003 | The Target Occasion: how to sell to bars focusing on occasions rather than categories | Part 1/3 of the Interview with Ilias Mastrogiannis from the Distillery Nation Podcast (Seattle, WA, USA)

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 

In this episode, Chris Maffeo spoke to Ilias Mastrogiannis, host of Distillery Nation and founder of the Mastrogiannis Distillery and Winery.

They discussed how the On-trade scene has changed by blending occasions and categories in recent years. They dived into why focusing on target occasions is important rather than categories. They discussed the importance of building demand for a brand before attempting to capture it and how On-trade sales have changed in the last few years. They discussed sales, building demand, targeting and filtering on-premise accounts, and the importance of focusing on the essentials, focusing on bottle-by-bottle sales.

I hope you enjoy the conversation. Share it with friends, click follow and rate it if you liked it.

About the Host: ⁠Ilias Mastrogiannis

About the Interviewee: ⁠Chris Maffeo⁠

All rights reserved: Distillery Nation

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

Guest

Ilias Mastrogiannis

Host | Distillery Nation Podcast

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

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 00:45

Hey, everybody. It's Elias Mastrianes here, and this is the Distillery Nation podcast where insightful business advice collide with craft distillery interviews. Look no further as you found the podcast you need to listen for craft distilling. Hey, distiller nation. This is Elias Masrani.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 01:03

I am your host and distiller behind the craft branded distillery located in Lakewood, Washington. And in this episode of distiller nation podcast, I had the absolute pleasure talking with Chris Mafeo. Chris is a drinks industry adviser and founder of Mafeo Drinks. He has a vast experience and knowledge on how to build brands from the ground up. And in this episode, we did just that.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 01:25

Chris went deep into sales, DTC, building demand, email list, how do we target and filter on premise accounts, the importance on focusing on just the essentials, and so much more. Before we get started, a few housekeeping items. If you have found value on the podcast, leave us a review on Apple Podcast. This is how we can grow, and we can reach more people. We also have a Facebook group.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 01:50

So if you're looking to supplement, help, or just connect with like minded people, head over to Facebook, search for Distillery Nation, and hit that join button. With that said, let's jump right into the interview. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Distillery Nation podcast. I am really honored to introduce today's guest, Chris Maffeiro. Chris is a drinks industry adviser, founder of Maffeo Drinks, has a vast experience and knowledge on how to build brands for them ground up.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 02:15

Chris, I'm super excited to have you here today. Welcome to the show.

Chris Maffeo: 02:19

Thank you. Thank you, Elias. Happy to be here, and thanks for the for the invite.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 02:24

Absolutely. Yeah. We connected over your your newsletter, which we'll touch a little bit later because I think everybody should be subscribing. But before we get there, Chris, a little bit about who you are and how do you get into the booze business?

Chris Maffeo: 02:38

Yes. That's that's always interesting. So I'm Italian originally. So, I mean, my background is of course, like, every everybody has their own drinks cabinet at home at the grandpa's and, you know, and and and in the family. And I've always been attracted by these bottles that were very old because my family didn't really drink that much.

Chris Maffeo: 03:04

So it was always like that that was the thing that got me into, let's say, drinks in general. Like I'm fascinated about the bottles. I'm a history lover, so I'm always fascinated on how these bottles come up and how do founders create these products and so on. And my background, I started in the industry in the on trade as a sales guy back in Rome, in it's actually twenty years right now. And I was a sales guy for an internet startup, so we were selling advertising to bars and restaurants.

Chris Maffeo: 03:40

I set up the Rome business with some friends back then at university, and we were doing events for major brands that were launching in the market. So all the big names, the it was the wave of the ready to drink back then. So they all wanted to launch their own ready to drinks in on trade. And then I took a little bit of a detour because I work in branding agencies, so there was not much to do with alcohol drinks. But I worked for some of those brands as a consultant, so as an external consultant.

Chris Maffeo: 04:20

I was based in Scandinavia, in Helsinki, Finland, and Sweden, in Stockholm, Sweden. Then just out of a chance, like I got hired by SEB Miller in the European office, and I was taking care of experts. So what you would see in my newsletter and what I talk about, it's very much of an underdog kind of thinking, despite I was working for major multinationals. Because I've always been in the export department. So I was always the person that was selling something that was famous in the homeland, but not at all famous in the export country where I was selling to.

Chris Maffeo: 05:06

So that made me think in a little bit of a different way versus the big guys that are, you know, like playing with a lot of market share and with a very top down kind of approach.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 05:18

And and the goal was really to sell to that export market. Right? Because with with those with those gorilla underdogs. Exactly.

Chris Maffeo: 05:27

So so I I I had the luxury, to be honest, like of, let's say, growing up and learn from big players, you know, ACB Miller, Asahi, Carlsberg, mainly in the beer sphere, in 30 plus markets around the world. So Europe mainly European and Middle East, but also like The Americas. Never Asia, to be honest. And that also got me into thinking like, actually, hang on a minute, like we everybody thinks they are different from a market perspective, which obviously they are. But in reality, the dynamics are very similar.

Chris Maffeo: 06:08

And, you know, selling, you are always selling to on trade and off trade. I mean, now D2C as well. Back then, not. But basically, you're always selling through an importer, through distributors and wholesalers, and the game is always the same. So let's say 80 can be standardized in the system, and then 20% needs to be adapted to whether it's US or certain European countries and so forth.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 06:40

Got it. So actually, before we dive into the next question is, are your what have you seen change between the entree, obviously, maybe, let's say, post COVID, right, versus now maybe after COVID, which is a big shift in how restaurants, bars operate. What are what are your insights and how you've seen the market shift between those last two to three years?

Chris Maffeo: 07:30

Interesting question. Like, I mean, I think, what I think, I may go a little bit out, let's say, against the stream in what I'm saying. So I don't think there's been a lot of changes because of COVID. I think that a lot of changes were already happening before. COVID has been a bit of an accelerator of some trends, whether, I mean, the digitalization and some other trends, organic and small brands and so forth.

Chris Maffeo: 08:00

What I've seen that has been probably like an, let's say, accelerated by COVID has been this, let's say, this kind of like blending of different styles of restaurants and bars and different kind of things. So the people that were selling mainly booze, mainly bars and clubs and so on, they started to actually look at food a little bit more because of obvious regulations and so forth. And at the same time, restaurants have started to actually not think anymore only, let's say, beer, wine, gin, tequilas in The US, but like blending a little bit in style. So now what I see, and actually this is something that I'm working with in a segmentation model that I'm developing, is to really understand like there's not any more the, let's say, of course you've got all the ethnic channels like the Italian restaurant, the Greek restaurant, the Asian restaurants and so on. But a lot of places are actually blending in.

Chris Maffeo: 09:03

So you would have, let's say, cocktails with pizzas that you would have never imagined, mean, even in Italy. I would have never imagined, like back in the days, it would have been only beer and some wine. You see, let's say, Mexican restaurants that are developing an incredible bar with incredible agave spirits, starting from Seguilla going into Mezcal and Sotol and La Canora and so forth. So there is a little bit of shifts in you go into a bar or restaurant and you cannot really understand where you are. You know, there may be like great burgers and great pizzas, and it's not a burger place and it's not a pizza restaurant.

Chris Maffeo: 09:45

It's something in between that capitalize on what I call the occasions. So it's like, why do I go out to a certain place? Or I want to go and socialize with friends, or I want to go out with my wife, or I want to go out and mingle after work. So there is always a core occasion that people are going for. And now restaurants and bars are trying to capitalize on those occasions, moving not anymore in category, let's say fighting within the category, so gin against gin, But now there could be a gin and toni that fights a spritz, that fights a light drinking beer, and fights a prosecco.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 10:26

Yeah. So to say. Yeah. And I think the restaurants are doing that for a diversification aspect as well from the income perspective. Right?

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 10:35

It's not as you said, it's not just food anymore. It's an experience. So so they're trying to build that experience up. So that's that's great insight because I think it helps people when we approach it on premise account. You know, we gotta we gotta start thinking with that in mind versus just get my gin or get my my product on the shelves.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 10:53

You know, you gotta think, okay. How does it integrate perhaps with their with their occasion and where their theme is going? So that's that's very valuable. Chris, you know, kinda your motto is brands brands are built from the bottoms up. You know?

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 11:09

That's kinda the core theme of everything that you do. And I totally agree. I can totally relate. Can you explain a little bit of that concept and really what it means for distilleries looking to kind of adopt that same mentality?

Chris Maffeo: 11:24

Yes. So it's it's funny because actually that motto came very bottom up because I I didn't come up with it. It's just that when I I started writing it in my LinkedIn post and then a lot of clients and people that were reading, they were actually mentioning that to me. And then I was like, actually, that probably resonates with people, so let's use it a bit more. And it's an easy way to explain what, you know, like how to build brands.

Chris Maffeo: 11:49

So I go against the old school way of top down thinking. So thinking like market share, thinking like, okay, want to launch in France, the gin category is this big, I want to get a share of gin category, and let me deep dive into this. So what I like to think, because that was working many years ago when there was not such a proliferation of brands, and especially, I mean, we can take tequila for The US and gin for Europe as two extremes of proliferation of brands. And now basically, like people want to it's difficult to build brands like that because you can't just be another tequila or another gin. So you need to go really bottom up, really understand how you start from your messaging, from your core brand identity and then commercial proposition, understand what kind of bars you want to go to first, what types of bars because of the occasion that you're going for.

Chris Maffeo: 13:02

So it could be a gin and tonic, it could be a margarita, it could be, you know, some other specific occasions. And then you build it bottom up. So you really build one bar by bar, bottle by bottle, case by case. And then you will reach selling pallets to importers. But it doesn't work like I'm going to sell a pallet to an importer and then he's going to deplete it, hopefully, kind of thing.

Chris Maffeo: 13:33

So it's not any more about stuffing people up with stock and then trying to find a way to get rid of it. It's more like, let me sell something that this person might need because my brand stands for the same virtues and the same purpose of this bar, or this person resonates with me, you know, the owner or in direct to consumer, like the actual consumer. So that's why I really believe in this bottom up thinking, because it's also difficult for people to relate to small numbers and big numbers. So what I mean is that if you're, I mean, you're a distiller, so you know like that it's really like bottle by bottle, and it takes a while to finish a bottle of whiskey. You know, it's not the fast moving consumer goods as we think it is.

Chris Maffeo: 14:34

But people don't relate to that. So people build the brand, and then I realize that they have no idea how to dissect all those sales from, you know, what does that bottle mean in terms of pours? So how many two ounces pour it is to make up a bozzo, and how many do should they sell every day to sell a bozzo per week or to sell a case per month and so forth?

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 15:03

Yeah. You actually did a tweet, right, where you said, okay. A thousand a thousand cases. You know, you you did the breakdown. And then the last piece is it's four cocktails per day across 50 bars.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 15:14

That's what it that's what equates to. So distillers usually say, oh, I'm a thousand case distillery or, you know, eczema, but you gotta reverse it. Right? That's what really what you're saying is reverse it to the minimum, which helps you focus a little bit better, I think, and also drive. Do I have those 50 bars?

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 15:32

Are they am I part of the cocktail list, or I'm on the back collecting dust? And how do I get on the cocktail list? So maybe with that in mind, let's assume that we are doing our research to get those 50 bars that are closer or perhaps related to our business.

Chris Maffeo: 15:50

Yes.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 15:51

What are the some of the strategies that you think we should do to approach him or perhaps have him part of the the cocktail list? I think that's kind of the critical path. Right? We we need to connect with the bartenders to become a brand that it's hopefully in a cocktail and moves fairly those four cocktails a day. So what what are your some insights and something that you can share with the audience?

Chris Maffeo: 16:34

So this is a crucial point, what you're raising. So the the let me take a step back. Like, the there's a lot in my experience, like now I've been doing this for twenty years on off and everybody gets it in theory, you know, everybody gets that you should go to cool bars, you know, build advocacy with bartenders, get them love your brands and so forth. Issue is that what I see is that there's a lot of me, me, me kind of like language in most brands, rather than explaining and building the category and building the industry, so to say. So what I mean by that is that people should create the demand first and then capture the demand.

Chris Maffeo: 17:23

So what I see many brands do is that they rush into capturing a demand that doesn't really exist. So basically, like I would go to a bar to sell my whiskey, my gin, or whatever that is, but this person in front of me has never heard about it, is not interested, they already have enough tequilas, gin, vodkas, and whiskeys there. So how do I get that attention? And what I usually recommend doing is that, okay, first you should build the demand. And by building the demand, mean really like build the category.

Chris Maffeo: 18:02

So educate, talk about the category in general, the product. Why did you do that product? So let's remove the kind of like selfish side of building brands, which is like, I love this product. I use these botanicals because I love these botanicals. But the person in front of you doesn't know that story.

Chris Maffeo: 18:25

And in the end is like, is he really interested in that story? Because maybe, you know, you got some botanicals because you love them from childhood and so on. But if that person can't relate to that story, you know, it doesn't really matter for them. So what I mean is that, for example, like in terms of botanicals, it would be use the botanicals that explain, let's say, explain the botanicals in a way that what does it mean for your taste profile. So I'm using this because it's more citrusy and it goes better with that kind of food.

Chris Maffeo: 19:01

Or I'm using this, you know, this, I don't know, this mezcal is more or less smoky and it goes better or worse with certain type of cocktails? Or is it like more for sipping? And maybe you don't understand about mezcal, so let me introduce you to mezcal in general, rather than just talking about my mezcal and why my mezcal is better than any other mezcal. So it's more like, let's say my approach is more like let them come to you because you are giving away free knowledge and knowledge for free, so to say, and you are helping people to get some social currency to say, okay, oh, I'm gonna go for dinner tomorrow at some friends, I will show off with this bottle because now I know everything about this bottle and I know why for some people it will be off because it's too smoky, for some people they will love it because they are highly whiskey drinkers, so they would love a very smoky mezcal because it resembles of an highly, a very peated highly, and so forth. So going back to the building demand and capturing demand, if you look at the history, the salesperson were building the demand and capturing the demand at the same time.

Chris Maffeo: 20:25

So a sales guy would go in a bar and it would be the like there wouldn't be any I mean, there would be TV, but there wouldn't be any internet. There wouldn't be let's say bar owners were not as skilled as they are today in terms of let me Google the best tequilas around the world, let me take Tasmanian whiskey, or let me take Japanese whiskey, and so on. So they were doing everything. It was very transactional. So I'm building the demand, alias, like, let me recommend you this great whiskey.

Chris Maffeo: 21:00

It just got it shipped from whatever, Ireland or Scotland or from The US. This is the best thing you should have. Everybody in the neighborhood is having it. You should have it. And then you were just a random bar owner, and they was like, okay, this guy seems to be knowing what he's what he's selling.

Chris Maffeo: 21:16

Let me let me stock it. But now it doesn't work like that anymore because you are a very skilled bar owner and you know better than the sales guy probably or sales girl, you know, about that category. So it's more like a lot of people go to those bars without having built the demand first. So it's more for me, it's like building the demand, crafting the messaging. So what am I talking about?

Chris Maffeo: 21:46

Am I talking about, I don't know, like the now I look at your barrels there, like, you know, am I talking about the aging process or am I talking about sourcing the ingredients? Or am I talking about, is it like a more stylish brand or is it more a is like a very sustainable forward brand? So what message am I talking about? Because a lot of brands have got beautiful messages to talk about, but they are mixed. There may be like four or five messages that they want to come across, and they haven't built up their hierarchy.

Chris Maffeo: 22:25

It's like, to a guy like Elias, I'm going to skip the sustainability because he doesn't care. I'm going to talk about how stylish is the bottle, because he's a stylish guy and has a stylish bar, for example. Maybe you are in a remote place in the countryside with a very like a rustic country chic venue, they are doing their foraging and organic ingredients and so on, I'm going to take that card of the sustainability because that's what I mean. And if you understand what kind of venues you need to go for, then you create your 50 bars list, which is not the 50 best, but it's just it's just like the 50 best for your bar for for sorry, for your brand. Mhmm.

Chris Maffeo: 23:11

And then you go and hunt those people. And in the meantime, you have built the demand with those people. And then it becomes like then there's a bit of a snowball effect after you do it. But people forget that it's a very long term game. You know, like I always use my own example.

Chris Maffeo: 23:30

When started writing on LinkedIn, I would have like 50 people viewing, not even liking, you know, viewing my content. It's just that I really bang on that nail all the time because that's what I believe should be my message. And then people will come. And in the beginning, like, was difficult to get traction, and now like there's more and more people actually coming and talking to me because I'm consistent with my own messaging. It's a very similar it's a very similar strategy whether you have a brand as a random business or if you have a brand as a as a drinks brand.

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 24:11

Yeah. And I think that's a perfect example with the LinkedIn again in your content is you built the demand and now you're trying to capture the demand, you know, based on people reaching out to you either, you know, for podcasts like this or, you know, other venues. You're trying to capture that momentum, which is very similar to actually, it you talked about my next question, which really you discussed based a lot, which was, you know, a lot of distilleries don't have that that dedicated sales teams, you know. It's usually maybe one, maybe they outsource that sales experience to go to those bars and do the on premise, which is really hard. Then I think it goes back to what you said, which is how do you differentiate yourself?

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 24:58

How do you build that story, that single hierarchy? Hey. This is what we stand for, and this is what we do, and how do you are essentially unique from everybody else. Because if you're if you're just another bourbon that's, you know, doing the same thing, you're you're aging in the same barrels that everybody else, it's it's all gray. You know?

Ilias Mastrogiannis: 25:18

It's like, how do you how do you become that yellow or red where it's a little bit different Exactly. In my view. So that's a that's a great view.