This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features JW Wiseman, the founding father of the non-alcoholic craft cocktail company Curious elixirs.
Photo credit: Nick Kova. JW Wiseman, founding father of Curious Elixirs.
Founded in 2015, Curious Elixirs generated $2.2 million in its first five years – and skyrocketed to over $50 million within the last five years. The brand has served tens of millions of shoppers at a few of the world’s best restaurants, including Daniel and The French Laundry; in nightclubs like House of Yes; and in their very own 4 partitions via direct customer business. The brand is predicted to generate sales of $176 million by 2030.
Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
What was your major job or occupation if you began your side business?
I help clean food startups like Daily Harvest and Chomps get their first million customers through my marketing company Good Business, and in addition opened a bar called The Whiskey Brooklyn and nightclub OUTPUT. It took about five years before we had enough stable money flow for me to commit to Curious Elixirs full-time.
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When did you begin your side business and where did you discover the inspiration for it?
Since I work in nightlife and am an enormous cocktail nerd in New York City, I’ve loved hospitality ceaselessly…and ended up drinking an excessive amount of. One winter evening in 2012 I had over 20 drinks and the subsequent day I didn’t also have a hangover – it was so scary. I modified my relationship with alcohol and began drinking less. But I still desired to be social and have an upscale cocktail experience – that literally didn’t exist back then. So I got down to create it.
We’ve created complex alcohol-free cocktails using the world’s finest ingredients, drawing inspiration from cocktails recent and old. We worked with bartenders, food scientists and herbalists. And Curious Elixirs was born.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Curious Elixirs
What were a few of the first steps you took to get your side business off the bottom?
Tinker within the kitchen, read books about herbs, and take the possibility to make something that is never been done before: a non-alcoholic craft cocktail with herbs and adaptogens to show you how to calm down.
One Sunday morning, as I used to be working on an early hibiscus Negroni recipe, the name got here to me out of nowhere – Curious Elixirs – and I continued working on it until it was finally ready for testing at parties in Brooklyn and Queens.
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At the time we had a hotel in Rockaway Beach called the Playland Motel, and I did a Curious Elixir for the opening weekend. I didn’t even call it non-alcoholic, but people continued to drink far more than the alcohol. I knew I used to be on to something.
To learn more concerning the alcohol-free sector, I sought advice from gastronomy professionals and at the identical time accomplished training with food scientists. I learned how one can adapt craft bartender mocktails to then scale drink production using the very best quality clean label ingredients from world wide.
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What were a few of the biggest challenges you faced while constructing your side business and the way did you overcome them?
When Curious began as an organization in 2015, lots of the non-alcoholic ingredient extracts that make a drink bitter or spicy – like gentian in our Curious No. 1 or ancho chili in Curious No. 2 – not yet. Creating these extracts and mixing them into sophisticated non-alcoholic cocktails takes years of effort and experimentation.
Filming was one other challenge Shark tank in 2018, and the segment didn’t make it onto the show. Curious Elixirs was ahead of its time and the sharks just didn’t understand what an enormous opportunity the non-alcoholic segment would turn out to be. It’s still early, regardless that we have been here for 10 years. Back then we regularly ran out of products to sell, so it is a bit of a blessing that it didn’t air.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Curious Elixirs
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How long did it take for you to realize consistent monthly sales? How much did the side hustle make?
Based on my experience taking Daily Harvest nationwide, we launched Curious Elixirs with a monthly subscription called The Curious Cocktail Club. People loved the drinks right away, so we had the consistency from the primary moment, however it was tiny from the beginning. In the primary five years of our Curious Elixirs side business, we made $2.2 million.
Curious was also ahead of its time because we were create the curve. It took five years before Curious could pay me enough to deal with it full-time…that was January 2020.
When the pandemic hit, there have been two waves of newbies to non-alcoholic options: those that in the reduction of on alcohol consumption right firstly of lockdown, after which a second wave of people that drank an excessive amount of during quarantine and decided to pursue “sober curiosity.” “to get up.
What do growth and sales seem like now?
Curious will soon be 10 years old. We generated about $176,000 in the primary yr, and now we’re well over the eight-figure revenue range yearly with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30%. Curious Elixirs is proud to have achieved nearly $50 million in revenue over the past five years with a 20.8x brand growth rate – all with none outside investment.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Curious Elixirs
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What do you enjoy most about running this company?
Our mission has at all times been to vary the best way we drink socially, and in the previous few years this has really accelerated! People are waking up and realizing that life will be more fun, creative and memorable with less alcohol.
What advice do you’ve gotten for others hoping to start out successful side hustles of their very own?
Get began today. At the moment. Take five minutes and construct a side business with small, consistent actions. And at all times stay curious!
