The "Love & Money" Framework
What Most Brands Get Wrong by Focusing Only on Relationships (and Why You Should Focus on Being Relevant with Distributors and Hospitality Venues Instead).
The MAFFEO DRINKS Guides is a bi-weekly email newsletter. With a systematized approach, it helps drink builders grow their brand from 10 to 10k cases. Each edition solves one clear challenge for subscribers. Some editions are free, and others are paid. Sign up here:
Dear Drinks Builder,
The drinks industry is a relationship business. We know it, we live it, and that’s why it attracts so many new entrants daily.
At the same time, we all know it is also an issue in our industry. The informality of our business makes us think that everyone is a friend of a friend.
We tend to overestimate the power of relationships. Who hasn’t had a bad experience with getting paid by a friend of a friend? Who hasn’t been waiting for a reply from that friend of a friend with a bar?
Relationships are essential, but they hit a glass ceiling. You must support them with clear expectations between parties.
We all love our industry, but we are also here to make a profit
If bar owners listed all their friends' brands, they would need three back bars and ten drinks menus.
The same applies to distributors. They can’t list all their friends’ brands in their portfolios. They could, but many of those cases would collect dust in their warehouse. Not good.
It's a simple equation. Distributors hate dusty cases at least as much as bar owners hate dusty bottles.
They take space ⇒ money.
They hold capital ⇒ money.
Relationships are essential, but they are often not enough to move bottles.
Relevance = Movement.
Getting a smile, a handshake, and a promise to sell more of your brand in person is easy. Relevance is what they say and do about your brand when you leave the room.
Whether you leave their bar or have a quarterly review meeting with your distributor, when you return to the airport, you understand how relevant your brand is in that market.
You're a dusty bottle if you are irrelevant to distributors and customers.
The moment your brand is born, it needs to move.
No matter how much you love it. It’s all about getting rid of it: the distillery, the importer, the distributor, etc.
Relevance makes you move to the following link in the value chain. You can collect dust on a distillery floor, in a distributor’s warehouse, restaurant cellar, or in a home bar.
• Only the links in the chain you are relevant for helping your brand rotate.
• The more it rotates, the more people want to work with you.
I discussed this topic in another Mini-Guide:
You can be relevant at three levels. To win in the market, aim to be relevant at all three levels, but at least be relevant at two.