[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hey folks, I'm Ray Latif and you're listening to the number one podcast for the food and beverage industry, Taste Radio. This episode features an interview with Lars Williams and Mark Emil Hermansen, the co-founders of Empirical, an experimental distillery in Copenhagen that applies culinary and scientific innovations in flavor to spirits and food. Just a reminder to our listeners, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Let's say you have an innovative concept for a new company, but your idea doesn't fit within the established construct of the industry that you would be operating in. is a constant quandary for the co-founders of Empirical, a Copenhagen-based company that produces innovative spirits, and more recently, food. Launched in 2017 by Lars Williams and Mark Hermansen, both of whom previously held influential roles at world-renowned restaurant Noma, Empirical describes itself as a flavor company first and foremost. The goal is to identify and sustainably source high-quality, and often unusual, ingredients and turn them into delicious experiences. An example is Empirical's The Plum, I suppose. A clear spirit that, like all of the company's beverages, is made with a base of koji and flavored with the kernel inside plum pits and distilled marigold kombucha. While praised for their unique approach to distilling, Lars and Marc-Emil are often challenged by the traditions of an industry that historically inhibits, rather than rewards, innovation. Moreover, communicating the originality of Empirical's production methods to retailers and consumers can sometimes be a tedious process. Regardless of obstacles, they remain committed to their vision and continue to build Empirical on their own terms, defining the path as they walk it. In an interview recorded at Empirical's Harbor-based distillery in Northeast Copenhagen, I spoke with Lars and Marc-Emil about their remarkable work at Noma and their decision to leave the restaurant and start a distillery. They also spoke about flavor innovation as a means of stimulating memories and why transparency is the priority in marketing. Later, we discussed the upcoming launch of a product designed for scale, the complexities of a recent label revamp, and why satellite distilleries are integral to Empirical's next stage of development and its P&L statement. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now I'm honored to be sitting down with the co-founders of Empirical, Mark Emil Hermansen and Lars Williams. Gentlemen, how are you?
[00:03:02] Mark Emil: Good. It's good to have you here and it's fun to show you around the distillery a little bit. Absolutely. Mark Emil, thank you so much again for having me.
[00:03:10] Lars Williams: I'm just, as we were just talking about, I'm excited that you came in spring so you get to see the city from the best part. You are having a truly Scandinavian experience, I think. I am. It's amazing.
[00:03:19] Ray Latif: People often ask me when I talk about Copenhagen, you know, what do you love about Copenhagen? And it's easy to say everything because there is so much to love here. But it is when you get this experience where the weather's a little bit warmer, the days are a little bit longer, you get to experience the beauty of having an outdoor glass of wine or spirit in your case. And people seem to be really happy and energized that they're past the winter. It's fantastic. It's a great time to be here for sure. Yeah, that's exactly how I feel.
[00:03:47] Lars Williams: Yeah. You grew up.
[00:03:48] The Plum: Yeah.
[00:03:48] Lars Williams: I'm actually one of the few members of the team that was born and raised in Copenhagen. I went to school in first the US, actually Massachusetts, and then I lived in England where I studied in the university in Oxford, studied anthropology, and then moved back to start working with Lars. It was my first job and my only job before starting Empirical. So that's my story. Yeah. Lars, you're from New York.
[00:04:11] Mark Emil: Yeah, I grew up in New York, went to high school in Brooklyn. I guess moved out of the States around 2006 to start working in restaurants in Europe. The Fat Duck was first. And then from there, kind of in 2009, moved to this kind of upstart restaurant that a lot of people in the industry were talking about that were doing some weird things, but I thought it would be up my alley called Noma.
[00:04:39] Ray Latif: Noma is the number one restaurant in the world, according to whatever company makes those rankings. I'm forgetting the name of the company. It's the Pellegrino's 50 Best. 50 Best. Yes. Three star Michelin rated restaurant. An impressive place. I was there yesterday. I've been there three times. And it's so interesting because people who have a background with Noma, people who have worked at the restaurant, have such a unique experience and have such a point of view, I think, when it comes to food and beverage that is remarkable and remarkably different in so many ways than if you had not worked there. And I say that because Noma is something that is always mentioned. when your bios are brought up or when people talk about Empirical, all these two guys who used to work at Noma. But Empirical is five years in at this point. You're setting your own path. Do you almost want to break away from this notion that you are Noma veterans or that you, you know, have so much experience or have so much history with the restaurant?
[00:05:46] Lars Williams: You know, it's both yes and no, because I think to a large extent what we do and how we work is an homage to the The leadership that taught us that nothing's impossible, which is sort of like an underlying current of everything we do and how we do things. But absolutely, I mean, this is this is its own standing thing. You know, we're talking about Copenhagen. What I would say is that obviously we started empirical while living in Copenhagen, but this is by no means a Danish distillery or Danish product by any means. In fact, we are based in Copenhagen because we think it's a wonderful place to be and live. And it's great for our team to be in Copenhagen. It's a great lifestyle. But the idea of Empirical is born global, as we just spoke about a little bit as well. So being in Copenhagen is more by, on purpose, but also a bit coincidental. So I think breaking free of any sort of reminiscence of sort of like hyperlocal or that we just do scanty things here is by no means what makes us, at least me, wake up in the morning. I've never heard that adjective before, scanty things, but I like it. Is that commonly used? A scanty thing? I heard that all the time when I was, I was always blamed for being too scanty.
[00:06:53] Ray Latif: Did you feel like you understood Scandinavia when you first came here, Lars? Did you appreciate it as much as you thought you might?
[00:07:04] Mark Emil: I fell into it pretty naturally, although coming to Copenhagen and immediately starting to work at a restaurant where you're spending 80 hours at least a week working, didn't really give me a whole lot of exposure to Copenhagen itself in general. And so I think for the first four years I was working in the restaurant, people would ask me like, oh, how's Copenhagen? And I'm like, I have no idea. Because we were just, I know what the path to and from my house was like.
[00:07:32] Ray Latif: Did you have a house? Don't they keep all the chefs and interns and folks? Don't they all have their own NOMA headquarters or quarters? That's what I heard.
[00:07:41] Mark Emil: I think they've changed the housing more recently. There's been a series of iterations, which were essentially debacles when I was... Becoming a distraction. When I was working there in the early days. a lot of down payments or security deposits that were surely never given back. But no, I lived in an area called Norboro, which is really alive and vibrant. And it was nice to be able to just walk around and have like a nice meal or something like that on the half day I would have off.
[00:08:16] Ray Latif: The Noma that we know today had a lot of key figures, including both of you. And Dolores, you were head of the R&D lab for many years. Why did you ultimately leave the company?
[00:08:28] Mark Emil: Well, I think working someplace for eight years, you just start get to a point where you feel like it's time to branch out and do something different. And it was at a moment in time when they were shifting from what was now the old restaurant to their current location. And both Mark and I helped kind of push that project of the new restaurant forward and just felt like a very natural breaking off point where they were kind of doing a transition and it felt like an opportune time for us to start our own project.
[00:09:03] Lars Williams: Yeah, we gave a very, very long notice for sure. You know, in leaving, graduating to some extent, at least in my case, was also down to the fact of, I think, our partnership, Lars, or when we first met, I think, kind of this idea of the power of flavor in general. You know, we call ourselves a flavor company, and it's sort of a little bit tongue in cheek. I would say for many, but we mean it very deeply, seriously, because we think flavor and experience and encountering and discovering the world through flavors underexplored. So that's what we did, and namely you Lars and R&D at Noma. But also what we wanted to do, even before knowing that it was going to eventually end up as a spirits company, and we do cans as well and those things, or beverage company. Hot sauces of late as well. Hot sauces of late, yeah, I tried that.
[00:09:54] Ray Latif: Yeah, it was amazing.
[00:09:55] Lars Williams: Was to say, how do we bring kind of our passion for flavor, our way of engaging with nature and tradition and the world, frankly, to us from all over the world? How do we bring that to, you know, outside the walls in a restaurant? How do we bring that to more than 40 people twice a day? And we landed on Spirits by, you know, it's a very short story. It was just a great way to preserve flavor. It's a by-product of some of the fermentations we're deep into. And fermentation was always sort of like a guiding star of seeing that's the frontier of where we can really create extraordinary flavors and experiences. And yeah, it's a perfect way to preserve and share flavors. So it landed on that. That's why we bought the pressure cooker.
[00:10:34] Mark Emil: I mean, I think we were both very passionate about the way that flavor brings people together and can kind of create sense memories in a way. And I remember one of the dishes that I did was Danish oyster and had gooseberries and blackcurrant and a couple of different things. And my mom had certainly never had. any of those ingredients before, but it brought her back in a flash to growing up a kid and going to Brighton in the summers in Brooklyn. So the power of flavor to do that and create those sense memories, because flavor directly pulls memories from the amygdala without it being gated by the thalamus like you have for the rest of your senses. So it's a very visceral kind of experience that you can generate with flavor. And I think that ability and the want to take all the hard work and innovation that we and our colleagues had put in over the eight years we were there and the hundred hours a week that we're putting in, and how do we take that and make it an even more shareable product? How do we make it sort of democratize that process that we've been so involved in?
[00:11:38] Lars Williams: I love that story you just told Lars, and I think that's really what, that's why I was kind of like a fly on the wall when you were on the tasting, because that moment when you taste something and you kind of like have a short encounter with something, whether it's a sense memory, whether it's something abstract or just surprising, but that little moment where the flavor of it or the texture or anything just kind of like interacts, some kind of acknowledgement of something, and it could be a million different things happening in your brain, but that's my favorite moment of being in this business. I just love that.
[00:12:06] Ray Latif: Yeah, one of the co-founders of a brand called Nantucket Nectars always talks about the experience of drinking something. And the first thing you consume as a human being is milk. That act of consumption is so specific and so historical, and being able to translate that via food and beverage, modern food and beverage, is really a remarkable feat. And I think with Empirical, the question is, How far do you go? Let's talk about the name itself, Empirical. It represents change, right? It represents constant innovation, no?
[00:12:41] Mark Emil: Yeah, exactly. And I think that what we have based and what we try and not mandate to our team, but inspire in our team is that constant innovation, constant search perfection. I would say that I'm a person who does not believe in the concept of perfection, but I constantly strive for it. So knowing that you're never going to get to the end goal is actually a really freeing kind of concept where you know you're going to push as hard as you can today. And then if you do everything you could possibly do as well as you could do it, then you sleep easy that night. And so we just strive to do the best that we possibly can. And that's whether We're trying to find new ingredients or working on one of our limited products or the distillery team shifting the format of the condensers like more or less on a daily basis to try and find the perfect way of doing the distillations. Like everything is in flux and it's something that we actually try and communicate to our customers as well is that For instance, the Ayuk that we're creating today is a little bit different than the very first batch we did, but that's because it's better now. And for our listeners, can you explain what your Ayuk is all about? So Ayuk is where we use a chili called pasilla mije from the Sierra Norte outside of Oaxaca. And that's what we're using as a botanical. The flavor profile is somewhere in between like a Mezcal and an Islay whiskey, I'd say. It's briefly rested in Olorosa sherry casks, and it's based on a custom malt that we do with our local malter and a heritage grain called purple wheat, or that's the English translation.
[00:14:23] Taste Radio: Guessing your margins? That's risky. Belay Financial gives CPG brands the clarity to scale smarter, faster, stronger. Get your free inventory ebook by texting TASTE to 55123 and start making data work for you. Vibrant Ingredients is the natural ingredient partner powering food and beverage innovation, delivering flavor, function, and protection through a science-backed portfolio. Vibrant delivers purpose-driven solutions that help brands create extraordinary experiences. Discover what's possible with Vibrant today. Visit vibrantingredients.com.
[00:15:10] Ray Latif: Everything you do here has a foundation in brewing, which is something pretty interesting. I think some people would be surprised that you brew beer and then you distill it. I was telling one of your colleagues that, and maybe I'm making it sound overly simple.
[00:15:25] Mark Emil: No, no, no, no. I think it's more that we were just, because coming from a colony background where it seems very obvious that you start off with finding the best possible farmer that you can to get the best possible fruit, vegetables, seafood, whatever it is you're going to do. And you need to start with the best possible things. And then you build each step along the way, whether it's making a stock, you're using actually like really high quality chickens to make a great chicken stock. And then you're going to use that to make a great sauce. And for us, I think we were both naive and shocked when we first started looking into the industry and we were like, these companies just buy in factory made ethanol and flavor it. To me, that was like, If you'd gone to Noma last night and they pulled out a TV dinner and then we popped it in the microwave, but we put a couple sprigs of tarragon on top for you, there's three Michelin stars. I mean, that's how we felt. And so the idea that we would transpose that culinary way of producing the best quality thing that we could would start from scratch. It's a true story. It did truly blow our minds.
[00:16:29] Lars Williams: And it did take quite a while for us to realize that the way we are doing things is the absolute hardest way of doing anything. And as I would say, as Lars says, we continue to make it harder. But that's why we started the company. I think we're really seeing every single day with the team and with our guests and customers, it's like, I truly feel like we are at the frontier of something, at least our own limitations, we continue to push those boundaries. There's no point in experimentation in and of itself. It's more the quest, I would say, like I think Lars is describing really well. We were very inspired by the craft beer industry and how they work with creativity, how they continue to aspire to communicate new flavors, new processes, and having a lot of fun doing so, right? Walking into spirits is a very, very static category. It's all about replication. It's about tradition. It's about looking back. It's about legacy. And I think that's, first of all, what's surprising. Secondly, it also just made it very delightful to start, you know, that process and going out and sharing that with the first few accounts and starting to build from there. So I don't think there is an opposition between scale and that. In fact, I think we're proving that those two things are not opposed.
[00:17:43] Ray Latif: Yeah, that's something we talked about before we got on the mics is this question of can you still do what you love and the foundation or one of the cornerstones of empirical is constant improvement and experimentation, but can you do that at scale? And we'll talk a little bit more about you know, how you're attempting to achieve that. But, you know, I brought up the story of a brewer who I knew from the boss industry who I still know. I guess he hasn't passed away. But he started a brewery called Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project. And I asked him why he called it a project. He said, because projects end. He's like, look, this doesn't have to be anything I don't want it to be. But when you started the company, when you started Empirical, and your colleague downstairs told me that it took about a week for you to make that decision, or it happened within the span of a week, did you see it as being a company that you could grow with? Or did you see it as, let's try this and see if it works, and if it doesn't, you know, we could go and do any number of other things.
[00:18:43] Lars Williams: This was an all-in situation from the beginning. And I just think that's how we naturally work with any ideas or anything.
[00:18:49] Mark Emil: It never occurred to me that we wouldn't be able to do it.
[00:18:53] Lars Williams: Yeah, exactly. But I think that goes into scale. I think it's like one of those questions that I'm still struggling how to answer because the way I look at it is as impact, right? Like scale for scale's sake. Fuck that. I don't care about that. the amount of impact we can create with the partners we work with, with the customers we have, with the experiences we're sharing. Frankly, I think it's inescapable for us not to strive to serve the customers that want to try our products or that want to try those experiences. I think we have more a duty to then figure out how to do that. So it's quite the opposite, I think, more from a hospitality angle. I hate when our stuff is sold out. I hate when it's out of stock. I hate all of that stuff. Because it's inhospitable. And that's, I think, the motivating factor then going in. I mean, as you've been spending the past two years on, I haven't hardly seen you because this is all about traveling around the world, finding new ways of building supply chains, new ways of working with farmers, completely new substrates for fermentation and completely new categories designed specifically for those locations in order to live up to the promise that we come. We need to deliver on that. That's how we think about scale. Yet I have never encountered, I would say, with Lars and the R&D team giving a brief that would ever speak of scale. Because in order to create the quality, you can probably speak to this in your own words, but I'll just do it quickly, is that the purpose of Flavor, the purpose of what we do, from a creative standpoint of what I see the team doing, from a creative standpoint, it's not scale. Like the guys bash out stuff all the time, but that's how we improve, right? A lot of it doesn't even go to the market. A lot of it is, I mean, what is it like nine out of 10 things fail?
[00:20:29] Mark Emil: Well, actually, that's like the mandate that I have for the R&D team. And actually, I try and push that idea across the entire company, whether it's marketing, Whether it's trying to design things on the stills or any part of the company is that you should be pushing the innovation so hard that 90% of the things are failures. And if we're not doing that, then we're not going to be able to discover new ideas, new techniques, new ways of doing things. So you have to kind of put yourself on the edge to feel like you're finding those new things.
[00:21:03] Ray Latif: The founder of a honey company I once interviewed said, if you're not failing enough, you're not trying enough. Exactly.
[00:21:08] Mark Emil: Yeah. But I mean, when we first started, I was like, because my mandate when I was doing R&D for restaurants was I had to develop a minimum of four completed dishes that would go onto the menu every month. Usually we would be between four and six, so a little bit higher than the mandate. So that pace of innovation and trial and failure was something I was kind of became like a little bit of an adrenaline junkie on, so to speak. So when we started Empirical, it's like, we're going to do a limited small batch release every month. And I was having a ball, it was like so much fun, we were doing all these crazy things and the production team like kind of hated me. And then the sales team was just like, please fucking stop. Because they were like getting questions about like, oh, I just heard of that. Like, can I get some of that? Oh, it sold out three months ago. We're on two more series more recently. It's causing confusion.
[00:22:04] Ray Latif: I mean, this brings up a good point. I mean, you're talking about reinventing a spirits industry that's existed and has the traditions and has the business principles that have existed for so many years, but you're still working within the construct of that industry. How does it work? I mean, how do you guys attempt to, I guess, follow the rules, for lack of a better phrase, while drawing outside the lines?
[00:22:30] Lars Williams: I think you called the TTP and asked that question. It's about submitting the same application 50 times until it lands on someone's desk that's just going to sign it off. So that's another, that's failing 49 times out of 50.
[00:22:40] Ray Latif: The TTB, by the way, for listeners is the regulating agency for alcohol in the United States.
[00:22:46] Lars Williams: We will use ingredients that they just never heard of or can't look up in their books. So we have to supply them with actual material for them to read about. I'm sure they love that. Oh, they don't, they don't, but it'll work. We'll just continue to submit. But, um. I actually don't feel like we are working by any means within the confines. I mean, there are, especially in the States, obviously some compliance, legal confines of what we do. I don't find that we ever live inside that thing. When we do, I think it's more in terms of making it approachable for customers. In terms of how do people consume, how do we make sure that they feel not too intimidated by the novelty, right? But again, that comes down to hospitality more than anything else. We don't need to make it harder for people to interact with Empirical than anything else.
[00:23:34] Mark Emil: Something has to be delicious or else it just goes into the scrap bin. And then what we're shooting for is something that is a flavor that people hopefully have never had before. but also somehow juxtaposes that with a sense memory of something familiar. So ideally you'd have something that reminds them of childhood, but they've never actually had any of those flavors before.
[00:23:59] Lars Williams: So for instance, the new product that was recently developed and is being launched now and already kind of under stealth. So I suppose by the time this podcast comes out, it will have been released in New York, which is entirely designed from a whole supply chain perspective. You know, it's based on sorghum, which is actually a main grain. It's great. kind of a soil regenerating ingredient, quite undervalued. We grow it in Kentucky, drive it up to Milwaukee, around what, 60 mile radius or so? We also have a farm outside of Milwaukee. And a farm outside Milwaukee, that's even closer. Distill it there and it's only available in the American market. It's a spirit that has been designed as a more, how do you say it, like it's a, so it's slightly lower priced, first of all, to make it more approachable. It's also something that is much more oriented towards, what do you call it? Like a baseline spirit or something that puts down a foundational kind of... It's training wheels for the consumer. Exactly. But I think that almost devalues it. I'm trying to find a way to describe it. Sorry for using that phrase. But yeah, you can put it like that. But then at the same time, it's super delicious. It's very novel. It's truly like a time and place experience. And you'll have like green apples and melon. You'll have like silage, which was a word I had to look up when I heard it.
[00:25:17] Mark Emil: I think the most difficult part creatively is to actually realize where the confines of the box that your thoughts are circulating within, and then how do you actually then step out of that box? So my head of R&D, Chris, and I were just talking about some projects and bringing up some things that we tried three years ago, because we realize now that we would have actually approached that project very differently with the knowledge and kind of wisdom that we have at this point than we did three years ago, and so we're kind of going to revisit some of those ideas because we can now see from this perspective that we are actually thinking inside of a little box and that we've actually expanded past that. So the SoCo, which is a Sorghum project, was kind of based off one of those ideas and one of the ways that we develop new projects, which is in this case, like a deep research project into, let's examine every single starch or sugar source that we could possibly use for creating alcohol in the end. And he came across sorghum syrup, which is not that commonly known, even in the States, but used to be the main sugar source in North America. We got some of the syrup and we thought it had a lot of possibilities and then When I finally tried the fresh juice itself, it just blew my mind. It's like this very vibrant, sorrel, green apple. Tasted like walking through the field on a hot August day. It's like really just amazing product. And so then we are combining like a fermentation of the juice. And then we also do a fermentation of the syrup separately. And then we use the leftover juice after we've distilled that. And we kind of are inspired by a dunder pit, like when sort of Jamaican rum production. So we then let a secondary fermentation happen with the now alcohol-free juice, and then we use that to wash the syrup as sort of strike water for the fermentation and distillation of the syrup. So in one way, it is simple in the sense that it's a clear spirit that has elements of like an agarcole rum, kind of. And so it is like a, I think, especially for mixologists, like the feedback from them has just been amazing because it's like, It can work in gin drinks, it can work in rum drinks, it can work in vodka drinks. It's very flexible, but has a really unique kind of special flavor to it. So they love it.
[00:27:41] Lars Williams: The versatility is continuously being demonstrated. This is a cornerstone product of Empirical moving forward. It's called Soka, by the way, S-O-K-A, because we had to come up with a Like this is a new thing and we're going to just come up with a name that becomes a concept. We have to pick something like, you know, our names are all over the place.
[00:28:00] Ray Latif: The reason I use that term training wheels, and this is the third time I won't use it again beyond this, is it's a way to introduce your brand to more consumers at an affordable price point, at a flavor they might understand. And for some context here, what you guys sell are not traditional spirits as defined by the TTB. You're not selling gin, whiskey, tequila, mezcal, things like that because of the process that you use. So communicating that to a consumer, communicating that to a retailer, anyone who's in the industry, seems like it's a little bit of an uphill battle. What's been most effective in getting that message of who you are and what you're about and why you're different to those folks?
[00:28:41] Lars Williams: Transparency, first of all, sharing everything we do proactively and consistently, almost oversharing to the extent that we'll take anyone in to come and work in the coaching room and learn from that, or we'll teach you all about how we make our things. And that was basically us kind of like co-exploring how do we tell that story, right? Just didn't have any clue how to tell that story. But then we kind of like built that with our customers. What is that story? And the story is just what it is, it's how it's made, it's the ingredients, it's the suppliers, it's the team, it's the process. With Sokka we are taking a slightly different approach.
[00:29:18] Mark Emil: Yeah, so I think a lot of storytelling and a lot more explaining than you would typically have to do with a Like starting off the spirit, which is like a marketing exercise and then you figure out what to put in the bottle afterwards. We're clearly doing the reverse of that and putting something that we feel is that we're proud of into a bottle and then trying to figure out how to explain it to people. That's probably the most difficult part about what we do is trying to explain what we do. And Mark and I can get frustrated. Well, we'll take somebody on a tour and show them around the distillery for 45 minutes and then give them a tasting for a half an hour. And then at the end of it, they go, so what kind of what kind of gin is this? And you're like, okay, well, we still have some gaps.
[00:29:59] Ray Latif: I showed you what it was. I'm not going to tell you what it isn't. I mean, that's the most challenging part because everyone has a frame of reference. Everyone has a point of reference for what spirits are. And you know, you can talk about the flavors, the similar flavors, like your juniper flavored spirit.
[00:30:14] Lars Williams: I think the relationship to marketing from the onset was that, and again that comes to some extent back to hospitality, is that everything we do and say and share, whether we sell it or don't sell it, or whether it's a picture of industry, has to provide some kind of value, right? You have to provide value either via a learning, or acknowledgement or something like that, there needs to be a value exchange when you engage with Empirical. And a lot of marketing is not building any value. In fact, it's building noise. And we just didn't want to take part in that. So let's say if you opt into following along with Empirical, we will try and share as much as possible. And frankly, those I would say so far are also the people who have turned into great evangelists of the brand. And it's just a pleasure to then hear them tell the story back, or, hey, I got a book about this thing that Lars mentioned in LA the other day, and now I'm doing this, or you've seen that bar. It's about building a culture of learning and curiosity as well.
[00:31:07] The Plum: Do you want more repeat buyers on Amazon? Well, this free resource in collaboration with Straight Up Growth will help your brand turn first-time buyers into long-term subscribers. Download Winning the Repeat Purchase Game on Amazon now at Taste Radio slash SUG. That's Taste Radio slash S-U-G to start building retention-driven growth for your brand on Amazon. Scaling a beverage brand into major retail comes down to operational readiness. From packaging lead times to co-manufacturing strategy, the details can make or break a launch. In a new ebook in collaboration with Octopi and Asahi Beer USA, industry leaders share what they've learned in helping brands scale. Download it now at Taste Radio slash octopi.
[00:31:57] Ray Latif: A lot of education can be shared on the package itself. The label, your original label was very technical, just sort of lower third on the bottle. It had all the information about the spirit, ingredients, ABV, et cetera. You have a new label though. And I understand you introduced it in December of 2021, is that right? Yeah. The brand is much more prominently featured on the front of the bottle. There's a back panel that talks about some of the flavor notes and elements that you might get from drinking the spirit. I asked the person who was giving us the tour and tasting how people felt about it. She said, it's about 50-50. I assume that process of changing the label was challenging, frustrating. But when you landed on what you landed on, what did you feel like was missing? And do you feel like it's accurately communicating what you want now?
[00:32:50] Mark Emil: I think when Mark was talking about transparency and that's how we kind of landed on our first label, which, I mean, we'd started in a spirits company and we had to design a bottle and a label. And so we were going through a lot of very traditional kind of label designs with a friend of ours who's a designer and kind of months back and forth. And internally for R&D purposes, we were just using this label machine that was in the shared space that we were in. And these labels, I mean, they're just, it's like a plain white sticker label. It's a lab label.
[00:33:22] Ray Latif: Yeah. And it's typed out like, I think Times New Roman is the font, you know, it's the brand name, the ABV, the flavor. It's all the same size font.
[00:33:31] Lars Williams: It took us so long to decide on the bottle and the brand that by then. It was all over the place and it was working and people were like, oh, it's so cool with the transparent.
[00:33:41] Mark Emil: It was also like for us, a way for us to be as honest and transparent with our customers as possible. Because I mean, at one point it just clicked and we're like, well, this is the label that we use, right? Why would we do a different label for our customers? Because that's what people think labels should look like. Or it was just like this kind of thought exercise and we said, well, this is the most honest way that we can describe the product because that's how we describe it to ourselves. So let's just stick with that. And I think we wound up doing the label change as a way of being more hospitable to our customers.
[00:34:13] Lars Williams: having a little bit of discussion and hand-holding about what the flavor profile would be like, a little bit more of a description of what's actually in the bottle, and then... On a back bar, a bartender trying to find like a size 12 text where everything looks the same and they have five different SKUs, like they need to see the name of what they're grabbing for.
[00:34:32] Ray Latif: So when you're talking about your customers, you're talking about the retailers, the bartenders, the mixologists more than you are about the actual consumer?
[00:34:39] Mark Emil: It was a bit of both. I mean, I think when a bartender's putting something on one of our products on his back bar, he's already gone through a tasting with one of our team, had a bit of the storytelling already. And we wanted to be able to, if we were going to be placed in a store, of course, we do as much storytelling and work with the team at the store as possible, but still having a little bit more explanation we felt, I guess we were trying to be receptive to the feedback and some of it felt like we were just maybe being a little bit too obsessed with our own dogma of like purity and not saying anything.
[00:35:15] Lars Williams: It was hard enough with the product, we didn't want to make it even harder to find out what the hell it was called even, right? Or just make sense of the label. Just on the point of the customers, yes, it's the retailers, yes, it's the bars, it's the distributors, it's all the people we interact with. But namely the consumers, as you bring up, I mean, a lot of that is online consumers as well, where we try and interact as much as possible and deeply as possible with the people who choose to try out our stuff. So it's also in order to help and not make it all kind of self-referential, but actually giving in a little bit to that feedback.
[00:35:51] Ray Latif: When it comes down to it, the question about what Empirical is, has that evolved since you started? Do you have a better sense of who you are now than when you originally launched the company in 2017? Definitely.
[00:36:05] Mark Emil: When we first started the company, we called it Empirical Spirits. And as we matured and we started thinking about more what we were asking the spirits part of our company to do, which is basically convey flavor. We kind of realized that we were considering ourselves more of a flavor company than just a spirits company. And that also sort of came about when we started making cans and finally got our provisions segment of our company up and running, which is something that Mark and I had wanted to do from day one, but we just didn't have the headspace time. And these are the elixirs and the hot sauce. Yes, exactly. The more culinary aspects of what we do. And I expect that we'll expand into even more different ways based around flavor as we mature and get smarter and going forward. So it is kind of an evolution. There's a lot of, I think we probably have hundreds of ideas and projects which we would like to slowly expand into. We're also, I think, maturing a little bit as leaders and not trying, I think both Mark and I were very good at throwing hand grenades into the company early on. And so now, you know, my head of production, who's kind of like my right hand, Rodrigo, I'll be like, Oh, I got this great idea. I was like, I'm not going to tell Rodrigo. He'll have a brain aneurysm if I just throw this idea at him now. And we wait till like we have like a little bit more time and try and fit it into our yearly plan.
[00:37:32] Lars Williams: We had a very clear vision when we started Empirical, which wasn't articulated and I don't even think that we found a way to clearly articulate it yet, other than Flavor Company, which is... That is truly what we are and how we work. It's a practice more than a catch line, I would say. That vision never changed. In fact, that's one of the things I'm most proud of, is that all the stuff we went through, the vision never changed. And I think it's down to a few things. First of all, we have been working together super closely for so many years that We don't need to communicate that much to understand each other. We know our individual boundaries and we've seen a lot of things together, which means we can very rapidly adjust towards the vision or readjust towards it. Anything that gets out of whack. Secondly, the reason that works is we often joke that the overlap of our skill sets, the Venn diagram of our skill sets don't overlap. They may touch, but they don't overlap. well as our ethical framework is more or less a perfect circle, right? So I think that's how we can maintain that vision. So when you say, hey, we want to build this new SKU, this whole supply chain, we're going to produce a lot of it, it's still kind of like benchmarking towards that feeling and that vision. Otherwise, we're just frankly not going to do it. Like I told you about Fallen Pony, that was a very, very popular product that we pulled from the market because it didn't align with the vision once we had to scale it up because the supply chain wasn't transparent enough for us to work with.
[00:38:59] Ray Latif: Fallen Pony being one of your spirits made with quince, a delicious spirit I get to try. It is a shame that you aren't able to produce it anymore. The sustainability aspect of your business, the quality aspect of the business, just, it didn't fit into the matrix of who you are and what you're about.
[00:39:17] Lars Williams: And we lost a lot of money off of that, but this was a decision we just made. Like there was just, there was really no discussion or no, no glance at a P&L. So yeah, surely pretty stupid from some standpoint, but also frankly, just not the kind of company we're building. So we scrapped it.
[00:39:31] Ray Latif: The company you are building right now, though, this is something that Lars mentioned downstairs, which is pretty funny. I think you had asked the question, Marc-Emilio, you said, people ask us, what's the goal of Empirical? And Lars had been like, well, I want to open a distillery in Japan. Is that what it was? I mean, we were...
[00:39:46] Mark Emil: I think it was more of an open-end question, like, where do you want Empirical to be in five years?
[00:39:52] Lars Williams: Everyone is asking me, what's the goal? Where do we want Empirical to be in five years?
[00:39:56] Mark Emil: This kind of tongue-in-cheek response. But that was also intuitively the idea of having a giant factory that just got bigger and bigger and bigger and turned into... BMW or Absolute or whatever large factory you can think of wasn't appealing to me and it wasn't a place that I would like to continue to work and the idea of expanding horizontally as opposed to vertically and we're about to hit our production capacity here in Copenhagen and to ameliorate that we're starting a production in California. I'm going to be talking to prospective partners in Asia where we're looking to set up production in Asia and That's a really exciting way to expand a company where not necessarily every segment of the company is producing exactly the same thing. It makes sense to use North American ingredients and a North American factory and Japanese ingredients if we wind up doing our production in Japan. And I think that also follows the empirical ethos, which is exploration, innovation, trying to develop our team and ourselves as individuals and exploration of a lot of traditions and techniques and learning from as many different people as possible. But also to kind of connect the world to each other in a way with flavor, because there's We have a good friend in Zimbabwe, and we've been down there a number of times. And the first time I went down there, I was just blown away by the amount of amazing flavors that just don't ever really make it out of the country, or I had not been exposed to in my culinary career. And so the opportunity to create a product down there and share that with the world would be amazing. We've visited friends in Brazil and done projects with them. We spent two weeks in the Amazon tasting hundreds of things that I never knew existed. And the opportunity to share that with the rest of the world is really exciting. So yeah, this exploration and sharing is two of the most important things to Empirical.
[00:42:01] Lars Williams: It's a lot about just turning that discovery and that urge for discovery into practice.
[00:42:07] Ray Latif: Via a network of distilleries or at least satellite operations where you can take advantage of ingredients that are native to that specific area without using the, and this is something Marc-Emil, you talked about, actually, I think Lars, you brought this up, you know, shipping products or ingredients from port to port is something that is ameliorated by having these Yeah, exactly.
[00:42:32] Mark Emil: I would think I mentioned Ayuk, which is the spirit that we make with the Pasea chilies, and at the moment, or until four weeks ago, we were shipping all of the Pasea that's grown in a very treacherous eight-hour drive from Oaxaca, then has to make it to another truck, to a port and then goes into a container and then shipped to Copenhagen and we make a really lovely spirit and then part of it we ship back to North America. You just think about that and you're like, this has to be a pretty stupid way of doing this. And if we just are a little bit more thoughtful about what we're doing. And I mean, to give myself a cavat to that, I mean, that we were limited by not having the time and ability to really plan out the structure of setting up a North American facility from the get go, just due to the complexity of it. But as I said before, we're always trying every day, we try and be a little bit better, more thoughtful about what we're doing and get a little smarter every day. I think not shipping things quote unquote unnecessarily is an ideal for us, just in terms of making sure our customer has the best possible product, but also looking at the impact that it has on the globe is also important.
[00:43:50] Ray Latif: But on the one hand, you can make the capital investment in a new distillery, or you can make the capital investment in expanding the one here. And some investors might say, well, you know, you're doing really good business here in Copenhagen, and you have a good operation where you have a path to profitability, if you're not already profitable. this is going to take a hit on that P&L statement. How much do you think about that when you are thinking about this grander vision? Do your investors, does profit and loss really guide things as much as you want them to? I mean, we tend to... Oh, gosh, Lars. I mean, we're going to have to answer this. No, no.
[00:44:26] Lars Williams: Lars is laughing pretty well. The good thing is that Lars and I both love scrappy, right? And the whole thing is very much a DIY thing, as I'm sure you saw, right? Yes. So a lot of this comes down to hacking existing infrastructure, existing systems to keep it lean in that way. On the flip side, that becomes a function of your time. And as I said, I haven't seen Lars for most of this past 12 months because just relentlessly traveling around the globe, trying to set these things up or source different pieces of equipment or meeting different designers or scientists to figure out the airflow of some system somewhere. So on that end, it actually makes a lot of sense, because then the trade-off, I would say, after the fact, you find out, okay, will this actually, this scenario that we just leaned into, developed, came up with the hypothesis for and spent a lot of time and resources developing, does that actually make sense after the fact? And if it doesn't, we will make it work. And that's the case now.
[00:45:20] Mark Emil: So it actually makes a lot of sense to have it locally as well. Yeah, I mean, to that point, we're not, as we look at expanding our production in different parts of the world, we're actually looking at making our P&L better, to be honest. And I think that's also taking, as Mark said, looking at existing infrastructure and technologies and making it empirical in a way. So where we're distilling the Soka in Milwaukee, we found a distillery that for some reason had this piece of technology that was originally designed to de-alkalize beer or wine. So you'd brew a normal beer or wine, and then you put it through this machine, which basically pulls out the alcohol out of it. And when I kind of came across the machine when I was doing some, I don't know, Google rabbit hole at four in the morning, to me, I was like, that looks kind of like a continuous vacuum still. And so. We did an initial test on one and it wasn't anywhere where we wanted it to be. So I called up the guy who invented the machine and said, well, I need to do this and this and this. What if I put like a valve here and can we reprogram that part of the machine to do this? And can we change some of the software and blah, blah, blah. And he was like, I guess so. It's going to be running like wildly out of spec. And I was like, sounds right up our alley.
[00:46:37] Lars Williams: So it's actually, I would say, yeah, it's actually fairly at this point as it's like to do it that way.
[00:46:41] Ray Latif: What Marc-Emil and Lars are talking about or referring to is the distillery operation downstairs where there's zip ties holding things together, there are chef hats on top of motors and things like that. There's some very non-traditional ways of non-traditional distillery setup for sure, but it works. It works and what you produce is remarkable. I don't know if you're looking for new investment or what your relationship is with your current investors, but I guess how do you get people to buy into your vision when things are still seem to be, you know, in constant flux in a good way. But, you know, typically investors want to see some sense of consistency in terms of how you grow, but you're growing in a way that's, again, also seemingly non-traditional.
[00:47:26] Mark Emil: Well, we like to, I think we succeed in that by convincing our investors by just making delicious things. So, for instance, one of our very first investors, who's actually been a real mentor to us on the business side of things, was like, at one point, he's like, oh, you guys, I think we should pare down the amount of SKUs. We really should concentrate on one product. And this is the, I was like, yeah, maybe. And while we were having that discussion, I was already working on our first canned beverage, which was like a complete departure from anything we'd done as a company. And when he found out about it, he was super angry and we got like shouting at us all over Zoom call. And we sent him a can and then he tried it and he was like, I think you guys should stop everything else you're doing and only make this can.
[00:48:14] Lars Williams: We've always been clear on our ambition and our willingness to be patient in building things the right way. You know, Empirical is not the kind of company that's going to sign up in a celebrity or something like that. We think that we can build a new way to think about flavor and processes, hopefully show something new and inspire other people to do the same. And I think that's a very strong purpose. And I think that's a strong idea for a business that we're currently proving. So I don't know how else to answer it. I wouldn't say, you know, we don't have any sort of traditional distillery investors. We don't have any strategic partners. In fact, I don't really know what we would use that for.
[00:48:53] Mark Emil: No, yeah. I mean, we only have one person in the entire company who's ever worked at a distillery before. And we always, I'm like, Freddy, you're giving us a bad name.
[00:49:00] Lars Williams: I mean, we have a ridiculously big vision that we'll maybe not share on Taste Radio, but I think you can read between the lines of how we talk about empirical. And we are totally aligned, Lars and I, on that vision, and we are relentless in pursuing it, and we are willing to be patient to achieve it.
[00:49:18] Ray Latif: So if a strategic investor knocks on your door and, you know, you probably have had those calls before.
[00:49:24] Lars Williams: Yeah, we've certainly had multiple of those calls, even from, I have some funny stories we can tell offline, but very, very, very early.
[00:49:32] Ray Latif: Even at PressureCooker stage. Context for folks, the PressureCooker was the original still for Empirical, or the base of it anyway.
[00:49:41] Lars Williams: Yeah, I think the exhilarating feeling we, every time this conversation comes up since like five years ago, it's like, no, no, but we just got started. Like, what does it even matter? And it's always the same thing today. It's like, no, no, we just got started. Everything is a new start to us all the time. And I don't really see the point. I think what we want to build as a company, I want to get to a point where I just can't help myself to go into the distillery and the lab and see the guys and taste all the new things they are working on. That's a goal. And build something grand around it that can have some sort of impact.
[00:50:17] Ray Latif: I've had so much fun just like in these last three hours being here because I finally got to experience what you guys have been talking about, what we've talked about in the past and what I've read about in the past. And just congratulations to both of you and to your team for creating this amazing company, amazing brand. I'm so excited to see where it goes from here and to visit one of your distilleries in the States, if and when they open up. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks to our guests, Lars Williams and Mark Emil Hermansen. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at Taste Radio. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening. And we'll talk to you next time.
