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00:00:00
00:00:01
Meredith Mills-Merritt
45 Plays3 days ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Meredith Mills-Merritt.
To keep up with or connect with Meredith:
✨The Original Southside’s Website: https://www.drinksouthsides.com/snag-a-southside
✨The Original Southside’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drinksouthsides/
✨Meredith’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithleahmills/
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:00
Speaker
This is a very special content people because I'm interviewing another Meredith Meredith thank you so much for joining Thank you Meredith this is doubly exciting for me And i feel like we have to tell everyone that we also have discovered that both of our husbands are named Matthew So truly what are the odds of this? No, I know I'm actually kind of excited because it's crazy But for anyone listening who doesn't know you can you say who you are and what you do?
00:00:23
Speaker
So my name is Meredith and I am the founder and CEO of the original Southside, which is a new to market canned cocktail brand that is working on bringing back a timeless classic with a modern better for you twist.
00:00:39
Speaker
And I have to say you sent me and Steph on my team some samples. And oh my God, so good. And perfect for the spring. My husband and I both split one the other night and stepped outside and just like enjoyed it. And it was delicious, refreshing. He doesn't even really like gin cocktails and he was
Unique Product Certifications
00:00:56
Speaker
into it. I love the ingredients, but I definitely want to talk about the overall brand, the work you're doing, your day-to-day, the story behind it. But before we do, can you just describe the product itself a little bit? Because I feel like it's great and people- Should know. Yeah, absolutely. So the product itself is a lightly sparkling premium gin-based canned cocktail that falls under the ready-to-drink segment. We use lemon and cane sugar and a little bit of mint. So to your point, it is very refreshing, very warm weather forward.
00:01:32
Speaker
The key differentiator for us here is we are certified organic. We don't use any artificial colors, preservatives or flavors. So we have an all natural based formula.
00:01:45
Speaker
The gin inside is actually a proprietary compound gin. So we mixed our own botanicals and picked out the flavor ourselves. I think sometimes you can get something super juniper forward. So this is a little bit more floral, which is great. And as of a few weeks ago, we are actually the first canned cocktail in the country to be certified glyphosate free by the Detox
Career Shift to Brand Management
00:02:07
Speaker
Project. And for those who are not familiar, glyphosate is basically Roundup.
00:02:11
Speaker
Wow, congratulations. Thank you. I didn't even know I had to worry about that in cocktails. Surprise. Well, it's so cool. The branding's gorgeous. But next, could I ask you to just talk about your career journey?
00:02:23
Speaker
Of course. You founding. So when I was in college, both of my parents are attorneys, and I never second-guessed what I was going to do. I was going to take the LSAT, and I was going to go to law school. So I studied for the LSAT, took it three times, bombed it three times, started to realize that this was my first kind of face to face with abject failure. I was always fairly high achieving and motivated. And so I really wanted to go to a top 15 law school and my scores just did not support that.
00:02:53
Speaker
And I started to think to myself, am i potentially forcing a square peg into a round hole here? And that is what caused me to look at other avenues and things for my future. And so I ended up going into business school right after I graduated, also at SMU, which was my undergrad. and focusing largely on finance because the next thing that I was the most passionate about was female representation in finance because that's lower typically. It's a very competitive field and as I got through some of my upper level classes like derivatives, I started to realize what takes me a few hours takes my classmates, you know, 30, 45 minutes and if I was going to be competitive here, this may not be the best option for me. And so I pivoted to strategy and that is how I found out about the wonderful world of brand management and product innovation, which felt like a really wonderful balance of qualitative and quantitative properties and things that I liked within myself. I've always been very creative and I've always had a little bit of this entrepreneurial flair, but I'm also not afraid of numbers. And so that balanced really well what I thought I would be
Expertise in FDA-regulated Products
00:04:03
Speaker
good at. And from there on, I started to prioritize brand management roles across the country as I started to look for jobs after my MBA. And I landed
00:04:12
Speaker
out in Los Angeles, thanks to a fellow SMU alum who I had reached out to to talk to her about her career path at Unilever Prestige. So she actually put my resume forward for the team that she was on. And so we got to work together. And that is how I cut my teeth in the beauty world. I got started on a teenage acne line. i like to call it the ugly duckling because they were trying to breathe life into it.
00:04:36
Speaker
When I joined the team, there had been little to no spend associated with these products, and they were trying to make it more Gen Z relevant and interesting. And so Because it was acne, what I didn't realize at the time is I had kind of taken a hyper specialty in very complex FDA approved things like salicylic acid, AHAs, BHAs, tretinoin, retinol, like things and ingredients that over a certain percentage have to be approved.
00:05:03
Speaker
And so I really liked it. I fell in love with it. Taking things from concept to launch was Something that I felt really good at and we were a global team so I got exposure to all of the markets versus being just US or just global.
00:05:18
Speaker
So from there I decided I wanted a little bit more experience in skincare so I moved to another brand that was slightly more anti aging kind of luxury focused higher price points different consumers. And from there, i joined a startup skincare outside of the Unilever Prestige Group that was focused on a skincare and topical and supplement solution. So something that you would take as skincare supplement and something that you would put on your face. And from there, i started to realize that I wanted to do something on my own.
00:05:51
Speaker
But beauty was so oversaturated. this is from like 2018 to 2024. So peak COVID, peak self-educated TikTok. You had all the dermatologists coming online. You had everybody kind of thinking that they knew better than one another in terms of what to put on their
Inspiration and Development of Southside
00:06:06
Speaker
skin. And there was a lot of misinformation. And so I didn't feel like I could introduce a beauty product that would be interesting or different enough to compete. And When I was in l L.A., I went back to school at the University of Southern California for a master's in consumer behavior. And it was at that program where we had a class project, which was to create a ready to drink cocktail. But for the class, it had to be wine based since that was an area that was really suffering due to the entrance of malt and spirits based cocktails. And shout out to the USC library. I got all this wonderful information on spirits, specifically white spirits. And what I noticed is that, number one, gin was kind of primed and ready for a renaissance here in the U.S. You have vodka and tequila, which are the main drivers of the growth of the white spirits industry. But gin is still there. And on the other hand, what we also saw was that premium spirits based ready to drink cocktails are on the up and up.
00:07:03
Speaker
And so this was around 2022. And in my mind, I was like, well, I have a family recipe. So if we can thread the needle on timing and if we can nail this, this could be a really good opportunity. And so I sat down with my family and was like, listen, this is mom's recipe. It's something that I know how to do since my day job was working with contract manufacturers and taking things from zero to one. So instead of doing what I say is the smart thing, which would have been investing in like a Roth IRA or 401k, hired a company need to commercialize my family recipe. And 13 months later, we had the final sample.
Transition from Law to Entrepreneurship
00:07:37
Speaker
Oh my gosh. So many moments I want to touch on there. When doing this show, I get to interview a ton of cool founders and Our client base is a lot of founders and execs. And there are so many cool people who were almost lawyers or used to be lawyers. Like a very disproportionate amount of the folks I work with. And I don't know what that is, but there's something there. We were like high achieving psychopaths. Maybe. Working for you guys. You're all crazy smart. and guess right
00:08:08
Speaker
I'm fascinated by this. I want to talk about branding because I love the branding work you've done. Before I jump into that too much, also the beauty space I feel like is such a good one. In the 2018s and COVID, I was deep into the
Market Insights and Brand Launch
00:08:23
Speaker
beauty TikTok. Yes, we all were. and Yeah. And I was like, this is my life now. This is my passion. my track But I do think that it is such an incredible education if you're just even a consumer paying attention around brand product market fit white space consumer habits like it's fascinating and it's such a rich space to dig into there so it kind of makes sense to me that you spent time there do you feel like you'd ever go back do you like the beauty space you're like no no no I did my time and I've moved on
00:08:52
Speaker
I was ready to move on when i left the beauty space, but it was so fun and it is really glamorous at times. And I do miss the free skincare. So yes, I would love to go back at some point, but I'm happy in alcohol for now. How were you able to tell that gin was primed for a renaissance? What was it in the data that tipped you off to that?
00:09:15
Speaker
They had had a compound annual growth rate of about 7% per year, which doesn't sound like a lot. But when you looked at the graph over time, you started to see vodka and tequila kind of stall. And gin had this huge opportunity area. And we know that they've been drinking gin for forever in the UK. And In places like New York City, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, there were these really interesting chic little gin bars that were starting to pop up. And so from just a sheer opportunity standpoint, it was an option for us to go into a super saturated space and
Creating a Proprietary Gin
00:09:52
Speaker
carve out our niche. And
00:09:54
Speaker
So far, that has paid off because while there are other gin skews, there aren't as many and there are much less canned South Sides. We're one of a handful. And even from there, none of them have the ingredient proposition that we do. So we were able to kind of whittle our way down and take advantage of, yeah, this is something that's still going to grow slightly year over year. It's not going to be as explosive as tequila, but it doesn't mean it's not growing and we shouldn't pay attention to it.
00:10:21
Speaker
When you hired the company to commercialize the family recipe, essentially, what was that process like? How did it start? And did you say like 13 months? or Yeah. What was that like? So I knew exactly what I wanted it to taste like, and I knew the parameters that I wanted it to fall under. And by parameters, I mean, I knew I wanted it to be a higher alcohol by volume percentage. So typically with a canned RTD cocktail, you get between 4% and 8% alcohol by volume. We are at 10%.
00:10:49
Speaker
So almost double at what sits on shelf most of the time. So I knew that I wanted to be a product that could end up in Whole Foods one day. i was a Whole Foods shopper. Organic was important to me.
00:11:00
Speaker
And so from the get-go, that means no artificial colors, no freaky hidden ingredients, And I knew I also wanted to use real cane sugar because that's what the recipe called for. We would make the simple syrup. And so if I were to just sit down and make you this recipe, it would be like 80 proof. And that's way too strong to be commercially available. And so how do you capture the essence and the flavor of that cocktail and dial it back to this canned format, understanding
00:11:32
Speaker
modern manufacturing capabilities and understanding that this has to sit on a shelf and understanding that this product has to travel. And so there's just all sorts of things that go into it. And that's why it ended up taking us so long because I was super particular about the finish, like the aftertaste and what it felt like when you were drinking it, as well as the smell and the color on top of just balancing out the ratios of the ingredients and We developed our own gin. So at the time, I didn't realize that we had kind of chicken and egged this, which was we ended up creating our own proprietary compound gin. That's delicious, by the way. And it's something that we're thinking about launching solo.
Branding Vision and Lifestyle
00:12:14
Speaker
But within the drink, I think that's what's made it extra powerful because we're not just using someone else's gin like we did it ourself. That's incredible. Okay. So your branding is one of your specialties. Can you talk about it? What's the feeling and intent behind it?
00:12:30
Speaker
I have to credit my team too. And so while myself and my graphic designer are responsible for the branding, one of my best friends in Los Angeles, she is a creative director. She is who I sat down with and spent hours on Pinterest with to really bring this to life. And so I just got really lucky that I've had working relationships with my graphic designer and creative team that they're able to kind of have a wormhole inside of my head and bring everything out to life. I think that's a really special relationship because sometimes. It can get lost in translation. And so when I sat down with everyone at the time, my brand codes were very scientific and clinical and boring. I hate to say that, but they're a legacy brand code that you don't really get the opportunity to do much with. And I was...
00:13:16
Speaker
Fresh out of my and MBA, I really wanted to do something interesting. And when it comes to the type of product that we were selling, I was like, we're selling alcohol. This is a product that people are going to have fun with, I hope. So let's have fun with the brand. And the brief was pie in the sky. Let's take this as big as we want and then we can dial back from there. i knew I wanted to have a really fun kind of retro character. So that's where our lemon character who is affectionately named Squeeze comes in. i actually came up with the tagline first because when you drink this drink,
00:13:50
Speaker
The first thing out of most people's mouths is that is so refreshing. And I would always say, yeah, some would say fresh as fuck. And so that fresh as fuck tagline, which we asterisk out the U, pardon my French, but that is our legitimate tagline. And so legally, I'm not allowed to put that on the packaging because the TTP does not allow curse words.
00:14:10
Speaker
But yeah it's truly fresh as FCK. And so from there, we kind of built out this world where we were like, okay, we want it to be fun. We want it to be premium, but we also want it to feel gender neutral. So that's where you have the green and yellow come in, which is also our main ingredients of lemon and mint.
00:14:28
Speaker
You have this storytelling of I wanted the product to feel like it had been around for forever because it's a 1920s recipe, but also have this new feeling like if I was a consumer walking into the store, It fits in on shelf from the standpoint of, oh, this has longevity, but it's also punchy and interesting enough to get people's attention because I knew that that's what I would be fighting for and I would have very limited shelf space. So a lot of tiny things added up to what you see before you with the original South Side and from a video clip. content standpoint, I told my creative director, her name's Gabby.
00:15:09
Speaker
I said, think back to the original Gossip Girl, which for better or for worse, I'm a huge fan of that show. The soundtrack was amazing. The clothes were amazing. The characters were incredibly annoying, but in the best way. And so I said to her, okay, season two, original Gossip Girl,
00:15:26
Speaker
when they're out in the Hamptons, what would a backyard party look like if they threw it? They would be dressed in fabulous clothes. They would maybe be barefoot. They would be having beautiful drinks and glass coupe glasses. They would be just having a real time. And so then that kind of translated to wherever you are in the country, in the world, and you crack open a South Side, I want it to transport you to that. I want it to transport you to the best of times on the tennis court or the boat or some really wonderfully refined experience, but have the convenience and format that it can be taken to a tailgate or to the golf
Balancing Entrepreneurship and Personal Life
00:16:05
Speaker
course.
00:16:05
Speaker
It's funny, as you're talking, I'm remembering the taste and the taste is giving Gatsby like that old school. Right. It's so true. And what an incredible vision. Now I'm picturing Blair barefoot white dresses, coupe glass. And you're always like, how are you guys all allowed to drink so much? Like where are your parents? Yeah. Incredible. What a vision. i feel like it was truly expressed through the branding. I It's amazing. Can you talk to us a little bit about your day-to-day and what does a day in your life look like? I'm curious about the business side, but also curious about how you're balancing it with personal too. Are you like a big morning routine person or what are your evenings look like? i would say that work-life balance has gone out the window, but I knew that that was going to happen. And I had had the active conversation with my husband and my family and my friends, which was i am signing up for
00:17:00
Speaker
a five to seven year rodeo, which is how long it takes to potentially build a brand. And I understand that it's going to be a little crazy. And I have been very fortunate to have their support. I will say, i think having as much of a routine as possible for me is really great because my day-to-day from the work side of things is so unpredictable.
00:17:21
Speaker
And when you layer in the operational and production side of things, which you're always producing, you're always sourcing, something's always going to go wrong. And so I think also understanding that, you know, don't be dumb enough to think that everything's fine ever. Yeah. just Expect the unexpected and roll with it because I, for the longest time, I'm very type a I do really well with a plan and I would always try to pre-prepare for things.
00:17:47
Speaker
And so understanding that the person that I needed to become that would handle these things would happen in the moment versus pre-planning for it has been really important. But from the personal side, I would say I'm a morning person through and through. By the time five o'clock rolls around, I am a shell of myself. I've given it all. I've left it all on the field. And so I like get get up make sure I'm taking my supplements, make sure I'm making my coffee. That's become a really wonderful, calming experience is to just have that really good cup of coffee and dive into things. My husband and I try to hold each other accountable. We live in Southern California. I feel really lucky. We're five blocks from the beach. And so we try to take advantage of this beautiful weather as much as we can and go on as many walks or go to as many Pilates classes as I can, because that's a defined period of time where I'm not thinking about South
Overcoming Business Challenges
00:18:36
Speaker
Sides. But yeah, outside of that,
00:18:39
Speaker
working from home and having this be a family business and even roping my husband into it sometimes, you don't really get to turn off. So it's how you manage the in-between. That's interesting. I like what you said. actually wrote it down and it said, don't be dumb enough to think everything's going to be fine.
00:18:55
Speaker
I totally am with you. I feel like that drives me nuts sometimes. Like sometimes I'll be sitting at the end of the day. Maybe I'm watching TV with my husband and I'll be thinking about the business and he'll be like, you had a great day. Everything's fine. But I struggled to believe that everything's okay.
00:19:09
Speaker
yeah And I think your brain's just sifting through being like, what's the problem that needs attention? But I also love what you said about trusting that the person who's going to solve the problem is going to be the person in the moment. It's not like the pregame or the rumination that solves it. It's just you showing up, being present, dealing with it and moving on. i love both of those. Everything you're saying is really resonating with me and Medberry, but- It's hard. It's so hard. And there are so many times that this has happened to me. And this is just the first example. I always count on something going wrong at the end of the year, like right before Christmas when everything is closed down. wow And my parents would always have this phrase, you plan for A, B and C and then X, Y and Z happen. And so we call it decision X. And so decision X happened five days before Christmas. And I was with my husband's family. We were in Virginia. I felt so bad because I had to lock myself in their office and basically fix this. And I said to my husband then and there, I was like, I always know that something is going to go wrong, but it never means that you know exactly what it is. And sometimes it can even surprise you at what goes wrong. And so you're never going to get ahead of it. And that is a really hard lesson, I think, as a founder and as an entrepreneur. But that's why I always mention I have had to really trust myself a little bit more that instead of worrying beforehand or wearing myself out, blocking and tackling things that may not need to be blocked and tackled. When the situation arises, i put on my Superman suit and that's who takes care of
Advice for New Founders
00:20:43
Speaker
it.
00:20:43
Speaker
I like that. And do you feel like you can operate that way where you're like, I don't really need to be anxious because I know things will go wrong. And in the present moment, I'll be able to rise to the occasion and deal with it. Or do you still have a low level anxiety sometimes around like, oh, something's going to go wrong. It's going to suck to fix it. Oh, yeah. I'm an anxious menace. Like my morning supplement routine rhodiola, ashwagandha, happy saffron from AmenMD. So I am tweaking the dials on my cortisol control and it's working, which is great because i think we've all been there. We're like, oh, my God, can my body physically produce this much cortisol? It's crazy. yeah So I wish I could say that I was chill like that, but absolutely not.
00:21:26
Speaker
No, I appreciate that. Because if you were, I'd be, I don't know. Obviously, I'm asking the question because i'm always like'd be like, I hate you. I'd be like, I get it. Also, can I suggest holy basil? i don't know if you've played around with that one.
00:21:37
Speaker
No, I'm going to add that to my list, though. One of my personal faves. So we've got a day in your life. We've got everything you're working on. If you could give advice to someone who's in their very first year of starting something out, what would you say to them based off of the lessons that you learned?
00:21:52
Speaker
I came into this category, so alcohol specifically, like I knew consumer, i was comfortable with it, but I came into alcohol with zero experience.
00:22:02
Speaker
And I let that make me feel less than when I was in certain situations. conversations or rooms early on because I felt like I didn't know as much as everybody else. And what you quickly start to realize, and I feel like people say this all the time, is people are faking it till they make it to.
00:22:22
Speaker
And just because someone has been around longer than you does not mean that they know more than you or that they know better. so do not discount your intuition for anyone or anything Love that.
00:22:40
Speaker
Because it's so true. i would make myself feel so small and I'd be like, well, this is my first time being a CEO and this is my first time in this industry. And I'm like, no, you know what? I've got a brain and my gut is telling me that this is what we need
Advocacy for Ingredient Transparency
00:22:54
Speaker
to do. And every single time I've listened to my gut,
00:22:57
Speaker
It's been the right thing to do. i love it. Is there anything I haven't asked about that you feel like you'd want to say or express? I would love to talk about what people don't realize about alcohol is just how little ingredient transparency and integrity there is, which is another kind of prong of what I'm working on building out outside of South Sides. So South Sides...
00:23:18
Speaker
I wanted to be able to stand behind the product. And so that's why i took so much care on the ingredient side of things. We also publish our ingredient list and our nutrition facts panel on the four pack. And then we also have the ingredient list on the can. But think about when you go into the liquor store, the last time you looked at a liquor bottle, finding an ingredient list or a nutrition facts panel.
00:23:42
Speaker
It'll be like proprietary botanicals or something like that or spice blend. but That's it. Right. And so when you think about beauty and when you think about other fast moving consumer goods, you are used to being provided at least what's inside.
00:23:58
Speaker
And so this is what encouraged me to co-found the Clean Alcohol Collective where we have nine brands on board. We have three that we're going to bring on board and soon. We launched in December of last year, which is super exciting. My co-founder is taking the same approach to beer. He also came from a beauty background. So the two of us together are working on fixing our respective verticals in alcohol. And it's so true that a rising tide lifts all ships. And so we looked at the impact that retailers like Sephora had creating Clean at Sephora because in the consumer mind,
00:24:36
Speaker
It created this division of, oh, if this is a clean product, then what's in the product I've been using? And that is the dialogue that we want to encourage because we firmly believe at the end of the day, that you just deserve to know what's in your alcohol and what's in your drink. And even if you don't want to manufacture something that's considered quote unquote clean, consumers deserve at least an ingredient list. Like I am not perfect. When I am hungover, I will go to McDonald's and I will get the saltiest fry on the planet and a Diet Coke and it's amazing. But that's part of my eighty twenty But like anything, Oreos have an ingredient list. We can agree that those aren't health products. Coca-Cola has an ingredient list and a nutrition facts panel, and that's not a health product. Alcohol, canned cocktails, beer, they don't do that.
00:25:28
Speaker
And that should be so concerning to people. And so the example that I'll give, and then i'll obviously round it out, is the top three spirits-based ready-to-drink cocktails typically range from High Noon, Cutwater, and Jose Cuervo brands. And we can all agree that The term healthy drinking is an oxymoron. Like no amount of alcohol is good for your health. But what we do know is you don't need to double down on some of the bad stuff. When you look at high noon, I mean, maybe someone's more successful than I am. The ingredient list is nowhere to be found. When you look at cut water, the ingredient list is nowhere to be found. When you look at some of the Jose Cuervo RTDs,
00:26:11
Speaker
They're known to contain sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, FD and C yellow number five and a whole laundry list of other things. And so the example being is when artificial preservatives like sodium benzoate are mixed with ascorbic acid, which is just another word for vitamin C, it can produce benzene, which is an additionally cancer causing substance. And the FDA has known about benzene in food and beverage. since the 1990s. And so they're obviously not going to help us change it. On top of that, you have new and NIH reviews that link common additives to more chronic gut disorders. So titanium dioxide, red 40, yellow five, yellow six, aspartame, all of those.
00:26:57
Speaker
And my approach was Let's give people all of the cocktail with less of the compromise. No one's ever going to be perfect. People drink for a number of different reasons.
00:27:08
Speaker
But this has proven that we can manufacture in a way that is just a little bit more thoughtful. And so that's what I encourage people to do. That's my soapbox. I'm really glad you said all of that. I feel like it's so insane that until you said that, I had never thought about that. Most people are that way though.
00:27:24
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, I feel like I've cut back so much. but like I drink maybe two drinks a week max. Right. is But it's funny you say this. When I was looking at the packaging for yours, i was like, I don't feel quite as bad about this one. Like it's not in natural wines. I'm like, oh bad great I appreciate it. I'm just glad that your product is out there and it's cool. And think I loved this talk with you so much. I think what you're doing is cool. i love the branding. I'm rooting for you guys and in awe of what you're doing. Thank you so, so much.
00:27:56
Speaker
Thank you for having me. For folks, we can put your website under there and I could put your LinkedIn URL if that's a good spot. Where else should we send people if they're like, I really want to follow Meredith or check out her products? Our Instagram is just at drinks outsides. All right. We'll throw that in there too. Meredith, thank you so much.
00:28:13
Speaker
I love doing this. Thank you, Meredith. I appreciate it.