Growing Cottage Grove distillery launches new vodka

Tag: bottle filling line

Just about anyone can start a business, said Jeff Meyers, co-owner of a distillery and bottling operation in Cottage Grove. The tough part, he said, is staying in business.

“You’ve got to learn how to love grilled cheese and Cup of Noodle soup,” Meyers said, only half-joking.

Since founding their company, Side Pocket Corp., in 1998 when they were just barely out of high school, Jeff, 30, and his sister, Megan, 31, have made countless personal sacrifices. Instead of spending their cash on cars, travel and entertainment when they were in their 20s, they plowed everything back into their company.

They’ve even put off finding mates and starting families.

“Our view is (the business) comes before everything,” said Jeff Meyers, sporting a backward black cap with the Side Pocket logo.

He and his sister routinely work from 7:45 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday; 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday; and an hour or two on Sunday.

“It’s like a child,” Meyers said of the business. “You wouldn’t leave her alone by herself. You worry about her. Sometimes you just want to come down and make sure everything’s fine.”

In the past few years, those sacrifices have started to pay off. Side Pocket has been profitable each year since 2005, Meyers said. Its sales growth has topped 100 percent in each of the past five years. It provides 12 — soon to be at least 15 — jobs with good pay and benefits. Starting wages for warehouse and filling jobs are about $14.50 an hour, Meyers said.

“These folks have had their setbacks and adversity, but they prevailed.” said Cottage Grove Mayor Gary Williams. “I’ve enjoyed watching these young guys, this brother and sister, grow their business and increase sales,” he said. “They’re not afraid. One of the things in business is sometimes you just have to make the commitment that you’re just going to keep forging ahead, and these folks have.”

Donations bring distribution

In the past year, the company has spent millions of dollars buying its site in the Cottage Grove industrial park on Highway 99 South, expanding its plant to 88,000 square feet, and launching a new ultra-premium vodka.

That product, “Support Her,” comes in a frosted bottle with a screen-printed pink ribbon, the international symbol for breast cancer awareness. A standard size bottle costs $34.95 in Oregon. (Prices vary in other states because of taxes.) For each bottle sold, Side Pocket donates $5 to breast cancer research and treatment. That’s more than twice what the company makes on the product, Meyers said.

“It’s pretty unusual that someone is that benevolent, but good for them,” said Bill Owens, founder and president of the American Distilling Institute in Hayward, Calif. “For a small business, that’s remarkable.”

It’s not a sales gimmick, Meyers said. “We make ... the donation so large that people can’t help but see that what we’re trying to do is help women,” he said.

By launching Support Her, Side Pocket hopes to help people battling breast cancer, increase sales, and establish national distribution — not just for the company’s new vodka, but for its line of about 10 other brands of distilled spirits, Meyers said.

Support Her is one of the fastest growing brands of vodka in the nation, he said. Side Pocket introduced the product in September, and it’s now available in 22 states, with plans to be in 48 states by December, Meyers said.

“We’ve had incredible interest in it,” he said.

National grocery chains, such as Kroger — Fred Meyer’s corporate parent — have agreed to stock the product in states that allow grocers to sell distilled spirits. Oregon does not permit it.

The brother and sister came up with the idea for Support Her in January 2007, while Megan was eating a cup of yogurt. The yogurt manufacturer pledged to donate 5 cents to breast cancer research for every foil top consumers returned to the company.

“I’d been saving the tops and sending them in,” Megan Meyers said. “We thought we could do something on a bigger scale.”

After asking breast cancer foundations if they would accept donations from vodka sales, Side Pocket partnered with three of them, including Making Memories, a wish-granting service for people with terminal breast cancer.

Side Pocket agreed to co-sponsor 300 breast cancer fundraising events a year, providing Support Her vodka and Chick Food pomegranate schnapps for special cocktails served at those events.

Now the race is on to line up distribution in the full 48 states.

Side Pocket has spent $12 million on custom bottles, equipment and marketing to quickly launch Support Her, said Jeff Meyers, adding that setting up distribution in a state usually takes two to six months.

That can be a challenge for a small company such as Side Pocket, based in a small town such as Cottage Grove. Meyers said he recently asked a distributor in Texas whether he could send him a sample of Support Her and some product literature.

“I don’t even see Cottage Grove on the map,” the distributor retorted.

He loved the product, though, Meyers said, and Side Pocket is working to win him over.

Side Pocket already has won over many other distributors, he said. “We’ll send a bottle of Support Her, and they’re amazed” with the taste and quality.

Meyers was in charge of quality control at the distillery until spring 2007, when Brian Skewes, 25, a transplant from the wine industry, took over that job. Meyers, who admits that “distilled spirits were not something that I consumed much of,” said he developed his palate over about five years by tasting and comparing all brands of spirits, from the cheapest to the highest quality.

Side Pocket has hired specialized brokers to make Support Her available nationwide. One, for example, who works with the buyer for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which provides products and services to military families worldwide, opened the door for Support Her to be sold at military bases in California, Louisiana and the Washington, D.C., area, Meyers said.

“The military has been a very strong supporter of Support Her,” he said, adding that the military buyer said she wants the product eventually in all army bases and embassies worldwide.

Earlier this year, the buyer for Air Force One and the White House called Side Pocket to request Support Her for those venues. Side Pocket shipped those orders early last month, Meyers said.

Vodka a quick hit

Once Side Pocket has established national distribution for Support Her, it can use those same sales channels to promote its other brands, Meyers said. Side Pocket makes about 10 product lines, each with about five distilled spirits, such as vodka, tequila, gin and rum.

The company’s early products, such as Lubrication vodka and its Octane line of 100-proof spirits, were geared to people in their 20s and 30s. Others, such as its Vixen brand and Chick Food Premium Schnapps, were marketed to women.

The Vixen label features a silver female silhouette — nose cone art from a World War II bomber.

A cartoon chick is the dominant image on the Chick Food label. Jeff and Megan brainstorm virtually all of the product names and art concepts, which are polished by an art house in Portland, Jeff Meyers said.

In recent years, the company has been creating products for customers in older demographics (age 40 to 60), such as Meyers brand premium blended Canadian Whisky.

Oregon, a leader in microbreweries and wineries, now is home to nine craft distillers, said Owens, of the American Distilling Institute. There are 144 nationwide, he said.

A Portland-based distiller snapped up Side Pocket’s Lubrication brand in February 2006, just six months after its launch, Meyers said. Side Pocket poured the proceeds of that sale right back into the business. Side Pocket retained the manufacturing rights, so the company bottles the spirit for the new owner. Side Pocket also does contract bottling/packaging for about a dozen clients, including Baja Bob’s sugar-free, low-carbohydrate cocktail mix, which is based Encinitas, Calif., and Gleukos sports drink, which is based in Portland.

Salsa dreams die

When they first started their business, the Meyers siblings had no idea that they’d eventually own and operate a distillery. Jeff’s original idea, which he outlined for a highschool project, was to create a gourmet food company centered on salsa.

He and Megan renovated a garage behind their parents’ Cottage Grove home, and obtained FDA approval to make and package foods there. But when the siblings finished the renovations, they realized that the salsa market was flooded.

“Everyone who had a stove and a kitchen sink was making salsa,” Jeff Meyers said.

So they came up with another idea. They thought their mom’s Bloody Mary mix was a winner, so they decided to try to sell that. They introduced a line of drink mixes and later made contact with a broker for Baja Bob’s, who asked Side Pocket to bottle the product. Side Pocket bought an automated filling line and Baja Bob’s orders kept them so busy, “We didn’t have time to do anything else,” Meyers said.

Before long, Baja Bob’s asked Side Pocket to import tequila to package with the cocktail mix. Meyers said he dutifully obtained a certificate from the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. Later, when he made arrangements to start importing tequila, a federal regulator called and said Side Pocket needed to obtain a special federal permit — a complex process that typically takes three to four years.

Side Pocket didn’t have that kind of time, Meyers said. So his dad Bill spread out the pages of the 11/2-inch thick application on a conference-room table and set to work, seven days a week, eight hours a day.

Side Pocket had the permit in hand in a record 62 days.

“We were very persistent” — in a nice way, Meyers said. “That’s been our trademark,” he said.

But just as Side Pocket got its permit, “the low-carb craze crashed,” Meyers said, and the plans to sell tequila with Baja Bob’s drink mix fizzled.

Jeff and Megan spent about a week batting around ideas of how else they could use their hard-won distilled spirits permit.

That’s when they came up with plans for Octane, their own line of 100-proof products and Lubrication vodka.

That ability to “turn on a dime” is another Side Pocket trademark, Meyers said.

The family advantage

The company has come a long way since the early days, when the owners loaded up charges on their credit cards because — barely out of their teens — they were too young to get bank loans.

Now, besides supporting Jeff and Megan Meyers, the company employs their brother Matt, distilled spirits production manager; his wife, Teresa, Support Her marketing director; sister Jennifer, office manager; and her husband, Rocci Bufo, warehouse manager. Sister Jessica, retail manager, runs Side Pocket’s in-house tasting room, where the distiller sells product by the bottle. There is a 10-year span between the oldest and youngest Meyers siblings, who had worked together on various family projects since they were children.

Dad Bill helps Jeff supervise sales, and Jeff heads production. Megan oversees the administrative side.

Mom Sandy helps out in the office.

“For us, the opportunity to have everybody here, and watching this grow has just been fun,” Bill Meyers said.

Many people would never dream of working with their parents and siblings.

But Jeff Meyers said there are advantages to working with family members “you know so well that with a nod of the head, you can tell you need a half-inch wrench for a machine that’s down.”

The company also has hired excellent employees from the local community, Meyers said.

He said Side Pocket will continue to grow, and his goal over the next five years is for it to become one of the nation’s largest distillers.

“A lot of businesses fail because they were told it’s not going to work,” Meyers said.

“You’ve got to find a creative way to keep yourself in business during difficult economic times, and that’s hard to do sometimes,” he said. “Our philosophy is to never be afraid of growth because generating more income is always better than saving the income you’ve got.”

Copyright © 2007 — The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA

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