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Women and the Drinks Biz

Jenn Root Martell, Cider Businesswoman

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Owning an alcohol business is tough! Let's talk about it! I will take you through my journey of starting South City Ciderworks in SF and delve deep into the details of creating a product, building a market, and educating consumers about cider. But it’s not just my story of being a woman in this male-dominated industry that I want to tell. You’ll hear from other ladies inside and outside the biz as well! Join me on this wild ride whether you're looking to start an alcohol business, work in th ...
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Send us a text It’s been three and a half years since I launched my first episode, deep in the COVID pandemic and at the helm of a California cider company. A lot has happened since then, I have talked to a lot of amazing people, and I have shared and learned a whole lot about being a female businesswoman in the alcohol industry. But now this podca…
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Send us a text Starting a business is tough, especially in the alcohol and hospitality industry. What’s more tough? Shutting it down. But how do you know if you even should? Tracy Gunn of Exitable says you should always have an exit strategy and an end goal. Join us as we walk through what that looks like and how she has lived it herself with her o…
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Send us a text Wendy LeBlanc cut her teeth in the tech industry in Seattle, learning data systems at Microsoft and elsewhere. But the call of cider drew her and her partner to the Black Forest of Germany to set up 1785 Cider company based out of his parent’s farmstead and orchard. She’s blazing a cider trail, slinging apples, and building a market …
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Send us a text 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 teachin…
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Send us a text Born with strong German roots, Anna and Wendelin 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 …
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Send us a text 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 jou…
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Send us a text 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 inter…
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Send us a text 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 diversi…
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Send us a text 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 li…
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Send us a text 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 t…
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Send us a text Here we are! 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. But don’t fea…
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Send us a text 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 within the wine world 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 spea…
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Send us a text 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…
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Send us a text 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 …
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Send us a text 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 ar…
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Send us a text 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 t…
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Send us a text 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 learne…
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Send us a text 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…
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Send us a text 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 a…
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Send us a text 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 u…
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Send us a text 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? If you’re nearby, che…
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Send us a text 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 s…
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Send us a text 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 unti…
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Send us a text Her cider journey has taken her from a HUGE commercial cidery in Michigan to a small production cidery and tasting room in North Carolina where they use pet nat processes and disgorging. And each experience feeds her passion for cider and the apples that make it. Becca Galvin joins me to share her wild cider ride and share how she ha…
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Send us a text Annie Delre was intrigued at an early age by human nature and why we do the things we do. She harnessed that inquisitiveness into becoming a health and wellness coach for those trying to make their lives more productive, goal-oriented, harmonious, and happy. She joins us today to share some resources that she uses to help us reduce t…
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Send us a text She has three kids under 10, she’s running one of the most successful cideries in West Virginia, she’s the Vice President of the Board of Directors for the American Cider Association and she balances it all so well. Brooke Glover shares how she built Swilled Dog Cider from the garage up and how she’s making it all work. Swilled Dog C…
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Send us a text Amy Reiley has a website, cookbook, and built a small publishing company so that she could help other independent writers get their cookbooks out to the people. She is also the leading authority in aphrodisiac gastronomy, blending chemistry and the power of persuasion into crafting the book on what you can eat to make you better in b…
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Send us a text Virginia has a thriving wine culture and tradition where Corry Craighill continues to make her mark as a winemaker. Now at Septenary Winery in Central Virginia, Corry has learned both the art and science of making wine through hands-on experiences at wineries on multiple continents. She shares her journey and advice she has for carvi…
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Send us a text This is a thing. You’ve poured your heart and soul into a business, a career, a relationship. It’s toxic, you’re emotional, you’re drained, you’re not yourself. Yet you stay with it because you think it’s worth it. You’ve invested so much. The sunk cost fallacy is absolutely a thing and here is my story of how it impacted us and our …
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Send us a text HOPS! They're required to make beer and tastes mighty nice in cider as well! Because I didn’t know most of this myself, I want to take you on a brief tour of hops - what the hell are they? Why and how they are used in beer, the history of growing them in the US, and why we liked them so much, we made a flagship cider with them for So…
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Send us a text Some people are definitely born with the sales gene. And Maggie Skinner of Revolution Brewing has seen every side of beer sales from getting small breweries off the ground and into the market, to managing the house - the whole house - to working for a distributor and their portfolio, to now managing sales for a brewery with a regiona…
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Send us a text Starting with baking, Courtney Lorenz knew she wanted to work with fermentations while also helping people lead healthy lives. This joint mission led her to kombucha and building an amazing brand and product in Northern Michigan. On this episode she shares her fermentation journey, why she is so drawn to this beverage, and how she ha…
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Send us a text When producing a beverage for public consumption it is important to know beforehand that people even want it. When you get rolling, that consumer feedback is still so important. But so is market data, category trends, and what the media is saying. Jess Lander from the SF Chronicle joins me to share her story as a wine and travel writ…
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Send us a text She’s focused her education and career on empowering women and advocating for their well-being. Now she has put her experiences into words with a new book about cultivating assertiveness and finding your voice. Cara Tuttle Bell joins me to share her personal journey and dive into why the systems are failing women in the workplace and…
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Send us a text On this episode we head to the Commonwealth of Virginia to a cidery focused on dry ciders, fresh ingredients, and unique flavors. Tegan Biun is half of the cidermaking powerhouse team over at Lost Boy Cider in Alexandria and brings her wealth of cider knowledge, experience and passion to their production processes. She shares her win…
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Send us a text The Sober Curious movement is gaining traction in this country which I am reminded of at the start of every year with all the Dry January posts. And if you need to reassess your relationship with alcohol, please, by all means. But on behalf of alcohol producers, I feel compelled to say a few words about how a neo-prohibition movement…
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Send us a text For this episode we’re headed back West, to the Central Coast of California. There, Morgan and Maggie have been building Two Broads Ciderworks - focusing on locally grown apples and wild fermented, co-fermented, single varietal, and classically blended ciders. They have bootstrapped a small business and also continue to face challeng…
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Send us a text Starting in the tech world as a programmer, Limor worked her way up to manage teams of engineers both in Israel and the US, all while also raising four children and moving between countries. She has recently redirected those skills to helping other women in the tech space as a coach and mentor. On this episode she shares her story an…
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Send us a text You’re trying to grow a market for your brand but you’re running out of time in the day? You’re in a state where you can’t sell your own products in the market and have to work with a wholesale distributor? Just interested in what it takes to sign with one? Shopping around for the perfect distribution partner would take til the end o…
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Send us a text It’s been 20 years since Meagan Bishop and I said buh bye to high school and set off on our own separate courses. She actually jumped into sales and the alcohol industry much earlier than I did so while I am still in Virginia we are sitting down to discuss her journey through golf courses, tennis lessons, winery tasting rooms, and al…
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Send us a text For this episode Jamie Barlett of PolyPay joins me to talk about the great resource that she has developed to connect small businesses with the payment processing tools that they need while also sharing her journey of building this finance company from the ground up as a female in a male dominated financial industry. It’s another exa…
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Send us a text Adelaide spent years assessing risk for an insurance company, using her math background to save money and work out inefficiencies. During COVID she got the entrepreneurship bug and changed gears entirely. Now a couple of years into building a spirits brand from scratch she shares her story - why she made the leap to the alcohol indus…
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Send us a text Laurie Gilbertson was a criminal prosecutor in New York for 10 years and then made the jump to consulting, sharing all that she had learned with other lawyers and entrepreneurs. She shares her experiences being a female in another male-dominated industry, and some tips and tricks for putting your best self forward for a sales pitch o…
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Send us a text Today I have some news to share - that South City Ciderworks is closing its doors and shutting down production permanently. This has been a painful journey over the last month and I know that it is not over yet. But through it all I have had this podcast, and I have more yet to share, assuming I don’t start feeling like a total impos…
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Send us a text Jennie Dorsey has built a career around her passion for cider and her enthusiasm is contagious. She’s been on the sales beat, she’s managed a sales team, she’s run a taproom restaurant, she’s written the rules on how to taste, analyze, and talk about cider and she joins me on this episode to talk all about it! Special Mentions: Tieto…
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Send us a text The interviews are back! I sit down with Airelle Peters of Black Mermaid Lifestyle Brand and soon to be Justified & Worthy Brewing Company to talk about making beer, drinking beer, and promoting and educating women and minorities in the industry. It’s not easy being a reservist for the military, a cicerone, a brewer, and a mother but…
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Send us a text Glass hydrometers, production hoses, rubber impellers, racking arms, butterfly valves, and stainless steel tanks. All critical to the production of cider. And all oh so easy to completely destroy. And over the years we have done our fair share of breaking stuff. Just to give you an idea of all that can and has been destroyed in the p…
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Send us a text Every bottle, can, box, tube, and paper towel in a big box grocery store is there because a lot of different voices and interests have decided it is so. And getting your craft beverage on that shelf can be a daunting task. But it’s not the only off-premise option for products. For this episode I dive into all the options we have as s…
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Send us a text The apple orchard has been in the family for five generations and that love and legacy shows through in the great cider that they make. For this episode, Andrea from Far West Cider over in Richmond, CA joins me to chat about growing up on the family farm, her journey into cider, and what they’re doing to innovate and keep things inte…
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Send us a text When I started South City Ciderworks seven years ago I wasn’t thinking about where my life would be down the road and that I might not want to be in California for the rest of it. Almost a decade later, a little girl later, a global pandemic later, and a company merger later we have packed up our life and are moving back home to the …
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