, you’re saying spirits and wine and beers, like, Yeah, but it’s all non out. He’s like, Oh, it’s not out. So you’re like a bodega. And I was like, Well, no, not really. Because like, we don’t have a hot bar, and we’re not doing it. But it took him like three days to figure it out. And I basically sent him this is what we can pay you in rent. And he sends back, our dad’s dad’s fine like what the worst case like, worst case scenario, like it’s sitting empty right now, if you guys fail, you fail, but like, whatever. And he like he took a chance on us. So we signed the lease, I think the last week in January, so like a week and a half after we registered the domain. I had started building the E commerce site. And we open to the public on February 27. So a month after we registered the domain crazy Cray we opened. We opened our second store 91 days later.

Kara Goldin 14:40
Oh my gosh, that was that. That is absolutely nuts. And so when so you’re the largest e commerce specific for NA to wholesalers and distributors and very impressive. So why do you need brick and mortar? I saw that you’re continuing to open up smaller stores? It definitely, you know, if I hadn’t met you and had sort of heard some of your other interviews, it sounds like there’s a bigger plan for that.

Nick Bodkins 15:13
So so the first thing that I will say is that I have, I have, like, I have a specific and visceral love for physical retail, I am probably not the first person that you’ve talked to, and you probably experienced this as well, like, Amazon is not a good shopping experience. It’s objectively not, it’s garbage, like literally your own brand. They are selling the buy boxes against your own brand to competing brands that you physically have to advertise. In order to show up if I search for like, it would be like Google saying, Yeah, I know you’re looking for Apple. But how about these three garbage brands you’ve never heard of, you wouldn’t use them as a search engine anymore. And so the other thing that I think is really important to like, sort of, in defense of our retail strategy is we’re not opening 5000 square foot 10,000 square foot stores, our Cobble Hill stores 410 square feet, our Hayes Valley store is 375 square feet. One or two people that are working in the store, they know what they’re talking about. And most importantly, we’re in neighborhoods where people live. Like, this is not a tourist attraction. This is not formula retail that goes in, you know, next to all the, you know, the DTC brands that realize that they could actually open a store for less than their paid media budget. But like, that’s a really important thing. And if you actually take it down to kind of like the technical level of things, us sending our inventory into Google Merchant Center, along with the fact that it is local inventory means that if you’re searching for the brands that we sell nearby, we’re going to win the buy box on Google Shopping for a lot lower because we have a physical location, and it says it’s point eight miles away, and it’s available for pickup or delivery today. So no one would argue with me, none of our investors would argue with me if it’s like, well, like, let’s look at return on adspend. But let’s bump let’s bump ad spend this month by $40,000, or $50,000. Because we think that there’s aggregate demand out there. Now, flip that to let’s open a retail store for $50,000. And it’s a completely different dynamic, because you have fixed costs and all these other things that go into it. But we get so many more consumer insights, direct conversations with customers about what they like, what they don’t like, the only thing you find out from an ad is did they click on it? How much time did they spend on the page? And then did they buy something from you? You don’t know what attracted to them to that. And it’s becoming harder and harder, as more and more of that data lives with the ad platforms themselves that are putting it behind? Well, we don’t want to give it to you, because doing that would give away out?

Kara Goldin 17:58
Absolutely, we actually had a store for hint for many, many years in San Francisco on Union Street. I don’t know if you ever saw it. Yeah. But, you know, we also viewed it as we not only had our offices kind of in the back and in multiple locations, but we, it was cheaper for us. This is how crazy it was to, for us to have this, you know, 1800 square foot store in San Francisco on Union Street than it was for us to have a billboard that we could look at right above. And it was an experience people came in. During the pandemic, we were actually open. And we had curbside pickup. And people came by and picked up cases of hands in cases where stores were empty from water not being available. I mean, it was crazy. So it was you know, we always and I think that’s the same for you. It’s sort of a it’s a hook in many ways, especially if you have one of your locations in a city to actually, you know, get people interested and curious about the brand. So

Nick Bodkins 19:20
yeah, I mean, again, like if you look at New York City, it’s it’s it’s kind of a complete anomaly of a market, obviously. But like, no one’s going shopping for non out drinks in Cobble Hill that lives on the Upper West Side. So we have five stores in New York City because people want a neighborhood shop. Like you don’t tend to think about like a liquor store, for example, as like a bankable business because it doesn’t look like other you know, sort of repeatable businesses, like look at their repeat rates. Like look at repeat rates of like, of people that like not the wine store that you go into by like, you know, Josh and Mark West like the wine store that people go in. To buy like specialty wines that they really love that are for special moments. Like those people know, the person behind the counter, they know when new product comes in, the person behind the counter knows that they like, you know, mirlo from California, like whatever it is, it is, it is a very personal experience that people have. And so we’re not what we want is our stores to feel and act and actually be neighborhood shops that like people go into mold, like we have, you know, the dogs of bosan of like people that stopped by and we have like little dog bowls out front and like dog treats that we give and things like that. But, but when the fixed costs to your point about like the billboard versus the store. You know, one of the things that was kind of an aha for me was was knowing some of the team at Casper and realizing that one of their biggest challenges early on was they would rather you not buy the mattress, then return the mattress because they can’t sell it again. And so if you if you have already high fixed costs of production, and then you have super, super, super competitive online adspend. And then you have a 20% return rate, you can’t do anything about it. So opening a store and moving that return rate to say 5% because somebody might walk in and say, I actually don’t like this mattress very much. It’s It’s It’s net better for you than it is to like go through that process. I think the same would probably be said for like Warby Parker, getting product market fit and saying like, here’s five different glasses that you can try on makes a ton of sense. But like, yeah, how many people in a given market? In Cobble Hill in Brooklyn wanted to try Warby Parker? And how many people got the five box? And what does that cost to send them there and send them back and all the stuff that goes along with it to make $95?

Kara Goldin 21:56
Yeah, plus you have a natural focus group, right? Where you can be constantly looking, I used to sit there in the store in the head store and just watch the consumer Yeah, and what they would do. And we would test flavors, you I’m sure you could test brand new products when you’re trying to figure out how you if you’re adding a SKU or not, you can you can put it in there and you can just watch behavior and you see trends and so who is your consumer? I’ve been fascinated by the non alcoholic space overall because initially, you know, I grew up in a time when the options were Clarksburg, right. Yeah, I’m now with it. And and now it’s, it’s changed significantly. So I’d love to hear your take on this. So

Nick Bodkins 22:52
our core customer are our 30s and 40s. Women. For the most part, also indicative of like the rest of consumer spending, disproportionately make a lot of buying decisions for for like the entire household. It’s the largest group of of, you know, upwardly mobile professionals falling into this category. A lot of people are surprised to learn that like from an E commerce standpoint, a third of our business comes from west of the Rockies, a third of our business comes from the Rockies to the Mississippi. And a third of our business comes from east of the Mississippi. So everyone thinks it’s a coast thing. But I would expect you probably found a very similar pattern and hint that like, people want that stuff. And it’s actually that we see that there are parts of the middle of the country that that are food deserts that don’t have the same level of like fresh and organic ingredients and better for you products that you find on the coast. Because the assumption wrongly is that only people on the coast are concerned about these things. So that’s that’s like core customer. But I think to what you were saying I kind of bucketed into two different pieces. The first one is like the duels generation, and that is like I am looking for a replacement that is better than burnt. Oh duels, like that’s basically as bad as it could have been. It was like somebody dropping a case of it off. And they’re like, I don’t know, if people from AAA show up, like and they want to you know, they want an NA beer here. Here’s the thing you have to have behind. But 90% of our customers drink. Right. And I think one of the things that’s really interesting about my own behavior, my wife and I’s own behavior is a more mindful approach to drinking in our late 30s. My wife would say mid 30s She’s gonna probably listen to this and I’m late 30s My, my more mindful approach to drinking actually leads me to premiumization and super premiumization when I consume alcohol, what I I mean by that is I don’t drink a $15 bottle of wine Monday through Thursday anymore. I drink $100 bottle of wine on the weekend because it’s way more special to me now than it was. And so that’s been an aha for us. The second piece is the sort of younger millennial into Gen Z. And that’s a completely different dynamic, because they don’t have like I say all the time, it’s like, I could tell someone my age or older, I’ve got a non out check Pilsner that you should try. Or I’m sitting here drinking it not available in the US yet lucky saying amazing British beer, like when I go to London, I would normally drink Camden lager, or London pride, this is an amazing replacement for that. But if you’re in Gen Z, and you are part of the largest generation of non drinkers in 100 plus years, if I tell you that you have absolutely no frame of reference, so trying the replacement, marketing messaging doesn’t work with a consumer, that’s not replacing it with anything. And so what they’re looking for is an elevated experience interesting ingredients a lot more into things like functional ingredients, like adaptogens, and nootropics. And what they look for is an adult experience, and not necessarily a one to one replacement. So it’s really interesting, this sort of dynamics between two different categories that consumers Yeah,

Kara Goldin 26:25
so I am a little older than you and I have, I have kids in college. And so who’s still talked to me, so I feel like I’ve done something right. And you’ve done well, you’ve done well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And one of the things that I’ve heard from many of these people, I agree with you, it’s not that they aren’t drinking, but I think that there are no, they’re doing other things. Right. And, yeah, that, but then I think that the other piece that we’re dealing with, too, is there are a lot of kids who are on some kind of medication. So they come in to a university environment. And, you know, what they’ve seen happen is that if they decide to drink alcohol and mix things, a lot of them get sick. And certainly we got sick when we were in college, but you get really sick, and, you know, some of them black out, there’s a lot of things, you know, that happen. And I think a core thing is, is that, you know, they don’t want to die. Right. And I think that they on the other hand there, whether or not, you know, they need as much or not, I mean a lot, there are a lot of kids that are on ADHD and different meds that are, you know, helping them and so I think that the non alcoholic side of that business is also something that is very interesting to people and it doesn’t scream out to people that, you know, they don’t drink.

Nick Bodkins 27:53
That’s, that’s actually so there’s two quick, like follow ups to that, that I think are really important. The first one, which like, you know, as a guy I don’t really have like a lot to I don’t have a lot of room to speak about this. But I personally find it incredibly condescending that like this wine mom culture has like become a thing that like no, do you like it’s fine, just put an entire bottle of wine in your Stanley Cup and you’ll be fine. And it’s like, like, I have a toddler. She wakes up at the same time whether I am hungover or not. I want to be physically present for my child as much as I possibly can. And if that’s what if that’s what certain people feel like they need to get through the day, I completely understand it. But I think that that’s a really lazy marketing message. And not something that like people are actively saying, You know what I need, I need a crutch to get through my day. And the crutch that I’m going to choose is choosing happiness tonight. Alcohol, and I’m giving up happiness tomorrow with the hangover. Like we are we are writing a social contract that says I am willing to give up happiness tonight. Happiness tomorrow for happiness tonight. And and like that to me I think just it just rings of like, really empty promises in that whole category. And and then the other thing I guess I would say is you know, I think that alcohol is the only drug that people look at you funny for not doing like no one would look at you and be like, I can’t believe we’re in the middle of this concert and you’ve walked outside and not smoked. Like no one would say that anymore.

Kara Goldin 29:37
Unless you live in Northern California

Nick Bodkins 29:41
maybe a different kind of smoking maybe a different kind of smoking. But but like and there’s a lot to that too but but but like the the I think that the idea that with with an A with beer with with wine with spirits with an elevated cocktail experience certainly you look at around the room, and you have this means of normalizing yourself in a social setting in a way that otherwise would rightfully or not, sort of move you off to like, what’s like, people ask, you know, my wife has a drink. It’s like, are you pregnant? Is there something wrong? And it’s like, first none of your business second? Like, why are those the only two pieces that I might not be drinking tonight. And so our sort of reframe of this is that changing the ritual means changing the ingredient, and not the ritual, because inherently, for the most part, like drinking alcohol, in most settings is about togetherness in some way, shape, or form. Like we’re experiencing music together, we’re experiencing a bar together, we’re catching up with old friends, we’re enjoying a meal, like whatever those things are. And I actually think that that is what we’re drawn to. And the addictive properties of alcohol actually blunt. The, the the memory that we have of every next day after a big night out. That’s just like, I know, I know, for me, like hangovers do not last a couple of hours anymore. It lasts like a couple of days. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I, you know, I was on this panel last year with Brendon, from the editor from Fast Company at South by and he asked like, what’s your, like, wild prediction for like five to seven years from now? And I said, I think that alcohol will have a block box on it, like cigarettes within the decade. It’s

Kara Goldin 31:36
Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s, I don’t know, there’s there’s a lot of, you know, liquor lobbyists that are out there that I mean, it’s it’s amazing how much restriction there still is, I know a ton of people up in the wine country, for example, that have a really challenging time still doing DTC right to certain states. And, and it’s fascinating how all of that works, but getting into some of the different categories. So beer obviously has exploded the non alcoholic beer, for sure. Wine, do you want to explain? Like, I have not found a non alcoholic wine that I think is? Wow, I mean, that I that I, and I think it’s more complicated. I’ve definitely talked to growers. You know, vintners about this, but what is your take on that?

Nick Bodkins 32:34
So first of all, sending you some that I I personally like is I want you to find some stuff that you like to look, I think if you if you look at this sort of from an industry landscape, beer was the first to proliferate product innovation, because of the level of consolidation within the beer business. Making a good na beer is is essentially it’s a, you know, it’s a process, but like you’re removing three and a half to five and a half generally percent of the alcohol from the product. And there are a lot of ways that you can step that up and sort of change that and once the major players figured that out, the product innovation proliferated very quickly, Heineken zero Guinness zero is Straya. Peroni, like everybody’s coming out with Na beers. Everyone thinks about wine, and vintners and growers think about wine is everyone has their own process in mind is completely different than everyone else’s. And there’s a lot less consolidation in the category. There’s a lot of people that protect that like that process. When you do alkalis wine, you just for your listeners that may not know, you go through the full maturation process wines that are oped go into oak, like all the all the normal process in Whitewater or Rosaire, read every everything happens. And then it goes into one of two things. One is a is a reverse osmosis machine, which is not my favorite. The other one is a vacuum distillation, which essentially takes the atmosphere down to zero. And then they run the wine through it and essentially it works is like a reverse still so that the alcohol boils at room temperature without raising the temperature of the wine or affecting the the underlying piece there and then the residual alcohol comes out. The reason why it’s hard is that the nose sits on alcohol if you think about the same way that you put like a vanilla bean into vodka and that’s how you end up with vanilla extract. Alcohol is a really lazy flavor carrier, it’s really easy to extract extremely big bold flavors and put them into alcohol. So getting back into the wine but the nose and the actual piece. It’s excited it is a bit it’s a bit alchemy and a bit science, but those that are doing it really well. None of them are really at scale to a point where like, Kara would be like, Yes, I know exactly the right brand. This is the one I’m gonna go to, they figured it out, because they’re all kind of in these little pockets. There’s also been, I think, a pretty big, like negative reaction from winemakers in general. There are a few that are not. But I really think they need to get over it. Because yeah, everyone, everyone will complain about having to sell juice onto the bulk market and how the bulk market is doing all this stuff. But no one’s like, Hey, you want to drink responsibly, let me take some of this estate grown California Chardonnay or California sodium Blanc, or California cab, de alcohol eyes it and make a non out version of my own product that I didn’t give to someone else. And when you’re not drinking alcohol, you can still drink my brand. And like, will it be the same? I think expectation setting is really important. But my goodness, like I read that article about like the French government paying French winemakers, 250 million euros to pour wine down the drain. And I’m like, I couldn’t, I couldn’t do alkalis some of that and brought it because there are lots of reasons that people don’t drink alcohol, it’s medicine, it’s pregnancy. It’s I have something busy going on tomorrow. And I’ve got a busy Wednesday and like it’s gonna be it’s gonna be a big day. So I’m taking the night off. That doesn’t mean you don’t want something swirling in your glass. And I think probably the biggest argument I would make for it is it’s really hard to compare really great wine to na wine, if what’s going into making an a wine is the is is basically yellow Taylor barefoot bubbles in because no one wants to get the good stuff and the alcohol is the good stuff. So we’ve been focusing on trying to get more winemakers to the alkalis the good stuff. I don’t know if you’ve if you’ve seen but our friend Rachel from Oceania, oh, she’s in San Luis Obispo. She makes incredible Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that’s like single vineyard estate grown Pinot and Chardonnay. She de alkalized made Oceana zero for the first time this year. It is a premium single vineyard, California Pinot Noir. And it drinks like a much better bottle because it’s not made from bulk wine that was widely available at $1. A leader you know.

Kara Goldin 37:23
Yeah, I think you’re 100%. Right on on that, that I think that we’re dealing with an industry that is that, you know, feels like if they have a non alcoholic version, that it’s going to destroy Napa, or it not every but it I think the brand, I think is is it. And obviously Francis has Bordeaux and kind of feels the same way. But I think it’s a very powerful. You know, I had I have a friend who is up in Napa who, you know, obviously had to deal with the fires. And exactly, right. And she decided to create a product from from the smoky grapes. And, and there was a whole fight that went on, on whether or not they should actually label it with Napa. And

Nick Bodkins 38:26
always IOC and Appalachians and regions and like, Are we allowed to do this? And does it fall within this and like, it is a reason how I so yeah, it’s the same reason why, like, you know, one of my favorite songs in New York City is this guy, Miguel de Leone. He’s one of the owners of pinch Chinese. They have have had a Michelin bib, and a very substantial, incredible wine list since day one, but he’s the opposite. He’s like, I don’t need you to come in here with all of your Psalms speak and give me all of these reasons why, you know, this particular variety is the only one we would ever drink, like, drink what you like, like, you don’t need a reason to like it. And you can impress me all day long as a psalm with your knowledge of left bank from, you know, from north to south. Like, that doesn’t matter to the vast majority of people. And it makes it super intimidating for a lot of folks.

Kara Goldin 39:22
Yeah, absolutely. I could talk to you all day about all of this. So one question.

Nick Bodkins 39:29
I’m super passionate about the wine piece, like it’s, it’s a it’s the biggest part of our business by volume. And it’s actually the highest predictor of repeat rate when people find stuff that they really like.

Kara Goldin 39:39
Yeah, definitely. So most challenging aspect of building this business. Maybe this is your first time founder, you’ve worked for founders. But nobody told you that this is what you appease that you just had no idea that maybe sometimes hopefully not every Night, but you’re, you know, it’s something that you just like think is really hard. Not that you can’t I always view being a founder and being an entrepreneur is building a puzzle. Right? Not that you can’t solve the puzzle, but the puzzle is, you know, there’s pieces that you’re always trying to, to, you know, gain to solve for. But what is it that you think is hard? That is not what people always tell you?

Nick Bodkins 40:28
You know, I think, especially in a consumer facing business, if I look back the thing over the last three years that has been the absolute most difficult for me, has been deciding what to say yes, versus what to say no to because the sheer volume of opportunity for partnerships and brand extensions, and like all these people that want to do all these things, and like brands that might potentially work, but like would potentially degrade the rest of our port. Like, there’s so many. There’s so many and so easy ways to say yes. And it’s really, really difficult to figure out what to say yes to, because the default answer, once you reach some level of scale has to be no unless it falls into very specific objectives. Because we’re no longer this like, oh, well, like it might work, it might not work. Like there’s a couple of people like whatever, like, I have investors, I have employees, those employees have families. And the brands that we represent, we like to say that we are the pedestal that the brands sit on, I have other people’s dreams and ambitions on my shoulders as well, as well as the rest of my team. And so moving from freewheeling to thoughtful has been a real gear shift for me. And I think that the way that we’ve been able to navigate it is like, I was the founder that said, I’m not the right person to be CEO, as we continue to scale. Like, I want to still have these wildly ambitious dreams. And I want to figure out where we can go. But I want somebody in the seat next to me that’s done this before, who has scaled a business who has had a successful exit, that I can bounce them off and say, This is why I think this fits into our strategy. And let him help me figure out how to prioritize not just maybe yes or no, but when, like sequencing, the yes is as important as the yes or no.

Kara Goldin 42:24
I love that. So Nick bodkins, founder of bosan, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom, really appreciate it. Everybody needs to go on your website. We’ll have all the info in the show notes or visit one of your locations. And definitely thank you again. Yeah, really appreciate it.

Nick Bodkins 42:46
Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Kara Goldin 42:48
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted, where I share more about my journey including founding and building hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and good bye for now.