This transcript is auto-generated and may contain spelling and grammatical errors
Tyler Jorgenson (00:01.46)
Welcome out to Biz Ninja Entrepreneur Radio. I’m your host, Tyler Jorgensen, and today we have Chris Buglisi here to talk to us about how you get to innovate in the wild, wild world of whiskey. Because man, it’s been around a long time and innovating is not an easy thing. So I’m excited to chat with you, Chris. Welcome out to the show.
Chris Buglisi (00:23.802)
Thanks Tyler, super excited to be here, man.
Tyler Jorgenson (00:27.206)
I, we’ve been having a lot of people that are doing startups and running new businesses in the alcohol space. And I know there’s a lot of regulation and things in there. So it’s always fascinating the number of people that are getting into it. But if we zoom all the way back, like when was the moment that you first realized you were an entrepreneur?
Chris Buglisi (00:50.186)
man, was definitely college. mean, for sure it was college. I know you started young too. I was watching some videos of you before I hopped on here, man. But I think I always loved fixing small business problems and being more impactful with just making an impact in a smaller world. I think that was just kind of what I’ve always realized that I wanted to do. Obviously, both my business partner, JD, my best buddy.
Tyler Jorgenson (01:00.806)
nice man.
Chris Buglisi (01:19.64)
knew since growing up, really since 10 years old, he had the same kind of innate ability as well. And we both tried the corporate America thing and it just, we realized it just wasn’t for us. So you kind of have to go that route and then, you know, from there you just figure out what works for you, So.
Tyler Jorgenson (01:41.516)
Yeah, yeah, that’s true. It’s hard to, once you start seeing problems and seeing that you have an ability to fix them, it’s really hard to work in a machine that doesn’t want you to fix problems. So that’s for sure. So give me the origin story of Misunderstood Whiskey. I mean, first of all, I love the name, I love the vibe, but how did this come about? I mean, I’m sure this wasn’t a random accident.
Chris Buglisi (01:55.097)
Yeah.
Chris Buglisi (02:09.85)
It kind of was, mean partially. You know, we always had a mission, So right out of college, JD and I were roommates and this is when the bourbon boom was like, this renaissance was happening. It was about 2011, 2012. And you could buy bourbon anywhere at that time. It wasn’t just Kentucky anymore. There were distilleries popping up in Brooklyn. it was really good. could get good whiskey in a lot of different places in the US.
We got our first paychecks and we were like spending all our money on good whiskey, right? but what we realized was that a lot of our friends in that, a lot of our friends didn’t have the same appreciation for the whiskey that we did. And we kind of started this, we realized there’s a huge gap in the industry between like your typical flavored whiskey and your bourbon. And we also realized there’s a lot of people who said,
I want to like whiskey, but I can’t. So that’s where misunderstood started. And dude, I mean, it started from just hundreds of kitchen recipes. Like we didn’t go and say, Hey, you know, our whiskey is going to be ginger infused and let’s go do it. It took us years to literally spend early mornings, late nights in our kitchen, infusing disgusting things, right? Like things that you won’t even
I mean, JD always says avocado and whiskey don’t mix together. And it’s one thing that we tried. Like we tried everything. So we started this from zero experience.
Tyler Jorgenson (03:44.002)
You learned from experience. That’s, yeah.
Chris Buglisi (03:46.65)
Yeah, that’s the big thing, right? once we started, we had this ginger formulation and little mason jars started infusing whiskeys in our kitchen. Ginger started to have this beautiful mellowing agent. It was just like a mellowing agent for the whiskey. took that harshness away a little bit. And that was the purpose of misunderstood. was keep that integrity of the whiskey, but also have something that’s a little bit more palatable, a little more approachable. And our litmus test for that was, hey, can mom drink this? Great.
Can dad drink this? Even better, right? So we always set out to say, hey, we want to create a whiskey that’s approachable for everybody, that doesn’t piss off your bourbon drinkers, because we are bourbon drinkers, inherently, dating it myself. So that’s where it started.
Tyler Jorgenson (04:31.81)
Yeah. So that’s, and that’s not an easy thing to do. Say this is something that the, you know, the OGs are going to appreciate, but that the new people can also appreciate that. That’s a double, typically something that’s not done. People typically people say we’re one or the other. And, you know, with so many new variations and things coming out, they’re usually going after the new, right? Not really trying to appeal to the old. And so how did you guys come up with the name? I mean, it’s like the branding’s great.
I love the and the W stacked. Like I love all of that. How’d you guys come up with all of that and put a name to the brand?
Chris Buglisi (05:08.75)
Yeah, man. mean, so I would say JD is definitely the branding ninja, if you will, with the group. He’s very good at that. That’s his skill set that is complimentary to me. But we really came up with a misunderstanding because A, we wanted to bring new people into the whiskey category, right? Whiskey typically is very traditional.
the branding’s pretty traditional, there’s heritage lines that go into it. We don’t want to disrespect that because we love that, but we wanted to kind of take this new fresh, fun take on whiskey and attract new people. So that’s why we call it whiskey, right? The second thing is flavored whiskey typically gets a bad reputation within the whiskey community. So we wanted to make sure everything in our whiskey, there’s no shortcuts taken, right? Like it is all natural and real ingredients.
all real, there’s good bourbon in there that you would have in a much more expensive bottle of whiskey. And that matters to us, quality matters to us. So there’s kind of two reasons why it’s called misunderstood. We just wanted to flip the script a little bit on how people perceive whiskey.
Tyler Jorgenson (06:23.756)
Yeah, and I think those are great. You guys kind of got started, you know, 2011, just coming up with craft, like ideas and just brainstorming. What was the first really big challenge that you guys faced as you were trying to turn that idea into a business and how’d you overcome it?
Chris Buglisi (06:41.704)
man, going back pre our first bottling, the brand was actually not called Misunderstood Whisky. It was called something else that I won’t share right now, but we had our first trademark battle, which is always fun. in the liquor industry, is a bloodbath. I mean, there’s large companies in this industry who literally collect trademarks. They just collect them. They might not ever release the brand, they just collect them and that’s it, right?
Tyler Jorgenson (06:59.32)
Yep.
Tyler Jorgenson (07:07.138)
yeah.
Chris Buglisi (07:11.146)
And we, was like the day before that, you know, you go into that 30 day public Gazette, right. And you’re through, you’re almost under the finish line of getting your trademark actually accepted and registered on the 29th day. We had a representative from a very, very large company say, our client has an issue with your trademark. And, you know, it was funny. We had like a friend of a friend.
We couldn’t afford a lawyer at the time. Like we had no money, man. You know? So, we had a lawyer friend help us pro bono and that kind of wore out really quickly. He’s like, dude, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna win this. Like even if they don’t have a case, they’re just gonna squash you. Right? So that was our first really, big kind of hurdle. But what I would say is that it’s a silver lining, man, because misunderstood whiskey is a way better brand and name than what we were going to go with at the time.
Tyler Jorgenson (07:55.477)
No.
Chris Buglisi (08:10.99)
and you just gotta be resilient and keep on going. There’s so many options that go forward, you just gotta find the one that works for you.
Tyler Jorgenson (08:20.814)
That’s really good advice, that ability to stay resilient because a lot of people, especially in that very fragile stage of just getting it out to the market, if they face that level of setback, they might just call it quits. Hey, I tried. We gave it a go. Didn’t work out, you know, go, you know, go back to something else. And so you guys rebranded, you pivoted, you made the adjustments and now you like the brand even more, which is just super epic. When was that moment where you were like,
Chris Buglisi (08:36.238)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (08:49.546)
you had the realization, hey, this brand might actually take off, right? Because the opposite side of that, the getting the call from somebody saying, hey, we have an issue with your trademark is, hey, this has traction. What was that moment you first were like, okay, I think this is gonna go.
Chris Buglisi (09:09.556)
that was, it was three weeks. Well, actually, no, it was the first night we launched the brand. So I was still working corporate in Manhattan at the time. we did, we bottled our first 300 six packs, which is like nothing. That’s it. You know, it’s not much drove from barstown, Kentucky, where our, our, our whiskey’s made drove it like
Tyler Jorgenson (09:30.115)
Yep.
Chris Buglisi (09:36.154)
you know, illegally pretty much through like five different states and showed up for a huge event in Jersey city called Jersey city whiskey fest. And it was a Harbor financial center and 1500 people, 62 brands. were sitting right next to per no record. I remember one of the largest suppliers in the world and it was just us, man. Like it was just, we just got our whiskey fresh off the line there. We, was the first 20 minutes in business.
I remember before that we had a little online retailer that we dropped off some cases to, to like set up our online shop because we didn’t have one store of distribution at the time. It was just we’re sampling our brand new product.
Tyler Jorgenson (10:14.142)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Chris Buglisi (10:19.204)
people’s reactions to the whiskey then and there, we knew we had something special because the customer doesn’t lie. You have so many in this industry, you have so many layers between us and the customer, just the way that the distribution model works in liquor. But getting that first impact with people we didn’t know, this is not mom and our friends saying, Hey man, this is good stuff. You know, and they’re like spitting it out afterwards. These are people who are saying, this is the best.
Tyler Jorgenson (10:36.93)
Yep.
Chris Buglisi (10:48.26)
thing I’ve tried here. Like this is a multiple people came and gave us that feedback. And they also said, wait, you know, at that time they were ordering it online on their phones. We sold out of those cases in 45 minutes to the first four corners of the festival. So at that point in time, we’re like, my gosh, we actually have to like, there’s a little bit of market traction here. If the consumers like it, we can do this. Right. So that was it. I quit my job two weeks later. JD was hitting the pavement. were self distributing at the time. So
Tyler Jorgenson (11:05.859)
Wow.
Tyler Jorgenson (11:13.293)
Yeah.
Chris Buglisi (11:18.49)
no distributor, were just hustling out of the back of our cars and our bicycles, like dropping off $25 invoices to accounts, right? I mean, we were everything at the time and we sold out in the first two and half months. So that was when we kind of knew we had something really special here.
Tyler Jorgenson (11:29.75)
I love it.
Tyler Jorgenson (11:38.444)
That’s really cool. I appreciate that story a lot. It is not normal. I was just at a beer garden at a music fest. was for the older listeners, it was the final show of NoFX, like one of the big punk bands of the 90s. And a friend of mine has a brewery. They were participating in the beer garden, right? The point is it was exactly what you said where…
all of these beers from around the area where they were sampling and you could see people come up and you would, you could tell if they were being honest because they would get back in line or they would move to the next place. And so when you see that, that fast of a feedback cycle of like, Nope, I’m done sampling other places. I’m going to come back in line again. And you watch one person come through three, four or five times. It’s like, okay, we’re onto something, right? This is different that we, the consumer isn’t lying at this point. that’s a really cool story. And I appreciate that.
When, so you, and JD, you guys founded this together. You guys were friends before this. How has navigating that partnership been and friendship while also doing business? You know, any, any challenges and what advice would you give other people in a partnership?
Chris Buglisi (12:52.395)
What I saw I saw you guys had the Dena guys on and I was actually listening to this like similar question and I’d love to meet those guys by the way But I think it’s very similar year We’re incredibly lucky One because we’ve been pre-launched it took us four years to launch misunderstood, you know, When we launched the brand we already knew what we were good at like it was very much like
Tyler Jorgenson (13:02.323)
heck yeah.
Chris Buglisi (13:21.08)
we are already gelling on what his strongest capabilities are and what are mine. We’re super fortunate that we have skill sets that compliment each other, you know, and it allows you to have more trust and respect for that person in their duties as the leading officers of this company. So I think because we have different skill sets and as you
grow, you have more people, more responsibility, you kind of, you know, you’re just less involved in those decisions. You’re not involved in every decision anymore. And that’s incredibly important. you know, we’re still best friends, man. You know, it’s, it’s, we’ve been able to maintain it and it’s been great. And we also have a lot of fun, like our brands fun, and we like to have fun at work and, you know, we’re the least corporate people you’d ever meet. So,
I think there’s a lot of formulas for success there.
Tyler Jorgenson (14:20.332)
That is a consistent theme I’m finding in this industry, right? Is people typically are getting into this industry because they enjoy having fun. And it’s honestly the thing I like about so many of these brands that I’ve been able to interview is they’re just fun people. They just want, they have a good time and they’ve found a business that allows them to do that. So I think it’s super cool. And it’s great that you guys are still friends. I would have cried actually if you had been like, well, actually we don’t talk anymore.
So, yeah, so that’s good. yeah. I had a guest once say that the only way a partnership works is that if each partner works like they’re the only owner, like they work with 100 % work ethic, but they also trust the other person 100%, right? So yeah, whatever your percentages are, but you’re 100 % on everything you do, right? And so.
Chris Buglisi (14:50.266)
I mean there have been moments right it’s been a long journey. Yep.
Tyler Jorgenson (15:18.254)
I really appreciated that, because we all have life and things ebb and flow. But if you’re like, well, I did my 50%, I’m clocking out. It’s like, no, if there’s still work to be done, man, you get it done. It’s the only way brands gonna grow. So you guys are doing some, yeah, that’s good. You guys are doing some really cool things and, man, note to the editor, Tyler is talking over Chris. So we’ll clean that up, I’m sorry, man.
Chris Buglisi (15:26.84)
Yeah, work ethic we both have.
We both have good work ethic, so it’s important.
Tyler Jorgenson (15:44.866)
Tell me about the work ethic of both of you guys and then I wanna dive into something else here.
Chris Buglisi (15:48.762)
No, it was short. just, you know, we both have, I think had a really good work ethic instilled from our parents since we were like really young, you know, early jobs, stuff like that. So I agree with you a hundred percent. It is very much needed. You have to act like an owner. And we tell that to our employees as well. Like that’s one of our nine must haves in this company. You have to act like an owner. So yeah, so that’s a very important thing.
Tyler Jorgenson (16:17.43)
Alright, you can’t tease me with that. Hit me with the nine must haves.
Chris Buglisi (16:23.133)
I won’t go through all of them now, but it’s there a lot about Yeah, there
Tyler Jorgenson (16:25.774)
You gotta look them up. right, give me, so these are like nine must haves for when you hire people.
Chris Buglisi (16:33.934)
Yeah, it’s, you know, our company, you know, standards, ethics, stuff like that. I’ll go through a few of them. One is, you know, people buy from people. So that’s a huge thing for us is relationships. You know, it’s kind of like the golden rule is very important for us. You always have to be customer centric. That’s another one, because again, there’s so many layers in this business between distributors or retailers, but
If the customers aren’t buying at the end of the buying cycle, then you don’t have anything. That’s just the most important thing. Yeah, I mean, there’s a bunch of others, man, I can go through, but we can focus on something else and we’ll, yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (17:21.25)
Sounds good. No, I think those are two really good ones. along with, you know, act like an owner. I think those are solid. You guys are doing some really cool stuff with, again, innovating. You’ve launched another brand now. So that, it’s always an interesting thing. Like when you have a really cool product, do you add, do you go wide or do you go deep, right? Do you expand and do new brands or do you go deep and add new products and SKUs? You guys have done a little bit of both. And so,
what led to creating Oatragis? Like how do you go from, you know, ginger and whiskey to oat liqueur, right? So I’m super curious how this happened.
Chris Buglisi (18:05.733)
Yeah, there is a middle step there that happened. So in 2022, we were thinking about the next release for misunderstood. Because you have a ginger infused whiskey, as you said, you can go wide, right? Or you can test the waters of something new. So we decided to test the waters of a limited release. And that limited release is this guy right here.
This is misunderstood oatnog. I have all my bottles here too, just in case I had it shown. we started that because we look for white space that is commercially accessible. And I think that’s very important in this industry because there’s so much competition, it’s very cluttered. So we always look at grocery typically for like flavor trends and just where opportunities are.
in the booze world, what we typically see is that trends normally start and not out. And then eventually some of those trends, those flavor categories and those product categories will actually make it over to alcohol. We think about seltzer, hard seltzer, tea, hard tea, kombucha, hard kombucha, right? So these flavors, they all go over. But one thing that has not hit as it should is alternative milk.
Tyler Jorgenson (19:19.022)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Buglisi (19:31.386)
which is gonna be a $65 billion category by 2030. It’s massive. I mean, you can go to any grocery store now and it’s hard to find the regular milk, man. So we said, well, why don’t we come out with a salesman release and let’s try to do a, we know that misunderstood and some kind of cream base, the core go together very well for the holidays. We call it a ginger snap, right? Let’s do an Oatmeal.
Tyler Jorgenson (19:43.49)
Yep.
Chris Buglisi (19:59.788)
So we went into our kitchen yet again and started mixing things up and said, yeah, this can actually has legs. If it has viscosity and it actually mimics cream that is supposed to, we can actually do a really good job here and come out with something. And if it doesn’t work, it’s a limited release. And you know what? People never have to see it again. Right. So that did really well. And we’re actually going into year three of O’Nog’s season for us.
It was the first dairy free hard eggnog in the US. We got thank you letters from the dairy free community, from people who haven’t been able to have eggnog in like 20 years. And people were asking for it in like March and April. I’m like, guys, eggnog is a Q4 holiday drink. We’re not crushing eggnog going into the spring. So we put our heads together.
Tyler Jorgenson (20:29.198)
you
Tyler Jorgenson (20:56.172)
Right.
Chris Buglisi (20:56.62)
after the first season of misunderstood oatnog. And we said, how do we make this an all year thing? Because there’s clearly white space that we’re looking for here. And what does that look like? And we were toying with the idea of putting it under the misunderstood label, but it’s a whiskey company and we have more whiskeys that we’re releasing next year. So we’re like, this deserves its own focus and its own category. And that’s really how it already just came to be. We’ve been working on the last 19 months and it just…
literally is launching in five different states. last, you know, really the last two weeks has been getting out to market.
Tyler Jorgenson (21:35.578)
You guys seem to do a really good job of listening, which is not common, right? It should be, but you guys are customer centric, right? You tried something and then not only were people saying, yeah, that was so great. You’re like, okay, there’s clearly more here. And that probably wasn’t an easy decision to decide to spin it off into something of its own, but it makes a ton of sense because that is such a strong category of its own, right? Like alternatives.
milks and so I did not know my bingo card for 2024 did not have hard oat milk on it but here it is we were in that stage and that’s pretty cool so how did you guys develop your flavors there and what you know how did you guys go from idea to launch it on this
Chris Buglisi (22:17.423)
Yeah, man.
Chris Buglisi (22:26.478)
Yeah, I we used Oat Nog as the base. We knew we had a good product in Oat Nog. We had to make it different. We look at a lot of flavor trends again. We look at seasonality too. So cream categories, most of the business comes in October, November, December, right? So for us, we know that the espresso martini is like the number two selling drink in the US right now behind the margarita.
and espresso’s hot and coffee and cream go together obviously very well. So espresso was one that was kind of like a no brainer for us as an extension. Coconut for us, not as much, it’s funny, it’s a more of a divisive flavor and we know very well what a divisive flavor is like, we deal with ginger, right? But for us, it was a little more unique and again, the seasonality of it. like, can we,
Tyler Jorgenson (22:56.579)
Yep.
Tyler Jorgenson (23:19.778)
Yeah.
Chris Buglisi (23:25.792)
still maintaining, grow our business going into the spring and summer months with a coconut creme liqueur, right? So that was our second flavor. So that was the one that we really dove into. And then the third one, which is the main skew, was interesting because these are all bourbon based, but we actually toyed around in the beginning of calling it just original, like just the original flavor.
Like last, really in the ninth inning, we made the decision to change that. And we said, what’s, what is original? Like we’re, we aren’t a huge company. What are people going to see when they see original? Like it’s obviously going to be the laggard and these three. So we pivoted a little bit on the formulation. and we rebranded it to bourbon cream. So it is the world’s first dairy free bourbon cream, which is a big category.
And we hope that one does well. mean, it’s actually been a sleeper of the three. Like that one is like people secretly, I think really like that one. It’s a little more crushable, I think, just from the flavor profile standpoint, but that was the last minute pivot. And those are our first three that we’re kind of going in the world with, man.
Tyler Jorgenson (24:29.453)
Hmm.
Tyler Jorgenson (24:42.731)
And what you said there about it being maybe the slow at the beginning, but probably hot later is I think right now people are probably so excited for novelty, right? Excited for coconut and espresso and those things. it’s, but like you said, if you’re going to keep one consistently and reorder and do that, it’s probably going to be that bourbon cream, which is more of a consistent, you know, so that’ll be really interesting. So you guys just launched, I think very recently, this is just a brand new brand.
Oat Rages, which is just, I love the name, Branding Killer. I love the colors you guys went with. What are your big goals for it? What are you hoping to see it do in the next couple years?
Chris Buglisi (25:15.098)
What’s the man?
Chris Buglisi (25:22.958)
You know, for us, we’re starting with five markets and it’s even starting with five markets as a small brand is a lot. And you were talking big markets, you know, New York is in those five markets, Florida is in those five markets and Texas is in those five markets. For us, you know, we think this brand, mean, just from a marketing standpoint, we want this to be a staple in the household for dairy free consumers. Like that’s, that’s our plain and simple goal. Like,
This is not an extension. We’re never gonna come out with a dairy bacore with this brand. We are devoted to the dairy free community and we wanted those people and those consumers to know that we are there for that. This is their option for that, right? So that’s the big kind of overarching ethos and what we wanna do but.
It depends how it goes. You know, we have a lot to tackle in these five states. There’s a ton on the West coast that we haven’t even like, I mean, that’s it’s a massive California is the size of three states, right? So, and a huge alternative milk, consumer base there. So I think for us, we’re in 20 states with misunderstood. I think for us is just learning and growing and learning and growing and eventually get to the stage of distribution that we have.
Tyler Jorgenson (26:22.294)
Yeah, of course.
Chris Buglisi (26:49.018)
misunderstood. What I can say is early on, we’ve had a lot of chain success, we’ve been able to like, actually have conversations with that we haven’t been able to have beforehand with some really big, you know, groups. And if that’s an early indicator of just what this brand can do, we’re here for the ride, man. So that’s that’s that.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:14.478)
Yeah, I love it. All right, I’ve got two more questions for you and I’ll let you pick a pick which brand you want to answer the first one. If you listen to the day, not a episode you may know, I love, all the celebrity endorsements and partnerships and ownership within this space. If there was a one brand ambassador that you could just all they called you and said, Hey, I’m ready, you know, and you could pick which brand, but who would it be?
Chris Buglisi (27:44.758)
man, this is a tough one. I don’t know if I actually have an answer for that right now. I really, and this is genuinely me telling you that. Yeah, I don’t know if I have an answer for that right now because they are two different profiles. There’s a lot of huge profile celebrities that are dairy free and vegan. There’s a long list.
I don’t have an answer for you on those right now. Honestly, we’ve been so just head down just getting this brand out there, man, that it’s hard to think about that. But we are open to conversations if it makes sense for our brand. yeah, TBD, maybe I’ll come back to you on that.
Tyler Jorgenson (28:16.003)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (28:25.536)
Yeah, makes sense. Okay. Yeah, I’ll keep an eye out for it. I’m sure one will pop up here soon, but. All right, and the last one is a bit of a pivot because it is about you. So to me, business is amazing and I know you’re head down building these brands, but business is just business and it’s part of life, right? What is one item on your personal, it’s not your business, but your personal bucket list that you’re gonna accomplish in the next 12 months?
Chris Buglisi (28:53.69)
personal bucket list. try to, this is a little weird being in the booze business. Balance is super important. You gotta keep your head on straight. I really wanna actually take up jujitsu. I do. That’s like one thing for me that I really wanna start getting into. I’m getting a little tired of just going to the gym, so I need to get more creative with it. But yeah, that’s something in the next 12 months I wanna dive into.
Tyler Jorgenson (29:16.524)
Nice.
Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (29:24.224)
I love it. Did you wrestle in high school?
Chris Buglisi (29:26.964)
No, I did not, no. I don’t know that would have fared well.
Tyler Jorgenson (29:29.864)
all of my buddies that I wrestled with, yeah, are all going into jujitsu. So I was just like, maybe that was it. But I love that man. Thank you so much, Chris, for coming out on the show. To all of our listeners, go check out misunderstood whiskey and oat rages. You can find them on Instagram. You can also find them on their website at misunderstood whiskey.com. two really, really cool brands that you’ve got to follow and just see what they create over the next little while. And if you’re in one of those.
areas where they are already selling, make sure you grab some and support these guys and their startup and what they’re creating here in the marketplace. And to all my business ninjas, wherever you’re listening, watching or tuning in, it’s your turn to go out and do something.
