Reclaiming A Family Legacy: How Reviving Cuba’s Oldest Brewery Became Miami’s Youngest | S3, Ep 16.

What if everything your family built was taken from you at gunpoint by the very country you called home?

In this podcast episode of The Big Dawgs: with Manning Sumner, guest Manny Portuondo, the great-great-grandson of Federico Kohly whose family founded Cuba’s oldest brewery Cervecería La Tropical, shares his remarkable entrepreneurial story. This Cuban cultural icon was seized by the Castro regime in 1960.

For the past 27 years Manny Portuondo has been on a mission to reclaim that lost legacy and revive La Tropical making history once again, this time in Miami.

Now Cervecería La Tropical, Cuba’s oldest brewery, is Miami’s youngest.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You are the great, great grandson of Frederico Kohli, who
established the Havana neighborhood of Kohli and sold
the land where Cuba's oldest brewery.
In 1960, the Castro Regiment seized the brewery.
They stole it. They stole it and your family's
properties at gunpoint. You made it your life's mission
to revive your family's legacy. You've transformed La Trapacol

(00:20):
into more than just a beer. Cuba's oldest brewery is now one
of Miami's youngest. I've been at this stuff now for
about 2728 years. It became my passion project in
life. If it was a promise that I made
to my grandmother that I was going to do something about it.
Someone comes and puts a gun to your head and takes legacy and
takes everything and it's it kicks you out.
What do you do? They can take your possessions,

(00:41):
they can put you in jail, but they're never going to take away
the passion and the love that wehave of our island.
As long as you have that and a little bit of this, you can beat
them. What if I were to develop a
legal strategy and block them from ever shipping an ounce of
our beer outside of Cuba? Are you willing to stick to what
you said you were going to do regardless of the circumstances?

(01:03):
Are you just going to give up and quit?
I'm Manning Sumner, I've lived my life by 1 motto No days off.
No Days off has never taken a day off on you.
It's a commitment to becoming your best self.
Get ready to be inspired to do the same.
This is the big dogs with Manning Sumner, Manning,

(01:24):
Manning. I love it.
Appreciate you being here man. Well, thanks for the invite.
When I heard I was coming I was super excited.
Amazing place you got here and. Thank you.
Thank you. So I just want to give the
people a little bit of a background.
So you are the great, great grandson of Frederico Coley.
Is that Coley Coley, a prominentlandowner who established the

(01:46):
Havana neighborhood of Coley andsold the land where Cubas oldest
brewery, Sarve Cere? Yeah, got it.
La Tropical. It was founded in 1888.
La Tropical opened in Havana, launching the Cuban beer
industry. By 1958, La Tropical produced
over 60% of Cuba's beer, standing proudly alongside

(02:07):
cigars, rum and music as national assembles.
In 1960, the Castro regimen seized the brewery and your they
stole it. They.
Stole it. Unbelievable.
And your family's properties at gunpoint, forcing your widowed
grandma and her three children, including your mother, to flee
to Miami, and only with only $5.Decades later, Miami became your

(02:28):
birthplace and your home at 32 years old, after a successful
career with Anheuser Busch in Brazil's Brahma, as I said,
Brahma Brewery, you made it yourlife's mission to revive your
family's legacy. Your mortgage.
You mortgage your home, rallied support from Miami's Cuban
American community and spent years reclaiming the LA tropical
name and bring it back to life. A dream that came true in 2021

(02:51):
when Survey Saria La Tropical open this brewery and tap room
in the heart of Lynnwood. Actually, ironically right
behind my old My First gym. What are you mean?
What are the what are the chances of that in that?
Wild right and a joint venture with Heineken after you turn
down many offers from other brands and companies.
Today, La Tropical is brewed in a state-of-the-art facility in

(03:12):
Lynnwood with a 32,000 hecto leader capacity and featured a
tap room, restaurant and tropical garden.
Reviving the spirit of the original Havana destination,
You've transformed La Tropical into more than just a beer, it's
a cultural symbol. Cubas oldest brewery is now one
of Miami's youngest. Now LA Tropical is once again
raising the bar with LA TropicalMixology, the world's first

(03:35):
distilled beer cocktail. A patent pending ready to drink
canned cocktail that blends the crisp refreshment of beer with
the bold flavors of Handcraft cocktail.
I'd love to get into that. That's that's amazing.
That's a fun story to tell, I'lltell you that one.
So let's start with that cause. So I remember, I remember
getting shut down March, I'll never forget.

(03:55):
Like it was like, you know, that's that's one of the and I
hate talking about it honestly, because going back to that time
is kind of sucks, but but it kind of what it did for I think
a lot of business owners. Is it it it separated the people
that were willing to go the extra mile and people that that
were just going to quit. So it really showed people's

(04:17):
perseverance. Like you're willing to go
through this and see what happens on the other side.
Are you willing to stick to whatyou said you were going to do
regardless of the circumstances?Or are you just going to give up
and quit? And hopefully the government
gives me some money in that. So in that time, I mean, I was
the type of guy that like, I'm not going to slow down, I'm not
going to stop. And what was interesting on

(04:37):
March 17th, 2020, when they closed this down, I remember
walking my dog around the neighborhood because at the time
we had so much time on our hands.
Like walking the dog was one of our highlights of the day.
And I would walk Legacy all overthe town, all over the the
Wynwood city. And I literally remember like
going, what are they building over here?

(04:58):
This looks amazing. So, so a funny story with with
LA Tropical from those building days and we'll kind of go back
to the story afterwards. So, you know, we bought that
property in May of 2018, one acre lot, great lot there in the
middle of the city and had a 30,000 square foot warehouse on
it. And you know, put together an

(05:20):
entire team to redevelop that that lot into a brewery taproom,
garden and whatnot. And on the, on the brewery side,
even though my partner is Heineken, we, we actually
outsourced the engineering, construction and commissioning
of our brewery to a German brewery brewing engineering firm

(05:44):
called Rolex, like a, like a watch, but with AC.
And so we, you know, obviously with Heineken's help and, and a
team that I put together. And so they, you know, by 2019,
December of 2019, they, they finish building the parts in
Germany, they ship them out to the US.

(06:07):
So literally when the, when the breweries on containers, there's
a shutdown, right, right. And, and then now that I have
all this equipment coming, no one to receive it.
And part of the deal was we would bring these Germans like a
team of like 15 Germans to set it up.
Right, you could do that. So we were stuck in the mud.
Had to get a special visa finally to bring the folks in.

(06:30):
But you know, your point is, youknow, the the adversity, how do
you sort of overcome all of these different challenges and
get these guys in build the brewery?
We were lucky enough that we were bring them in, build out
the brewery and we opened March,April of 21.
OK. So it turned out OK for us.

(06:51):
Yeah, but it was tough. It was very, very tough times.
And that was a serious build outtoo.
Yeah, we put, y'all put all the capital.
Yeah, it was, I mean, I got $20 million build out, right.
It was a big. Build out, yeah, big build out.
Won't name the number one. Yeah, You know, so when going
back to the story, so as you mentioned in your in your intro,
you know, I, I've been at this stuff now for about 2728 years.

(07:14):
It became my passion project in in life.
It was a promise that I made to my grandmother that I was going
to do something about it. You know, our family and and my
partner's family, the Blancoretta family left Cuba in
1960, never to return. And basically having lost
everything, you know, like someone comes and puts a gun to
your head and takes, takes legacy and takes, takes

(07:34):
everything and that's it kicks you out and, and, and So what do
you do? You got a gun and go, go shoot
Castro yourself, which I wasn't going to do, right, right.
My, my dad tried. He really, he was part of the
Bay of Pigs, spent two years in jail as a result of that.
But I, I wasn't going to do that.

(07:54):
And, and so, well, I'm going to,you know, see if I can beat him
a little bit of this and a lot of this, right, right.
And in 1998, I, I came up sort of had that, you know, I'm sure
you, you've had it as well several times.
And that sort of entrepreneurialmoment when you say this is the
big idea. Yeah.
And then that light bulb moment,that light bulb.

(08:14):
Moment said shit, yeah, OK, I can do this, right, Right.
And then, then you put together a plan on how you're going to do
it. But my big idea was, you know
what, forget Cuba for now. I can't do anything about it.
Plus, there's only 10 million people there.
There's, you know, 8 billion people everywhere else.
It's a small island. What if I were to develop a
legal strategy that took controlof our international

(08:38):
registrations and trademarks andblocked them from ever shipping
an ounce of our beer outside of Cuba?
And this is blockade them. And this was 1998.
They weren't yet thinking about global brands and they weren't
thinking about sort of how to how to how to commercialize
them. And so I did some research.

(08:58):
I identified what were the top ten countries Cuba sources
tourism from hired Greenberg Traurig.
We just talked about that. Thank goodness I hired a good
firm. I, I mortgaged in my house to do
that and and then to buy some trademarks.
And for 26 years I kind of behind the scenes went country
by country. I sued them, I won.

(09:21):
I registered my brand where I felt the need to be registered
or I or I, I acquired it where Ifelt we needed it.
And then over 26 years, I put together a basically a holding
company that had all of these, these trademark registrations
claims and I sold the majority of it to Heineken without even
owning a brewery, by the way. And in 2017, I love that genius,

(09:45):
genius. And then and then I'm sitting
around with the CEO of Heineken Worldwide and the CEO of
Heineken America. This is maybe a couple of days
after the transaction and we're having some beers.
We're kind of celebrating, hey, you know, this great transaction
and this great strategy. And they say, Manny, what do we

(10:09):
do next? I said, shit, you're Heineken.
I thought you knew what to do next.
I said, no, I know exactly what we're going to do.
I'm like a prisoner that's been in prison for 2627 years,
thinking about every move of howto get out of prison.
And that's how I'm going to build La Tropical.
And La Tropical is not just going to be some some little
brewery. Being little is OK, But La

(10:29):
Tropical has to represent sort of the idea that they can take
your possessions, they can treatyou badly, they can put you in
jail like they did my father. But they're never gonna take
away the passion and the love that we have of our island and
of the culture and the brands that represented that that

(10:51):
island. And as long as you have that and
a little bit of this, you can beat them.
Yeah, and I did. That's awesome.
So tell me a little bit about the because I'm fascinated with
the the design process and the thought of, you know, cuz I
think you utilize the space likereally well, like when soon as
like I even like the fact that it's so it's kind of reminds me
of. Yes, I just said the same thing.

(11:12):
Yeah. Like when you come, when you're
driving to it, you're like, whatis, What is this?
What am I going to? And then, you know, you see the
graffiti and then you have the nice wall and then you walk in.
And when soon as you walk in that beautiful garden with the
stage. And it's very unique to Miami,
in my opinion. What start And then I love, you
know, just the, the, the abilityto have an indoor outdoor

(11:33):
component. So where was that always the
original plan? Did you have somebody help you
with that like? Yeah.
So I had, you know, in those 2627 years, man, I had visited,
I don't know, hundreds of breweries throughout, throughout
the world, right. So I kind of knew what the
competitive set looked like, youknow, worldwide, also within,

(11:54):
within the US. I had also made a trip for the
first time in my life to Cuba in2015.
I had never been. That's a whole different story.
I'll tell you that story in in asecond.
But I had been to La Tropical inCuba and to the gardens, and I
was just fascinated with the history of it.
The, the gardens were developed by a Cuban architect by Nimo

(12:15):
Ramon Magrina, who in the late 1800s had just come back from
Spain from Barcelona. And that's studied under Gaudi.
And so when he came, he actually, the gardens in Cuba
are a representation of Bar Cakewell from Barcelona in, in
nature 140 acres of, of land. And so I had seen the gardens, I

(12:40):
had seen the brewery. I knew that I, I didn't want to
copy it because you can't ever copy something that's original.
I wanted to reinterpret it in a more modern way.
I, I always say that, you know, Cuba's the past, Miami is the
future. So I wanted to give it a sort of
a Miami interpretation of those great things of the past.
And so that was sort of what drove the the vision was to, you

(13:01):
know, take that space, look at what are those cues that we had
in Cuba that we can incorporate in a more modern way.
I don't know if you remember when you go in, we have gates.
So those are the gates of. Our garden.
Scrap me if you're on. There's like a bird.
Cage a bird cage. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So a cool, cool story.
We had a bird cage bar in Cuba, and then I hired an artist to

(13:27):
paint the national bird of Cuba.It's a bird called the Tocororo.
So in English he would be calledthe Trogen.
What kind of bird is? It it's it's like a little bird,
but he's he's red, white and blue.
He's the inspiration for the Cuban flag.
Oh, wow. He's a national bird of Cuba.
Yeah. So I had him painted outside of
the bird cage because free Cubans don't live in cages.
And so I have all these subliminal messages.

(13:48):
I like that the. Brewery that unless you, you
kind of hear it from me or no one knows, 'cause I, I, my
partner's Heineken, I'm not supposed to be saying any
political thing, but I, I did itanyhow.
I, I have political message. Yeah, all throughout, all
throughout the space. And so, yeah, we have a bunch of
Cuban cues that we reinterpret. The bird cage is one of them.
The gates are another piece of it.

(14:10):
The stage is a big piece of it. So in Cuba, Los Ardines, LA
Tropical LA Tropical beer gardens to this day are the
center of Cuban music. If you're anybody on the island
that wants to become famous, youhave to play through La
Tropical. Every single famous artist from

(14:32):
the beginning of time has playedthrough La Tropical.
So we wanted to kind of bring for.
Music still, still to this day, to this day.
To this day, to this day, even to this day, if you're a Cuban
musician, if you're of of any stature, you would have played
at La Jardinas, La Tropical. And so, you know, we tried to
bring all these these elements and of course the beer, right?
You know, we, we our brewery in Cuba had a portfolio of brands,

(14:58):
but the the two most important brands was the first beer
produced in Cuba called La Tropical, La Original.
It's a Vienna style amber lager that we brew that same formula
that our ancestors brewed in 1888.
And I tell the story because I makes me very proud is if you go

(15:19):
back and look at the old bottlesof LA Tropical Originality,
you'll see that they proudly showed all the medals, the gold
medals that they had won in international beer competitions
throughout the world, in Paris, in Brussels and in the US, all
over the world. And two years ago, we took our

(15:41):
formula, which is based on that original formula.
But formulas always get tweaked because ingredients change over
time, right? You know, we use agricultural
commodities of hops and, and, and malted barley.
And so we got to tweak it. So anyhow, we, we, we, we, we
sent our version of that original formula to what's
called the World Beer Cup. And the World Beer Cup is like

(16:03):
the Olympics of beers, OK, the number one place, you know,
you're crowned at the World BeerCup, you're you know, you're it,
man, right? From a, from, from from a liquid
perspective, right. And so 1212 thousand entries,
the third in the world. Amazing.
Yeah. So they were doing something
pretty good in 1880, yeah. No, y'all have some really good

(16:23):
beer. I'm not even a beer drinker.
Yeah, and y'all's beer is reallygood.
Yeah. So we had that beer and then we
had another beer called Crystal in Cuba.
We sell it on the trophy Crystalhere in the US And so those are
basically our Cuban cues where we tell our story of
authenticity with the original families, the original beers and

(16:44):
sort of an environment that thatbrings you to a modern day Cuba,
which is Miami. Yeah, cuz Cuba sucks right now.
I mean, there's nothing there. I mean, it's, it's beautiful in
terms of the bones, but it's, it's like World War.
And it's insane. Like that's got to be one of the
saddest and the history of mankind.
People are amazing. But just, yeah, the political

(17:06):
situation is, is just awful. I mean, people are starving to
death right now. So in terms of like, what was
the main driver of do you feel like like going back, you could
go back? Was it like redemption?
What was that? Was it, was it payback?
Was it like what? Do you fuck you, Castro.
It was. That's that's that's what it

(17:26):
was. Yeah, that's what it was.
Seriously, it was. It was the, the, the, the
passion for it was to bring backthe, the, the sort of family
legacy and to sort of, you know,say, you know what, screw you,
you, you're not keeping us down,you know, and that was actually
my motivation. You know, it's kind of my way of

(17:48):
doing something right. And then that led to a business.
Yeah, yeah. And in terms of doing this, like
what obviously you told me aboutthe obstacles you faced during
COVID, but like, I mean, I've done many a build out and
there's always they never go as smooth as can.
You and they cost. More than a 1000% you always go

(18:09):
over budget. It doesn't matter how
painstakingly you plan, you're always over budget always.
And and your investors get furious with you.
But it is, it is what it is. So that being said, what were
the like major challenges? Did you have any major
challenges with the city of Miami?
Because I've dealt with that too.
So what? You know, the, you've seen the

(18:32):
brewery. It's the scale of it is pretty
big. Huge, yes.
And so the city hadn't really gone through a process for sort
of a manufacturer. Wynwood used to be a
manufacturing base many, many years ago.
And that's one of the reasons why we actually bought there,
because of the zoning. It was very friendly to light
manufacturing with a retail component, an outdoor component

(18:55):
that's hard to sort of nail downin other parts of the of the
city. So, you know, zoning was good,
but the city had yet to go through a, a process of
approving a what you don't normally build in the middle of
a city, right? You know, something of our scale
would usually get built behind an airport and an industrial
area. So, you know, walking them

(19:15):
through that process of, of the scale of the brewery and how
that was going to work, it was difficult.
I think also we hit upon a challenge that we got caught in
the in the crosshairs of the city doing a a change over how
they approved the permits from a, you know, manual process to a

(19:37):
digital process. I was in.
I got hit with that too. Yep, and it was a.
Disaster and people were at homeand you had no one to call and
you couldn't. So you just kind of wait.
Yeah. And you waited months and.
But at the end, yeah, I, I do have to say that at, at at the
end, they did facilitate once, once they, they understood the

(19:58):
scale of the investment that we were making, the impact that it
could have for Wynwood in the city of Miami.
The city actually became very supportive of our, of our
process. But yeah, it was at the
beginning, it was, it was tough.Yeah.
And then in terms of because nowI'm obviously in the CPG
business myself in terms of likescaling the the actual brand are

(20:20):
y'all trying is that happening? Is it?
Is it and where are you with that?
Yeah. So we started.
So we're we're in our fourth year right now.
We're we will turn five years old in April of next year.
So we're still pretty young justlike you for, for, for a brand.
Our initial focus was really create a foundation for the

(20:43):
brand in our own backyard. You know, we have a story to
tell about the brand in our own backyard.
And there's a large Cuban American community here as well
that, that that supports us. And if we can kind of tell that
story, we can, we can project that story, you know, further
out. So now we're in that process of
beginning to look for additionalmarkets.

(21:06):
You know, I don't at at this stage, I don't really see a
national expansion. You know, I see a more what
we're doing a target market expansion in those markets where
we feel there's affinity to thissort of Miami vibe.
Yeah. You know, may not be in Topeka,
but it may be in New York, righttype of thing.
And so we've started, we've embarked on that.

(21:27):
We've we've also done a big pushand we've been very successful
here into the duty free world. So we're on board Carnival
cruise ships, we're on board MSC, Virgin, we're in all the
major stadiums like you, You know, we pursue some of the
larger sports sponsorships. Yeah, the arenas.
I think that helps us punch above our weight a little bit,

(21:49):
right, to get more exposure. So we're the official craft beer
of Inter Miami. Amazing.
With LA original, we we're now in our in our fourth year of
that, OK, it's going amazing. And then with our Tropic Crystal
brand were the official importedfrom Miami beer of the Miami

(22:09):
Marlins. So yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
sneaking in there. Yeah, it's sneaking in a little
bit there being a little gorilla.
Yeah. But you know, those, those those
partnerships I think are, you know, they cost money.
They're not cheap, but I think they're they're it's money well
spent because it helps you, again, you know, create more
awareness for the brand that andit accelerates the the mass

(22:32):
awareness for the brand. And and then you see that, you
know, really come to fruition down the line relative to your
sales and the off trade, like a Publix or whatever.
Maybe they had it at the at the game.
Now they recognize that they're going to see it on the shelf.
So we have a big investment in that.
We have a big investment in, in our case, what we call the
entree for bars and restaurants,you know, where people enjoy our

(22:55):
product when they want to have fun.
And so we have a big, big presence on draft probably in
about 400 taps in South Florida and and growing, Yeah.
And. And you're distributed by gold.
Coast by Gold Coast are same distributed.
Yeah, shout out. Great.
Great for Frank and Alex. Yes, Alex Christina.

(23:17):
Yes, RT. Great, great team.
They're awesome. They're awesome.
Amazing team and very well connected with the community.
And you know, you know, I, I always thank them and hug them
and, and tell them I, I, I love them because they'll say, man,
you always get more, you get, you get a bigger share of the,
of mine than most people get here.
You're, you're small. And we still give you a, I go,

(23:39):
yeah, well, thank you. We appreciate that 'cause I
mean, we're competing against the big boys there, you know,
100%. And we're just a little a little
fly right now. So yeah, we were.
So I did a beer one time. Oh, you did?
Yeah, I did it with JW Wakefield.
OK. Yeah.
And it was no days off it. Actually went just like this it
was. Electrolyte beer, it was
delicious, all right. And and then we thought we were

(24:00):
going to want to do beer and because we're a beverage
company, so we had the, you know, trademark for beer and
wines and spirits and things like that.
And it's something we, you know,maybe I should talk to you next
time, do a collaboration. But we we went through that
whole thing like meeting with lawyers about the three tier.
System that's difficult. And we went and met with all
these different beer people and we were like, we need to stick

(24:22):
to water right now. So it, it sounds like.
So talk to me about those challenges.
Because I'm, you know, the biggest, the biggest challenge
in our industry, you, you hit the nail right on the head.
The biggest challenge in our industry is not necessarily the,
the manufacturing and the sort of overall marketing of the, of
the product. It's how do you get into the

(24:43):
hands of the consumer. And in our in our world, you
know, there are these archaic and this is a good with a
dovetail into Mixo Lohia as well.
But there are these archaic lawsthat go back to the 1930s to
prohibition that established thethree tier system and all these
rules and regulations. And every state is different.
And it's just it's a nightmare nightmare.

(25:04):
And it really it's A at this stage it that those laws outside
of taxation for the federal government and the state
governments, they don't even make sense anymore.
But they're kind of the sort of monopoly now for state
distributors, right? But anyhow, because of those
laws, they established sort of away to go to market.

(25:27):
And what's happened in the distribution world over the past
20 years is that it wasn't so difficult 25 years ago because
there were a lot more distributors in the market as
well. But over the past 25 years
they've there's been a huge consolidation.
Yeah, they keep. Reyes keeps buying.
Everybody up so at a time when maybe there was 5 or 6

(25:48):
distributors in this local market, now there's two right,
you know, and Eagle and Gold Coast.
Yep. And then every single brand in
the world is in either one or the other.
And so, you know, there is a pecking order and rightfully so.
I, I, I understand that, I'm sure you do as well.
There is a pecking order of how you get share of mine within a
distributor in order to, you know, for them to make you a

(26:09):
higher priority of focus and energy and effort.
Obviously there are other brandsthat pay the bills, the Coronas
and the Heinekens and the Modellos, and I understand that.
But on the flip side, I always argue, well, yeah, but you know,
if that were the case, then no little brand would ever become a
big brand. So, you know, you take on the
brand, you have a responsibilityto give me a little bit of share
of mind and and time and effort and and they do.

(26:31):
So we're we're super happy with Gold Coast.
And you know, Frank and Alex areamazing.
Christina, they're big supporters of the brand.
And you know, we just, you know,we're at a good spot right now
to to begin target market. The expansion of the brand and
leveraging this duty free channel is really interesting.
I don't are Are you in it yet? No, no.

(26:54):
I'd love to. It's a, it's a yeah.
It's a really cool channel to begin to kind of plant some
seeds because I believe that that Channel is all about fun.
It's what you know, you're targeting basically consumers
that are in a mindset of vacation and having fun.

(27:14):
And if your product can be part of that fun, then you're
associated with fun, you're associated with fun and, and
that, and that's one thing. And then the the second part of
that is that these consumers arefrom everywhere, right?
Miami is the cruise capital of the world.
It's not just a moniker. It's it's it's it's.
Real. It's real.
They, these people come from allover the US and all over the

(27:37):
world. And so a good way of starting to
market the brand to those folks where your product is not yet
available is on those cruise ships.
They're going to see it, they'regoing to have fun with it.
It may not be available in Topeka or in, in Wichita or I'm,
I'm picking Kansas. I'm picking on Kansas, but you
know, in Iowa or whatever. But you know what, eventually it
will and they may have seen it and consumed it.

(27:58):
And so you're going to have a leg up by just kind of
developing that Channel over a long period of time.
I'm also targeting the Caribbean.
OK. I'm in the British Virgin
Islands right now, doing really well in Tortola, Virgin Gorda.
Are you in Jamaica? Not.
Not yet do. You want to be.
Yeah, I do, yeah. So my business partner owns was
Cinco OK, the largest food and beverage distributor in the

(28:20):
English speaking Caribbean in Jamaica.
So I'll connect you. With it.
Thank you, thank you. So it's the same idea, right.
So if you if you can be part of that and you don't have to be
everywhere in those markets, butif you can be in the tourism
areas and the hotels and the bars that you know, you begin to
develop that global brand, right, without really being
global. Yet.
Exactly. So that's, yeah, interesting.
Fun fact is we've had since we we opened this place in November

(28:44):
and we've had 25 different countries visit this location.
There you go. Yeah.
So and Miami's, you know, that'swhat Miami does.
Yeah, it's a melting pot. It's a.
Melting pot of so many differentdiverse people and different
nationalities and I love it. So it, it definitely helps you
be known like we also have sold,I don't know all the statistics,

(29:05):
but we've sold apparel in like damn near every country.
Oh wow, every single country. Like it's really cool.
So and then when we launched this in the 1st 90 days, we sold
in every single state in the country, including what?
Distributes are you, are you areyou choosing like Gold Coast and
distributor. So Reyes, Reyes is our main, you

(29:27):
know, play. We're trying to be very
intentional with staying on Molson Coors trucks, right?
So we sound, we sound with Alaba, who covers the entire
state of Alabama. That's a Miller Coors Trust
we're working on. Oh, we just signed with JJ
Taylor and Tampa. So that's kind of our play where
yeah, Reyes is about to open up,open us up in different markets.

(29:47):
We're also with Cisco, OK, so that's helped.
Direct Cisco or you go through Gold Coast.
Direct with Cisco, OK. And then we are obviously on
Amazon and TikTok shop, but beverages are tough on those
channels, yeah, because they weigh so much.
So the shipping kind of kills you.
But but yeah, it's, it's I, I love this, this industry because

(30:08):
it's like playing chess every day.
You know, you have to just you have to drive desirability,
availability at the exact same time, because if you do 1
without the other, then you run out of money.
So it's like, you know, staying very, very disciplined and most
beverage companies, CPG companies run out of money.
Like that's the biggest. Well, because like you nailed

(30:28):
it. I mean, there's, you know,
there's, there's a huge investment that you need to make
in the brand, right? That's not cheap, whether it be
sponsorships with the heat or inter my I mean in my side that
these things cost, cost money, but you do it because you're,
you know, investing in the equity of that brand and and
you're thinking long term, right, Not just what, what,
what, what, what's the profit for tomorrow is, you know, what,

(30:49):
what does that do for 10 years from now?
Exactly. That's how I think.
No, it 100 percent, 100%. And it it's, it's one of those
things for me, I think we're a unique startup in the sense that
it's a 17 year old brand becauseI started this brand in 2008 out
of the gym. So the beverages were kind of
born out of the gyms. So there's some brand equity

(31:10):
that was built up over the gym 14 years before we launched
this. So it, it helped us definitely
in this city in Miami and South Florida.
And then attaching ourselves to Miami Heat was amazing because
what that did, it kind of gave us that street cred of like you
see our logo next to Miami Heat and it's like, OK, they're
legit. So that, that was kind of the
game plan there. And it's worked beautifully.

(31:31):
We've we've had an amazing partnership.
With do you do any other sports sponsorships or is?
There a couple of small like fighters I've been working with,
so I'll shout out to Chris Alvidrez soon to be in the UFC.
He just won his fight. I think he's 7 consecutive wins.
Awesome kid, just an amazing human being, you know, and he

(31:53):
and so stuff like that, but nothing.
I think that when you do such a big deal with the Miami Heat,
you can't go out there and startdoing deals like that with
everybody. Like because when we did the
heat, you can imagine the Marlins came calling and we had
talks and then to Miami, we had talks with the Florida Panthers.
We interesting enough, we're in the charter planes for the

(32:15):
Florida Panthers. So we're actually on the Delta
charter flights that where they,you know, they fly on the plane.
So that's that's been. A The Marlins are a great
organization. We've been working with enough
for two years and you know, I, Ilove working with, with the
Marlins, great, great guys, Rob Gellman and the team there is
very. Good.
Have you? What do you think about the new
Freedom Park with Inter Miami? Amazing.

(32:36):
It's gonna be amazing. Amazing.
I hope, I just hope we can afford to be there, you know, so
you know, they you're rightfully.
Better give you that hometown discount.
Now exactly, we've been with them from since the beginning
that but you know, it's amazing and and what's amazing is how
you know it took them a while toget going, but now I, you know,
I travel a lot so I every time Ileave and come back.

(32:58):
She used to have another sectionbuilt already.
So I think it's going up pretty fast.
You know, they said that they were gonna have it ready before
the end of the year. I think they're.
Gonna be, yeah, they actually, they want us to be there too, so
they want Legacy to be there. And so it's gonna be
interesting. I've been talking to them.
So we'll see. Yeah.
We just said you traveled a lot.So I was, I was curious like
what's what's your role now? Like what?

(33:19):
What is your main? So I just retired.
Actually, OK, congratulations. Thank you.
So no SO. You don't strike me as a guy
that sits on the beach and drinks beers though.
No, it's not, it's not that typeof retirement.
So no. But I, so I did the deal with
Heineken in 2017 and I made a commitment with them to kind of
get it up and running right. And so it'll be five years now

(33:42):
in April. And you know what, for me, and
I've been at this now for 27 years, and I had this
conversation with my partner as well that what's most important
is that it's not the Manny show with LA Tropical that, you know,
when I did the deal with Heineken, I was looking for

(34:02):
someone that bought into the overall brand story and had the
long term commitment that it wasgoing to go beyond me.
And so from the very beginning, I already knew that I had an
exit strategy that still had me around as a as a partner, but at
some point out of the day-to-dayoperation of the business.

(34:23):
Because if I were to be involvedin the day-to-day operational
business, then it would thwart the acceleration of a tropical.
It's very, very hard to run the business day-to-day and also
accelerate the growth, right, right.
Cuz you know you're dealing withpeople and you're dealing with
problems and you're dealing, you're in the weeds A. 100%

(34:43):
understand that. I just had this conversation
with the head of business development for me.
Yeah. And I literally told him I was
like, we were talking about me being in a certain meeting.
And I told him. I told him I was like, I
shouldn't be in that meeting. Yeah.
I was like, that's not my role. Yeah.
You know, do do you do. That's your job.
That's why you're here. So, so I started some succession

(35:04):
planning conversations with my partner, you know, from the
beginning, we talked about it inabout two years ago.
I said, let's let's start getting ready for it.
And, and then finally a search was done and we brought in this
amazing guy named Nick Bonk, whostarted about 30 days ago as the
new CEO of LA of La tropical. I'm not kind of the founder and

(35:25):
advisor. Yeah, I'm helping, you know, in
every which way that I can, but that unleashes me a little bit
cuz I'm very entrepreneurial andcreative and I, you know, I want
to do 100 different things at the same time.
So it's not really retirement from work, it's retirement from
having day-to-day day responsibility so that I can
help grow new markets and new beverages, new channels,

(35:49):
different ideas. Yeah, that I have.
And so that brings up some interesting things in my head,
like, so innovation is somethingthat we hear a lot about in this
industry. And then I read about, yeah.
So I'm curious about that. So if you can talk, I don't know
how much you can say, Yeah. Yeah, for sure, I can talk a
lot. I'm not sure if you let the cat
out of the bag yet, but it sounds fascinating.

(36:11):
So talk a little bit about that new innovation that you just
created. And and then also I wanted to
know if if you know, there's been a heightened sense of
awareness of Wellness these days.
And I've personally seen a lot of news on the decline of beer
sales. The decline I just saw one on
wine is like tanking right? Now before you know drinking

(36:32):
less or better and also going tosome of the non.
Alcoholic space. So I'm curious your take on that
shifting. Yeah, shifting their beverage.
OK, So Mixohia, so that's you'reasking about Mixohia.
You know, we double the world's first distilled beer cocktail
and innovation. So you know, so in large

(36:53):
corporations, whether it be a Heineken, Anheuser Busch or or
any large corporation, they always try to structure
innovation as a scientific process.
And there's some elements that can be, but I don't know that I
buy into that 100%. A lot of these sort of most

(37:13):
successful innovation, in my opinion, comes from solving
problems, right? Not necessarily because you want
to make a beverage that has thisor that.
It's, it's because you, you hit an obstacle with something that
it could be consumer driven. In our case, I'll, I'll tell you
a story. It was consumer driven, but

(37:34):
you're stuck because franchise laws and prohibition and all
that type of shit. And then you you have this
problem and then you try to solve it and then in solving it,
you discover something that you had no freaking clue.
You had not even crossed your mind at the time that you were
doing it. And it leads to patents and so

(37:55):
makes a little hear story. So we we build the brewery.
We stuck a lot of money into that place.
As you know, we. Thought it's gorgeous too.
It's gorgeous. One of the nicest.
Breweries and I'm and I'm sitting down with my partner,
said Heineken. And I said, you know, we're
putting a lot of money into this.
I visited hundreds of breweries throughout the world and they
only serve beer. Makes no sense to me.

(38:16):
We're going to stick this much money into a retail
establishment? What if the person that drinks
beer doesn't drink beer? What happens if they don't
drink? I want to buy a liquor license.
I'm putting a full bar in my brewery.
OK, buy the liquor license. So I bought the liquor license.
We opened up with a full bar andsure enough, we developed, you

(38:41):
know, we had a mixologist developed the whole, you know,
list of cocktails and whatnot. And I, I started thinking about
it a little bit more. So, you know, but wait, we're,
we're a brewery. We should focus on, on, on beer,
even though we have the cocktails.
But what if our brewmaster and our mixologist, if I gave him

(39:02):
the license to mess around and start mixing beer with spirits
into crafted beer cocktails? So that's crazy and that's not
going to taste. Let's try it.
Let's develop five or six of these things.
We'll put it on the menu and seewhat happens.
We put it on the menu becomes a third of all of our spirit
sales. No way.

(39:23):
And so I'll say, OK, wow, that's.
Pretty cool and basically you'retaking beer and.
Beer. Pouring it from a tap, taking
vodka, tequila, rum mixture, making coffee.
People been doing that in their houses forever, forever, right?
Do that in college, right? Exactly.
So we created this line of crafted beer cocktails that
people love and especially women.

(39:44):
What's the one that tastes like Doctor Pepper?
You know, the, the you get a beer and you do the shot in it,
and then you drink and it tasteslike Doctor.
You know what I'm talking about?Yeah.
Just kidding. We did that in college.
Yeah. And they light it on fire and
then you drink like. Exactly you.
Remember the name of. That yeah, I don't remember the
name of that. I'm showing my age, probably.
There's probably something back in the, you know, early 90s at
Anyways, yeah. So, so you know, they become

(40:05):
very successful and as I go to the.
Flaming Dr. Pepper Flaming Dr. Pepper and as I go to the to
the, to the tap room, you know, we call the rest of the tap
room, I noticed that women really dig it.
Men who drink beer after three or 4 beers want to change it up.

(40:28):
They start getting into it and people love it.
And and so the next step as a marketer, OK, how do we get that
in a can right now? I know I can do it behind the
bar. Yeah.
But how do I get it into a can? And I do some research.
It's illegal in the United States to mix beer and any

(40:50):
spirit in a can. Wow.
And so I was trying to bust thatsort of law the, you know, the
traditional way. So I, I called my partner so
Hanik and said, yeah, I need some money to hire like a really
good like beer attorney. I'm going to bust it open.
I'm going to figure this thing out.
And so I hired the one of the best, you know, beer legal

(41:13):
eagles you can hire. And I spend months knocking
through doors. I, I busted three of them to
find there's 10 more behind it. And and then I end up firing the
guy because it wasn't going to happen under the traditional
method. And so I said, you know, I'm not
going to solve it this way. I'm, I need to think more, you
know, entrepreneurial and said, I'm going to go meet with

(41:36):
distillers throughout the US. I'll interview them.
I'll see how the, how that all works, who their network of
lawyers are. And maybe I go around that way.
And so in that process, I discovered that if I can take my
beer, run it through a pot distillation system, and distill
it into a distilled spirit, it'sno longer a beer because now

(41:58):
it's a spirit. And if it's a spirit?
That's fine. I can mix it with other.
Spirits, let me ask you this, why was that law in the 1st
place? It's.
Just it's stupid. Because that's just stupid like.
Prohibition, taxation, control, there's no, there's no health
reason for it. There's no, you know, like
health risk reason for it. It's all monopolistic and

(42:23):
control control issues dating back to the 30s.
OK. And so anyhow, so we sort of had
that again, that sort of light bulb boom.
Wait a second. If I take this beer and I'll
tell you what we do now without giving away the patent yet, but
if I take this beer and I distill it and it becomes a

(42:44):
spirit, it'll I should have brought the bottle.
I should have brought the bottle.
It's mind blowing. It looks like a vodka.
It doesn't look like beer anymore.
Amazing. And so?
And what's the taste? That's that's the key.
So that the key is how you do that.
So distillation really strips out all taste from any product

(43:07):
unless you reinfuse it later. So what we did was we we, we we
wanted that distilled beer spirit to still retain some of
the nice elements of a beer thatpeople like in beer.
What are they? It's sort of a floral hop aroma,
right? That's like a bouquet type of

(43:28):
smell to it. And then kind of a little bit of
a multi backbone. This gives you a little
sweetness. And So what we did was we brewed
what's called the high gravity beer.
So a high gravity beer is we take our beer and we brew it in
super concentrated in a super concentrated way.
The alcohol would be in the 12 to 14% range on on this beer and

(43:49):
I super hop it. So I had tons more hop than I
would normally add in a beer. Then I take that beer and I
triple distill it in a pot distillation system.
We're a distillery now. So I, I triple distill that in a
pot distillation system. And what comes out of that is a
clear beer vodka, for lack of a better word, that's 168 proof.

(44:11):
It's like moonshine and all thiswhat?
But it has that kind of floral hop aroma and a multi backed 1.
And I take that spirit and I dilute it with water.
And once I dilute it with water,I can mix it with anything to
create cocktails. So Mixolohia is the world's
first. And then I figured out that no
one had done this before. I said, well, let's let's try to

(44:34):
file some patents. So we filed the three 3 patents
have patent pending. So we don't have it yet, but we
have a high likelihood of getting it.
One is for the how to how to distill, how to triple distill a
beer to have those flavor profiles. 2 is the distilled
spirit itself because we think that has marketability in the

(44:54):
future. Imagine some beer vodka to mix
it with anything and then the third is how to mix it to create
the mixture will heal flavors. So that's the.
Story. And is Heineken interested in
all this? Cuz it sounds like they should.
Be the joint venture owns the pack.
OK, good. Yeah.
So we wanna commercialize. We think we have a really

(45:17):
interesting opportunity to commercialize Mixolohia.
Right now we have 2 flavors of Paschantini and have Anito.
Paschantini's a passion fruit vodka martini made with triple
distilled beer and have Anitos, Blanco Rum Mojito and.
What does the the ABV end up being?
5.90 Nice, super easy to drink, low alcohol.

(45:38):
We can go lower as well. We focused on this first
iteration on taste versus calories.
A you know, a typical drink at abar if you were, you know,
ranges in between 230 to 270 calories.
Our Mixolohia comes in at about 160.
We could have gone to 100 or less than 100, but I would have

(46:00):
had to use artificial sugars andI didn't want to do that.
Yeah. So I I don't believe in that
stuff. I wanted to I wanted to have an
all natural product. I think nowadays people care
more about that than they do theother. 60 calories, you know,
burn. Them if you're.
Tactile, you know, or walkers. Two blocks.
Just not significant. Yeah, but it they taste amazing.
I bought you some samples so youcan have you can take holds and

(46:21):
they're here. You see, we sell your beer.
Here. Yeah, I saw it.
Thank you. Thank you.
And in Wynwood and in Fort Lauderdale.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
We got to see it by now, but no days off.
Water. No, I haven't fixed that.
My brain this entire time is working.
I have some ideas, but I don't want to share them on camera.
We'll share them off camera. So we got, we got that.
And then actually next week, I'moff to Cincinnati to our flavor

(46:42):
house with our with our master Brewer.
We're finishing the formulation for three additional flavors
that we have coming. I can't disclose those yet, but
they're really cool flavors and they're all, they're all under
this sort of fun naming. And you're already canning
these? Yeah, amazing.
Yeah, canning and in 4 packs ourfirst which was amazing.

(47:05):
I think it shows the the, the uniqueness of the product that
this actually occurred because as you know, I'm about to say
this, they're very difficult to get the authorization.
Publix authorized it in 180 stores from day one.
Wow, which is huge. That's huge, huge, huge.
So all the South Florida is carrying all the Gold Coast.
And what's your messaging in terms of like?

(47:29):
World's first distilled beer cocktail OK that our unique
selling proposition is a world'sfirst distilled beer cocktail
known as the still. Beer cocktail.
Yeah. And it's like on the packaging.
On the packaging and everything,yeah.
And what's the name of it? Again, Mixola here.
Mixola. Yeah, LA Tropical mixola here
and then we have you know, flavors.
So it's LA Tropical is the is the umbrella brand mixola.
He has the. And it's sold in the beer

(47:49):
section in Publix. It's sold in the RTD section.
RTD section, Yeah, OK, so like with the White Claws and stuff
like that. Yeah, based stuff is it's there,
very cool. About 1199.
Between 1099 and 1199, a four pack.
Oh so very well priced. Well priced.
And then, and then hopefully once we, once we nail down these

(48:09):
additional flavors, we'll do a, a variety 8 pack, which is where
the volume is, You know, you're gonna be like like like an 8
pack in the, in the well. Yeah, Cooler, yeah.
That's what right? You know, these 4 packs are kind
of starter packs for people to taste the flavors and whatnot.
Right, right, that's extremely cool.
Like definitely I'm yeah, I'm, I'm that.

(48:30):
Do you feel like that's where your passion is right now is
like? Yeah, I just think that, you
know, there's so many beers out there, it's really tough to kind
of, even though we have a prettyunique positioning, it's really
tough to to, to stand out in a sea of 10,000 breweries.
And with Mixohia, we've found a sort of a a unique product that

(48:51):
we created. We built mode around it with
patents that if we can sort of create awareness for that
product and it tastes amazing. It tastes really, really good,
super drinkable. We think we have a unique
opportunity to really go after some significant market share
with that nationally, globally and with Heineken as my partner.
Do you think it's it's somethingthat goes beyond the the beer

(49:13):
drinker as well for? Sure, for sure.
We did, you know, we did a lot of market research on how to go
to market and you know, what consumers think about this
product and what we found is that it attracted.
The neat thing about the productis that when you speak to a beer
drinker, they're intrigued that there's a cocktail that has a

(49:34):
beer spirit. And when you talk to a cocktail
drinker, you know you're really talking to them more about the
cocktail versus the beer. The beer's a unique feature for
them, not as important As for the beer drinker.
So now the market, instead of being this big, it's this big
because you're talking to both drinkers.
And I assume I mean, how I see it is you're talking to a lot of

(49:54):
women too. A lot of women.
Because women love to taste, love it, love it.
That's the key. If they don't, if it doesn't
taste good, they're not drinkingit.
I we we were lucky this past weekend was F1.
OK, I was there. Yeah.
Amazing, amazing, amazing. So.
This is the second year in a rowthat we've licensed the LA

(50:16):
Tropical taproom to F1. We had a 5000 square foot pop
up, for lack of a better word, with service a Rio La Tropical.
It was jamming all three, three days.
And we had Mixo Lohia. We debuted Mixohia there.
And to your point, a lot of women were drinking it.

(50:37):
A lot of women were drinking it.They love it.
Yeah, they love. It and if you get the women,
then you'll get everybody. Else.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
And, you know, it's, it's a goodsort of drink for South Florida.
So hot, humid, these types of drinks are, are, are refreshing.
You know, people want refreshment.
Yeah. They don't want to feel bogged
down, you know, bloated. Yeah, that's why I think my my

(51:00):
waters crush it so well, becauseit's such a refreshing drink,
you know? And it's a lot.
I mean you. Can't get better than than pure.
Water. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
I love it. So in terms of to kind of circle
back to the to, to the state of,of where people view alcohol and
beer and wine and spirits. I know people are still

(51:21):
drinking, obviously. I mean, that's definitely not
not a thing, but, but do you feel like people are drinking
less? Do you see it?
Do y'all feel it or is that something that they like to put
on the news and the headlines and.
You know, it's hard to really put your finger on it, right?
Because, you know, consumer preferences, sometimes they
don't always tell you what they really believe, right?

(51:42):
They tell you what you think youwant to hear, right?
And, and so, but I, my general view on that is, is that I don't
necessarily know that they're drinking less.
I think that they're just drinking more types of beverages
and in different occasions, because now it's not just about
the alcohol. There's, you know, THC, there's,

(52:03):
there's, there's hemp. There's cava kratom.
There's just so many different things.
And so the idea that this younger generation is shunning
some type of a will it be alcohol or you know, I don't
think that's true. I think, I think what, what's

(52:24):
happening is that they may be drinking less beer, but they may
be drinking more things with THCin it, or they may be choosing
to drink more, more tequila versus the beer.
And, and they're and they're drinking at different occasions.
What what used to be a monolithic beer occasion like a
sporting event. For example.
Right. You know, 25 years ago I worked
for Budweiser. You couldn't go to a sporting

(52:46):
event. That wasn't all.
You know all. Beer.
All the beer. Now they're serving cocktails at
the sporting events. There's, you know, all types of
RTD. So there's people start
drinking, just drinking different stuff.
So you think it's more because of how much variety is out
there? I think I mean there is.
Options like people have. Section of the of the of the
consumer base that that wants todrink a 00 for a Heineken 00

(53:09):
which is a non alcoholic beer. There's athletic, which is, you
know, grown. Yeah, they're doing really
immensely. Doing great, great beers.
So I think there is, but I thinkthat's more occasion driven.
You know, I, I still think that,you know, on a night out with
your buddies, you want to have acouple beers.
Couple. Yeah, a couple drinks, whatever
it is. Nothing wrong.
You want to take the stress off.Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. All right.
Have you thought about doing a low ABV or a non alcoholic beer?

(53:33):
Yeah, we. So right now we have a, a, a by
the way, I was telling on your team that we have a, a brand
that we'd love to, you know, getaligned with yarn.
We use it for a lot of running clubs and triathlons and it's
called Flocka. They were skinny on calories,

(53:54):
gordita on taste, like it's 88 calories, 3 grams of carbs, 3.9%
alcohol. And we make it with this hop
called the Citra Hop, which which imparts like a lemony,
zesty taste profile to the beer.It tastes amazing.
You wouldn't think you're drinking a light beer thinking

(54:15):
you're drinking like a full bodybeer because of that of that
hot. But that beer amongst the health
aficionado, whether it be peoplethat run or go to a gym or do
triathlons, they really love that beer and they love it
because it's low alcohol. So it doesn't have to be 0
alcohol, but low alcohol is alsovery important and also has some

(54:36):
of the, the calorie and carbs ora profile that's attractive to
that group. So yeah, I do think that better
for you is a, it's not just a trend, it's a lifestyle, right?
And I'm, I've adopted that lifestyle.
I know you have as well. You know, I, I'm always looking
to eat better and drink better. And, and so I think that's a,
that's a brand that you don't necessarily have to be 0

(54:58):
alcohol. You can be low alcohol, you can
be playing to that same cohort of, of consumers.
But to sort of answer your question in short, we have Flaca
and we are in the process of innovating on a non alcoholic 00
beer for a lot. That could be the no days off
beer. Yeah, maybe putting it out
there. Maybe.
Yeah, yeah. Let's that could be a great

(55:19):
interesting partnership. And then what is are you?
Are you considering opening up more breweries?
So A not necessarily breweries in the way that you sort of
posed the question, because it costs a lot of money to open up
a brewery. And thank goodness we have a
joint venture partner that has breweries throughout the world.

(55:41):
So we have access to really any brew.
We we will never have a capacityissue at like Tropic.
Yeah, yeah. Even if we trip capacity with
what we and by the way, our, our, our brewery has capacity
for about half a million cases of beer that we can manufacture
in can there in Windward. It's pretty big for a city
brewery, right, But so for the brewery itself, not so much for

(56:07):
the retail application of the brewery.
Yes, You know, we we envision I envision and one of the reasons
why I wanted to kind of get out of the day-to-day is that one of
the areas where I think I can help accelerate the growth of
the tropical is exactly that is how can we spin off sort of a
retail division and open up not hundreds because it's not a
franchise. It's for more like the like the

(56:30):
Hard Rock model or like the Margaritaville model for the
Jimmy Buffett, you have 25 of them.
You don't need to have 125 of them in the right locations,
tourist destinations and help create brand by selling this
whole Cuba Miami vibe with maybea little pilot brewery, you
know, but only to brew beers there on premise, not not for

(56:53):
the market. Yeah.
You know, I have, I have other more efficient ways of getting
beer to market, getting a littlebrewery.
So yeah. So that and do that worldwide.
Yeah. You know, cuz in Europe, the
whole Cuba thing's you know, andand Miami thing's very popular,
right. You know yeah.
So that's that's the idea. How do you how do you get your
talent for the live music? That's been hard.

(57:14):
That's been really tough. So at first, you know, we've
been shifting our business model, trying to figure out what
we think works best. At the beginning when we opened
up, we hooked up with a, with a,with a promoter and really the,
the, I was like the music manager at that time, right?

(57:36):
And my philosophy at the time was I wanted LA Tropical to be a
place for local artists that we could support to play only
original music. No fucking covers.
Don't come and play a cover, youknow?
You know, I want to promote youroriginality, your authenticity,
your authenticity. And she had a contract where

(57:58):
they couldn't play with more than 20% covers.
And so that worked really well coming out of the pandemic, you
know, there's a lot of, you know, great artists that were
coming out there. They had a fan base they get,
but as that time went on, what Ifound was that those artists
weren't pulling a fan base. And so we were spending a lot of
money on artists and it would, it was becoming background

(58:22):
music. And so we just shifted the
business model now to, to a, to a business.
And then, you know, that was a paid model.
So we we would pay those artistsa fair wage to to.
Perform. And perform an electric pick
out. We're now shifting.
We we've actually, we have a great partnership.
Have you heard of the North Beach Band show?

(58:45):
North Beach Band Show No. Band.
Shell. Oh band shell.
So this is an outdoor Amphitheatre.
If you've never been, it's a main.
It's like a hidden gem. Really.
Where is this? North Beach and they do 200
concerts per year and and all types of music from from you
know, country to to hip hop to. Really Latin OK and live music

(59:09):
live. Music, it holds about almost
like 2 or 3000 people and we're the sponsors of the North can.
You ride show. Yeah, I'm obsessed with live
music. Yeah, I can.
I can, I can hook you up. Those great guys to work with.
OK, great. And so they have access to all
these musicians now. And so we have a partnership
with them where they help us source these musicians and we do

(59:33):
a, a percentage of our of our bar above a certain sort of.
Yeah, threshold, threshold. And that seems to be working a
lot better. We're pulling in a lot more
people and it's a business modelthat's more sustainable versus
hey, just get a guy because you think it's good.
You don't know he's going to pull 10 people or 500 people.
And, and so, you know, they havean incentive to promote it,

(59:56):
right, to get their fan base to come and everybody wins.
They win because they get a, they get a piece of the action.
We win because we get more people.
And, and so we started that about maybe about six months ago
and, and we're very happy with it.
It's kind of gaining a lot of traction right now for us.
I love that. Yeah.
What, because you've been at this for 27 years. 27 years.

(01:00:17):
Yeah. So I, I find that when I'm
dealing with a lot of young people and.
And and discussing like the entrepreneurial spirit and and
we live in this like insta world, right, where every
everybody thinks they're just going to become famous or rich
or wealthy or whatever it is overnight, right.
So you mentioned you love shoe dog like so we have that in

(01:00:38):
common in the Nike story. And then I don't think people,
like, really understand what it took to build Nike, you know?
And so talk to me a little bit about that, that of how you
stayed with it for so long. What was it that you knew that
you were gonna see it through, that you knew you were gonna see

(01:01:00):
it until you actually did it? Because I don't think people
understand that. Mind, I love that.
I love that book and even the Nike movie on Netflix.
Yeah, Air is great. Yeah, I haven't seen it.
So there's a quote. I'm pointing to the book 'cause
I'm seeing the book on the on the shelf.
There's a quote in that book that I love that says something

(01:01:21):
to the effect of, it's a tributething to Phil Knight, something
to the effect of a man who movesmountains, starts by moving the
first rocks. And I, I think that's sort of,
I've always felt that way, right?
Is that, you know, you can have this great idea and you know,
you can pontificate on the idea and you can try to go get money
on the idea and, and get supportand ask 100,000 people what they

(01:01:44):
think of the idea. But at the end of the day, it's
the action that counts. And I've always sort of had the
philosophy and it dates back to a big, I'm big into sports and,
and, and since my childhood, I've always done sports and just
take the first step, man. And yeah, moving the mountains
gonna be harder than hell, but just starting each individual

(01:02:06):
rock and over 27 years, you movethe fucking mountain, right?
And you don't have to ask anybody.
Just go fucking do it. Just go do it.
And, and so I think that's the key.
The key is that this idea of instant gratification doesn't
exist. I, I don't believe in it.
I believe in hard work. I believe in commitment and take
the long view on things. And if you do that and you

(01:02:26):
believe in yourself and a littlebit of luck helps too, right?
Think you, you find your way, you know, but I think the
hardest part I'm becoming an entrepreneur and why most people
don't do it is, you know, peopledon't take the leap of faith.
You know, I've always sort of been one that if I believe
enough in something, even thoughI understand there's a lot of

(01:02:47):
risk, I'll jump because I, I have not only some arrogant, I'm
not trying to say arrogant, but I have belief in myself that,
that I know that on the other side of that Cliff, there's
probably a little branch, you know, that I can hang on, you
know, 20 meters down. And then I can probably move on
the branch and there's a little ledge that I can hold onto.

(01:03:08):
And then I can find the little crevice on the bottom.
Like I'll, I'll get in there. So I'm not jumping off the
Cliff. Yeah, right.
You're the type person. You're gonna figure it out.
I'll figure it out. Yeah, I'll figure it out.
That's all I am to and. So and so that's, you know, I
and I and I love it. I think that I don't like my
kids, you know, and I always worry about that, right?
Is an entrepreneur has to have acertain grit.

(01:03:28):
And that grit comes from your upbringing and, and sort of
maybe not having anything that you wanted to have when, when
you were younger because of, of financial necessities.
And, and, and you and you, and you have this grit, this hunger.
And if you have that grit and you believe in yourself, the,
and the ability to figure it out, you can't lose.
You can't lose. Other than Shoe Dog, you have

(01:03:51):
any other books you love? I just finished reading one
actually that I've I've put intopractice as well called The Dirt
Rich Dirt. Rich.
That's OK. How to buy land?
Oh nice, I just bought some landin Dominican Republic.
OK, OK, OK. Heck yeah.
I love that though that because I I found myself doing that too

(01:04:12):
where where you don't just read,you read and apply.
I read and apply, yeah. You know, I like, I like read,
you know, I always like reading books that I can take something
useful out of it, whether it be a a biography, like a shoe dog
or I like reading a lot of history too.
You know, I like historical books, historical fiction.
Did you see the men who made America on?

(01:04:34):
No, I haven't seen that. I've seen I've scrolled.
That I haven't. And you know who told me to
watch that and told me? He goes, he goes, he goes,
you're not going to be my CEO unless you finish this.
Unless you finish this Was Greenberg.
OK, all right, there you go. Immediately watch because I want
to stay the CEO. So I was like, all right, I'm
gonna watch it. But it was really fascinating

(01:04:54):
because it's like the Rockefellers and all that.
So it was really cool. Well, as we wrap up, I always
ask people this and, and I'm sure you're you're, you've been
around a while and I'm sure you've people know who you are.
But if you if you had, and if you wanted people to know
something about you that they don't or that you don't think

(01:05:16):
they do, what would that be? That I have a big heart.
I love it. Yeah, that's good.
I have AI have a soft spot in myheart for for the underdog.
Always. I always try to help the
underdog because I believe in the underdog.
That's it. Yeah.