Bar Convent Berlin 2022 - Bonus Video Episode | 15 simple tips to build drinks brands bottom-up

Show Notes

Happy 2026. This Episode is hosted by Chris Maffeo and brought to you by MAFFEO DRINKS. A Deep-Dive Analysis of This Episode is Available at maffeodrinks.com 

This bonus episode was recorded at Bar Convent Berlin, where Chris Maffeo held a presentation as a guest of Park Street University.

In his presentation, he talks about the MAFFEO DRINKS approach to building brands from the bottom up, explaining the most common mistakes brands make and how to solve them.

About the Host: Chris Maffeo

About the venue: BCB - Bar Convent Berlin

All rights reserved: Park Street

This episode is brought to you by MAFFEO DRINKS, an Advisory helping drinks leaders execute bottom-up growth while managing stakeholder expectations. 

Creators and Guests

Host

Chris Maffeo

Building Bottom-Up Strategies WITH Drinks Leaders Managing Top-Down Expectations | MAFFEO DRINKS Founder & Podcast Host

What is MAFFEO DRINKS: Built Bottom-up?

The MAFFEO DRINKS Podcast is a leading drinks business podcast delivering actionable insights for drinks leadership.

For founders, directors, distributor MDs, and hospitality leaders navigating the tension between bottom-up reality and top-down expectations.

20+ years building brands across 30+ markets. Each episode features drinks builders: founders, distributors, commercial directors, sharing how the drinks industry actually works. Not the conference version. Honest conversations.

Insights come from sitting at the bar.

Beyond episodes: advisory for leadership teams, subscription with episode deep dives and principles to navigate your own reality.

Beer, wine, spirits, Low and non-alcoholic.

Bottom-up Insights & Episode Deep Dives at https://maffeodrinks.com

Chris Maffeo: 00:51

I'm Chris Maffeiro. I'm originally Italian, but I've lived the last seventeen years in six countries in Europe, and I've been working for major brewer mainly around the world, working with 30 plus, more or less, markets. My focus has always been export, so I was I've always worked for major brands, but in countries where nobody knew them, which made it a very different perspective to to learn from. So what I've done in the the last three years, I am I'm self employed, and I've I've launched my company, Maffeiro Drinks. And and I'm basically sharing the learnings of what are the commonalities and differences among different markets around the world.

Chris Maffeo: 01:37

Specifically, I will focus on Europe while Chris Ladas will focus more on The US. And let's let's dig that deep dive. So as we as we hear a lot, like it takes twenty years to make an overnight success. This is not my quotes. I I stole it from somebody.

Chris Maffeo: 01:56

Actually, it's one of the top craft distillers in The US. And I I made it mine because it's a it's a real mantra. So we are usually thinking because we are drawn by publications, you know, trade industry publications and so forth that we always focus about exits and this brand made million, they were sold for millions and so on. But actually it's, you know, most of the time when you hear that a brand has been sold and bought by a major conglomerate, it actually was working already for quite a few years and decades. So the important thing is that probably you were not paying much attention because you have not heard you know, you heard about the brand only in the last in the last few years, but actually it's it's a lot of effort in 1% improvement every day so that you can really make the brand tick and win with different customers in a, what I always like to say, like in a bottom up way because as we we'll we'll dig into that later, but there is a lot of differences between building a brand top down or building it bottom up.

Chris Maffeo: 03:05

So the other thing is that I like to say to all my clients and to people in the industry, like, leave the meeting room. So the meeting room ends up ends up being an echo chamber. So you always talk to your own colleagues, your co founders, your the people that work for your brands, regardless if you are a founder or, you know, in a small company or if you work in a big company, but you have a brand that has a very low share of mind in a big multinational, you have to leave the meeting room and you have to be where the action is. So you have to be in the trade. And I always like to say the best great way to get insights is sitting at the bar, looking at the other people, what are they doing, how the bartender is communicating the brands, and make it bar proof, so to say.

Chris Maffeo: 03:56

Again, like talking about the top down and bottom up way, top down used to work in the past where there were very few brands, so there was a lot of distributors and importers that were managing to build the brand because there was not so many brands out there. Now there's been, in the last decade, there's been a proliferation of brands. It could be gin in Europe, we were discussing it earlier with Chris, or tequilas in The US, you name it, but there are different peculiarities, but there are some industries that some categories that are much more overwhelmed than than the others. So what's what is important is to really deep dive into into the market. So don't look like I I see it all the time here now in this in this in Barcom, like a lot of people have tagged like looking for distributors, but you need to make an effort to really understand which market you want to focus on and double down on that market to really understand, okay, what is Berlin?

Chris Maffeo: 05:01

What are the top bars for my brand in Berlin? Not the top bars to who? Because if you just search the top bars, I mean, like you basically get a list of top bars in Berlin, top bar is Paris, London, Rome, and whatever. But everybody's going to go through that list. And everybody's going to say to that distributor, I want to get into that bar.

Chris Maffeo: 05:23

So don't tell them, you know, I want to get into that bar, but analyze the market and really understand where you want to be. And then up upwards, you understand what is the what is the best route to market because once that you talk to those 10 bars that have the right occasion for your brand, the right focus on that occasion for your brand, then you will understand, you will ask them with a question like, who's your wholesaler? Who are you buying from? And then they will tell you who they buy from. And that's the way to approach the right person right for your brand, which could be a totally different distributor for another brand in the same markets.

Chris Maffeo: 06:07

Again, that leads to the next point, which is sell with distributors, not sell to distributors. So don't see distributors as an end customer because that's only the sell in. So you want them to sell out. So they may order the first palette, if you're lucky, half a palette or whatever, a few cases only. But you want them to buy continuously.

Chris Maffeo: 06:36

So but in order to do that, they need to be able to, I like to say, get rid of your brand as fast as possible so that they can rebuy you. So, and in this in this nice drawing that I made, it's very important to clarify what we mean by distributor because there's a lot of misconception there. So there is a difference between importers and wholesalers, and especially in Europe, there is a big difference. So the importer, I like to explain it in a simple way. So importers go horizontal while wholesalers go vertical.

Chris Maffeo: 07:14

What I mean by that is that an importer will represent your brand into a market and will go national. So it's like nationwide, but they will have five to 10 salespeople working nationwide. So if you take UK, there will be one or two people in London, then Manchester, Edinburgh, and you name it, Glasgow and so on. What you want them to work with is a wholesaler that actually is dig doubled doubling down into London, into Birmingham, into Manchester, because they've got like 10 salespeople only in one city. So they go vertical, and those are the guys that will amplify your brand and enlarge the possibilities to actually make your sales accounts.

Chris Maffeo: 08:01

So always consider the sell in and the sell out, they are two different things. The other thing is the margin sharing. So you need to acknowledge who are all the players in in the value chain in the in this drinks ecosystem. Because if you are missing one of the links of this chain, you may not allocate the right amount of margins for that operator. And this is crucial because I've seen many times like I've been sold, like I've been sent value chains that were not accounting for a wholesaler, they were only accounting for a distributor.

Chris Maffeo: 08:39

So all of a sudden, like there is somebody who doesn't make money, so they will order once and then stop ordering. So the important thing is that it's three levels. So you need to be emotionally relevant, strategically relevant, and financially relevant. So emotionally relevant is people love your brand because of what you represent. You know, it could be sustainable, it could be working on the same kind of way that their bar is working, but it's only about relationship.

Chris Maffeo: 09:10

And we love our industry because of because of that. We love it because it's a it's a it's a people business, but people are not enough. So I always give this example is like every every bar owner has got 20 slots in the back bar, but they've got 50 friends with brands. So there's 30 brands that don't have room. So they end up basically like like exchanging them all design depending when you're visiting them, but there is not enough space.

Chris Maffeo: 09:40

So you need to really focus on the bars that are relevant for you or that you are strategically important for. So example, a mezcal brand could be like a bar that doesn't have any mezcal, it could be strategically important for them to have a mezcal. But if you're not so they are your friends, you are emotionally connected to them, you sell them that mezcal brand, then they are it's strategically important for them because they are actually like they need that because they want to launch a program with Negroni Mezcal. So they want to have a Mezcal brand that they're lacking. But then if you're not financially, so they don't make enough margin off you, then the next guy or girl with a Mezcal brand that give them more margin, they will basically, like replace your brand.

Chris Maffeo: 10:28

So always think in this in this terms. It's a bit of a it's a bit of a ladder, like, you know, you can interchange those three things, but I like to think in a ladder way. So emotionally is the first step, strategically the second step, and financially the third step. Again, like nobody wants to have a dusty bottle. Like, I hear a lot of complaints usually like on there's a tendency to blame the next link in the chain, but the chain works backwards.

Chris Maffeo: 10:55

So it works from the glass. There is a glass on a bar with a brand inside that is sold by a bartender that was bought by a bar owner that was sold by a salesperson of a wholesaler, from a distributor, from an importer, back to the brand owner, back to the distillery. So it doesn't work top down. It's not I have a distillery, I have a brand, and now I'm going to push my brand down your throat in a way. So it's important to acknowledge this and and think that everybody like you've got a you will have a lot of competitors working with distributors, especially here in in in in Europe, like with importers that have a lot of brands that are similar to your category.

Chris Maffeo: 11:41

So everybody wants to enter the aperitivo occasion. So the gin and tonic thing, spritz occasion, everybody are fighting for the same piece of the cake. So try to make your own new cake, so that you can actually convey your message in a in a focused way. And and if they manage to sell out, then of course, they will you will get you will manage to sell in again. So a simple chart to look at this is thinking like a winning trio, like a solo game.

Chris Maffeo: 12:17

So it's not you calling the distributor and having a competition on who's calling more the distributor and who's emailing more the distributor convincing them on a special offer. It's about trying to like look at it as a matrix. It's like how does my brand fit into the distributors portfolio and how does my brand fit into the customers range? So look at the back bar basically. So the brands that are successful are the ones that are actually ticking the right box top right because they are they make sense for that back bar, and they make sense for that distributor that they are with.

Chris Maffeo: 13:01

Again, like, it's normal in the beginning to try to grow distribution, because that's how you grow, or that's how you think you grow. But a lot of time I'm speaking to brands, and I ask them, how many bars are you selling to? So most brands won't even give me an answer because they don't know how many bars they're selling to. But those who do, they will tell me many bars, like a 100 bars. And then it's like, yeah, but how many bought more than once?

Chris Maffeo: 13:33

Because you have to think like you have to sell the first bottle with the second one in mind. Know, if you sold them only once, that's not a customer. That's somebody who's trying your product and maybe was not successful, you know, that your product was not successful there. So you need to work it out. So once that you try your handful of brand of bars, sorry, let's say five or 10 bars, then really understand where there is more potential and why there is more potential in those kind of bars.

Chris Maffeo: 14:05

So I like to really capture it in a one case in one bar is better than one bottle in six bars. So it's still one case. It's still you still sold six bottles, but while at the beginning, it's fine to sell to five bars because you want to test the water, at the end, like, you need to double down on those that are actually buying one case because that's where the rotation is there. So the share of mind of their staff is there. And this is how you make it you make it happen.

Chris Maffeo: 14:38

And don't over don't underestimate the small very small details. So very often, bars don't sell your brand just because the delivery person has delivered one case, it was brought to the seller, and nobody knew that that bought that that case arrived. So sometimes it's just like you go there and it's like, but I sold I know that I sold to that bar, but nobody knew because I just spoke to one buyer and there is five bartenders there and only one person that is maybe on holidays is out of work, you know, is not working. So the the sales don't happen just for a very simple reason. There's no there's nothing about marketing activations and and so on to boost the rate of sale.

Chris Maffeo: 15:28

And then last but not but not least, I like to think of it as a people plus system. So this industry is probably one of the most, you know, it's one of the industries in which the human factor is more prominent, you know, like we see it here, as everybody, we're all hugging each other and kissing each other. And like, we're all happy to finally meet in person after years of LinkedIn and Twitter. But that's not enough. Because whether you are a founder that has a vision but don't manage to translate that vision to their team, or whether you hired a very great brand ambassador or, you know, somebody who's like a bartender who's making cocktail, like a more cocktail program for you, you know, you cannot scale, I like to say the magic of a of a single person, you know, if you don't have a system, you're not going to be able to scale that and you cannot rely on one simple guy or girl that is actually like has the vision of the brand and knows exactly how to work it.

Chris Maffeo: 16:43

So you really need to understand what are the ways to build a system that is understanding, okay, where should we focus on? How do we create demand? How do we send out our team to speak only to the people that want to talk to us, instead of like, just like, let's say, spamming the market and having people running around town, which is very expensive and not cost effective. So these are the most important thing. And again, don't underestimate the detail.

Chris Maffeo: 17:14

Once more, I like to stress this. Hunters and farmers. So the hunter is the one who's looking for new customers and the farmer is the one who's harvesting the rotation and the velocity in the market. Don't underestimate the fact that you may have a hunter that is hunting down all customers and it may be over promising things that the farmer cannot maintain, like promises that they cannot maintain. So you need to make sure that it's always like net new distribution.

Chris Maffeo: 17:46

It's not enough to have a new distribution because if you gain 10 customers, but you lost four, in the meantime, you got six customers. And it sounds like a very silly thing and a very simple thing, but you will you will know how many times it will happen in in in trade. So this is this is it for me. Like to give you my my contacts. You'll find me on on all the social media.

Chris Maffeo: 18:15

There is a website, winningwithdrinks.com. It's my website where I do a weekly newsletter, so you can subscribe there, and you get free access to a lot of articles and interesting tips to to grow your brand. So hope you you enjoyed it. Thank you.