I started a distillery and spend a lot of time selling my spirits directly to consumers inside liquor stores. Here's what I've learned about how you buy booze.

Sean Anger, 37, founder of Fox and Seeker Distilled Goods, spends time selling his product inside liquor stores and chatting with customers.

Sean Anger

• My co-founder and I started a distillery company in 2017, to revive authentic flavor in spirits with local grains.
• I've learned a lot about the way customers buy alcohol and discover new brands.
• Here are some of my biggest takeaways from spending hours getting to know shoppers inside liquor stores. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sean Anger, 37, founder of Fox and Seeker Distilled Goods, who spends time selling his product inside liquor stores.  It has been edited for length and clarity.

Over a decade ago, I became interested in the liquor industry after watching a documentary about a group of winemakers in Sonoma Valley. I had a background in engineering and manufacturing, which helped me learn how to brew beer at home.

I was fascinated by how you could create different flavors by using grains, and I started to learn more about spirits. My co-founder and I started Fox and Seeker Distilled Goods, a distillery company, in 2017, with the main goal of reviving authentic flavor in distilled spirits using only local grains.

We sell vodka, gin, and whiskey, but what makes our products different is they are made from scratch in our distillery. 

My role varies day-by-day, but I'm mostly responsible for marketing and operations. Not only do we sell through our own tasting room in Texas, but we distribute in retail stories in the US. Since we're a relatively new brand, I spend Thursday through Saturday in different liquor stores promoting our spirits.

Right now, we're a wholesale-first company and 80% of our time is spent building our retail footprint, so our in-store tastings can account for 30-50% of our sales each month. 

Because I spend more than 15 hours a week inside stores, I see a lot. Here are some interesting takeaways.

A lot of customers believe false marketing 

The biggest challenge of selling in a store is confronting marketing myths surrounding a certain style of liquor.

For instance, I'm constantly asked how many times distilled our vodka is. People have been misled by other liquor brands' advertising that more times distilled means better quality, but that's not the truth. It's just a marketing gimmick.

It's always a tough challenge to respect a potential customer's perception and faulty knowledge, while trying to educate them about liquor manufacturing. 

Another good piece of advice is to check the label for a manufacturing statement about where the spirit actually comes from. It's illegal to claim a brand comes from a certain distillery unless distillation actually happens there.

You meet all different kinds of people inside stores 

During in-store tastings, I speak with a variety of people, including famous athletes, aspiring rappers, homeless individuals and families buying supplies for a reunion. That's probably the biggest joy: You literally never know who you'll meet.

However, the dark side is people who come in because they are alcoholics. They come to me for a free sample, and then go off and buy whatever they can for their fix. For me, it's disheartening.

But it's not as frequent as people think. I'd say less than 5% of people I meet are alcohol dependent; 5% are in the store for the first time to stock up for big parties. Everyone else is somewhere in the middle. 

The majority of my customers are what I consider to be in-and-out, or convenience, shoppers. They usually walk into the store with an idea of exactly what they want. Some of them are open to chatting and trying a new brand.

Over the years, we've started to see which stores we should focus on more because customers there seem more open to new brands. 

Buying behavior is often correlated to demographics and trends 

I've started to see that people in their mid-30s to mid-50s, generally in both suburban or higher density areas, are more receptive to trying new brands of alcohol. However, this audience is often less likely to buy the first time they meet us, so getting them to be a potential customer often takes longer.

Inflation has impacted people's decision making 

In the last year, with inflation, I've noticed customer buying habits have changed. Fox and Seeker spirits range from $19.99 to $44.99. People have started asking more questions about our spirits to justify the value, whether it's about the size of the bottle, the price, or sometimes they don't want to buy another bottle of vodka or gin until they finish what they have at home. 

Value-oriented buying behavior will continue if we're in a recession next year. 

I noticed in 2008, during the recession, people spent their money on more well-established liquor brands; people didn't want to put their money into a bottle they didn't already trust.  

No marketing works better than one-to-one conversations 

As the founder of a new distillery company, no marketing tactic helps get more sales than being in stores. We're constantly competing with big-name or celebrity-backed brands. They put so much money into their marketing and we can't possibly match that. There's so much noise on social media too, but in the end, the best way to build a new liquor brand is one-on-ones with all types of customers inside these stores. 

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