July 25, 2025 • 31 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time time, time, time, luck and load. Michael
Verie Show is on the air. Fat, drunk and stupid
is no way to go through life.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Stuck. I'm shaking the dust of this crummy little town
off my feet and I'm gonna see the.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
World all my friend.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hello, old frig gass water type.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
That is a Yes, we believe it is by I'm
going steady, nice French kiss. So everybody does that. Yeah,
But Daddy.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Says, I'm the best daddys A careful man. There's the
beverage there.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Everybody down. We gotta what on the telescope, sir? What
the wide five world of sports that are going on? Tipsy?
(01:13):
Yesterday we were discussing sugar prices vis a vis corn prices,
and that one of the factors that drove Coca Cola,
the largest purchaser of sugar in the world at one point,
to abandon the cane sugar that made it so delicious
(01:34):
to which we had grown accustom our entire lives. When
they switched to corn syrup decades later, we all pined
for the good old days of cane sugar, and that
what had occasioned that was that sugar prices had risen
so high for a number of different reasons that they're
(01:57):
higher here than anywhere else in the world, which is
why some food manufacturers have moved operations outside the United States.
Because if your greatest product, your greatest input is sugar,
and you pay more for it here than elsewhere, at
some point the economies of scale make sense to move
(02:20):
operations where labor is cheaper, regulations are fewer, taxation is lower,
and oh, by the way, the product that you are
finishing off for your end consumable costs a lot less.
It's almost a no brainer. We're driving businesses out of
the United States. I received an email from a fellow
(02:41):
who said, you need to talk to Kelly ray Lean.
I don't know if I'm pronouncing her last name correctly.
She had a rum distillery in San Leon and she
had called in yesterday, but we were in the middle
of our conversation with Terry and we didn't get to
talk to her. We asked her to call back today
and Kelly is on the line. Kelly, first of all,
how do you pronounce your last name?
Speaker 5 (03:04):
Yeah, you were right, It's Raylen.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Okay, so tell me about your rum distillery.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
We started the room distillery in two thousand and five.
My husband Matt and I we did it just because
we're we're kind of into pirates.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
We still are.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
I came from the wine and spirits industry. We worked
for distributorship for ten years. I'm a wine sammier, and
we saw that there wasn't a lot of there was
a good rum made in the United States. And then
I had kind of seen what had happened with craft
beer because I used to sell it back in the
day when you couldn't sell a craft beer, and the
next thing, everybody wanted them. And we thought that I
(03:43):
used to.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Work for Republic Public Coverage.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Now it's our NBC.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Yeah, they're the two big ones here.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
So yeah, So we had this great idea while drinking
bad room one day that we're.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
Going to make American made room.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Why isn't there American made room because we grow sugarcane,
you know, right here Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Gulf Coast. And
we thought, geez, that makes sense, but why isn't anybody
doing that? And we found out the main reason has
to do with the rum subsidy that goes two RUMs
made from the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, and
we're like, ah, there's a tax cover over. And that
(04:20):
was why there's really at the time, back in the
early two thousands, there really weren't any rum companies here
in the United States anymore. It it all shifted to those
two islands, those couple of islands because there's a there's
a big tax advantage.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
So they're playing pull on, hold on, Kelly. This is
one of those things that people don't know. And so
you think, well, what if I were to want to
buy an American made role. Let's say I'm in a
pro American mood. I've bought my American made furniture from mac.
I want to buy my American made rum. You know,
(04:55):
Americans just don't make any room anymore. And people don't
realize how tax policy and subsidies and governmental intervention drive
things like that. It's not that there aren't people willing
to do it. There isn't the expertise, there isn't the product.
It is that governmental intervention drove the American maker out
(05:16):
of that market, and you would never know it. It's
one of those hidden it's one of those hidden awful
things where government MUCKs everything up. Okay, but you said,
you know what, what the heck, we're going to do
it anyway.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Well, yeah, Well we were a bit naive because at
the time we maybe didn't quite understand the ramifications of
the tax cover over and it amounts to about four
to six dollars per bottle once it goes through. Because
I can't we couldn't sell our stuff direct to folks.
We had to put it through the three tier Nuxtual
kind of four tiered system America.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
I'm very familiar I know you are with with with
the Rednanck Country Club. Yeah, so it was one of
those things that we realized, wow.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
We can't, we can't compete. I mean, your price point
right off the bat, just because of taxes, your price
point is going to be four six dollars more on
the shelf than something else. And then not to mention
the fact that we're little. So when I was buying molasses,
I wasn't buying you know, millions of gallons. And when
I was buying yeast or bottles for instance. I mean,
(06:18):
if if you're buying, if you have a big contract
and you're buying a million bottles, you get them for
next to nothing. When you're forced to buy a truckload,
you're paying you know, three four, five times what the
big guys are planned.
Speaker 5 (06:29):
So it was just it was it was eye opening
to say.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
The least, from whom did you buy your sugar?
Speaker 4 (06:36):
We bought I don't even know the name of the
company anymore. I want to say we went through kind
of a middleman. International Molasses, I believe, is who we used,
and they were initially just a food company, but we
convinced them to We had we had looked at a
distillery down in South Texas, but they were only doing
a lower grade molasses that had a lot of sulfur
(06:59):
in it. So when you make products from that without
actually treating the molasses, you end up a real like
skunky kind of tasting product because it's got the sulfur
in there.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
So we were interesting books. That is true about my
best friend uncle Jerry. Jerry McGill has a company called
Liquid Assets and they are a distributor and he is
known online as doctor Drinks. He does the drinks for
some of the major restaurant companies in the country and
he will create a pina colada, for instance, just for them,
(07:32):
but he imports. He imports. What is the stuff that
goes into margarita wine ave? And he'll talk about you know,
he'll lay out three different things and have me taste it,
and you know, what do you think? And I can
tell that I don't like I don't like item number one,
(07:52):
but I don't know why I don't have It's like
I know what music I like and what I don't,
but I don't have the music theory to understand why
I don't like it. I can I don't like it,
but I know I don't like it intuitively, but I
don't know why. And he'll say, well, it's skunky because
of this, or it's just that's this. What do they
do to the molasses that kind of finishes it, that
(08:12):
makes it clean and not so old? I'm sorry? Yeah,
hold tight. I could talk to you about this all day.
I love these stories. It's cleans it clings key, It's
Bunber Girl and the Boy. I like like a Berry's show. Ye,
we'mon throwing Little Andrew's sisters in. There's some sweet little
(08:35):
old lady out there listening right now. She's a widow.
She's sitting in the she might you know what she
might have taken over the lazy boy that her husband
sat in for years. You walk into enough old people's
homes you find that the old man has to I mean,
he's got the king chair and she got some little cloth,
you know, kind of comfortable chair, but it ain't his.
(08:58):
And sometimes when he goes, she says, you know, I'm
not it make sitting his share. This is comfortable. Yeah,
there's some sweet little old lady out there. It's a
weirdo woman listening to our show, my favorite kind of listener,
and she says, dog, I knew I like that, Mike.
They're playing The Andrews Sisters Harold. Harold's been dead for
(09:18):
ten years, but she's thinking how nice it would be
to tell Harold and Andrews Sisters were playing. And remember
that time we went to the Sock Coffin and they
played that and we danced, and I swear I was
afraid he was going to get me home late because
it's a carburetor or something something wrong with his engine.
I couldn't remember. But we broke down on the side
of the road. But that guy was so nice and
picked us up and brought us home. And my dad
never knew and I never got in trouble. Kelly. What
(09:40):
was the name of your room again?
Speaker 4 (09:43):
It was rum?
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Oh you didn't hire a consultant for that name.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
No, we, shockingly we did not. We were not marketing
people at the time.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
And I don't know, I don't know if we're a
lot better.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
At it now. But what are you doing now.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
We're actually retired?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
And was the intention to make this rum? I mean,
was this was a financial thing. This wasn't the hobby thing.
You intended to make a go of this?
Speaker 6 (10:11):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
My husband kept his job. My husband the chemical engineers
undergraduate degree. He did keep his job because the room
company surely wasn't paying all the bills. But no, it
was it was to to grow something to sell it.
And we all in the buildings, the property, everything outright.
And a funny thing yesterday when you were talking about
the sugar and mentioned me and everything, I called a
(10:33):
few times, but then I couldn't because we were actually
in a meeting with some folks that are buying all
of our equipment.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So and is there intention to move the equipment or
to run the distillery there?
Speaker 4 (10:44):
No, the equipment's going to be moving, so it's actually
going to Central America.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Oh well, is uh do you still a buccaneer bar?
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Well, the bar was really the tasting room portion of
the distillery, so so know that that closed. In order
to keep that open, I would have had to get
a mixed beverage license, and then I couldn't sell my
own We couldn't sell our own product there. Then, because
of the way the Texas liquor laws are and stuff.
Without the distillery, I couldn't keep the I couldn't keep
the buccaneerbar open without the distillery, because that's all we
(11:14):
sold there was railing products. We made rum. You mentioned agave,
and we made blue agave. That was we were the
first people in Texas to make blue agave and one
of the first in the country to make blue agave.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
And what makes blue agave blue agave?
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Well, you can't call it tequila if you don't make
it in that particular region in Mexico. And since we
are clearly not in that region, we could.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Call why did you how do you know that? How
do you know that? Huh, you're a tequila fishonado? You
like the when did you become a tequila fishonado? Just
so I just roughly huh four to five months ago. Okay,
all right, so Ramon agrees with your opinion. I'm sure
(11:58):
you feel you've had a ringing indoor from Ramon on
the issue good of tequila. Okay. I have a buddy
named Morgan Weber who's gotten real big into this mescal thing.
I don't know if you follow that very much, but
that's a big thing from the hoity toity Marpha folks
who like to act like it's the Aspen of Texas.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Yeah, mes Call is a different type of agave that
it's all in the same kind of family, but you
use a different plant and then with mes Call they
smoke it. So that's why it has that Real people
that like Scotch tend to like mess Call for that
reason because it's got that kind of smoky taste in textures.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So I want to do an anatomy of an American
enterprise that government contributed to, maybe not solely, but contributed
to driving out of business, because I think you could
see this in almost every industry where we've watched Americans
exit the industry and foreign companies take over to sell
US products, so that we are becoming primarily a nation
(12:52):
of consumers, not of makers, and that bothers me on
a number of different levels. Yes, but so you're working
at Republic. Well, let's go back where were you born.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I was actually born in Michigan, basity.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Michigan, Okay. And then I got here the day after
my wedding at twenty years old. The day after my
wedding at twenty years old, and moved and moved to
the Houston area.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
And that's the same fella.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Yeah, the same guy, yep.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
And what's his name? His name is Matt and what
brought you out to Houston.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
He's a chemical engineer, So he went to Michigan Technological
University up in the up and we met when I
was in high school and he was in college at work,
and when he was interviewing, we kind of wanted to move.
I don't like cold weather, and I lived in Michigan,
so that was kind of rough, and we lived in
a small town and we really just wanted, you know,
see what's out there and something bigger. And so when
(13:44):
he was interviewing, when he was in college about to graduate,
he was kind of picking some areas and Houston was
one of them. And given the chemical industry and oil
and gas industry. He's been in the oil and gas
industry for the past twenty ish years or more. But
he just retired to just a couple months ago. And
that's why we picked Houston because it was a it
looked like a lot to do and it's I'm glad
(14:05):
we did because we're so close to so many things
and there's just a lot more opportunities.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
To And did it start in San Leon the business? Yeah? No, No,
did you first come to Sanlyon or where did you move?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
No?
Speaker 4 (14:18):
No, we lived We used to live in like clear Lake,
So we moved kind of to we first, like right
from the bat, we lived kind of el meat a
mall area back in the back in you know how
old I am, back in ninety one, so we lived
We lived on meat a mallish area in ninety one,
and then we moved to clear Lake a few years
later and had a house there and we live in
League City now. We've been in League City for twenty
(14:39):
two years.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
So like it did you did you? How long? When
did you go to work for Republic?
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Well, it was a republic It was Shapps, It was
a Julia SPP's was the name of the company then
and it was wine and beer, and that was in
ninety five. I want to see ninety five. I started
after I had finished putting myself through U of H
and everything. I was supposed to actually go to law school.
Had my major is political science, and I had done
(15:11):
a lot of pre law, and I kind of signed
up for the l set and was doing all these
things and looking into it, and then I saw how
much it was gonna cost, and I was like ouch.
And I got this job offer to sell wine. And
I had just started getting into wine and beer tasting
thanks to Wines of America, a little wine store that
we would go to because get this, they had free
(15:32):
free tastings and we were poor, poor married kids.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Was it on Shepherd?
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Yes, it was, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Used Scott Scott was the owner. Scott Scott was my
next neighbor. O.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
The girls all get pretty at closing time when you're
listening to the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Why how you doing? My libertarian friends?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Now?
Speaker 7 (15:56):
If you like me, the liquors store is your best friend.
That's why you buy your.
Speaker 8 (16:00):
Paper rolling products, your cigarettsts, your discount.
Speaker 7 (16:03):
Beverages, your money or us is big and all kinds
of things.
Speaker 8 (16:07):
I know, when me and wat Tussa drive down there,
the man always put a dog bone through the window,
foll and.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
She's so appreciative.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
You know.
Speaker 7 (16:13):
The other night, me and my friends were sitting out
here on the porch looking at TV, sitting in the recliners,
having a good time.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
And who come over here but the.
Speaker 7 (16:21):
Brazil headed lady and she had stole, shoplifted whatever you
want to call it, some moonshines.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Do y'all know what that is?
Speaker 7 (16:29):
It come in like a pickle jar something, and I
didn't know what it was for, and it smells. I
took me a big old gulf of that child. Next
thing I know, I went ass up, face down on
the concrete, throw me at the mouth, talking all out
my head. And she said, girl, you're not.
Speaker 8 (16:47):
Supposed to just guzzle it.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
You're supposed to mix it with something.
Speaker 7 (16:51):
But somebody should have told me this.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
You made an ass clown out yourself.
Speaker 8 (16:56):
I like a liquid that tastes good, a liquor that's
cold looking. It flow through my blood stream and goes
straight to my nucleus with kumberums and just make me happen.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Gonzalez, our friend, the drummer, from the Lineup Band in
Galveston is our guest. Thanks for holding on man, what
you got?
Speaker 6 (17:19):
Hey, Michael, thank you so much. I hope you're having
a good summer.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yes, like you, I was.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
I was not a camp kid, but had lots of
friends that did go and was able to study and
see what you liked about it. But they didn't like
about it, but all in all great experiences for him.
So this a few weeks back, I was asked to
be a part of a golf tournament. And this is
a it's called Camp Corral and it's Marvin Cercy who
owns Golden Corral here in Dalason. It has been supporting
(17:46):
this for many, many years, but this year he said,
really I want to do something different and instead of
giving money to the national circuit, just have you parleyed
into something bigger than Jalveson can do. And what this
does it sends kids to camp that have lost their
mom or dad service or have been injured and cannot
don't have the means to send their kids to camp.
So Camp Carroll picks up that ticket. It's about twelve
(18:07):
hundred dollars or so to send a kid to camp.
And I had a very good experience. They build lifelong friends,
like you mentioned before, and so it was an honor
to help them with this golf tournament here at the
oldest country club in Texas and Galveston. We are a
little bit behind the eight well because it's coming up
so quick, but we're going to do okay with teams,
but we could probably use a few more. And I
(18:28):
don't know if any listeners are willing to and we
even do like three hundred hunt dollars whole sponsorships, but
you know, if they want to participate, we'd love to
have it. We're looking to build this until yearly saying,
but it's going to be August fourth, Monday morning at
the Galveston Country Club.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Duly noted my friend, I hope you are doing well.
We'll see you down there soon. Let's go to Albert,
Albert eure up, sir, Hello, Michael.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
You know we talked out all this flood going over
in the Hill Country. I think Harris County is setting
us up for a similar situation with all the development
and concrete being poured over on the west side of
Harris County where the rice fields used to be. There's
no rice fields anymore. Basically to say all it is
(19:19):
is concrete, and all that's going to be is runoff,
which is basically what caused all the flooding in the
Hill country is runoff. There's no ground absorption, and seems
like our county officials don't care. I once had a
ken Fokemone went to one of the flood meetings. He
directly asked him whether they knew how much water is
(19:41):
going to be added to the bayou system, you know,
with all the concrete, and they just looked at him
like deer in the headlights.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I don't know if you saw recently the Harris County
Flood Control District, I can't remember if it was, Oh
it was, I think as the names Bob Rehack, he's
one of those guys Bob showed, Bob Rehacked Marissa Hanson,
one of these assists journalists that's out there just doing
all the digging that none of the professional journalists will do.
(20:12):
And he learned that the head of the flood control
District had sought over eight thousand dollars to go to
a conference at the Urban Land Institute. Well, they broke
down what the expense request was for it was over
two thousand dollars for a flight, Well, they found out
(20:35):
you could the flight on Southwest was one hundred and
seventy bucks. It was over two thousand dollars for rooms.
They found out the room was two ninety nine a
night because Urban Land Institute had a block, which is
what you do when you have a conference like that there.
It was all you could have gone for probably one
thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, and she asked for eight thousand. Now,
(20:58):
is that the reason we have no, not that specifically,
but it's representative of a pattern and a mindset, and
the mindset is to be wasteful with your dollars. You know,
if you ever read The Millionaire next Door, you see
the stories about people that are a millionaire and you
(21:21):
wouldn't know it because they weren't the CEO of a
major company or an inventor or a tech millionaire. They're
people who work for a living and save their money.
They do not engage in ostentatious displays of expenditure. They
don't spend money on things that they don't need. They
(21:42):
don't buy more than they need. They don't buy a hire.
They drive reasonable cars, not fancy, showy cars, and they
just don't waste money. When you waste the taxpayer's dollars,
as we're seeing in that case, then it means you're
wasting the taxpayers dollars.
Speaker 9 (22:05):
If you've ever done a bonehead thing at work, Eddie
Martini at our quarterly meetings gives out the Egghead Award
for the dumbest thing done. No matter how dumbest thing
you do, I have just outdone your dumb thing. I
turned down the audio in my ear and the vocal
(22:27):
on my mic because I wanted to call the Naedville
Little League baseball coach during the break. I got so
enthralled in that phone call and had all my levels
down that I didn't.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Even notice that we were back from break. Whereupon I
hung up the call, quite fascinated in the journey that
the Nadville Little League kids have taken, having had no
queue in my ear, because did I mention I turned
all my level down. And I pick up my phone
(23:04):
and I see a message from Hermone and I see
an email that says, are you coming back from.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Oh, Micky, go listen to this season Radio? Michael Berry.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Kelly Raylene is our guest. She founded along with her husband,
Raylene Rum, and I think it's fascinating to drill down
and get granular into the details of the rise and
fall or the organic ending of a dream, an American dream.
(23:40):
This is exactly how other American dreams are launched that
go international, whether it be Apple or McDonald's or Microsoft
or you name it. We shouldn't be putting impediments in
the way to our success while doing things that encourage
businesses born here to move abroad or that kill business
(24:02):
this born here, all right, Kelly. So you're working at
Republic Distributors and you get the bug. You you want
to have your own brand of your your own product.
Let's talk about the nuts and bolts and dollars and
cents of how that worked. Oh man, it was.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
It was hard.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
We were only in our gosh what we were in
our early to mid thirties, and we don't have kids,
and my husband's really good with finances, and myself too.
We live within our means, like really live within our
means and drive these cars and all that stuff. So
we had a decent amount of cash sitting around and
we thought, you know what, let's uh, let's make this
work for us. And so we bought some property and
(24:44):
we started a business plan and then started just working
on getting the permit state, federal.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
You bought the property in San Leon.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Uh huh, yep, do you? Oh, it's not Acres Stanleyon
he Sanley On Baycliff. Everything's done by kind of like lots,
like trailer lots. So we've got I think we have
nineteen lots or something like that. Okay, they're decent size
there twenty.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
I want to say, how did you choose that?
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Well, we needed somewhere that was unincorporated because what we
found we were looking in Keema League city places like that,
and the issue there is going to be that you know,
have state, not a state in county, but then you
also have city taxes and then the regulations there were
boodles more of them when you're looking at doing something
within the city limits. And that's why we discovered that
(25:38):
a lot of businesses put their business right outside of
a of.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
A city limit.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
And an unincorporated area, which is Sanley On Baycliff is unincorporated,
it's just it's county. And we wanted to be near
the water because we're pirates, we're into rum, we're sailors
all that kind of fun stuff, and so we wanted
to be close to the water. And then just two
blocks from the property we bought was our favorite place
in the world, which was destroyed and Hurricane Nike, which
was the family on Marina, which they affectionately referred to
(26:04):
as the Buccaneer Bar, and that was our hangout. So
we bought lamb two blocks in there. It's now the
site of a Peer six restaurant.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
So, oh, my friend Ray Briers the Pipe Yard, Inc.
He's a he buys themselves pipe all day long. I mean,
entire pipelines across multiple states. A fascinating business. I'll call
him and just ask me, tell me about his latest deal.
But he is a he gets all the deals done
at Pier six. He loves Pier six. Yeah, all right,
so's a great place.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
And that used to be the Buck that used to
be the Samley a Marina.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Oh okay. And then but you did never move there,
you just hold on to the property. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
We bought the property back in I want to see
two thousand and five, two thousand and six and started
building everything out and then got the rest of our permits.
We've got our fed permitt in six and I want
to say we've got our date permit and the lad
O six are the first of seven. And that's when we.
Speaker 5 (26:51):
Started going ahead and.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Distilling rum and then eventually we made the Blue Agave spirits.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
And vodka and whiskey to put this in and all
the while we just.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
Saved up along the way.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, when you say saved up along the way.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
We would buy equipment as we as we could afford it.
And you know, the first thing was the still, and
we did take out a loan. We took up a
loan for equipment. And then when we finally were able
to get the laws changed to allow us to drink
our own product on site, sample and serve cocktails and
sell bottles there, we went ahead and really hit the
bullet and we built the building next door to the factory,
(27:26):
which was the Buccaneer Bar, and for that we had
some many of our own to finance that, but we
needed a loan for that, so we did take out
a loan for that, and then over the course of
the next few years we just buckled down and I
did never pay myself and we paid off the loans
pretty quick within a few years.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Well that's usually the case, isn't it the entrepreneurial that's
what my husband had, have a job. It's exactly that
is exactly right. People, don't people have this idea when
you show up and you look around and you multiply
how many people about what you're spending. Oh, they're getting rich.
Most businesses are if at best, they are staying afloat.
And you find out that it took twenty years to
(28:05):
save up the amount of money to open the door.
There is a spouse that is still working, they've cashed
in their retirement. It's all on the table. So when
you write that whimsical review because somebody was having a
bad day or you were having a bad day and
want to be a critic, what that's doing to somebody.
It's for somebody that's never everybody should own a small
(28:25):
business because it really gives you a whole new perspective
on life and what it's like as an experience there.
So then when did you close shop?
Speaker 4 (28:36):
We closed in February of this year, so just recently,
I mean I've still had some operations going on, possibly
in the late February early March, as far as just
kind of closing out some more inventory, and then we
just kind of had a free for all. It was
a lot of locals and stuff and a regular customers,
everything off the walls and furnish, you know, all that
kind of fun stuff. A lot of people wanted specific things.
(28:58):
So that went on probably through through March.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
And what is the next phase for you?
Speaker 4 (29:04):
You know, we're just kind of we have a lot
of ideas and my husband is a master of spreadsheets.
He's got spreadsheets and all sorts of crazy stuff that
he's going to do and this, that and the other.
But we're really just kind of taking a little moment too,
because I was usually working sometimes you know, seventy hours
a week, usually fifty sixty easily, and he had his
(29:24):
real job, you know, in the in the oil and
gas world, and then he did a lot of work
for our business too, come down on Saturdays and helped
bartend and he did all the heated the crazy stuff,
the taxes and tabc ttv irs. So it was it
was a lot of work.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Just the compliance portion. I used a lawyer named al
Van Huff and he does he represents specs, so he's
forgotten more about the liquor industry than I'll ever know
it's It was amazing to me when we started michael
Berry moonshine, and our idea was, moon shine is five
percent what vodka is I don't know. The number was
(30:03):
very but if we could find the power of our brand,
So if we could, if we could develop a following
of moonshine, we could pivot to vodka, which is just
multiple washes of moonshine, which is a much more popular category.
So if we could make it in moonshine, we could
kill it in vodka. And so that was the plan.
(30:24):
But we outsourced our production to a facility that didn't
mind the shop and it exploded and almost killed one
of my best friends.
Speaker 6 (30:32):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
I lost the stomach for it, and he didn't want
me to this day, he wishes we'd get back into it.
And it burned ninety five percent of his body. But
he loved it. He lived it. He was the face
of our brand. And I said, Darren Whitakerser's saying, and
I said, no, Darren, I talk on the radios what
I do. I want no part of that ever again.
And he was there sampling some new flavors. But it's
(30:56):
just one of those things to get that call and
rush to the hospital and meet my buddy, and he
you can't go in and see him, and he's all
burned up. And all the regulatory all the restrictions, the
comptroll or the all of the nonsense that you have,
it's a wonder anybody stays in business. Kelly ray Leane,
You're wonderful. Thanks for being with us and sharing your story.
(31:18):
Thank you.
It's that time time, time, time, luck and load. Michael
Verie Show is on the air. Fat, drunk and stupid
is no way to go through life.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Stuck. I'm shaking the dust of this crummy little town
off my feet and I'm gonna see the.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
World all my friend.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hello, old frig gass water type.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
That is a Yes, we believe it is by I'm
going steady, nice French kiss. So everybody does that. Yeah,
But Daddy.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Says, I'm the best daddys A careful man. There's the
beverage there.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Everybody down. We gotta what on the telescope, sir? What
the wide five world of sports that are going on? Tipsy?
(01:13):
Yesterday we were discussing sugar prices vis a vis corn prices,
and that one of the factors that drove Coca Cola,
the largest purchaser of sugar in the world at one point,
to abandon the cane sugar that made it so delicious
(01:34):
to which we had grown accustom our entire lives. When
they switched to corn syrup decades later, we all pined
for the good old days of cane sugar, and that
what had occasioned that was that sugar prices had risen
so high for a number of different reasons that they're
(01:57):
higher here than anywhere else in the world, which is
why some food manufacturers have moved operations outside the United States.
Because if your greatest product, your greatest input is sugar,
and you pay more for it here than elsewhere, at
some point the economies of scale make sense to move
(02:20):
operations where labor is cheaper, regulations are fewer, taxation is lower,
and oh, by the way, the product that you are
finishing off for your end consumable costs a lot less.
It's almost a no brainer. We're driving businesses out of
the United States. I received an email from a fellow
(02:41):
who said, you need to talk to Kelly ray Lean.
I don't know if I'm pronouncing her last name correctly.
She had a rum distillery in San Leon and she
had called in yesterday, but we were in the middle
of our conversation with Terry and we didn't get to
talk to her. We asked her to call back today
and Kelly is on the line. Kelly, first of all,
how do you pronounce your last name?
Speaker 5 (03:04):
Yeah, you were right, It's Raylen.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Okay, so tell me about your rum distillery.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
We started the room distillery in two thousand and five.
My husband Matt and I we did it just because
we're we're kind of into pirates.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
We still are.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
I came from the wine and spirits industry. We worked
for distributorship for ten years. I'm a wine sammier, and
we saw that there wasn't a lot of there was
a good rum made in the United States. And then
I had kind of seen what had happened with craft
beer because I used to sell it back in the
day when you couldn't sell a craft beer, and the
next thing, everybody wanted them. And we thought that I
(03:43):
used to.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Work for Republic Public Coverage.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Now it's our NBC.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Yeah, they're the two big ones here.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
So yeah, So we had this great idea while drinking
bad room one day that we're.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
Going to make American made room.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Why isn't there American made room because we grow sugarcane,
you know, right here Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Gulf Coast. And
we thought, geez, that makes sense, but why isn't anybody
doing that? And we found out the main reason has
to do with the rum subsidy that goes two RUMs
made from the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, and
we're like, ah, there's a tax cover over. And that
(04:20):
was why there's really at the time, back in the
early two thousands, there really weren't any rum companies here
in the United States anymore. It it all shifted to those
two islands, those couple of islands because there's a there's
a big tax advantage.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
So they're playing pull on, hold on, Kelly. This is
one of those things that people don't know. And so
you think, well, what if I were to want to
buy an American made role. Let's say I'm in a
pro American mood. I've bought my American made furniture from mac.
I want to buy my American made rum. You know,
(04:55):
Americans just don't make any room anymore. And people don't
realize how tax policy and subsidies and governmental intervention drive
things like that. It's not that there aren't people willing
to do it. There isn't the expertise, there isn't the product.
It is that governmental intervention drove the American maker out
(05:16):
of that market, and you would never know it. It's
one of those hidden it's one of those hidden awful
things where government MUCKs everything up. Okay, but you said,
you know what, what the heck, we're going to do
it anyway.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Well, yeah, Well we were a bit naive because at
the time we maybe didn't quite understand the ramifications of
the tax cover over and it amounts to about four
to six dollars per bottle once it goes through. Because
I can't we couldn't sell our stuff direct to folks.
We had to put it through the three tier Nuxtual
kind of four tiered system America.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
I'm very familiar I know you are with with with
the Rednanck Country Club. Yeah, so it was one of
those things that we realized, wow.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
We can't, we can't compete. I mean, your price point
right off the bat, just because of taxes, your price
point is going to be four six dollars more on
the shelf than something else. And then not to mention
the fact that we're little. So when I was buying molasses,
I wasn't buying you know, millions of gallons. And when
I was buying yeast or bottles for instance. I mean,
(06:18):
if if you're buying, if you have a big contract
and you're buying a million bottles, you get them for
next to nothing. When you're forced to buy a truckload,
you're paying you know, three four, five times what the
big guys are planned.
Speaker 5 (06:29):
So it was just it was it was eye opening
to say.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
The least, from whom did you buy your sugar?
Speaker 4 (06:36):
We bought I don't even know the name of the
company anymore. I want to say we went through kind
of a middleman. International Molasses, I believe, is who we used,
and they were initially just a food company, but we
convinced them to We had we had looked at a
distillery down in South Texas, but they were only doing
a lower grade molasses that had a lot of sulfur
(06:59):
in it. So when you make products from that without
actually treating the molasses, you end up a real like
skunky kind of tasting product because it's got the sulfur
in there.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
So we were interesting books. That is true about my
best friend uncle Jerry. Jerry McGill has a company called
Liquid Assets and they are a distributor and he is
known online as doctor Drinks. He does the drinks for
some of the major restaurant companies in the country and
he will create a pina colada, for instance, just for them,
(07:32):
but he imports. He imports. What is the stuff that
goes into margarita wine ave? And he'll talk about you know,
he'll lay out three different things and have me taste it,
and you know, what do you think? And I can
tell that I don't like I don't like item number one,
(07:52):
but I don't know why I don't have It's like
I know what music I like and what I don't,
but I don't have the music theory to understand why
I don't like it. I can I don't like it,
but I know I don't like it intuitively, but I
don't know why. And he'll say, well, it's skunky because
of this, or it's just that's this. What do they
do to the molasses that kind of finishes it, that
(08:12):
makes it clean and not so old? I'm sorry? Yeah,
hold tight. I could talk to you about this all day.
I love these stories. It's cleans it clings key, It's
Bunber Girl and the Boy. I like like a Berry's show. Ye,
we'mon throwing Little Andrew's sisters in. There's some sweet little
(08:35):
old lady out there listening right now. She's a widow.
She's sitting in the she might you know what she
might have taken over the lazy boy that her husband
sat in for years. You walk into enough old people's
homes you find that the old man has to I mean,
he's got the king chair and she got some little cloth,
you know, kind of comfortable chair, but it ain't his.
(08:58):
And sometimes when he goes, she says, you know, I'm
not it make sitting his share. This is comfortable. Yeah,
there's some sweet little old lady out there. It's a
weirdo woman listening to our show, my favorite kind of listener,
and she says, dog, I knew I like that, Mike.
They're playing The Andrews Sisters Harold. Harold's been dead for
(09:18):
ten years, but she's thinking how nice it would be
to tell Harold and Andrews Sisters were playing. And remember
that time we went to the Sock Coffin and they
played that and we danced, and I swear I was
afraid he was going to get me home late because
it's a carburetor or something something wrong with his engine.
I couldn't remember. But we broke down on the side
of the road. But that guy was so nice and
picked us up and brought us home. And my dad
never knew and I never got in trouble. Kelly. What
(09:40):
was the name of your room again?
Speaker 4 (09:43):
It was rum?
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Oh you didn't hire a consultant for that name.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
No, we, shockingly we did not. We were not marketing
people at the time.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
And I don't know, I don't know if we're a
lot better.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
At it now. But what are you doing now.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
We're actually retired?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
And was the intention to make this rum? I mean,
was this was a financial thing. This wasn't the hobby thing.
You intended to make a go of this?
Speaker 6 (10:11):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
My husband kept his job. My husband the chemical engineers
undergraduate degree. He did keep his job because the room
company surely wasn't paying all the bills. But no, it
was it was to to grow something to sell it.
And we all in the buildings, the property, everything outright.
And a funny thing yesterday when you were talking about
the sugar and mentioned me and everything, I called a
(10:33):
few times, but then I couldn't because we were actually
in a meeting with some folks that are buying all
of our equipment.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So and is there intention to move the equipment or
to run the distillery there?
Speaker 4 (10:44):
No, the equipment's going to be moving, so it's actually
going to Central America.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Oh well, is uh do you still a buccaneer bar?
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Well, the bar was really the tasting room portion of
the distillery, so so know that that closed. In order
to keep that open, I would have had to get
a mixed beverage license, and then I couldn't sell my
own We couldn't sell our own product there. Then, because
of the way the Texas liquor laws are and stuff.
Without the distillery, I couldn't keep the I couldn't keep
the buccaneerbar open without the distillery, because that's all we
(11:14):
sold there was railing products. We made rum. You mentioned agave,
and we made blue agave. That was we were the
first people in Texas to make blue agave and one
of the first in the country to make blue agave.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
And what makes blue agave blue agave?
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Well, you can't call it tequila if you don't make
it in that particular region in Mexico. And since we
are clearly not in that region, we could.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Call why did you how do you know that? How
do you know that? Huh, you're a tequila fishonado? You
like the when did you become a tequila fishonado? Just
so I just roughly huh four to five months ago. Okay,
all right, so Ramon agrees with your opinion. I'm sure
(11:58):
you feel you've had a ringing indoor from Ramon on
the issue good of tequila. Okay. I have a buddy
named Morgan Weber who's gotten real big into this mescal thing.
I don't know if you follow that very much, but
that's a big thing from the hoity toity Marpha folks
who like to act like it's the Aspen of Texas.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Yeah, mes Call is a different type of agave that
it's all in the same kind of family, but you
use a different plant and then with mes Call they
smoke it. So that's why it has that Real people
that like Scotch tend to like mess Call for that
reason because it's got that kind of smoky taste in textures.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So I want to do an anatomy of an American
enterprise that government contributed to, maybe not solely, but contributed
to driving out of business, because I think you could
see this in almost every industry where we've watched Americans
exit the industry and foreign companies take over to sell
US products, so that we are becoming primarily a nation
(12:52):
of consumers, not of makers, and that bothers me on
a number of different levels. Yes, but so you're working
at Republic. Well, let's go back where were you born.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I was actually born in Michigan, basity.
Speaker 5 (13:03):
Michigan, Okay. And then I got here the day after
my wedding at twenty years old. The day after my
wedding at twenty years old, and moved and moved to
the Houston area.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
And that's the same fella.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Yeah, the same guy, yep.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
And what's his name? His name is Matt and what
brought you out to Houston.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
He's a chemical engineer, So he went to Michigan Technological
University up in the up and we met when I
was in high school and he was in college at work,
and when he was interviewing, we kind of wanted to move.
I don't like cold weather, and I lived in Michigan,
so that was kind of rough, and we lived in
a small town and we really just wanted, you know,
see what's out there and something bigger. And so when
(13:44):
he was interviewing, when he was in college about to graduate,
he was kind of picking some areas and Houston was
one of them. And given the chemical industry and oil
and gas industry. He's been in the oil and gas
industry for the past twenty ish years or more. But
he just retired to just a couple months ago. And
that's why we picked Houston because it was a it
looked like a lot to do and it's I'm glad
(14:05):
we did because we're so close to so many things
and there's just a lot more opportunities.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
To And did it start in San Leon the business? Yeah? No, No,
did you first come to Sanlyon or where did you move?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
No?
Speaker 4 (14:18):
No, we lived We used to live in like clear Lake,
So we moved kind of to we first, like right
from the bat, we lived kind of el meat a
mall area back in the back in you know how
old I am, back in ninety one, so we lived
We lived on meat a mallish area in ninety one,
and then we moved to clear Lake a few years
later and had a house there and we live in
League City now. We've been in League City for twenty
(14:39):
two years.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
So like it did you did you? How long? When
did you go to work for Republic?
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Well, it was a republic It was Shapps, It was
a Julia SPP's was the name of the company then
and it was wine and beer, and that was in
ninety five. I want to see ninety five. I started
after I had finished putting myself through U of H
and everything. I was supposed to actually go to law school.
Had my major is political science, and I had done
(15:11):
a lot of pre law, and I kind of signed
up for the l set and was doing all these
things and looking into it, and then I saw how
much it was gonna cost, and I was like ouch.
And I got this job offer to sell wine. And
I had just started getting into wine and beer tasting
thanks to Wines of America, a little wine store that
we would go to because get this, they had free
(15:32):
free tastings and we were poor, poor married kids.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Was it on Shepherd?
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Yes, it was, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Used Scott Scott was the owner. Scott Scott was my
next neighbor. O.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
The girls all get pretty at closing time when you're
listening to the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Why how you doing? My libertarian friends?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Now?
Speaker 7 (15:56):
If you like me, the liquors store is your best friend.
That's why you buy your.
Speaker 8 (16:00):
Paper rolling products, your cigarettsts, your discount.
Speaker 7 (16:03):
Beverages, your money or us is big and all kinds
of things.
Speaker 8 (16:07):
I know, when me and wat Tussa drive down there,
the man always put a dog bone through the window,
foll and.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
She's so appreciative.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
You know.
Speaker 7 (16:13):
The other night, me and my friends were sitting out
here on the porch looking at TV, sitting in the recliners,
having a good time.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
And who come over here but the.
Speaker 7 (16:21):
Brazil headed lady and she had stole, shoplifted whatever you
want to call it, some moonshines.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Do y'all know what that is?
Speaker 7 (16:29):
It come in like a pickle jar something, and I
didn't know what it was for, and it smells. I
took me a big old gulf of that child. Next
thing I know, I went ass up, face down on
the concrete, throw me at the mouth, talking all out
my head. And she said, girl, you're not.
Speaker 8 (16:47):
Supposed to just guzzle it.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
You're supposed to mix it with something.
Speaker 7 (16:51):
But somebody should have told me this.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
You made an ass clown out yourself.
Speaker 8 (16:56):
I like a liquid that tastes good, a liquor that's
cold looking. It flow through my blood stream and goes
straight to my nucleus with kumberums and just make me happen.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Gonzalez, our friend, the drummer, from the Lineup Band in
Galveston is our guest. Thanks for holding on man, what
you got?
Speaker 6 (17:19):
Hey, Michael, thank you so much. I hope you're having
a good summer.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yes, like you, I was.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
I was not a camp kid, but had lots of
friends that did go and was able to study and
see what you liked about it. But they didn't like
about it, but all in all great experiences for him.
So this a few weeks back, I was asked to
be a part of a golf tournament. And this is
a it's called Camp Corral and it's Marvin Cercy who
owns Golden Corral here in Dalason. It has been supporting
(17:46):
this for many, many years, but this year he said,
really I want to do something different and instead of
giving money to the national circuit, just have you parleyed
into something bigger than Jalveson can do. And what this
does it sends kids to camp that have lost their
mom or dad service or have been injured and cannot
don't have the means to send their kids to camp.
So Camp Carroll picks up that ticket. It's about twelve
(18:07):
hundred dollars or so to send a kid to camp.
And I had a very good experience. They build lifelong friends,
like you mentioned before, and so it was an honor
to help them with this golf tournament here at the
oldest country club in Texas and Galveston. We are a
little bit behind the eight well because it's coming up
so quick, but we're going to do okay with teams,
but we could probably use a few more. And I
(18:28):
don't know if any listeners are willing to and we
even do like three hundred hunt dollars whole sponsorships, but
you know, if they want to participate, we'd love to
have it. We're looking to build this until yearly saying,
but it's going to be August fourth, Monday morning at
the Galveston Country Club.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Duly noted my friend, I hope you are doing well.
We'll see you down there soon. Let's go to Albert,
Albert eure up, sir, Hello, Michael.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
You know we talked out all this flood going over
in the Hill Country. I think Harris County is setting
us up for a similar situation with all the development
and concrete being poured over on the west side of
Harris County where the rice fields used to be. There's
no rice fields anymore. Basically to say all it is
(19:19):
is concrete, and all that's going to be is runoff,
which is basically what caused all the flooding in the
Hill country is runoff. There's no ground absorption, and seems
like our county officials don't care. I once had a
ken Fokemone went to one of the flood meetings. He
directly asked him whether they knew how much water is
(19:41):
going to be added to the bayou system, you know,
with all the concrete, and they just looked at him
like deer in the headlights.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I don't know if you saw recently the Harris County
Flood Control District, I can't remember if it was, Oh
it was, I think as the names Bob Rehack, he's
one of those guys Bob showed, Bob Rehacked Marissa Hanson,
one of these assists journalists that's out there just doing
all the digging that none of the professional journalists will do.
(20:12):
And he learned that the head of the flood control
District had sought over eight thousand dollars to go to
a conference at the Urban Land Institute. Well, they broke
down what the expense request was for it was over
two thousand dollars for a flight, Well, they found out
(20:35):
you could the flight on Southwest was one hundred and
seventy bucks. It was over two thousand dollars for rooms.
They found out the room was two ninety nine a
night because Urban Land Institute had a block, which is
what you do when you have a conference like that there.
It was all you could have gone for probably one
thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, and she asked for eight thousand. Now,
(20:58):
is that the reason we have no, not that specifically,
but it's representative of a pattern and a mindset, and
the mindset is to be wasteful with your dollars. You know,
if you ever read The Millionaire next Door, you see
the stories about people that are a millionaire and you
(21:21):
wouldn't know it because they weren't the CEO of a
major company or an inventor or a tech millionaire. They're
people who work for a living and save their money.
They do not engage in ostentatious displays of expenditure. They
don't spend money on things that they don't need. They
(21:42):
don't buy more than they need. They don't buy a hire.
They drive reasonable cars, not fancy, showy cars, and they
just don't waste money. When you waste the taxpayer's dollars,
as we're seeing in that case, then it means you're
wasting the taxpayers dollars.
Speaker 9 (22:05):
If you've ever done a bonehead thing at work, Eddie
Martini at our quarterly meetings gives out the Egghead Award
for the dumbest thing done. No matter how dumbest thing
you do, I have just outdone your dumb thing. I
turned down the audio in my ear and the vocal
(22:27):
on my mic because I wanted to call the Naedville
Little League baseball coach during the break. I got so
enthralled in that phone call and had all my levels
down that I didn't.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Even notice that we were back from break. Whereupon I
hung up the call, quite fascinated in the journey that
the Nadville Little League kids have taken, having had no
queue in my ear, because did I mention I turned
all my level down. And I pick up my phone
(23:04):
and I see a message from Hermone and I see
an email that says, are you coming back from.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Oh, Micky, go listen to this season Radio? Michael Berry.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Kelly Raylene is our guest. She founded along with her husband,
Raylene Rum, and I think it's fascinating to drill down
and get granular into the details of the rise and
fall or the organic ending of a dream, an American dream.
(23:40):
This is exactly how other American dreams are launched that
go international, whether it be Apple or McDonald's or Microsoft
or you name it. We shouldn't be putting impediments in
the way to our success while doing things that encourage
businesses born here to move abroad or that kill business
(24:02):
this born here, all right, Kelly. So you're working at
Republic Distributors and you get the bug. You you want
to have your own brand of your your own product.
Let's talk about the nuts and bolts and dollars and
cents of how that worked. Oh man, it was.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
It was hard.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
We were only in our gosh what we were in
our early to mid thirties, and we don't have kids,
and my husband's really good with finances, and myself too.
We live within our means, like really live within our
means and drive these cars and all that stuff. So
we had a decent amount of cash sitting around and
we thought, you know what, let's uh, let's make this
work for us. And so we bought some property and
(24:44):
we started a business plan and then started just working
on getting the permit state, federal.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
You bought the property in San Leon.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Uh huh, yep, do you? Oh, it's not Acres Stanleyon
he Sanley On Baycliff. Everything's done by kind of like lots,
like trailer lots. So we've got I think we have
nineteen lots or something like that. Okay, they're decent size
there twenty.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
I want to say, how did you choose that?
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Well, we needed somewhere that was unincorporated because what we
found we were looking in Keema League city places like that,
and the issue there is going to be that you know,
have state, not a state in county, but then you
also have city taxes and then the regulations there were
boodles more of them when you're looking at doing something
within the city limits. And that's why we discovered that
(25:38):
a lot of businesses put their business right outside of
a of.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
A city limit.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
And an unincorporated area, which is Sanley On Baycliff is unincorporated,
it's just it's county. And we wanted to be near
the water because we're pirates, we're into rum, we're sailors
all that kind of fun stuff, and so we wanted
to be close to the water. And then just two
blocks from the property we bought was our favorite place
in the world, which was destroyed and Hurricane Nike, which
was the family on Marina, which they affectionately referred to
(26:04):
as the Buccaneer Bar, and that was our hangout. So
we bought lamb two blocks in there. It's now the
site of a Peer six restaurant.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
So, oh, my friend Ray Briers the Pipe Yard, Inc.
He's a he buys themselves pipe all day long. I mean,
entire pipelines across multiple states. A fascinating business. I'll call
him and just ask me, tell me about his latest deal.
But he is a he gets all the deals done
at Pier six. He loves Pier six. Yeah, all right,
so's a great place.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
And that used to be the Buck that used to
be the Samley a Marina.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Oh okay. And then but you did never move there,
you just hold on to the property. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
We bought the property back in I want to see
two thousand and five, two thousand and six and started
building everything out and then got the rest of our permits.
We've got our fed permitt in six and I want
to say we've got our date permit and the lad
O six are the first of seven. And that's when we.
Speaker 5 (26:51):
Started going ahead and.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Distilling rum and then eventually we made the Blue Agave spirits.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
And vodka and whiskey to put this in and all
the while we just.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
Saved up along the way.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, when you say saved up along the way.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
We would buy equipment as we as we could afford it.
And you know, the first thing was the still, and
we did take out a loan. We took up a
loan for equipment. And then when we finally were able
to get the laws changed to allow us to drink
our own product on site, sample and serve cocktails and
sell bottles there, we went ahead and really hit the
bullet and we built the building next door to the factory,
(27:26):
which was the Buccaneer Bar, and for that we had
some many of our own to finance that, but we
needed a loan for that, so we did take out
a loan for that, and then over the course of
the next few years we just buckled down and I
did never pay myself and we paid off the loans
pretty quick within a few years.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Well that's usually the case, isn't it the entrepreneurial that's
what my husband had, have a job. It's exactly that
is exactly right. People, don't people have this idea when
you show up and you look around and you multiply
how many people about what you're spending. Oh, they're getting rich.
Most businesses are if at best, they are staying afloat.
And you find out that it took twenty years to
(28:05):
save up the amount of money to open the door.
There is a spouse that is still working, they've cashed
in their retirement. It's all on the table. So when
you write that whimsical review because somebody was having a
bad day or you were having a bad day and
want to be a critic, what that's doing to somebody.
It's for somebody that's never everybody should own a small
(28:25):
business because it really gives you a whole new perspective
on life and what it's like as an experience there.
So then when did you close shop?
Speaker 4 (28:36):
We closed in February of this year, so just recently,
I mean I've still had some operations going on, possibly
in the late February early March, as far as just
kind of closing out some more inventory, and then we
just kind of had a free for all. It was
a lot of locals and stuff and a regular customers,
everything off the walls and furnish, you know, all that
kind of fun stuff. A lot of people wanted specific things.
(28:58):
So that went on probably through through March.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
And what is the next phase for you?
Speaker 4 (29:04):
You know, we're just kind of we have a lot
of ideas and my husband is a master of spreadsheets.
He's got spreadsheets and all sorts of crazy stuff that
he's going to do and this, that and the other.
But we're really just kind of taking a little moment too,
because I was usually working sometimes you know, seventy hours
a week, usually fifty sixty easily, and he had his
(29:24):
real job, you know, in the in the oil and
gas world, and then he did a lot of work
for our business too, come down on Saturdays and helped
bartend and he did all the heated the crazy stuff,
the taxes and tabc ttv irs. So it was it
was a lot of work.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Just the compliance portion. I used a lawyer named al
Van Huff and he does he represents specs, so he's
forgotten more about the liquor industry than I'll ever know
it's It was amazing to me when we started michael
Berry moonshine, and our idea was, moon shine is five
percent what vodka is I don't know. The number was
(30:03):
very but if we could find the power of our brand,
So if we could, if we could develop a following
of moonshine, we could pivot to vodka, which is just
multiple washes of moonshine, which is a much more popular category.
So if we could make it in moonshine, we could
kill it in vodka. And so that was the plan.
(30:24):
But we outsourced our production to a facility that didn't
mind the shop and it exploded and almost killed one
of my best friends.
Speaker 6 (30:32):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
I lost the stomach for it, and he didn't want
me to this day, he wishes we'd get back into it.
And it burned ninety five percent of his body. But
he loved it. He lived it. He was the face
of our brand. And I said, Darren Whitakerser's saying, and
I said, no, Darren, I talk on the radios what
I do. I want no part of that ever again.
And he was there sampling some new flavors. But it's
(30:56):
just one of those things to get that call and
rush to the hospital and meet my buddy, and he
you can't go in and see him, and he's all
burned up. And all the regulatory all the restrictions, the
comptroll or the all of the nonsense that you have,
it's a wonder anybody stays in business. Kelly ray Leane,
You're wonderful. Thanks for being with us and sharing your story.
(31:18):
Thank you.
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