Washington Business Summer 2017 | Washington Business | Page 33

washington business 8:10 a.m. 10 a.m. 9:30 a.m. indicates where everyone should be and their assigned tasks, including Justin. She scolds him for not following the grid. A full month of planning is complete and it isn’t quite 10 a.m. workforce solutions, layers of laws and paperwork Like other small-business owners, the Stiefels face unique challenges in daily operations and at the regulatory level. On the workforce front, as bottling expanded, they needed additional weekday staff to work the odd hours of 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jennifer came up with a creative solution: The Bus Stop Moms. “I thought, ‘who can I get to work that shift?’ Then, I thought, ‘what about all the moms at the school bus stop?’” she said, introducing Emily, Julie and Shelby, a few of the Bus Stop Moms. The flex schedule works for them, and if they want an important project done right, Jennifer said, “it goes to the moms.” Being a maker and purveyor of alcoholic beverages also presents unique hurdles, and a lot of paperwork. “On one hand, we have the laws of physics that can’t be changed and on the other hand we have all these laws created by man at the local, state, federal and regional level,” Justin said. “The laws are creations that tell people what they can and cannot do, and those impositions add costs. In our case, because we deal with alcohol, we have two additional layers of taxation. Our federal tax return is due with a check every two weeks.” “Everybody is an underdog, no matter what they’re doing. You just have to figure out how you’re going to attack the market.” — Justin Stiefel, owner, Heritage Distilling Company ‘every spirit has a story’ The competition in the spirits market is stiff, but it doesn’t concern the Stiefels. “Everybody is an underdog, no matter what they’re doing,” Justin said. “You just have to figure out how you’re going to attack the market.” One example is the company’s Brown Sugar Bourbon. “No one makes anything like it,” Justin said. It was a concept based on complex market research, right? Wrong. “We have a great team. We sit around and look at what others are doing and say, ‘we’re not going to do that; we’re going to do the opposite of that,’” Justin said. “We’re all using the same ingredients: water, yeast and sugar. All the molecules are the same, we just put them through different processes to manipulate them in different ways to make them stand apart from the competition. Every spirit has a story.” The success is evident in the hardware the company has picked up since its inception. Heritage Distilling Company is the most awarded of the roughly 700 craft distilleries in North America, receiving a record 14 medals in 2014, 19 medals in 2015 and 24 medals in 2016 from the American Distilling Institute, several for “Best in Show.” summer 2017 33