When we originally met, you were in hospitality and tending bar. I've been fascinated watching you start companies in so many different areas, whether it’s fragrance, technology, non-alcoholic cocktails. A lot of people would say these are completely different things, but there must be a way that you connect the dots?

“On the outside, it looks a little chaotic, but the through-line from chef to sommelier, mixology to food science and product development and technology and non-alcoholic cocktails is actually more cohesive than it might seem. I would probably describe my passion and my mission at the intersection of health, food, science, and hospitality.

“Even before I went to culinary school, my lens looking at the world has always been through food and drink…the science and psychology and the culture of it, not just the ingredients. That sent me on some interesting journeys, including giving up alcohol a number of years ago. This allowed me to re-examine what social drinking looks like, where it's headed, how I fit into that aspect of hospitality…this really old, important ritual, which is sharing a drink together.

“I’m more health focused than I was 15 or 20 years ago, but those tenets are still there. Even though I don't consume alcohol, I'm not anti-alcohol. I still have a huge amount of respect and allure for the wine world and the stories of wine. But where my focus is now is kind of shifting, and reimagining how we gather, how we drink, what that means for our health, what's in our glass, and how that reflects this cultural moment and our identities as they're ever changing.”

Any particular lessons that your years working in hospitality taught you that translated into starting businesses?

“Anyone who's worked in hospitality, in any capacity, and I would include even retail jobs in that…you learn things about yourself, about the world, and about people that are so powerful that they apply to any industry.

“So even though I technically left hospitality a long time ago, I have always hired and worked with people either directly in hospitality or who have hospitality experience, on purpose. They just have a way with teamwork, relating to other people, communication, stress under pressure…these attributes that are really, really hard to acquire at a desk job. You can always tell when you're working with people who have hospitality experience. It's a different breed.

“This might be an unscientific way to think about it, but the average person might have, say, 5,000 person-to-person encounters throughout their whole life. If you're in hospitality, you might have that in one week. So you have this rapid feedback loop, and there's not a lot of room for bull**** in that environment. You get right to the root of who people are, what they want, and how to make them happy or sad.

“The learning cycle is so rapid in hospitality — in sales, communication, marketing, empathy, and compassion — that you can condense a lifetime of human-to-human experience into a few months or a year.”

Non-alcoholic beverages have really exploded over the last few years. When you created your business, did you start it because you saw a gap that other NA brands were not filling?

“There's certainly some personal motivation in there…I'm not seeing what I like, I'm gonna make it. But there was also this big cultural shift that I saw playing out, that I didn't think the other brands were either realizing or responding to in the right way.

“I feel like the non-alcoholic category has had three phases. The first was the “Mocktail” phase…nobody knew what they were doing, and they would just put 12 ounces of juice in a glass with a bunch of garnishes. Not a lot of thought to it, but important. That gave way to people taking mocktails more seriously.

“Then we moved on to the “proxy” era…where if the goal of stage one was just having something available, then the goal of stage two was to mimic alcoholic options. That’s where you started seeing Seedlip and these non-alcoholic whiskeys, non-alcoholic wine, non-alcoholic margaritas…the goal was to mimic as closely as possible the look, the flavor, and the experience of drinking alcoholic drinks.

“And that was incredibly important, specifically for a certain demographic of people who were cutting down or giving up alcohol but had grown up with drinking culture and flavor profiles and these rituals. So these consumers had a very specific sense of what an adult drink is supposed to look and taste like.

“What I saw was this shift to stage three…younger consumers who didn't have that same relationship to traditional cocktails, and folks like me who had given up alcohol and didn't really feel like cosplaying. It was a lot of work for me to give up alcohol, because it was so intertwined into so many areas of my life. So it didn't feel desirable or right for me to then pretend to drink a margarita. Not to mention the taste was never that good, and they were full of sugar and calories.

“So I saw this huge movement of people giving up or cutting down on alcohol, leaving the bar, the nightclub, the party behind, and moving to run clubs and sauna parties and this fitness/wellness movement. The rituals had changed, which meant that the expectations around what's in your cup had also changed.

“And that was really the moment where I was thinking about what I would like to drink, because that’s my lifestyle now. I began to think, ‘What if drinking could actually be good for your health instead of neutral or negative?’  Instead of trying to mimic a beer, wine, or cocktail with no alcohol…what if I could reimagine what a cocktail is, what its purpose is, and what a drinking ritual looks like for this new era of wellness and fitness?

“I see this playing out more and more every day. Gyms and run clubs are really good at creating proximity, but proximity itself is not connection, and people are craving connection. You're not going to create connection during a yoga class or during a workout. It's those 15, 20, 30 minutes afterwards, where everyone is recovering and hydrating…that's when the camaraderie and connection happen.

“To have a drink for that particular moment was exciting to me. Drinks are not for demographics…they're for moments and occasions. Champagne for celebration. A cold light beer at a backyard barbecue. It's not about who it's for, it's about the moment. And so that post-fitness, social recovery moment is the one that I picked as the most important for the next five or ten years, and we hitched our wagon to it.”

Bonus Question: Is there something you would consider the most unforgettable thing you've ever tasted or smelled?

“Man, that is a tough question. I'll pick one that's relevant to Guinep…the brand is named after a fruit, the Guinep fruit, and a lot of people don't know that because I actually don't talk about it as much as I probably should.

“Being an ingredient and food and flavor guy for so long, I always considered myself someone to seek out new flavors of food, so I felt like I had a good repertoire. But I'd never heard of this fruit. Some friends in Puerto Rico introduced me to it. It's a small green fruit, looks like a little lime, kind of unassuming, grows wild all throughout the Caribbean and parts of Central America.

“I tasted it and I was like, ‘What the f*** is this? Where has this been all my life? How have I never tried it? How is this not a really popular fruit everywhere?’ It's unbelievably aromatic, a little sweet and tart…like if a lime and a lychee had a baby, and that baby was raised by a guava. And I was instantly hooked on the flavor of Guinep.

“So that was certainly a big one. I’ve got a zillion other stories like that…everything from snake blood and testicles to all kinds of weird, exotic stuff. My life has been punctuated by a series of flavor moments that I love to talk about. But I’ll pick that one as my story!”