LIBATIONS Three siblings

LIBATIONS

BOOZING BUDDIES

Family-owned business values relationships with customers

by THOMAS J. MONIGAN

Chuck, Mike and Pat Kelley learned lifelong lessons growing up in a familiar Emerald Coast family business.

“Work ethic,” said Mike Kelley, addressing one of those lessons. “You’ve got to work hard to show results. Nothing comes easy.”

Kelley’s IGA supermarkets were owned and operated by Roy Kelley and his brother Charles.

The current generation, two brothers and a sister, started Kelley’s Beach Liquors in the year 2000 with a Panama City location. Since then, they have opened Crestview, Fort Walton Beach and Destin stores.

“Back in the day, we used the phrase ‘hometown advantage,’ and that is truly what we think we are and what we want to be,” Mike Kelley said.

Local ownership appeals not just to locals, but to military personnel and visitors who make their way to Northwest Florida from all over the world.

Meanwhile, tastes in alcohol have become increasingly sophisticated and complex.

“You see the acceptance of craft beer in a younger generation,” Chuck Kelley said. “And a lot more women are drinking craft beer. Also, like wine, you’re seeing people matching the style of beer with whatever they’re eating for dinner. Whether it’s an IPA (India Pale Ale), a porter, a stout or a pale ale, it can match up like wine does with meals.”

Local craft beer is sold primarily in cans.

“For the beach, for boating, for pools, people don’t want a glass bottle around,” Chuck Kelley said. “Where they used to concern themselves with the acceptance of cans, today it’s just the opposite. Everybody’s going to cans, and it’s made it a lot easier.”

The steady and impressive growth of local breweries has made for a steady flow of new products.

“When people travel, they don’t necessarily want beer from the national breweries they’re accustomed to back in their own hometown,” Mike Kelley said. “They want to experience the local flavor.”

Tastes have evolved, too, with regard to liquor.

“Generation Z is buying more upscale products, and there’s more ‘premiumization’ in the categories,” Mike Kelley said. “Tequila has become the ‘new bourbon,’ and shelfaged tequilas are gaining in popularity.”

Gen Z’ers also have surprisingly refined tastes in wine.

“With their buying power, we’re seeing more entry-level people who are drinking sweeter wines,” Mike Kelley said.

“All of the imports from Australia, South Africa, Argentina and Chile have declined in popularity,” he added, “and it really goes to people, their palates, their education level and the strength of the domestic American wines. The only categories that have held their own are France and Italy. That’s Northwest Florida for you.”

↑ The Kelleys have watched as a new generation of drinkers has embraced craft beers. Cans are cool these days, and visitors, too, like to sample locally brewed products.

↖ Siblings Chuck, Pat and Mike Kelley launched Kelley’s Beach Liquors in 2000 with their first store in Panama City Beach. Stores in Crestview, Destin and Fort Walton Beach have since been opened.

RAW BAR Happy Hour

LIVE MUSIC

Sports Bar, Beer Bar, Seafood Restaurant

125 Poinciana Blvd., Miramar Beach (Next to Winn-Dixie) (850) 842-3200 • austonson98.com

Multiple Best of the Emerald Coast winner since 2008

The original, award-winning wood-fired pizza and classical Italian cuisine

↑ Like a bookstore that sets aside shelf space for the works of local authors, Kelley’s Beach Liquors displays together the products of regional distilleries.

Low carbs, great taste

“Seltzer has exploded, and it has maintained sales,” Chuck Kelley said. “In the past, there have been items that have come on the scene and been a onehit wonder that lasts maybe a summer or a season. Seltzers hit and grew to the extent that suppliers couldn’t keep up with the demand and couldn’t keep product in the warehouse.”

Why such an impact?

“They bring alcohol content with low calories and carbs,” Chuck Kelley said. “So where you used to think it would be female-oriented, that’s not the case. Guys are walking in and buying 12-packs of seltzers all the time now. It’s impacted all beer with more avenues to explore, and who knows what will be next?”

“The younger generation wants to live a healthier lifestyle,” Mike Kelley said. “They’re looking for lower alcohol content to line up with their healthy standards. Seltzers in the ‘ready to drink’ category are off the charts. Why? The convenience of it, and the low alcohol and they’re willing to spend more money for that convenience.”

These days, what constitutes convenience for many people means shopping from home and having products delivered to their door.

“We’ve had a website for eight or nine years,” Mike Kelley said, “and we embarked on upgrading it about six or eight months before COVID-19 hit. It came together where we had our online shopping available the same time that we had our smartphone app.”

Via the Beach Liquors app, consumers can place orders through City Hive or Drizly. DoorDash makes deliveries.

“We don’t always look at the crystal ball and read it, but we knew prior to COVID-19 that shopping at home and having home delivery, that was going to be a big thing,” Mike Kelley said. “And we are lucky to be in the right place at the right time.” EC

expression JUN/JUL 2021

↘ Mr. Big & The Rhythm Sisters, under the direction of band leader Tim Jackson (with tuba), are prepared with playlists well-suited to a variety of occasions. CREATIVE WORKS LAND ON PAGES, CANVASES AND PAGES

BOOKS Traversing 30A

MUSIC

MUSICAL PERFORMERS

Mr. Big is the personification of high energy

by WYNN PARKS ↓

← George Petropoulas, Chuck Schwartz, Ronny Levine and Tim Jackson perform at a wedding. Mr. Big & The Rhythm Sisters strive to tap into the emotional associations that people have with familiar music.

Folks with a taste for nostalgia and a love of ritual are sure to get down to the musical reiterations of Mr. Big & the Rhythm Sisters. True it is that innovation isn’t their main jam.

No, Mr. Big’s hook is an omnibus of over 200 multi-generational pop songs from “Puttin’ On the Ritz” to “I Like the Way You Move,” including many others from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. With every song performed, Mr. Big mimics the original version, a kind of musical chameleon act.

Mr. Big is a musical theater troupe, an ensemble of eight singing, playing and acting performers, plus a “technical,” sometimes called the DJ. Styling itself a band, the pumped “Red Bull Eight” offers audiences musical performances tailored to the occasion, be it birthday, wedding, “just because,” sloshed or some combination thereof.

Look at the Mr. Big website! Whatever the scene — from outdoor flip-flop and mai-tai concerts with a Gulf view to serious formal balls in swanky hotels — beach folk, society types and society wannabes can all be viewed dancing off their coats and ties, their floppy hats, their shawls and finally their asses in a transport of pleasures.

“Oh, I remember what I was doing the first time I heard this!” all must be saying.

“Mr. Big can’t do the bar scene,” said band leader/director Tim Jackson. “That’s not where the money is. Aside from pay, we’ve got wardrobe and props and equipment to maintain. Sometimes there are side features like palm readers, as well. So playing for beer and jalapeño nachos won’t cover it.”

Jackson is initially guarded, seeming to deliberate about almost every word. As the

leader of the band, he regularly calls on the spirit of the bass and switches to trombone if he feels it.

Jackson has more than one iron in the fire. Mr. Big is only a piece of his Prime Time Entertainment business, but a pretty big piece, so his wariness isn’t too hard to figure out.

“See, Mr. Big isn’t one of the band members,” Jackson declared seriously. “Mr. Big is like the band’s personification.”

After a while, Jackson loosened up and went psychological for a second or two.

“Mr. Big, is a cover band, in a way,” he said. “We want to tap into the preestablished emotional associations from the original renditions and, in the meantime, to up the (band’s) game.”

Taking the band higher is no doubt an interesting exercise. Because once Jackson has the bass bumping out the beat, joined by Joe Lyon’s drums and Ronny Levine’s singing six-stringed axe, and George Petropoulas and Chuck Schwartz blare in with trumpet and sax, there’s nothing left but the out-front, vocal locomotions of Pearl Ash, Joanna Hayes and Demetrius Singleton wailing with the intensity of a ’77 Firebird Trans Am getting rubber. In 20 years, Mr. Big’s members have changed, and this iteration is a tight one. It entertains, interacts and does cover songs with a lot of flashy mojo.

But something’s up with the Emerald Coast music scene these days, something reminiscent of what happened with Austin’s cosmic-cowboy music during the ’60s and ’70s, when a rebellious bunch of outsider musicians walked out on Nashville and landed in Texas. Musicians from Bangor, Maine, to San Diego flocked in after them and brought about rich music venues like “Austin City Limits.”

Today in the Florida Panhandle, flocking songwriters and hot-shot musicians are lighting all around the bay. Every crab-shack bistro and juke-til-youpuke joint has live entertainment at least once a week. Recording studios and sound facilities are popping up like mushrooms.

What are the odds that both talent and technicals would jam up in the same place with enthusiastic audiences, audiences ready for any old festivity to begin?

One might hope that in the midst of a Panhandle music rush, Mr. Big & the Rhythm Sisters won’t be satisfied to serve only as a place where high-grade talent can keep up their chops and get decent pay. That may be a fine start, but it doesn’t begin to tap into Mr. Big’s bigtime potential.

The band is perfectly positioned to find its own voice and become far more than an A-grade cover band, if it recognizes the opportunity. EC

↑ Demetrius Singleton, above, serenades a guest at a wedding reception. Top, from left: George Petropoulas, Chuck Schwartz and Joe Lyons combine to play cover songs spiced up with a lot of mojo.

Demetrius Fuller

Leading the Emerald Coast Arts into a Creative New Frontier

BY ZANDRA WOLFGRAM

The fun factor of the Emerald Coast arts scene is about to hit the charts.

Demetrius Fuller, who founded Sinfonia Gulf Coast in 2005 and serves as its music and artistic director, was named CEO of Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation (MKAF) in December.

“It’s truly an honor to be able to continue this legacy and go into the future with the talented staff and board of directors,” Fuller said. “I’m already having a lot of fun.”

Established in 1995, Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation is a notfor-profit charitable arts organization founded on the cultural, educational and spiritual beliefs of Destin matriarch and lifelong arts patron Mattie Kelly. Today, MKAF remains firmly committed to Mattie Kelly’s vision of making the cultural arts available to all in Northwest Florida.

No one is more excited to continue fulfilling Mattie Kelly’s “creative” vision than Fuller.

Top on this CEO’s priority list is to expand MKAF’s community outreach efforts — the drumbeat of MKAF’s mission. At Fuller’s urging, education director Melanie Moore has curated an unprecedented number of programs (108 and counting). Coined ArtsReach, it provides hands-on art, theater and music education programs designed especially for K-12 students, children and adults with special needs, as well as veteran and active-duty military service members.

To ensure everyone feels welcome to join the “party,” MKAF has revamped its membership program. Specifically, a new category for young professionals has been added.

“Membership is the backbone of MKAF. We are creating some great opportunities to get a younger demographic engaged, interested and involved. It’s really going to be fun,” Fuller says.

MKAF fans can expect an exciting year-round lineup of cultural events and offerings that will celebrate art, music and the culinary arts. Kicking off the 26th season is a unique collaboration only Fuller could deliver: The Music of Queen, featuring Sinfonia Gulf Coast performing live on stage with the tribute band.

With all he’s doing to realize Mattie Kelly’s dream, a clear theme has emerged. “We really want to up our fun factor in all we do,” Fuller says.

DEMETRIUS FULLER

ARTSREACH PARTICIPANTS

MATTIE KELLY ARTS FOUNDATION 4323 COMMONS DRIVE W, DESTIN | (850) 650-2226 | MKAF.ORG To view the calendar of events and to learn more about MKAF and how you can join the fun, visit MKAF.org.