Ever wondered if your website is working well for you? There are specific things that the bar and restaurant industry need to make sure their online presence in their website is doing the best that it can to help their business. Kelsey Gilbert-Kreiling has built a community and a business around designing amazing websites and teaching others to do so with the Week of the Website. She joins me to share her story as she moved through the male-dominated tech space and grew a small business that was woman-led and a force to be reckoned with.

Born with German roots, Anna and Wendelyn came up through the entertainment industry in the US, following their passions for film and music. But over the years on the road they fell in love with whiskey. In 2023 they set their sights on building a new brand and a new beverage that builds a community around whiskey and is open and accessible to all. Lodestar Whiskey was born and these ladies are full steam ahead!

Building a cidery and orchard from scratch on an Island in the Puget Sound in Washington State was a major career shift for Laura Cherry and her husband. Now in its 2nd decade, Dragon’s Head Cider has started true to its traditional english cider roots and added a taproom downtown this fall. Laura joins me to reflect on her cider journey and celebrate the community that she has built under the cider apple and perry pear blossoms.

Annually the US celebrates and recognizes the amazing achievements of women throughout history and in the present day. What started as a Day turned into a Week and finally in 1987 gained the designation of an entire Month - Women’s History Month. This March we jump into the humble beginnings of this idea and how it grew into an international movement. For better or worse.

DC Brau has been a gold standard in craft beer in DC for more than a decade. During that time Paulette Palacios has moved up through the beer scene, learning all the ins and outs of beer buying and building a network within the industry. Today they head up the taproom for the DC Brau Brewery and are instrumental in supporting diversity and equality initiatives in the beer industry across the region. Paulette sits down with me to share how they got here, walk me through a day in the life, and announce what’s on the horizon.

Monique Allen has spent the last several decades in landscaping, building a thriving business, supporting a team, and recrafting their approach to the industry through the three pillars of planet, people, and profit. From her entrepreneurial experience she has also developed a program called lifescaping to help others build better lives and better businesses in the trades. She joins me today to share her journey in another male-dominated industry and share how she has grown and learned to be a better leader and now a coach for others.

Amberlee and her husband landed in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia for college and have now made their mark by launching the first cidery in town. Together they built a local network, organically grew a business during a pandemic, and now have a thriving space for cidermaking, the arts, and the community. She has built the vision that is Sagebird Ciderworks and they are crushing it. Literally and figuratively.

A new year, and a new name for this podcast. I’m changing it up, cleaning it up, getting organized. As I jumped into a rebrand for this podcast, it brought me back to so many points of time along my cider business journey. So here’s why I felt I needed to shake things up and give this podcast a fresh start. My stories and interviews will be the same and my mission and goals have not changed. Women and the Drinks Biz Podcast now offers even more inspiration, motivation, and support. Change is a good thing!

I talk a lot about the village in the cider world, and in beer, and in spirits. Michelle Mandro is building a network and a community to support and highlight the work and successes of women across the wine industry. Wine Country Women has built a network, printed beautiful books featuring women in wine and spearheads scholarships and mentorships to support members at every level. We talk about what it’s like to be the first to build a network like this and what it takes and why it’s important to bring women together.

Building your organic marketing ecosystem. Say what?? Entrepreneurship takes a lot of work - building a product or service, constructing a business around it, securing sales, and marketing. So much marketing. And the website still reigns supreme as the gateway to your audience online. It must showcase your company culture and purpose while also hitting the right keywords and points. It’s a lot and that’s what Lauren Gaggioli is here to talk about. How do we optimize SEO while also focusing on purpose-driven goals. And yes, you should be doing both. And we’re gonna walk you through it.

Sarah Real is a self-taught home brewer out of Brooklyn who, along with her husband, took the giant leap and founded a commercial brewery in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. She loves fermenting traditional beers but also highlighting the ingredients and pushing the flavor profile to construct new and interesting brews. She joins me to share her brewing journey and what it took to set up a taproom for Hot Plate Brewing Company and a community of their own.

In 2017 when we were a couple years into South City Ciderworks we launched an effort to find a new location for a taproom/tasting room. We looked up the peninsula and down the peninsula. We looked at our own location and down in South Bay. So many places and so many letdowns. I’m stepping back in time to share our tale of shopping around for a taproom for our cidery and all the reasons it never worked out. I’d like to think it shines some light on where we were going with the brand. And in the end with COVID, it all might have been a blessing in disguise. But we’ll never know!

She’s an activist, a survivor, an entrepreneur, and a mentor. Virginia Lacayo has been through a lot growing up in Nicaragua and is here to share her story and how she has learned to be her own advocate and fight for the rights of other women and minorities. Anyone can be an activist but sometimes you just need a little help to get that change started. Luckily there are people like Virginia who can guide the way.

It’s all about the Power of One! Katy Dang of Cider Sister’s Cider in Idaho has stayed true to the traditional cidermaking processes of old and as a one woman business has built a brand and a following around her cider. Her path took her from one coast to another and across the pond and back. Join us as she shares what she has learned along the way and how she keeps it real and keeps it simple with her aged dry cider.

Mae Littlefield had a couple of different businesses under her belt before she set out with her husband to develop and build a beautiful distillery in Southern Maine complete with a lovely lineup of craft spirits foraged from all parts of the state and showcasing the amazing smells and tastes of this unique New England region. But it has not come without its challenges.

Johnny Appleseed is an American folk hero, myth, and legend. But he was also an actual man. On this episode we go back to the time of John Chapman to relive his story and learn about his contribution to cider and the American apples culture. It’s a far cry from the happy go lucky Disney version but like with most legends, there are always seeds of truth.

We’re heading to Michigan to talk with Molly Stepanski, co-owner of Presque Isle Farm and Cider. She and her husband have learned by trial and error what works and what doesn’t on a farm and have created a successful vegetable farm and small batch hard cider brand as well, complete with a brick and mortar tasting room in town. Join us as Molly shares her cider journey and how she has conquered obstacles all along the way to create something amazing.

Every year COVID aside the Central Coast of California cider community comes together to host an amazing event so aptly named: the Central Coast Cider Festival. The event showcases ciders from all over the state, poured by the producers themselves. There’s music, and food trucks, and did I mention tons of cider? For this episode I sit down with the planning team to share all about why it started, why these festivals are important, and what it’s like putting one on. We’re heading behind the scenes of a cider event!

Entrepreneurship can be something learned from family or passed down through generations. Or it comes to us as special opportunities to build something new and watch it grow. As a serial entrepreneur, Carina Ramirez Cahan has been building companies over the years to meet different needs. First it was in the area of biofuel and now she is setting her sights on disrupting the bra industry with an innovative wireless option. This New Yorker joins me to talk about what it takes to dig deep, lean on your courage, and keep learning and growing as strategies for success.

Inventory tracking, production scheduling, ingredient buying, vendor relations, task organization. All the critical yet not very sexy responsibilities that go into getting that craft drink in your hand. My former co-worker Alisha Blue joins me as we share a day in the life of production management. When everything is going right until it all goes very wrong. What needs to happen and how you adapt in the constantly shifting world of alcohol production.