James Zackler, co-founder of DIRTY VIRGO, joins us to talk about building a non-alcoholic cocktail brand for the mainstream moderator — not the sober-curious wellness crowd. Drawing on his background at Pernod Ricard, Anheuser-Busch, and Blue Bottle, James shares why he and his co-founder bet on non-alc cocktails over non-alc beer, how they self-distributed by hand-delivering product to bars and clubs, and what it&#x27;s taken to scale from 30 on-premise accounts to over 90 retail doors. We also get into fundraising on proof rather than vision, and why he believes big beverage companies are structurally too slow to win this category themselves.

Dirty Virgo: Non-Alc Cocktails, the Mainstream Moderator, and Why Big Beverage Can't Move Fast Enough

Healthy Hustle Spotlight

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Healthy Hustle Spotlight

## Transcript

It's a Healthy Hustle Spotlight, where we elevate the voices of industry leaders, innovative companies, and unique investors in the healthy CPG space. I'm your host, Ariana Korman.

Today, I'm speaking with James Ackler. James is the co-founder of Dirty Virgo, a non-alc cocktail brand built specifically for the mainstream moderator. Dirty Virgo offers low-calorie, low-sugar, non-alcoholic versions of your favorite cocktails, enhanced with electrolytes. After a successful proof-of-concept run, the brand is expanding deeper into New York City and across National Grocery in the Northeast.

Prior to Dirty Virgo, James spent nearly a decade across some of the world's leading beverage companies, including Anheuser-Busch, ZX Ventures, Pernod Ricard, and Blue Bottle Coffee, with earlier experience in consulting. Hey James, thanks so much for joining us today. James Ackler Yeah, absolutely. Happy to be here. So let's start from the very beginning. Can you tell us what was happening in your life and in the market when the idea for Dirty Virgo started to take shape?

James Ackler Yeah, so I guess I was at Pernod Ricard on a special projects assignment. I had just finished up my stint there, building the e-commerce function and sort of pulling it into business. I always thought special projects is where CMOs went to die, but that was also for me too. And ultimately, it gave me a moment to think about my future. Like, what did I want to do next? Where did I want to go? And I'd always had this idea of wanting to be in entrepreneurship in some capacity.

And I didn't really ever have that idea. And then finally, John, my partner, he and I had met at Anheuser-Busch. We had launched a number of products together. He came to me with the idea of a non-alc cocktail brand for high-energy nightlife. And I was like, man, if not now, when? And it really felt like a great opportunity. We sort of kicked around the idea for a while.

And it felt like with my future, with being engaged and thinking about babies, I can't certainly start a company when a baby finally arrives. I got to do that beforehand. So we jumped into it. We started thinking about what's going on in the space. At that time, Athletic had taken off. And there was over a billion dollars in value in the last handful of years just for non-alc beer. Macro brands were huge into it. Bud had just signed Dwayne Wade for Bud Zero.

And then there's Heineken with F1. But one of the studies that we looked at that we were really excited by was that despite non-alc beer being the number three, that was what was really driving growth. They were the number three most requested format for non-alc. The number one most requested format for non-alc was actually non-alc cocktails. And so we were really excited by that. We were sort of curious, like, why would that be happening? And so we looked at the space. We thought, like, oh, this is really like a lot...

Dirty Virgo: Non-Alc Cocktails, the Mainstream Moderator, and Why Big Beverage Can't Move Fast Enough

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.

Dirty Virgo: Non-Alc Cocktails, the Mainstream Moderator, and Why Big Beverage Can't Move Fast Enough

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.