This transcript is auto-generated and may contain spelling and grammatical errors.
Tyler Jorgenson (00:01.092)
Welcome out to Biz Ninja Entrepreneur Radio. I am your host Tyler Jorgensen. And today we have a guest where we get to talk about a product with really unique vision. And I’m really excited to dive into the philosophy behind this, because not every product is created the same. And so I want to welcome out to the show, Manya Rubenstein. Welcome out to the show.
Manya (00:26.626)
Thank you, thanks so much for having me, Tyler.
Tyler Jorgenson (00:28.973)
So you created Isco, which are a brand of spirits, but to me they’re very unique. They’re not just like yet another gin or yet another vodka. Tell me what was the spirit and what was the idea behind these?
Manya (00:45.022)
Yeah, absolutely. So you’re right, because we try to be really different with everything we do.
But everything we do really comes out of two main threads. We produce all of our spirits on the site of an old steel yard in Providence, Rhode Island. was the Providence Steel and Iron Company for over 100 years. made structural and ornamental steel. And over the last number of decades, there’s been an artist community that is in and around that neighborhood. We really come out of that artist community. So we’re really makers. We care a lot about, we’re really inspired by the history of the
and the history of making and we care a lot about the details of what we do, being really creative with what we do and we’re really hands-on with every piece of the process that we touch. So that’s one chunk of our DNA. The other side of it is a deep interest in sustainable farming, specifically regenerative agriculture.
Tyler Jorgenson (01:34.203)
Yeah.
Manya (01:41.718)
And we see ourselves as this creative urban hub that’s really tied into what’s happening on the farm and also what’s happening in the ocean. So where Rhode Island is known as the ocean state, I became a sort of mid-life surfer and discovered that being in the water is something that just brings an enormous amount of happiness. So we like to work with products that are some of the best things coming out of interesting things happening in regenerative farming.
Tyler Jorgenson (02:01.422)
cool.
Manya (02:11.192)
and also to work with things from the sea. so we really, you know, take all those things as our inspiration. We have a process where we, all of our spent grains go back to feed pigs and cows on a local farm. And, you know, we have solar panels on our roof. We do what we can with our business, but we really see our role as storytellers. know, spirits are so amazing for bringing people together and they have such a long history with agriculture. They’re really the perfect expression of agriculture.
Tyler Jorgenson (02:14.522)
Wow.
Tyler Jorgenson (02:26.939)
Yeah.
Manya (02:41.032)
make shelf stable and share the extra from your delicious harvest. So we’re really trying to bring that back to the world of spirits. It’s something people tend to talk about more with their food and think about more with their local farmers market, but they don’t always think about it with their spirits. We’re trying to change that conversation and have a lot of fun while we’re doing it.
Tyler Jorgenson (03:03.578)
I really like that. I think that entrepreneurship and artists, entrepreneurs and artists have such a common DNA. There’s a lot of shared components there. And I would argue that every true entrepreneur is an artist, although not every artist is an entrepreneur. So when was the most…
Manya (03:20.226)
Mm-hmm. I was going to say, they’re both a little crazy.
Tyler Jorgenson (03:25.934)
Yes, absolutely. When was the moment where you first realized like you were an entrepreneur?
Manya (03:31.49)
Ugh.
Yeah, think I actually I’m going to just straight up just blame my dad for that. He ran his own company and and I sort of you know, that was dinner table conversation. And so it was just something that I always grew up around. And I think I have a bit of an independent streak. So I’ve worked for really large corporations and had some really amazing experiences. But I think there’s there’s always been a pull to to have more
I’m a really hands-on kind of person and to have some real like tangible impact on what I’m doing. So I think it’s kind of combination of those two things.
Tyler Jorgenson (04:11.462)
Yeah.
So you’ve been the, you founded this what, almost over nine years ago. So how did you come up, is that right?
Manya (04:22.544)
We’ve only been… The distillery has only been… We opened our doors in March of 2020, actually. as the pandemic was kicking off, so that was weird.
Tyler Jorgenson (04:29.251)
Okay, okay.
Yeah, interesting timing. So, you know, what, what pushed you to be, to, go into this direction of, you know, launching something in this industry.
Manya (04:43.294)
what it really was, was.
recognizing that spirits, I was saying before, were such a great medium for storytelling. And I really was looking to do something that was farming adjacent. I didn’t want to be a farmer. I foolishly thought that this would, maybe I thought this would be less work or something. Yeah, exactly. Please laugh. But yeah, so I started working with one of our two head distillers who,
Tyler Jorgenson (05:05.712)
Ha
Manya (05:17.508)
I thought in the beginning I was just gonna help them with a business plan to open the first distillery in Providence since Prohibition and beyond my merry way. But quickly we realized that we wanted to partner up and do this together. So that was really how things started.
Tyler Jorgenson (05:24.924)
wow.
Tyler Jorgenson (05:35.15)
Is that, is that true? Did you guys create the first distillery since prohibition?
Manya (05:38.926)
Yes, in Providence, in our tiny state’s capital, we did indeed. We are still actually the only distillery in Providence proper. There have been more in the state that have opened up in the last couple of years, but still, yeah, it’s, mean, on the challenges front, think…
Tyler Jorgenson (05:54.876)
Very cool.
Manya (06:04.576)
Spirits are interesting because there’s a lot of laws on the books that are still there from prohibition in a lot of years and different states, you know, as I’m sure you’re well aware of, rolling them back and modernizing them at different paces. It definitely makes a difference. And, you know, there was a point before we decided to move forward with this business where if things hadn’t gotten just a smidge better, we probably wouldn’t have done it at all because it wasn’t really going to be much of a business. I would still say that
Tyler Jorgenson (06:09.695)
yeah.
Manya (06:34.26)
that we have a lot more restrictions than say, you know, our counterparts in New York State where you see like they’ve really gone for sort of modernizing the industry. We still have to, we still have a lot of things that I feel like we still have a ways to go there. And it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the coming years.
Tyler Jorgenson (06:53.892)
Yeah, so speaking of those legacy laws and things, I’m sure that has created a few challenges. So you had this idea, you come in and you help a friend or somebody to get started and you end up being a part of it. What was one of the first major challenges that you faced and how did you guys overcome?
Manya (07:12.89)
Well, I would say, certainly, gosh, every part of every day basically.
Tyler Jorgenson (07:21.518)
Yeah, sure. well, that’s for sure.
Manya (07:23.27)
going on, I’d say, know, a big one was opening in March of 2020, because our whole business plan was obviously turned upside down. You know, the idea was the tasting room was going to be a place that people could come to learn about how spirits were made and, you know, get to know the brand and, you know, try things out. you know, it was always going to be like, we always wanted to be a cool neighborhood cocktail bar at the same time. But we didn’t anticipate that there would be like no bars and restaurants to sell to for the
Basically the first year that we were in business. So that was a real change. made like a lot of other small distillers. We made hand sanitizer. We quickly realized like, wait a minute, this stuff that everybody’s out of, we have a lot of it. Like, well, we can help. We sold it to the city of Providence and other folks. So that was really great. And yeah, yeah, that was definitely, that was definitely not what we planned out of the gate.
Tyler Jorgenson (07:56.55)
Wow.
Tyler Jorgenson (08:10.908)
That’s good.
Tyler Jorgenson (08:17.14)
No, and like you said, I think, you as an entrepreneur, you are always solving problems, right? There’s no shortage of them. So tell me a little bit about what products you launched with and which ones you developed next, kind of the genesis to generation of what you guys have built.
Manya (08:24.77)
Yes.
Manya (08:35.544)
Sure, absolutely. yeah, so we started off with the very first product we launched was a straight ahead vodka called structural vodka after the structural steel that was made on the site that we produce out of. Actually, I think I have one over here. do. Where’s it heading? Here we go. This guy. And it’s a really beautiful example of a, like what a.
Tyler Jorgenson (08:55.323)
Very cool.
Manya (08:59.47)
corn based vodka can taste like if you take two months to make it and make it from really, really beautiful stuff. It’s a sipping vodka. Most people are not familiar with the sipping vodka. It’s not really that people will drink it and be like, this can’t be vodka. doesn’t seem like vodka you would encounter in other contexts. So this was the first thing.
We sold this out of what we call the wish we could window, because it was early pandemic wish we could give you a hug, but we can’t, so we’ll give you the sanitizer and we’ll sell you this bottle of vodka. Like here you go. That was the first thing we followed it up with our ornamental gin, also named after our namesake from our site. And a really nice like Western style modern gin.
Tyler Jorgenson (09:30.702)
Ahahaha!
Tyler Jorgenson (09:36.304)
That’s amazing.
Manya (09:49.92)
Then we came out with our blue velvet bourbon, which is made from two different types of blue corn. It’s 100 % corn mashbill, aged for two years in baby barrels. One of the corns is an organic from a company called Clarkson Grain, who’s taken a lot of their operation organic over last decade or so, which is pretty cool. They’re a pretty large company and out of the Midwest. And then the other blue corn is we worked with a
company called Masienda that sources masa and makes tortillas are actually now available in Whole Foods. Super cool company, great tortillas. And they source from land-raised strains, like unchanged from their wild genetic ancestors from family farmers in Mexico. So they source the other blue corn for us. Then we did a barrel-aged version of our gin using those leftover, we love like reuse. So, you know, we reuse those barrels from the blue velvet bourbon and we made patina.
which is one of my favorite spirits that we make barrel aged gin really super tasty. And then we came out with the first product we’re probably best known for. So I was speaking earlier about the ocean. at Disco, we love oysters. We love them because we love how they taste. We also love all the cool things they can do from an environmental perspective, both as like a really low input source.
Tyler Jorgenson (10:56.508)
That’s cool.
Manya (11:19.664)
source of awesome delicious protein and then you know they provide all these ecosystem services like you know providing habitat for other creatures and like a single oyster tiny little oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day and help clean its environment which is really amazing they provide natural hurricane barriers they’re super cool we love them and we were sort of celebrating like surviving our first year in business and we decided to see what would happen if we realized like nobody had ever come
Tyler Jorgenson (11:33.936)
Wow.
Manya (11:49.724)
vodka and oysters in a single spirit. So we started experimenting and eventually we came up with Ostrata, which is our vodka distilled with oysters. So we use our beautiful regeneratively farmed organic corn. We work with a farm that’s in Hudson, New York for that.
And then after we go through this two month long process to make the base spirit and then we take oysters actually from This is a this is a version that just went up to New Hampshire. So in this case we used Fox point oysters
from Laura’s farm there and it’s in Little Bay, New Hampshire. And we ran a distillation with them actually in our still. And so shells, meat and all, everything gets all sort of combined together with our oyster liquor drops into our liquor and everything gets distilled. And then we just add water on the other side to bring the proof down to something delicious and drinkable. And then we also partner with local organizations for each market that we’re in that are ocean-based. So it’s the Blue Ocean Society.
in New Hampshire for example and they do they started as a whale watch organization they do a bunch of awesome beach cleanups they’re super cool so they get a percentage of proceeds from every bottle that’s sold in that market.
Tyler Jorgenson (13:03.204)
cool.
Manya (13:04.398)
So makes awesome martinis and Bloody Marys and actually like pairs surprisingly well with like, you know, citrus or tropical juices as well. So it’s actually a super versatile, really yummy product. So yeah, that’s our that’s our oyster vodka. And then we have a gin that’s made with seaweed and oysters as well called Sea Flow and this nice little sort of blue color. So you asked me about product.
Tyler Jorgenson (13:15.292)
Hmm.
Tyler Jorgenson (13:26.245)
Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (13:29.724)
It’s a beautiful bottle. guys, you, you guys sent me a bottle of that. And I think it was, it is just beautiful. The packaging, the, you know, it doesn’t, it feels substantial, right? And and it just is, I love the design and the, just everything I had never heard of there being see like seaweed and oysters. And it, it, to me, it was so fascinating, like the writing and description, because it was written very matter of factly,
Manya (13:34.166)
Yes.
Manya (13:58.093)
Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (13:58.256)
Yes, it has notes of seaweed. And I’m like, okay, this is something new.
Manya (14:00.61)
Yeah, totally. that, you know, that’s, always interesting for us, you know, especially with, you know, the oyster vodka and oyster gin, like these are not things that people necessarily are familiar with, especially, you know, they don’t necessarily exist. So that it’s, it’s great, but it also
I hope you had a chance to try it. When people try the products, they’re like, okay, wasn’t necessary. I think sometimes the idea that you get in their head about what it’s gonna taste like isn’t what it’s gonna taste like, and they’re also really pleasantly surprised. So I think for us, trial is super important.
Tyler Jorgenson (14:36.284)
I’m sure.
Tyler Jorgenson (14:42.106)
Yeah. So have you been able to now open the tasting room and do, and have the experience the way that you wanted to do it?
Manya (14:46.201)
gosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, no.
Tyler Jorgenson (14:51.674)
And so how is that just a ton of fun to be able to see people like watch as people experience something for the first time?
Manya (14:58.388)
Yeah, I mean, think it’s so our tasting room we use is like our little, you know, sort of.
like R &D hub. So we’re always coming up with interesting new things. And I mean, that’s kind of what we did with Ostryda. We sort of trialed it there and then people loved it. And so we took it and did it for wider distribution. So we have some really, really fun things coming up there. We’ve been doing a series of aquavit. We actually are aquavit, just won a gold in San Francisco, which is really exciting. And we’re going to be
releasing, we’re basically doing like an aquavit variation every January. We throw like a winter blues begone party sort of in the doldrums. We have mobile saunas. We have, you know, aquavit cured gravlax. And this year we have a really special super fun flavor variation on aquavit. So it’s like a esoteric on an esoteric, but
But really, really awesome last year, everybody came out in their Nordic sweaters and we had a whole thing around it. So we have a couple releases like that and some other very specific to Rhode Island things, like things, I’m not a native Rhode Islander, although I’ve been here now.
quite some time and definitely feel very attached. But there’s some really specific food things to the state that people outside of it have never even heard of. So it gives us an opportunity to make some spirits out of that and see what happens. So we some really fun things coming up that I’m excited about.
Tyler Jorgenson (16:16.816)
Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (16:30.486)
It sounds like Rhode Island winters are very different than Southern California winters. Although I just found out that I have familial ties to Rhode Island. Like a distant relative was like one of the first governors or something really, really neat. And so we actually have some cool ties to the early days of Rhode Island and the early founders. yeah, I…
Manya (16:35.393)
Yeah.
Manya (16:40.493)
Manya (16:45.013)
wow!
Manya (16:50.658)
amazing. love it. Tell me more about them and maybe we’ll make a spirit about it.
Tyler Jorgenson (16:57.028)
Ooh, that’d be cool. I’ll send you the details next time I come through there. I’ll definitely swing by the tasting room and, because I drove through and Rhode Island and Providence and all those areas and only found out like three days later that I was within miles of this family members grave site and all these things. I’m like, man, I wish I need to go through there again. so definitely we’ll be making another trip, but, I love how you guys tell stories through it because you know, like you said that in many ways.
Manya (17:16.429)
Maybe.
Tyler Jorgenson (17:24.508)
That’s why people get together and socialize and do these things is to connect and stories is how humans connect, right? It’s how we bridge time and space and opinions and all those things. What are some fun stories that have just kind of happened as you guys have built the brand and had to grow the team?
Manya (17:44.141)
let me see, it’s a great question. hmm. Well,
Tyler Jorgenson (17:53.294)
And word it a different way, like as you grow a team, you always have those challenges of bringing new people on and training and expanding, right? And so how have you guys overcome that? Continue to pass on the initial spirit of your brand to the people as you’ve grown.
Manya (17:59.693)
yeah.
Manya (18:07.214)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. mean, I think, I think it’s been it’s been an interesting journey, you know, finding the right
people is so key to any business and you know the folks that you’re like really excited to collaborate with and who kind of you know you feed each other’s energy and you’re you know you’re not daunted by the the myriad of problems that are you know just constantly cropping up that you’re having to figure out how to navigate. I think that that’s really really important.
Tyler Jorgenson (18:40.399)
Right.
Manya (18:47.01)
I mean, I’m thinking of, you know, we have someone on our team that had never done the role that he’s in before.
But we knew that he was going to be a great fit for a bunch of reasons. And, you know, he’s just like done such an amazing job with zero experience, specifically in that area. And I think that that’s just been an interesting thing to see. It’s like, if somebody’s really, if people are really, if they’re smart, and if they’re passionate, and they have the ability to learn and to, you know, to
grow. I think the other thing I’ve said about this this person in the past is that they they they were a musician and so we knew they could riff and like I think that that’s a really key like component for you know staying a state like you have to just stay so flexible.
Tyler Jorgenson (19:41.018)
I love that.
Tyler Jorgenson (19:49.572)
Yeah, especially in those early days when your team is still under 20 people or under 25 people, you have to be adjustable and pivot. And I’ve never thought about it as able to riff, right? I think that’s a really neat way to explain it. I think that’s really cool. So you guys are based in Providence. A lot of your distribution is regionally in that area. Do you have a dream location? Like, man, we would love to get into this market or this…
Manya (20:01.294)
everyone.
Tyler Jorgenson (20:18.768)
maybe there’s a specific bar, like something, do you guys have just some of those dream spots?
Manya (20:20.854)
Yeah. yeah. For sure. Well, I mean, so we’re currently in Rhode Island, Mass, Connecticut. We just started up in New Hampshire and Maine.
We’re in New York, just a little teensy bit in New York, but we’re hiring somebody in the market actually, so put that out there if anyone wants to come work for us New York, let us know. And planning on doing a lot more expansion there in the next year. So, we sort of intend to, we have an amazing new head of sales who we brought on
Tyler Jorgenson (20:46.214)
Yay.
Manya (21:02.734)
this past year who’s really, really awesome. And with her on board, we’re really working on our expansion plans for the East Coast and Eastern Seaboard basically. Not quite coming to Cali yet, but hopefully at some point. Yeah, hopefully at some point. Yeah, all right.
Tyler Jorgenson (21:18.844)
It’s smart to stay tight in your distribution at first. It makes a lot of sense, yeah. That’s okay, I travel a lot, so we’re all good. So here, the other question I like to ask, and this one’s really fun for me, since you guys are such artists and kind of a vision for it, is there, who is somebody that you would just be like over the moon if they stepped in as a brand ambassador or endorsed your brand?
Do have like an artist or a musician or somebody here like this person? Man, that would be just be amazing if they represented us or endorsed us.
Manya (21:52.59)
That’s a really that’s a really great that’s an excellent question, Veronica Mars Yeah, I don’t have to give that one some thought I have to give that some
Tyler Jorgenson (22:02.981)
There’s no wrong answers, right? That’s what’s fun about it.
Tyler Jorgenson (22:14.49)
We need to like Google, like which celebrities love oysters, love the ocean. There’s a good question for your next all hands meeting at work is, yeah. Not everyone thinks like that, right? And so I just think it’s Yeah, it’s exactly, it’s your who’s your company celebrity crush. Who’s the brand’s celebrity crush?
Manya (22:20.394)
Yeah, yeah, totally. I’m like Darryl Hannah. Yeah, really? You’re stumpin’ me here. You got some good ones. I’m like, who’s my celebrity crush? no, I gotta go get one.
Manya (22:41.378)
I will, next time we meet, I’ll be prepared to answer that.
Tyler Jorgenson (22:45.808)
I want you to just message me on this one, because I’m just personally interested now. Yeah. All right, we’re coming into the holidays, right? And spirits traditionally play a big part of all of, they have a big role in the holidays. What are some things that Isco is looking to do around the holidays?
Manya (22:49.157)
Very good, very good.
Manya (23:00.846)
Yeah.
Manya (23:05.876)
yeah. Well, we are doing our third annual Night of Cheer at the distillery itself, where we are working with a bunch of local spots that work with our products. they’re going to be doing features of our stuff. We’re going to be help promoting those. And we’re going to be
centering it all around. It’s not a pub crawl because those are illegal in Rhode Island and it’s not that’s not actually what we’re intending. But it’s basically a night of cheer at Isco. We’re going to be accepting donations all month long for an awesome organization called Amos House. So like, you know, coats and canned goods and things like that for folks that that don’t have those things during the holidays. And then we’re going to be doing a big party on that. It’s December
12th and you know, turning all the donations in the next day. We’ll be featuring all these great cocktails talking about our awesome partners and just kind of like the and you know, letting letting people come to our thing know that they’re open after we close we close at 10pm. We’re like, you know, the very chased drinking establishment. We’re limited in what we can serve as a manufacturer. So, so yeah, so that’ll just be you know, we’re hoping we’re just kind of getting rolling on
Tyler Jorgenson (24:17.934)
Yes.
Manya (24:30.293)
lining everybody up to do this. We’re hoping we’re gonna get great participation and we’ve had a really good experience with it in the past and collect a lot of nice warm coats and delicious things to help make the holidays better for some other folks.
Tyler Jorgenson (24:37.724)
That’s cool.
Tyler Jorgenson (24:44.06)
I love the social consciousness happening in everything you guys do. And so kind of for the last thing to wrap this up, to me, you you do a lot in the business as an entrepreneur and a founder and CEO, you can get very, it’s easy to get single focused, right? But what is one item on your personal bucket list that you’re gonna accomplish in the next 12 months?
Manya (25:08.59)
That’s a great question. Okay, so not, you’re saying not ISCO related. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think that I would really, I think that I need to learn to nose ride. Because I’m not that good at it yet. So next 12 months, I don’t know, might be pushing it. But, know.
Tyler Jorgenson (25:12.995)
No, just mania.
Tyler Jorgenson (25:29.233)
You
Tyler Jorgenson (25:37.948)
Is there a break or a location you want to surf in the next year that you haven’t been to before?
Manya (25:38.317)
I think.
Manya (25:44.59)
yeah, I, I, I don’t, I, I don’t have any on my list. but I, yeah, we’ll, we’ll see. I have, I have a lengthy copy list, but probably when my kids are a little older.
Tyler Jorgenson (25:56.805)
Okay.
Tyler Jorgenson (26:00.452)
Yeah, I get that. I very much understand that. It gets a little bit easier. It just gets a different type of stress. You’re less stressed on the little things, but more stressed on the big things as the kids get older. Well, cool. It’s been so fun getting to know you a little bit, learning about Isco. Really cool. I just love all of the stories connected to and the depth and the history and the richness of what you guys are creating. I think it’s so special.
Manya (26:08.046)
Yes.
Tyler Jorgenson (26:29.084)
So everyone, please go check out Isco Spirits. It’s I-S-C-O, spirits.com. And you can learn more about what Monia and the team are doing there and see all the, they’ve got a beautiful website. You can learn more about them. And to all my business, wherever you’re listening, tuning in, watching, whatever it may be, it’s your turn to go out and do some.
Tyler Jorgenson (26:52.812)
Awesome.
