able — amount of free time on his hands . With no experience or connections in the alcoholic beverage industry , it might have seemed as if he was starting at square one , but he had learned some valuable lessons from two previous unsuccessful forays into entrepreneurism .
“ A lot of people have an idea , then figuring out how to actually do it feels daunting so you give up and move on ,” Lewis said . “ I just made up my mind that I ‘ m going to get something on the shelf . I ’ m going to figure out how to get my Transfusion flavor developed , how to get it made and how to sell it , and I ’ ll figure everything else out later . That ’ s pretty much what I did .”
Over a period of five to six months in 2020 , Lewis worked with a flavor house — a commercial food and beverage laboratory — to take his homemade Transfusion recipe and create a scalable formula that tasted good and could be mass produced . He then contracted with a manufacturer to use its facility for production and canning and hired a graphic designer to create a label .
“ That was just sort of the way it happened — you just keep peeling back layers of the onion ,” he said .
Some layers were tougher than others . Because he initially couldn ’ t find a distributor , Lewis had his family home licensed by the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control ( ABC ) Authority as the headquarters of an alcohol wholesale business . That allowed him to legally store pallets of canned cocktails in the garage and sell directly to retailers .
“ There was no middleman so I could charge more for a case , but my wife and I were doing all of the driving ,” Lewis recalled .
Of course , there ’ s driving … and then there ’ s driving .
By late May 2021 , five days before Memorial Day , Fore ’ s Wisconsin producer finished canning the initial batch of Transfusions . Lewis had given samples to local golf courses , grocery chains and other stores , and there was strong interest from buyers — provided the product was in stock by the start of the three-day holiday weekend .
No big deal , he thought . I ’ ll just have the pallets shipped to Virginia overnight . Lewis called a freight shipping company and was informed it would cost about $ 5,000 to get the product to Virginia within three to four days .
So , Lewis flew to Green Bay , Wis ., rented a 26-foot box truck , drove to the production facility and loaded the pallets . He then made the 15-hour trip back to Richmond where he and his family unloaded hundreds of cases of Fore Transfusions and stacked them in the garage . The next day , Lewis and his wife delivered them to the buyers as promised .
“ That ’ s just the kind of stuff that comes up . If you want to get it done , you ’ d better be willing to do it yourself , whatever that means ,” he said . “ If we hadn ’ t done that , we wouldn ’ t have launched that weekend . Would that have been the end of the world ? Probably not , but I had given these places my word that I ’ d get them product on time .”
A chance encounter on a golf course — where else ?— led to Lewis finally securing a contract with Republic National Distributing Co . ( RNDC ) in April 2022 . He promoted the new beverage line at several large trade shows , including the PGA Show in Orlando , a beer wholesaler event in Las Vegas , and the Virginia Food and Beverage Show . He also made a mutually beneficial connection with golf personality Fat Perez ( real name Nick Stubbe ), a former collegiate golfer-turned-social
A lot of people have an idea , then figuring out how to actually do it feels daunting so you give up and move on . I just made up my mind that I ‘ m going to get something on the shelf .”
— Turner Lewis
FORE CRAFT COCKTAILS
20 V IRGINIA G OLFER | J u ly / A u g u s t 2024 vsga . org