Meet Veso: The Modern Aperitif

While Chris Beyer’s recent-grad, tech industry peers were recovering from hangovers and sulking in their Sunday Scaries, he was picking grapes in a vineyard with a bunch of 60-year-old men. Going to the vineyard became a Sunday ritual for Beyer, the young scrappy helper for his dad’s group of hobbyist winemakers.

“I honestly didn't really like wine before that, but I really fell in love with it when I got to see the whole process up close,” recalls Beyer. His dad’s group of friends had been making wine for 6 years, starting with one barrel in a home wine cellar and growing to produce nearly 10,000 bottles a year at their peak. Still operating as hobbyists, they split the bottles over five families and the head winemaker — leaving each family with 1,000 bottles per year. Put simply, there was too much wine. So when Beyer got involved, he began thinking about commercializing it.

But Beyer was haunted by the trope: how do you make a million dollars in wine? You start with a billion. He knew that entering this competitive industry would require more than a passionate group of 60-something men. It would require a clear, distinct “edge.”

“I was always looking to see what younger generations were drinking. I saw that people were less focused on the nuance of a 2018 versus 2019 Cabernet. They wanted something with wider variation,” says Beyer. “I landed on a thesis: people were going to get into bolder, fruitier, spicier flavors.”

He found that variation abroad. While in Europe in 2019, Beyer discovered vermouth and aperitifs — wine infused with spices and botanicals and fortified up to around 18%.

When he returned to the U.S., Beyer began experimenting: “I started tinkering around — infusing and fortifying and fermenting everything in my kitchen. I finally settled on an infusion process for a white wine base, using fresh strawberries, citrus, botanicals and spices.” But at the same time as Beyer was beginning his aperitif journey in the U.S., the brand Haus started to blow up. “Haus did a really good job marketing and elevating aperitifs into the mainstream,” he recalls. “I looked at them and I was like, I cannot do this better than them.”

It took six months for Beyer to realize that what he was building was something different — and that there was space for more than one person in this industry. So he perfected his two formulations and put all of his bets on family feedback. “The idea was that if I had my family try them around Christmas, and they thought they weren't totally terrible, I would jump into it.” Needless to say, his family was (delightfully) “shocked” by the liquid.

In 2021, Beyer incorporated and applied for a liquor license, rented space from a winery in San Francisco, and got to work on building Veso. He worked on translating what he had done in his kitchen — a gallon and a bunch of strawberries from the farmers’ market — to 300 bottles, then 2000 bottles, learning how to handle fresh fruit at scale and manufacture by hand. “I had to teach myself everything from food science to manu- facturing and winemaking,” he recalls, all while testing with consumers, bartenders and retailers. In October 2021, Veso officially launched into the world.

EXPANDING INTO ON-PREM

Getting Veso onto menus was the first key step in Beyer’s strategy. “I didn’t want to get into retail too fast.” He was concerned that people still required education about aperitifs, and if they drank them the wrong way, their impression would be spoiled. “The best place to be introduced is in a bar or restaurant setting.”

At the same time, Beyer wanted to be strategic around which restaurants and bars introduced the liquid to consumers. “I was careful not to sell into sub-premium places. If we had said, ‘we're in that dive bar or fast casual spot,’ the big restaurants and nice restaurants wouldn't pick us up. Going premium and then working your way down is important.”

For Beyer, this looked like starting with one of the best (and one of Beyer’s favorite) restaurants in San Francisco: Rich Table. “It was a bold move to try to get in there first, but I was naive and had no idea what I was doing,” he remembers. He often frequented the restaurant and had even met the Beverage Director through a friend, but hadn’t yet mentioned his brand. One day, though, he decided to bring a few bottles to just go sit at the bar with a friend and “see what would happen.” They each ordered a few drinks before hinting to the bartender that he made aperitifs, then casually mentioning that he had a bottle with him. The bartender was intrigued and tried it on the spot — offering to share it with the Beverage Director later that day. Two weeks later, the Beverage Director emailed Beyer asking to put Veso on the menu. “Getting this kind of account helped us immensely in the future. Our second, third, and fourth accounts all trusted our brand simply because we could say we were already in Rich Table. It was a major validation point.”

Beyer’s Advice for On-Prem

“On-prem is very relationship-based,” Beyer explains. The decision-makers in restaurants are typically the Beverage Director or the Lead Bartender. If it's wine, there is a Wine Buyer, and if it's a restaurant group, there's typically a Beverage Director for the whole group, which is more corporate, and feels more like going into mass retail.”

The catch is that the restaurant industry isn’t checking emails — so you have to meet them in person. “The tough thing is, there’s no good time to do it. If they’re open, they’re too busy. If you come in before they open, they’re frantically getting ready. It's a really hard game to play. You have to leverage connections or go to bars and drink in front of the bartender.”

If you are able to catch the right person at the right time, Beyer offers the following script: “’Hey, I’m a local aperitif maker and wanted to see if I could set up some time to pour samples for you now or next week.’ They don’t need a full sell sheet, or to know that you’re 40% less sugar than Campari. They want the least friction possible.” He does, however, recommend that you come prepared with a bottle. Having a physical product helps establish legitimacy before the tasting — “this isn’t just some kid making beer in his closet.”

Because showing face isn’t sustainable at scale, Beyer notes that big spirits companies will use distributors along with brand ambassadors, who are either part-time or full-time former bartenders or Beverage Directors. These folks know everyone in the industry, and will go out and sell your product “either directly door-to-door or they'll create cocktails and host events and happy hours for bartenders and industry people.” With on-prem being so relationship-based, these ambassadors can significantly help accelerate your reach.

Retail Strategy

While on-prem is more nuanced, expanding into retail is much more similar to the “typical” CPG process: getting in touch with buyers (who do check their emails) and scheduling tastings and meetings.

To get onto retail shelves, Beyer began by self-distributing (legal for wine in the state of California). This limited him to the local area, but also meant that Beyer retained full control over the brand. “If I made a sale, I could drop it off at that moment. Sometimes restaurants would even put it on the menu that very night.”

Self-distribution was also necessary before distributors would even consider bringing on the nascent brand. “Distributors pay upfront for the product, so it’s a risk to them. They don’t want to take you on until you’ve had enough growth that they would get profit from your existing accounts.” The first year and a half of this was tough — building momentum seemed to require momentum. But once Beyer hit around 35 spots and felt Veso was reaching a bottleneck, he finally approached a distributor, Revel Wine, who Veso is now working with on a broker basis.

Revel has been a huge asset to the brand and significantly reduced buying friction, but Beyer is quick to note that distributors don’t do all of the work. “You don’t just pass everything off once you have a distributor. There’s a whole set of distribution management expertise that you need to leverage. I still have to go on the ground and do sales work,” he says.

Now, Beyer’s greatest challenge has shifted: “Once you get into retail, you want to maintain velocity. But at the same time, you need to keep product in stock.” When retailers deplete inventory, they often forget to reorder and the brand has to essentially “resell” it to them. In restaurants, too, you need enough stock to stay on the menu or they’ll pull you — they don’t want to see “flip-flopping.”

Beyer’s Advice for Off-Prem

Though Beyer wasn’t emphasizing off-prem initially, he quickly found that the interplay between on- and off-prem can be incredibly valuable for startup brands: “A restaurant in San Francisco requested samples because they had found us in a small boutique liquor store. The retail side can inform on-prem — if bartenders start seeing you everywhere, it gives your brand credibility before you approach them.”

At the same time, being on-prem helped boost velocity in retail. “People often see Veso on a menu, see how it’s being used, and then want to purchase it themselves at home. You have to do both on- and off-prem in tandem.”

Ecommerce As A Marketing Tool

When Veso launched, they were exclusively DTC. Since Veso is technically wine, they are legally allowed to ship to most states, and each state requires its own license. But they quickly found that the costs associated with DTC were unsustainable for the brand. Firstly, shipping liquid (and particularly alcohol) is incredibly expensive — both because of the sheer weight of a glass bottle and the additional $4 just to get the recipient to sign. Second, Beyer found that paid ads were a “money pit” due to rising CAC.

“Though we offer free shipping, we found that people would still rather go to the store to buy it. There’s some psychological friction around getting alcohol shipped — people want to see the brand in person.” Thus, Beyer moved towards using ecommerce mostly as a marketing channel.

“I keep it open so people can order, and we do get orders weekly, but I'm not really investing in it yet,” says Beyer. Veso’s site is currently acting as a hub for storytelling, as well as a landing page for new releases pushed to their email list and Instagram followers. In the future, they’re hoping to also launch a subscription club. “Subscription clubs are the best way for wine to use ecom, because the AOV and LTV are both significantly higher.”

Looking Ahead

As Veso continues to expand in California, they’re looking for new ways to garner brand awareness across the country. Their most exciting upcoming activation? A fully custom, co-branded vermouth product for TikTok influencer Drinks By Evie to be launched in August or September. Because they self-produce, a collaboration like this is simple to execute. Plus, “an influencer doesn't want to go to some factory winery and pick out flavor extracts. That's not fun. They want to actually see the craft process.” Ultimately, Veso and Evie will be splitting profits and driving new eyeballs to the brand.

While self-production has been opening up many opportunities for the brand, Beyer has also begun thinking about how to expand more efficiently. “Right now, we are 20 people hulling strawberries by hand. We’re trying to figure out how to do this in a more automated way before we can consider scaling.” His plan right now is to scale as much as possible in the current facility, then start moving the process over to bigger wineries with greater capacity. “Most brands start out with a fully automated process. But I started with an extremely labor-intensive process — so anything I do will make it easier. It won’t be that difficult to scale.”

In the meantime, Beyer and his small team are knee-deep in 1,300 pounds of strawberries and 2,000 pounds of citrus for their next production run. Though he’s moved beyond the days of wine-caddying for his dad’s friends, Beyer still remembers his roots. “I wanted Veso to be made with a process I could be proud of, with ingredients straight from farms. Along the way, I realized that it wasn’t just about creating something better in the bottle — it was about enhancing the entire experience, inspiring a more intentional drinking culture. One that is built around people, places, and memories.”