If you were trying to design a mutual fund of businesses that actually took advantage of last year’s pandemic lockdown, at-home cocktail companies would absolutely need to be part of your portfolio. WithCo Cocktails founder Josh Ellis basically bet on himself when he left his full-time real estate job at the end of 2019 to concentrate on his fledgling bottled cocktail mixer endeavor, and his returns have been impressive.
“I couldn’t get traction with the business as a side business," Ellis says. "I needed commitment and discipline. I wanted to be uncomfortable and learn a new trade. Risk has always been a big driver for me.” He had started up WithCo (named for “with company”) with bar professional Bradley Ryan with a Kickstarter campaign in 2017, and launched his website the following year.
The kernel of the idea behind WithCo came from a backyard birthday party where Ellis was serving batched cocktails. “We got an overwhelming response,” Ellis explains. “I realized that this was how hosting should be, spending less time making drinks and more time with guests.” WithCo saw a slow growth until Ellis made the big jump and rebuilt the business from the ground up starting in January 2020. Then, well, you know what happened.
“That’s when the story really begins,” shares Ellis. “With the pandemic, we didn’t know what was coming. I had already jumped out of the nest and had to learn how to fly! I had to go all-in.”
He redesigned all of his product packaging and prepped to scale up his business. He realized that people were willing to spend more money on a premium product like his for a better experience while they were trapped at home. Advertising on Instagram and Facebook, he saw his business grow an astounding 1,100 percent between March and December 2021, when he became Amazon’s top-selling cocktail mix. He is proud to have been able to hire several employees who had been displaced by COVID and grown through four warehouses in nine months before setting up shop in his current 6,000-square-foot facility in East Nashville.
Ellis considered most of the other products in the cocktail mix space to be too sweet with too many preservatives. He did all his own flavor profiling in-house and came up with recipes that are shelf-stable for up to a year and good in the refrigerator for a month after opening, all without the use of preservatives, additives or citric acid.
Aiming at the massive RTD (ready-to-drink) cocktail market and the hard seltzer juggernaut, Ellis has created a line of WithCo products with flavors ranging from a traditional ginger mule base to bloody marys, Old Fashioneds and an autumnal seasonal recipe he calls “sweaterweather.”
As opposed to premade cocktails that often depend on the cheapest spirits available in their blend, WithCo allows consumers to demonstrate their own preference in spirit since you can mix anything from Pappy to bottom-shelf bourbon in a WithCo Old Fashioned — whatever floats your cherry. He has also consciously designed most of his mixes so that they play well with multiple different spirits or soda water if you’re looking for a creative mocktail alternative. “Our eight mixes can create 35 different cocktails,” Ellis boasts. Some restaurants like Anzie Blue and Epice also employ WithCo products to offer a cocktail menu without investing in the effort and inventory involved in stocking a full bar.
Ellis has signed distribution deals with Best Brands in Tennessee and ships via Amazon and his own website all over the country. Since there is no alcohol in WithCo products, Ellis can offer it in grocery stores as well as liquor stores, a nice bonus for his distribution strategy. After his meteoric rise in 2020, Ellis still expects triple growth overall in 2021, especially during the corporate gift and holiday shopping season.
While the financial success has been great, Ellis still remembers why he started the business after a backyard party. “We did it to help people gather, to build community around a beverage.” If you want to spend more time with your friends and less time sweating behind your home bar, pick up a few bottles of WithCo and a handful of handles of your favorite spirits and set them out on the table with glasses and ice. Frivolity will doubtlessly ensue.
