Episode 5
· 51:58
Alright. Welcome, guys. Thanks for jumping on to the podcast. Super excited to have you both here. If you could introduce yourselves, and then we'll just dive right in.
Travis:Kendall do you
Rishi:wanna go?
Kendall:I want Rishi go first.
Travis:Rishi go first. Yeah.
Rishi:Alright. Thanks for having me, Travis. Rishi Malik, one of the 2 of us that are cofounders of Friday Deployment Spirits. Here to talk about all things spirits related and whatever else we dive into. Awesome.
Rishi:I
Kendall:think that it's relevant for the podcast for you to mention that you work in tech and what you do in tech. I feel like that's relevant because the liquor is focused on tech people.
Travis:That's fair. Yes. Go ahead.
Rishi:Yes. Fair. I run I have run blast from engineering teams. I've been in tech for a long time. And right now, I run engineering teams for a digital only bank, which is its own, Sempra can awards.
Travis:And so that's why you decided to start a spirits company because you're working tech for banking?
Rishi:The spirits help. I I'd be lying if I said they did.
Kendall:Awesome. And I'm Kendall Miller. I also work in tech, although I tend to be more on the business side than deep in the engineering. It's been a very long time since I've written Meaningful Code. Also one of the cofounders of Friday Deployment Spirits, and excited to be here with you, Travis.
Travis:Awesome. Thanks, guys. And also for the benefit of listeners who maybe can't see, I have to note that Kendall's display name while we're recording right now is Kendall vonpants McGiggles. I just think we have to get that on the record.
Kendall:They let me put anything in this thing,
Travis:then I will text you. You gotta go crazy. Yeah. Love it.
Rishi:We've missed his real last name from everything I know about him.
Travis:We'll have to see a passport to confirm, but I'll go with it for now.
Kendall:The the Vonpantz McGiggles family is a long interesting winding story, but that's for a separate podcast.
Rishi:Okay. We'll get we'll do that,
Travis:on your return return trip.
Kendall:Sounds good.
Travis:Sounds good. Okay. Awesome. So okay. Friday deployment spirits.
Travis:What like, I could I obviously already know what that is, but what is that? What the heck? That's an interesting name and yeah. What's that all about?
Kendall:You wanna start with origin story, Rishi? Or you were I don't know how we're gonna do this back and forth.
Rishi:I've never been on
Kendall:a podcast where I have to also yield to somebody. It's it's,
Rishi:all of us turn it around. We'll turn around and and ask Travis if he's ever had to deploy code on a Friday.
Travis:I have had to deploy code on a Friday too many times. Yes.
Kendall:And that's why we exist.
Travis:That's why you exist. K. So is that do you exist for the for the, while you're deploying or for later that night?
Kendall:Depends on what kind of deployment it is. There's there's lots of different ways to you either need the drink to get in the Friday deployment spirit
Travis:Yeah.
Kendall:Or because you've been in the Friday deployment spirit, you need the drink. It can go both ways. And let's let's be very clear, you can be in a Friday deployment spirit on a Monday, on a Tuesday, just because it has the word Friday in it doesn't mean you can't,
Travis:it's a state of mind.
Kendall:It's a state of mind.
Travis:Okay. Excellent. Alright.
Kendall:But but I I'll add more color to that, since Rishi turned that right around. So the origin story is, we're at a brewery in Denver. Rishi and I and actually 2 other friends. And there had been some discussion about why can't we get a bottle of whiskey called, I did sock 2 and all I got was this bottle of whiskey. Or and, you know, we're just on and on and on and we have a big long list of all of the ideas that we brainstormed.
Kendall:And the other two guys left and Rishi and I stayed after and had another beer and we're sitting there and Rishi says, well, I kinda like I think this is a good idea. And I'm like, well, I think this is a good idea. He's like, well, I'm not I'm not fucking around. Can I can I curse on this podcast? I don't know if
Travis:I can curse.
Kendall:And I'm like, well, I'm not fucking around. And then the, the next day we're on the phone with the distillery saying, hey, what's it what's it take to buy $10,000 worth of whiskey and how do we set something aside that's just for us? And anyways, long story, we ended up starting with gin instead, but, generative a rye, our first whiskey is coming out in December, if all goes according to plan. But, yeah, that's that's the origin story. Anything I missed there, Rishi?
Rishi:Yeah. I feel like you're you're underselling one part that I think is very telling of you as an individual. We're at the brewery. We're talking through it all exactly as Kendall said. And I've been, like, thinking about this for quite a while and, like, looking at, like, starting my own distillery and going down that path.
Rishi:And we're chatting. He's like, well, like, there's there's people who do this already. We should just talk with them. Let's go. You know, that that that's fair.
Rishi:Like, I don't I don't know how to distill. Let's talk to to to experts. And then the next day, he's like, hey, I talked to experts. Here's some options. And I was like, wow.
Rishi:Okay. He's like, this is an actually moving part. Yeah. A 100%. A 100%.
Rishi:So full credit to to catalog that. Awesome.
Kendall:I get a lot of shit in my career for maybe going 2 or 3 steps down the road before I pause to ask if that's actually what people wanted.
Travis:Right. Yeah. Okay. Alright. I like that.
Travis:I mean, that's how you get things done. So that's that's cool. That's good. Okay. So lots of questions.
Travis:Why why gin, first of all?
Kendall:So gosh. Again, I'm I'll fill in a little bit of color and Rishi correct me. The the short answer is we sat down with a distillery, with the the owners of a distillery having, you know, my how do I buy $10,000 worth of whiskey? Very quickly got me to the owner. So if you wanna get a hold of the owner of distillery, call and ask that question.
Kendall:The, so we we sat down and had lunch a couple weeks later with the owner of the distillery that we partner with and, you know, began with a, hey. This is what we're thinking of doing. This is how we think this works. We didn't yet have the name. Like, to be clear, we had a whole bunch of names for, individual liquors.
Kendall:We had a whole bunch of ideas, but we we hadn't landed on Friday deployment spirits yet. I think Friday deployment was the name of one of the ideas for a whiskey or something, and, then we it ended up becoming the the company name. But while sitting there brainstorming this with him, you know, it basically came around to like, hey. Look. We can do a whiskey.
Kendall:It'll be a heavier initial investment. There'll be all these other things. And, within our parameters and, honestly, I'm a gin guy, so part of it was I was like, well, I would rather have a gin. I mean, I like whiskey. Don't get me wrong.
Kendall:There's very little liquor that I've come in contact with that I don't like. Vodka's one of the few things on that list. It just doesn't excite me. But that's how we ended up going the gin route. And, yeah.
Kendall:Anything to add there, Rishi?
Rishi:Yeah. I mean, I think it's I mean, we're we're tech people. We work in tech, and I think there's there's something to the, rapid, you know, and or MVP and or just like feedback. Now we're talking whiskey, good whiskey takes years to to age. And of course, the distillery we're talking with, like, they've been doing this long time, so they have, you know, they have the supply.
Rishi:But what it then ends up coming coming down to is, like, well, we can make a gin, you know, and we can make a gin on the order of, you know, weeks slash months when you consider kind of everything that goes into the, the alcohol and distribution and sales process, which we can talk about. But it's just it's just faster. And that that is very entertaining. And because it's faster, you then can be more creative, more unique with it. So as we kind of delve into that, we're able to work with them to customize the recipe.
Rishi:Like, our, our gin is, you know, completely unlike everything else that they make from that aspect because it's got our inputs and and their creativity all tied together. So it just made it to it made it much faster, and more creative process.
Travis:Yeah. That that was gonna be my next question was like, okay. So because it's gin, you get to basically your custom ordering it as opposed to whiskey. It's like because of the aging process, you have to take what's available if you're working with a contract distiller.
Rishi:Well, you can
Kendall:you go ahead, Rishi.
Rishi:Yeah. Sorry. You you can customize it even for for whiskey, but
Kendall:then
Rishi:it will take you that, like, aging amount of time to get that out. So it could be our own 100% recipe, but we're probably a few years away from that maturing and being ready to go to where we'd wanna be selling to our customers.
Travis:Gotcha.
Kendall:Yeah. So, the gin thing, I mean, there's some funny things about that is, what Rishi liked in a gin and what I liked in a gin were almost polar opposites. And so when we we sent the distiller some notes and said, hey. We want Rishi likes this, kinda likes this. We recognize that's impossible.
Kendall:So, you know, do the best you can, and they came up with a a couple of different recipes, and we went into to taste. And, I have have to say it's still one of the highlights of my career is sitting in a distillery tasting liquor for work, and I highly encourage people to get into this industry just for that reason. I was like, what what what have I done in my life right that has led to this? Because it makes me so happy. But, I think they expected notes on our gin, and, one of them was just so good.
Kendall:It was like this changed nothing. This. This is perfect. And, to this day, I mean, Rishi for, like, the first couple months was like, I think this is my favorite gin I've ever had. Like, you can't say that about our own gin.
Kendall:Like, it's just it's, like, not and and now I'm like, I I think this is my favorite gin I've ever had. Like, I finally just am like Okay.
Rishi:Wait. So somehow it it
Travis:hit for both of you.
Rishi:Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
Kendall:We're we're both big fans. I really like our gym. I can't believe how good it is. You're selling it. Like, you should
Travis:hopefully, you like it.
Kendall:Well, I mean, Travis, like, we think this is a great idea. And had our product been absolute shit, we would still have sold it. The fact that we got to a fantastic product because we partnered with a great distillery that happens to really know what they're doing, huge icing on the cake. Makes me way more proud of what we're producing. Like, don't get me wrong.
Kendall:But like this is this is leaps and bounds above I think what either of us had really expected was gonna be the the quality of the product. And correct me if I'm wrong about that, Rishi. But and then, you know, back to the whiskey thing. Even now, I mean, we buy a single barrel from them. Right?
Kendall:And every barrel is gonna be different. In the way that they bring it, you know, that they finish it is is is pretty complicated. And we have input on some of that. And, you know, what's the final alcohol content gonna be in? You know, we we tried it at cask strength and in a couple different ways.
Kendall:And so there's a lot of we still have a tremendous amount of influence over this, and this is still a Friday Deployment Spirits product, which I wanna be super clear about because I think that that's relevant is, like, we're not white labeling some other places liquor. Yeah. This is our product.
Travis:Cool. Awesome. Yeah. I I, I knew that was like a thing, you know, that you'll see just, you know, quote, unquote distilleries, but it's all they just buying contract stuff, you know, buying stuff off the shelf or whatever. But I don't think I realized how, I guess, accessible is maybe the right word it is to for, you know, for a new company to do this where you're, like, you're having that level of input in in what you're getting.
Kendall:I don't think it is that accessible. I think we got really lucky. I think we got a hold of the right distillery at the right time. Yeah. I think I think the average person who calls up a distillery and is like, hey, I wanna do contract distilling.
Kendall:They're gonna be like, well, cool. But fuck you. Right? I think that's probably gonna be if we got lucky.
Travis:So does this, however much detail you can get into, does this distillery that you work with, do they is this what they do or do they have their own brands as well that they sell? How does that work?
Rishi:Yeah. So they have their own brands. This is is what they do, but they are, they are very much known for their, I'll say their craft, but also their kind of, from our ingredients, you know, all all the way out, you know, every everything they do, every drop. They are very involved in it. I mean, to to the point that, like, even the people that grow the grain, you know, they personally know.
Rishi:They've been to the farms. They're like, they they do all that kind of work. Nice. And so that's not what you get with most places. Right?
Rishi:Most distilleries aren't like that in general, much less one that you could hire on a contract basis. Yeah. So, yeah, what Kendall said is absolutely true. Like, we just got lucky that these people are so steeped in what they do. They have that skill.
Rishi:And that when we started talking with them, it was something they were interested in in doing and partnering with us on.
Kendall:Yeah. Is that and and to to to clarify that a little bit too, what they do is they're a distillery and they're very good at this. Right? They they don't do contract actually with anyone else. They only do it.
Kendall:That that doesn't mean they won't someday. They they might someday. But they only do contract distilling with us. And the interesting thing about this is their background is such an in a way that I think Rishi and I both really appreciate and can identify with where they question things in every step of the process. There's a lot about the way the liquor industry works where it's like, well, this is just how it's done.
Kendall:Right? Even when I when we were starting this, a good friend of mine was like, Kendall, don't buy from a local distillery in Denver. It's gonna cost you a fortune. Like like, go, but I can get you liquor from, Indiana for nothing, you know, and and, fiddle with that. And I was like, yeah, but I don't I don't want it to be nothing.
Kendall:Like, I want it to and and we like that it's close by and these kinds of things. But also throughout the whole distillation process, the the mechanisms that things go through, they've questioned, they've challenged, they have new and different processes. The way that our gin is made, they have, you know, I'm gonna not get into all the specifics, but some proprietary parts that they built themselves by hand, you know, big metal pieces Yeah. To make this go because when they made gin in the traditional way in quotes, they were unimpressed with the regular product. And they just found ways to improve and improve and improve and all of their liquor's great.
Kendall:Ours just happens to be really good as well. So Nice. But it's it's they're very good at this. That's part of what's fun.
Travis:Yeah. I mean, that feels to me, that's like a that seems unique in that, oh, you're you are their only contract customer as opposed to, like, you that was what I had in my head is, like, you know, your friend said, oh, Indiana. Like, I I think that's, like, a thing. Right? There's, like, you can just go get whatever off the shelf and, you know For nothing.
Travis:Label it. Yeah. Really cheap.
Kendall:Yeah.
Travis:Yeah. Okay. Cool. Interesting. So you so you've started with gin.
Travis:When did you when did you first start selling the gin?
Kendall:Do you remember, Rishi? I'm trying to think. I think it was I
Rishi:think we're about a year?
Kendall:It wasn't Christmas because it was right after that we finally got it together. Maybe I'm
Rishi:wrong. January.
Kendall:No. I think I think we
Rishi:we ended up, like, basically launching in in January. Okay. Cool.
Travis:So you're coming up on a year of of having that out available. Okay. Cool. And you have you said your next product is, knock on wood, coming in December?
Kendall:Yep. So I'm gonna I'm gonna hold up a bottle. So this is Friday deployment gin. This is our first print of the label. It didn't actually fit the bottle.
Kendall:We had to do a different, print. You know, that's why you do a test print. Right. And the gin is called force push gin. And, yeah, the the the whiskey is coming out in December.
Kendall:I'm I'm saying early December. We're gonna have preorders up ASAP. Unfortunately, this isn't just a tech company where we can just push things and make things happen. So despite our best
Travis:physical product.
Kendall:There's a physical product. There's a 3 tier system required by law and alcohol distribution that is an unbelievable pain in the ass, especially if you're used to shipping software, which requires you and your computer and literally nothing the fuck else. You can just make bits go. Yeah. Yes.
Kendall:And so the amount of effort we put into just getting this to go is, yeah, I don't know. Rishi has been working very hard with, even the people who manage our, our online, it's not even our online presence. It's like our distribution and
Rishi:Distribution and fulfillment. Yeah. It's it's a complex set of machinery that, you have to by law use. And for software folks, it's hard to understand. But for small companies in general, it's much more complex than it it should be, which is why you see so much kind of consolidation in the industry, which a lot of people get to realize.
Rishi:Like, most of the big brands, all of them at the same company, Almost all of them use the same types of distributors. And so it would be like a small company to try and get into, retail presence and to just being able to ship. It takes a bit. And there are now at least a couple of companies trying to, like, help with that, but it's it's not to offer. It is complex and it takes a while.
Kendall:Yeah. Well, I think we weren't in business for 5 minutes before we were like, why are we making a product? All of the money is in the government sanctioned middleman. Like like, there's literally a government law that says you have to have a middleman. What do they do?
Kendall:Nothing. What value do they add? None. Like, I mean, it's it's unbelievable how much, money you can make in this if you were just the middleman, sanctioned by the government to be there. Gotcha.
Travis:Yeah. So I was gonna ask that. What have you what have been, like, the the hurdles or obstacles? And so you mentioned the 3 tier system. I'm not familiar with that.
Travis:What is the 3 tier system?
Rishi:You're on the hook now, Kendall. You gotta go through all the details. Okay. Okay. Well, so
Travis:Get into it.
Kendall:I'm this is this is hand wavy because, we're essentially, you know, the brand people and marketing people for what we do. Right? Like we're not deep in the weeds of even that, even though we run into as many problems as we have. So my understanding in the simplest terms is the person who produces it can't distribute it. The distributor can't produce it and can't sell it, and then there's a store.
Kendall:So you can produce it. There's there's the 3 tiers is production of the alcohol, distribution of the alcohol. That means like getting it from the production site to the stores, and then the sale actually selling it to the end customer. By law, there have to be 3 different tiers. And now also that varies dramatically state by state.
Kendall:So in Colorado, if Rishi and I decided decided we wanted to go make our own distillery and start this from scratch and do it ourselves, it's relatively easy to get a permit to distill. And we can sell the alcohol in Colorado. If we wanna sell it outside of Colorado, we're totally fucked. We can't ever do it. If you wanted if we were in California and we wanted to go start a distillery, it would take much longer for us to get all the permitting to get started.
Kendall:But once we were producing alcohol, it's a lot easier to ship outside of the state. And if you're in Utah, you just can't drink because, you know, why why should you be able to? Like, it's just it's just unbelievable how complicated it is, and every state is different.
Travis:Right. Yeah. Yeah. I know some states have this stuff about how, like, the liquor stores are state owned and there's all that whole mess. And thankfully, we don't
Kendall:have that
Travis:here in Colorado. Okay. Interesting. So do people do companies not just, man, this may be beyond what you've had to deal with? Do they not just start like, okay, here here's the distribution company and here's the distilling company and just, well, it's the same ownership and but that's the way around the or maybe that's what they do and it's just you have to jump through the hoops to do it.
Rishi:You you can. There there's kind of 2 big aspects to the distribution side of things that make it tricky. Number 1 is distribution isn't just a federal thing. Right? So if you're like, okay, we're in Colorado, we can we hit the state of Colorado up to get a distribution license.
Rishi:It's not that it's not that bad, not that arduous, not that expensive, but there's 50 states. Right? So that's 50 distributor license that we have to have, 50 different sets of rules that we have to follow and all that kind of thing. In addition, the retail game is very, it's a physical product and it's physically based. So like for our spirits, we do 99% of our sales online, but there is actually a local liquor store that carries our gin.
Rishi:And, you know, the way that that kind of sale process happens is I'd physically walked in there and we did it tastier. I got to know people. And it's great. And it's a ton of fun. But when you think about that, you know, how many liquor stores are in any given area?
Rishi:That's a very physical time. You know, it's it's a very physical process. You have to go to each one of them. You have to taste, you get them doing that. And so that's why actually where a lot of the distributors and try to add some value.
Rishi:You sign with the distributor, and it's their reps kind of going along with you and doing that kind of stuff, which is great. But when you're a company that that's small, you're like, you know what? All our folks are tech folks. We're gonna be selling mostly online. People like, oh, yeah.
Rishi:Yeah. That's not something where you were used to. So this is novel for them even in that regard because they're they're the value add that they're trying to bring isn't as relevant for us because you're really not gonna walk into a random liquor store in a random state, like, I want a Friday to flame spirits. At least not yet. Not for a while.
Kendall:Yeah. It's yeah. I mean, to that point, the way a normal distillery gets started or even a normal liquor brand if they were doing contract distilling is you tell all your friends, you grow a local presence. You know, they tell their friends it grows a little bit bigger. You try to get into some stores that are in the neighboring towns.
Kendall:You try to get into some stores in the neighboring states and you you grow out from there. Right? Or you have a really attractive bottle that people buy because it's a really attractive bottle. And and our entire brand is like, if you work in tech and you see force push gin on the shelf by Friday deployment spirits, you point at it, you giggle, you buy one for your friend, you know, who was up throughout the weekend, on pager or something. Or you're a company that hears about it and you buy it as a gift for for folks, which even that we had one corporation, you know, who's like, hey.
Kendall:We wanna buy this for 200 of our employees. Shit. They live in 40 different states. There's no way we can legally distribute this, and it's just a huge pain in the butt. Right?
Kendall:So we are in an unusual place that it makes sense for us to sell direct to consumers online. Our presence is primarily that way because maybe in San Francisco, it would really make sense for us to be on a handful of shelves, but probably in the rest of the United States, it's it's niche enough. Yeah. But that's unlikely.
Travis:Okay. So that that's that was definitely one of the questions I wanted to ask is, obviously, I working in tech get the appeal, like, it's hilarious. The the name of the company is hilarious. The name of the gin, like, the 4th push gin, like, great. It's, you know, like, you're you're checking all my boxes here.
Travis:But that does seem super narrow. So why did you decide to, like, go that targeted with your marketing versus something, you know, slightly more broad that would be have more mass appeal?
Rishi:I mean, number 1, like, we're attacking. It's funny. Like, I mean, so we always we're talking about, you know, I'm I'm at a bank and banks, still, you know, tend to have to do things out of hours. Right? And so every time, like, you know, not even us, like, we're we're very modern, but like our our supplier vendor, a third party that we integrate with.
Rishi:They're like, yeah. We're gonna go do a deployment. And it's like, great. That deployment is gonna be at, like, 1 AM, you know, on a Saturday night because that's when their volumes are lowest. And it all makes sense, but it's just like it's just the things you deal with being intact.
Rishi:And so for us, it just it just made sense. It kinda matched with what we have to deal with with the amusement and the comedy of it. And it's what we know. I mean, like, I can I can talk to tech all day? I can talk spirits and get, like, very fancy with it, but, like, you know, I can't talk to, you know, the best way to be a celebrity and and market something new or whatever.
Rishi:I just don't have any experience in that. But tech, we know.
Travis:Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like a real, like, commit to the bit kind of thing. Like, this is the thing. We're gonna be committed all all in on that kinda yeah.
Kendall:Yeah. I mean, I think it's also like it it is our crowd. It's everybody that we know is in tech. They're the ones who are gonna find this amusing, find this fun, who are gonna wanna spend you know, it's it's a premium product, and it's it's not cheap. Right?
Kendall:It's, it's it has a premium price tag. And so, we know that this is a market that is happy to spend a little extra on something special. And, okay, happy is maybe the wrong word. Willing to spend a little extra on something a little extra special. And and I think companies I think companies are always looking for something like this.
Kendall:If you're in a private equity company or a venture capital firm and every one of your companies is a tech firm, like, having a tech specific gift that is a premium product that people are gonna really appreciate, in a bottle of gin or in a bottle of whiskey is, I I think, yes, it's a niche market. It's plenty large for how big we're ever going to be.
Travis:Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're not trying to to take you're not trying to compete with, who's it?
Travis:Ryan Ryan Reynolds that has all the the Right.
Rishi:We're not
Kendall:gonna be a daily we're not gonna be a daily replacement like Aviation Gin tries to be. Right? Like, it's just the price tag doesn't make sense for that. Honestly, the quality of the product doesn't make sense. Like, we are a premium product.
Kendall:People are gonna buy it for special occasions and to celebrate things, and that's that's fine. We're okay with that.
Travis:Cool. Yeah. I like that. What have you what has been what has been the most, like, surprising thing that you've learned getting into this? I guess I'm first, I'm assuming that before this, were either of you involved in the liquor alcohol industry at all?
Travis:Like, okay. You didn't have an exposure. So what's been the most surprising or interesting thing you've learned going through this process? Because it's gotta be like its whole, you know, its own complete world of stuff.
Kendall:Yeah. You wanna start on that one, Rishi, and then I'll go?
Rishi:No. Go for it. Lead out.
Kendall:I think just okay. The hardest thing by far is that it is a physical product and I need to not just buy bottles. I need to buy bottles and from a separate place by labels and then I need to buy a stopper and then there's a little, you know, wrap that goes around the stopper on the top and, picking one that's compatible with my stopper and compatible with my bottle is complicated. And then getting those bottles shipped from, you know, the the gin bottles come from Missouri. So getting getting a freight pickup from Missouri into Colorado to drop the bottles off, and then, you know, there's the the putting the label on.
Kendall:It's not easy to put a label onto a round bottle. And even if you have a label machine, you know, there's some complexity there. And then, there's I think that the the physical product piece that's continues to shock me is there's no amount of pushing that I can do that just makes it go. It just there's no way I can sit at my desk long enough and get the product out. It doesn't work that way.
Kendall:Yeah. I can I can do everything right as fast as I can, and as soon as the bottles arrive, I find out, oh, now I also have to have a way to ship the bottles from the distillery to the distributor? So the bottles arrive at the distillery in, you know, 12 packs because they're empty bottles. But once they have liquor in them, they're a lot heavier. Those boxes are probably gonna break down.
Kendall:And if I ship my product to the the distributor that way, it's gonna be a problem. So now I have to buy boxes that can handle a smaller number of bottles and how are form fitted to fit these bottles so that I can get them to the distributor even though all the distributor does is sell them to the store who immediately takes them out of that box, puts them in a different box, and ships them to someone else. So I mean, it's just like the layers of complexity versus like, hey. I built a product, and now we're gonna turn some dials, and we have more bits, you know, zooming through the air. It's it's it gives me an appreciation for how easy SaaS is.
Travis:Yeah.
Kendall:Now the other side of that coin is, I was buying bottles for the the the whiskey, last weekend, I think, and or 2 or something. But driving to a place, picking up a bunch of bottles, sticking them in the back of my car, interacting with the guys at the warehouse, like, that shit's fun when you've worked in software your whole career. You're like, I'm doing a real thing. Look, ma. I can touch it.
Kendall:You know? And, the the story and then I'll shut up. Sorry, Rishi. I'm I know you're shocked that I'm long winded, but, you know, the audience doesn't so the, the story that I share a lot is, there was one time about 4 or 5 years ago that I was driving down the interstate and, with my family in the car, and it's quiet. We're listening to music.
Kendall:And my wife points at a random warehouse, and she goes, do you see that? I said, yeah. And she goes, I don't know what the fuck they do, but I guarantee it's more real than what you do. And I was like, wow. Sick burn.
Kendall:And, now I have a product that is a real product.
Travis:Very real.
Kendall:Yeah. We also sell hats, by the way, which, you know Yeah. More more things to come in the future. Yeah. But, yeah.
Kendall:Rishi, what would you say is the surprising bit for you?
Rishi:So kind of a similar take, but a different nuance to it. In my tech career, I've done quite a bit with hardware in the past. And a lot of the same, you know, everything that Kendall is describing, the same problems exist in hardware. Still physical products, still very hard to manufacture. You have to deal with all those same complexities.
Rishi:But I was surprised at the fact that in hardware, they've adapted quite a bit more to smaller companies. And alcohol hasn't, even though it's been around for so much longer. And there's been smaller companies for so much longer. You know, you could think of, I mean, even if you think of stereotypical, like, moonshanners. I'd make it in their backyard or whatever.
Rishi:Like, it's not a new thing. But some of the industry just does not have support for smaller companies. In hardware, I can get a PCB run for something in 10 pieces, and it's not hard. Mechanical enclosure, all that kind of stuff. Like, there's places all right here in Denver.
Rishi:It's easy to do. What I wanna do like a million of them, I can get it done in in China or overseas or Mexico. All of the infrastructure is there and companies have started to work for much smaller amount to run and tailor what they do. It just seems like the liquor industry has missed that. I'll give you one example.
Rishi:Everything Kendall described about, like, labels and bottles and stoppers, all that kind of stuff is true. But you also are weighing on people to do some of this. I remember one, I think it was I think it was actually far as labels, in the first run. They just kind of stopped communicating for, like, a couple of days. Really, hey.
Rishi:Are you making the labels? Like, we just, you know, we need this, you know, whatever. And they come back. It's like, hey. We were able to talk internally and get you a little bit of, a little bit of a discount.
Rishi:And the discount came to, you know, on the order of, like, a few cents per label. And, you know, they did work. It's something they don't usually do, but they were trying to, like, be nice and, do what they could. But, like, for us in the volume that we we deal with, like, a few cents per label made absolutely no difference. We were at it would rather have just shipped it a few days earlier.
Travis:Right.
Rishi:But that's just not how they think because all of their customers do, you know, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of labels. And, you know, that few cents is impactful and will will change things. And so, that that part's been, you know, certainly a learning experience and a and a big surprise for me that they're just not geared for small people.
Travis:Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting.
Kendall:Yeah. Even the software companies that we use to help with distribution and fulfillment. It's just it's a mess out there. And, what's what's available is hard to use. It's clearly not aimed at people like us.
Kendall:It's, it's fascinating. You it feels like Shopify should have a, like, profile that you can just apply and it does liquor. That doesn't exist. That's not a thing.
Travis:It feels like it's one of the things that, you know, at least my initial reaction is, man, there's a lot of, money on the table there for somebody to come in and and do things right. But then also you wonder if, you know, there are so many, you know, hurdles and moats to to even get into it and regulations and all that kind of stuff. I wonder
Kendall:if that's Yes.
Travis:Kind of the the sticking point. Gosh. Even that you were talking about the, like, the bottles and the labels and the stoppers and the little foil cap over the stoppers and, like, man, that seems like that should just be like a one stop shop kind of thing. You know? Like, here's your, like, bottle company and they just you just order your bottles with your labels and everything.
Travis:And,
Kendall:you can get your bottles and your stoppers and your, you know, the the PVC caps on top all from the same place. But, you know, the big places have a 1,000,000,000 options and the small places have one option. And sometimes you wanna go with the small place because they got the bottle you want, but they don't have a stopper that makes sense. Yeah. You know, one of the one of the bottles we looked at recently, I was like, I prefer the shape of this bottle, but the only stopper they sell is a screw on cheap ass plastic stopper and or, you know, cap, and that's not gonna work.
Travis:Like Right.
Kendall:The brand profile like that. Fit the brand.
Travis:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.
Travis:We're totally I was thinking about that. We're totally spoiled in in tech where it's like, oh, you have this complexity, but there's a library that just kind of papers over this complexity and you don't have to, you know, it's like, oh, you have your your bottle library and you just use, you know, import bottles and you're good to go.
Kendall:Yeah. For the audience for the record, for the audience, Travis swore that he wouldn't bring up DHH in this, conversation.
Travis:I never said DHH. That was all you. That was all you. Okay. What's is there anything that you so so that's, you know, okay, what you've learned, what's been interesting.
Travis:Is there anything you would go back and do differently or if this have things gone smoothly enough that you're like, oh, yeah. We we kinda figured out how to do this and made it work. And, are were are there any, like, oh, man, if we had only done this?
Rishi:I the the only thing that comes
Kendall:to mind is from the get go, the plan was always whiskey, and, there's a lot of people who are like, I love the brand. I'm a whiskey guy, not a gin guy, you know, or I'm a I'm a whiskey person, not a gin person. And and, I don't regret that we came out with gin first. I think it's actually good that we learned as many lessons as we did with this, this process. I'm excited about whiskey.
Kendall:So I that's not even a, like, I wish I had done it different. That's a, I'm really looking forward to this and, you know, I think this is the natural, evolution. But, I don't know. I mean, Rishi, anything that you wish we'd done fundamentally different?
Rishi:Nothing fundamental. I think the way we did it I mean, obviously, we got incredibly lucky just with with the distillery again. I I yeah. I don't know. I don't think there's anything.
Rishi:I'm like, yeah. We we just really, like, missed the boat. Like, that would have made a big difference in our operation or our sales or anything else like that. I think it would have been maybe just a little bit more, planning or, like, relaxing maybe on my side to be like, okay. No matter how hard we go, this is going to take, you know, 3 months longer than we thought in the in the first place.
Travis:You can't force the process kinda thing. Right.
Rishi:And not that, like, again, like, you know, you just have to learn by doing that type of stuff. But, I probably would have been, like, a little bit more chill with some of the things just knowing. Like, okay. Yeah. Like, well, we'll start this, you know, 6 months before we even, like, have an idea here just because that's the kind of thing we'll take or whatever.
Rishi:Yeah. Totally. Yeah. That makes sense. That now, so we can adapt.
Kendall:We have gotten a lot more relaxed about it. I think both of us because we're like, well, it first of all, like, we're not failing miserably by any means. Like, we're we're having fun. We're selling the product. People are buying it.
Kendall:People are liking it. None of my friends ever tell me they don't like it. And I'm like, guys, I know, like, flavors, very subjective. I know some of you don't like it. Somebody at some point needs to tell like, I it just feels weird that everybody tells me they love it, and I'm like, I either you're all liars or it's really, really good, and I think it's probably some of them are liars.
Kendall:But, Yeah. I think we've we've relaxed a lot in it, and and we're getting better at definitely, I've relaxed a lot, and I'm getting better at it. Rishi spends a lot of time talking me down because I get I get worked up, and frustrated.
Travis:Okay. So what's you've got whiskey coming in December, hopefully, sounds like, which is seems like excellent timing right before the holidays.
Kendall:What's rye whiskey
Travis:called
Kendall:generative a rye. It's a play on generative a I. See what we did there. Yep. Yep.
Kendall:Very
Travis:timely. Good. Yep.
Kendall:What were you gonna ask? Sorry. I was
Travis:What what else? Like, what's the future? What's on your, you know, on your radar for next year or down the road? Like, where is this going?
Kendall:Rishi, be the profit. Be the liquor profit.
Rishi:The the nice thing about it for for both of us is that it's there is a longer term vision, but, like, it's the the details are kinda come, you know, they they come to us as we go. Like, hats is a great example. Where do you wanna do, like, something around merch? Didn't really know what it would be. And then, I mean, as as Kendall does, he was like, no, let's get something going.
Rishi:How about hats? And do we kick that around for, like, I don't know, a week or a week and a half? Then again, Kendall doing what he does, trying to find some suppliers and, you know, making that happen. Now we've talked to some folks about, excuse me. You know, we could do, like, a coffee brand.
Rishi:Other stuff that, like, folks are, tech folks are are into, that can be added to it. You know, there will will be, I'm sure, some other other types of merch. Yeah, like I said, coffee is good. There's other spirits that we want to do and other, varieties of it, you know, other types of whiskey and stuff like that. And then we've, we talked around the idea of just like the, again, like the I'll call it branding aspect of it.
Rishi:But, you know, with the ride coming out for the holidays, we're just trying to do gift packs and, you know, bottle of the the ride, bottle of gin, and that kind of stuff. And again, geared for for tech people, but, like, you know, Kendall talked about, like, the first thing being, like, did talk to and all I got was this bottle of whiskey. Like, we've talked about, you know, even more custom boxes where it's, like, you know, kind of like the idea, like, in, you know, case of a security, you wanna really, like, break glass and, you know, get your your bottle of whiskey. Jokes like along those lines, but that that are meaningful for people in in tax. So Yeah.
Travis:No. But I mean, something like that. Yeah. Totally totally resonates with people who have been in that, you know, in those situations. It seems like that's right on.
Kendall:Yeah. We we'll we'll play it by ear. There's a there's a lot we have in mind. We've considered some big hairy, audacious things a few times, but then pursued it a little bit and found out we couldn't make those things happen. So, you know, we've we're having fun with it.
Kendall:I I will say that. Rishi and I worked together previously, before this and and got along well, and and we're enjoying doing this together. And, it's interesting being a side project because we both, you know, give it time where we have time, and, it there's there's a lot of ideas that we both throw around for what excites us about what's coming up, but but it's also like, but next is this thing and the next is that thing. So, we'll see.
Travis:Cool. It sounds like the fun aspect is high up on the list of, kind of priorities for for how you run this thing.
Kendall:Yeah. My only complaint is that I can't hardly process liquor like I used to. There was there was a time where I drink gin every night, and now I have it very occasionally because, liquor just messes me up. And I got old and I stopped processing it, and I'm I'm grumpy about that. I should have done this 20 years ago, but it's it's okay.
Kendall:It's still fine.
Travis:Same same here, in spades for sure. I don't, you know, don't drink. I mean, occasionally now. Which actually makes me curious. Have you thought about, you know, any kind of nonalcoholic, you know, spirit, you know, kind of alternative type stuff?
Travis:You know, it seems like that segment of the market is steadily growing right now as, you know, there's more interest there.
Kendall:Match matching, alcohol free vodkas called tabs and spaces. That's crossed our mind. I don't think that it's, necessarily coming anytime. That's not a high priority for either of us. So there's there's a lot of people in the non alcohol.
Kendall:What's funny is, when I told talked to my tax people right after we started the company, they were like, Kendall, no. Don't start a liquor company right now. The liquor business is struggling. Everything's tanking. We we work with a ton of these, and I was like, well, like, I'm not this is pretty niche y'all.
Kendall:Like, I'm not sure we're really gonna be tossed by the same waves. Like, there'll be waves. Don't get me wrong. But, like, I'm not trying to throw my life savings into a brewery right now when everybody's all the breweries are going under. So it's yeah.
Kendall:I don't know. It's different. Cool.
Travis:Alright. What else should I what else should I have asked you about running this business, about about making gin and whiskey that I haven't asked you?
Kendall:Rishi, what are the activities that you most enjoy pairing with alcohol that aren't coding?
Rishi:All I do is code. I I definitely know that I've made
Kendall:it before. I was gonna say running. Rishi goes on these, like, runs where it's, like, run from here to there, take a drink, run from there to there, take a drink, and keep going. He, like, did a marathon with wine in France. Right?
Kendall:I mean, there's there's been some things. So
Travis:Okay. That's impressive. I mean, just the marathon in and of itself is impressive, and then you add some wine in. I don't think I'd be completing that marathon.
Kendall:Or you'd be really happy when you complete it.
Travis:I guess so. Yeah. Crawling across the finish line hours later.
Kendall:Yeah. Yeah.
Rishi:It it it was a good time. It was a good time. You know, maybe we do a a spirit based version, which, maybe a whole marathon. If we're doing that, we may actually make it a little shorter to get a little bit clean. Yeah.
Rishi:No, all that good stuff. I mean, we're, we're, we're again, fortunate, like we're in Colorado, so, you know, our spirits are great when you have, you know, sunny days and you want to sit up there and have a drink, or snowy days when you're just coming back from, from the mountains. You know, and, like, you can buy all our stuff on on our website, Friday deployment dotco. Yeah. I I don't know if there's anything you missed.
Rishi:I think we talked through the the highlights, but, you know, folks have, have ideas of something you wanna see a tech joke that you just find hilarious, let us know. I mean, that that is that's actually one of the the funniest things kind of somewhat unexpected when we start talking about some of the new things we wanna do when people start to hear about it. Everyone's got the the the name. Right? They have those ideas they wanna contribute.
Rishi:They wanna, like, workshop it. They wanna bounce them back and forth. And it's a ton of fun. So,
Kendall:Which shout out to Topher. That's how we got the name generative a rye. We we we threw around a bunch of ideas and one of our a mutual friend threw this out and we were like, we think that's the one. So Pretty good.
Travis:Like It's
Kendall:pretty good.
Travis:Pretty good. I I like that. Yeah. I'm more of a whiskey person than a gin person myself. So I may have to, give that a try.
Travis:So
Kendall:Many Americans are, and I'm sorry that we're broken that way because gin is better.
Travis:Okay. So then that I gotta ask. Have you been to, have you been to Scotland, Kendall?
Kendall:I have not. Rishi, have
Rishi:you been to Scotland? I have. I have.
Travis:Okay. That was one thing that I thought was really interesting when we we went there. It's been several years now, but, we were there for, month and a half, I think. And the number of gin distilleries in Scotland was surprising to me. Like, I had no idea.
Travis:I was like, oh, they're known for whiskey. Of course. You know, it's Scotland. You got it scotch. But there was gin, like, everywhere.
Travis:So I thought that was pretty interesting. I was not aware of
Kendall:that.
Rishi:Yeah. We were actually talking about that. I think earlier today, it was yesterday, but just, there's just a lot more gin consumption, you know, on a per capita basis in the UK. More craft brands, drinking gin neat, or going places for, you know, more creative expressions with gin. It's just it's just more of a cultural thing over there.
Rishi:Yeah. So, yeah, maybe one of these days we'll launch there.
Travis:Yeah. That's what I was gonna ask. Is that, like, are are the hurdles there just huge to get into overseas markets? Is that crazy or like
Kendall:It's just time and money. The two things that we have an infinite amount of.
Travis:Right. Yeah.
Rishi:I actually I actually looked into this, decade ago, 14 years ago.
Travis:Okay.
Rishi:Because I was actually living in London at the time. The craft brewery scene in Denver in the US was just way bigger than it was in in the UK. Now a lot of that's changed and caught up. But I actually started pricing out, like, what it would take to get some of the spirits, over there. And it just like the the the thing that matters the most is producing over there because shipping is just insane.
Rishi:Oh. You have to do, like, kind of a few containers worth at a time to really make it cost effective on top of, like, the taxes and everything else, which, is actually a bit more defined in the UK, at least. Like, that's easier to do, because I've been doing it to kind of for longer, and it's just more encoded in their system. But, Yeah. I I think for us, you know, we're small enough and then things have changed.
Rishi:We could probably do some small runs over there, but, maybe we end up doing production too.
Travis:Cool. Okay. Alright. Well, for my huge UK audience, you know, I can look forward to that someday in the future.
Kendall:My my dream is someday in the future, people wake up, put on their Friday deployment pants, put on their Friday deployment hat, grab a Friday deployment spirit, and, something truly memorable happens. And I'm looking forward to looking forward to all of that.
Travis:Well, I hope that you, live to see that dream come true, Kendall. That's really good. Maybe if they're waking up, maybe that's when they grab the Friday deployment coffee. I don't know. Just, you know, throw that out there.
Kendall:Seems like you have strong opinions about when it's appropriate and when it's not to drink alcohol, Travis. I mean, you know.
Travis:Far be it for me to dictate,
Rishi:you know.
Travis:Far be it for me.
Kendall:Or
Travis:you could have Friday deployment, pastries, you know, for your breakfast, croissants. I love a good croissant.
Kendall:Friday deployment, hair of the dog. Yeah. That seems like a weird name for a liquor in this brand. Let's not do that, Rishi. Let's just avoid that one.
Travis:Alright. Cool.
Kendall:We're gonna jump into
Travis:some lightning round questions. What's that?
Kendall:Yeah. Probably not the worst name we have. Yeah.
Travis:Maybe you should, yeah. You should that should be some of your marketing, like, you're welcome for not choosing these names, you
Kendall:know.
Travis:You should be grateful.
Kendall:That's right. That's right.
Travis:All the names we skipped over. It's not a bad idea. Let's jump into some, lightning round stuff. Whoever either one of you answer or both of you answer, don't care. Just, just have fun with it.
Travis:Either of you have a favorite book you've read recently, something you really recommend. Recently. Or or all time, like, just if you've got, like, a, you know, a huge favorite.
Kendall:Rishi, do you have one off the top of your head?
Rishi:Not recent. There's a nonfiction book called Ghost Wars. About a lot of what, Neos was doing. I and few other countries in Afghanistan, back in the day. So huge at stake, but it's really well done.
Rishi:I learned a ton reading it. So, still sticks with me even though it's been over a decade now. But
Travis:Okay.
Rishi:Ghost recommend that.
Travis:Okay. I've not heard of that, which is a little surprising. That seems right up my alley. I'll check that out. Okay.
Kendall:I've, been reading a lot of history related things recently. And, if you are into doom and gloom, this book Command and Control Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident and the Illusion of Safety. That's the title of the book, but, about some of the biggest nuclear disasters in American history and then some of the very near misses, all over the world that America has cost caused. And if you ever wanna feel like we're all doomed, it'll definitely make you feel that way. Yeah.
Travis:I was
Rishi:totally missing that. More more doom is totally away.
Travis:That's what we need right now. Yeah. Good. I I mean, that's I'm into that kind of thing. Just the history in general like that.
Travis:So I'll I'll definitely add that to my list, and we'll link all this stuff in the in the show notes. Alright. Favorite, place you've been traveled to or lived? You've both
Rishi:I've heard it.
Travis:Lived in some interesting places. So yeah.
Rishi:Istanbul for me.
Travis:Oh, okay. Did you live there or just visited?
Rishi:Just visited. Just visited. But, yeah. It was it was fantastic. I mean, all the people, all locals were just phenomenal.
Rishi:Like, super welcoming, a ton of fun. But obviously, there's a ton of history
Kendall:Yeah.
Rishi:There. And you have some there's some violent history or whatnot. But you can see, like, where, you know, emperors, like, walked through the doors and how, you know, different people took it over and just, like, didn't remove it or anything. Just, like, put their own stuff on top and Yep. Yeah.
Rishi:It's just just great to learn all the history. People are awesome. Just gorgeous place to to hang out.
Travis:I
Rishi:had a ton of fun there.
Travis:Cool. Okay.
Kendall:Man, the Palace in Sevilla is top of my list for places to visit. I ignored Sevilla for a long time even though people were like, you gotta go. And I'm like, I've seen Spain, and they're like, you haven't seen this, and it really is amazing. As far as places I've lived, Chongqing still top of my list for wildest, craziest. If you if you can get to China and you can go to Chongqing, it's it will change your life, but, it's unlike anything you've ever seen.
Kendall:So
Travis:Okay. Interesting. Alright. I've never even heard of that place. So
Kendall:Most people haven't. It's one of one of the biggest cities in the world, but you probably haven't heard of it. Yeah.
Travis:Okay. Interesting. I'll have to to do some do some reading there. Do you have a favorite food? Especially maybe perhaps something that happens to pair well with, force push gin.
Rishi:I would just like to go on record by saying, I think every food pairs well with force push gin.
Travis:That's a good answer. I feel like I kinda tossed you that one. Right? That's good.
Rishi:You set me up. I I had to Yeah. Take that one. Yeah.
Travis:That's a good answer.
Kendall:I don't have a specific I mean, there's a lot of favorite foods for me I really like to eat, but anything that I can sweat while I'm eating because it's spicy enough, that's what makes me happiest.
Travis:Okay. Spicy food. Alright. Do you find, that Denver satisfies that craving?
Kendall:Usually not without an additional, spice of some sort.
Travis:Yeah. Yeah. Right. Fair enough. Yeah.
Travis:Colorado is not known for spicy food. That's for sure. Cool. Well, that's all the, that's all the questions I have for you guys. I super appreciate you being on the show.
Travis:It's been a ton of fun. I know, more about the alcohol industry, and don't think I'll be starting a competing company anytime soon because it sounds like a pain, but it also sounds very interesting. So I'm looking forward to to checking out the rye when it comes out next month. I'll be looking for that preorder.
Kendall:Yeah. Hoping preorders are up in the next couple weeks, and, check out Friday deployment dotco as Rishi said.
Travis:Cool. Excellent. Yeah. I'll look up the website in the show notes. What about, where can people find where else or are there other places people should look for you guys?
Travis:Twitter, Blue Sky, anywhere else?
Rishi:Yeah. So, if you wanna pick up the gin, it is also available at Bevy's out in, in Littleton, West Side of Denver. Cool. And, yeah, find us on Instagram, TikTok, and given the space that we're in, LinkedIn is our biggest social media presence.
Travis:Nice. Okay. I like it. There seems like there's a lot of untapped potential there, so I like that. Cool.
Travis:Well, we'll link up everything in the show notes. Thanks again, guys, for coming on.
Rishi:Thanks for having us, Travis.
Kendall:Thanks, Travis.
Rishi:See you. Cheers.
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