GARY: Next on Start Up, we head to Chicago, Illinois, to meet up with Fiona and Faith, the founders of Nouvie, a wine alternative that captures the essence of celebration without the alcohol.

All of this and more is next on Start Up.

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♪ GARY: My name is Gary Bredow.

I'm a documentary filmmaker and an entrepreneur.

As the country faces significant challenges, small business owners are navigating their way through a changing global marketplace while continuing to push the economy forward.

We've set out for our 14th consecutive season, talking to small business owners about how they started, how things are going, and what matters most to entrepreneurs in modern-day America.

This is Start Up.

♪ GARY: Wine has been a central part of human culture for millennia.

Celebrated for its complex flavors and its role in social gatherings around the globe.

However, the process of removing alcohol while preserving the soul of the wine is a more recent innovation, evolving from basic thermal evaporation to sophisticated vacuum distillation.

As global lifestyles shift toward wellness and mindful consumption, de-alcoholized wine has transformed from a simple alternative into a refined craft, allowing drinkers to enjoy the rituals and tannins of a fine vintage without the effects of alcohol.

Today, I'm heading to Chicago, Illinois, to meet up with Fiona and Faith, the founders of Nouvie.

I'm excited to learn more about the evolution of the brand and offer a toast to Fiona and Faith for turning their dream into a reality.

What is Nouvie?

FIONA: Nouvie is a de-alcoholized wine brand that I started with my sister-in-law, Faith.

GARY: De-alcoholized.

FIONA: Yeah.

GARY: I've never heard that term before.

Usually it's non-alcoholic.

FIONA: We use that term because Nouvie starts as full-strength wine, and then it goes through a de-alcoholization process where we remove the alcohol through like a vacuum distillation process.

So it's de-alcoholized 'cause it's starting as wine, but it's also non-alcoholic because it is under the 0.5% ABV.

But some products are non-alcoholic but not de-alcoholized.

GARY: Gotcha.

FIONA: So some products that might look like a wine, a non-alc wine, actually are more like juice-based or tea-based.

But ours starts as full-strength wine.

GARY: What did you do before this, I guess?

FIONA: Yeah, so, you might be surprised to know that I didn't grow up in this country.

GARY: Okay.

FIONA: [laughs] My accent and name kind of gives it away.

GARY: Yeah.

FIONA: But I'm from Dublin in Ireland.

I originally came as an exchange law student, actually.

So my background is then I became a lawyer, and I was working as an immigration attorney and a law firm owner for close to twenty years.

GARY: Trying to connect the dots from being a practicing attorney to making wine.

FIONA: Yeah, I know, it's a weird line to draw.

About 6 years ago, I-- almost by accident, I went on a juice cleanse and I read a book that kind of totally changed my perspective on alcohol.

GARY: Sure.

FIONA: It's called This Naked Mind, and it just-- the author kind of breaks down just like a lot of myths that we're told about alcohol.

And after reading that book, I was like, kind of reading that book, I was like, "I don't really want to drink."

A while later, I was turning 40 and was like, "Okay, let's see if we can celebrate this."

But I was like, "Is there-- is a non-alc wine a thing?"

There was a lot of talk of non-alc beer.

Then we found-- again, back to the lawyer researcher in me, I was like, "Let me see what's online."

And I found some online marketplaces that are like non-alcoholic, like, kind of online stores.

GARY: Sure.

FIONA: So I'm like, "let me just order, like, every single option and I'll just find the one that I love."

GARY: How were they?

FIONA: Um... You know, what I say is I'm thankful that we had that experience, because I don't think that we would have started Nouvie.

If we- if I just found my go-to one, that would be my go-to one.

I wouldn't be here.

GARY: That would be it.

We would not be sitting here right now.

FIONA: No, I'd be working on my immigration lawyer work, right?

And so, ones that we thought were okay, and there were a few, they were very high in sugar.

You know, 9, 10, 11.

GARY: Okay, so now you're getting a big calorie bomb.

FIONA: Right.

Like, honestly, I'd rather just have a glass of wine.

GARY: Right, exactly.

FIONA: I mean, so we were just like, "Huh."

And then it kind of just hit me, like, "This is-- like, I bet there's other people that would want this."

GARY: There's an opportunity here.

FIONA: Yeah.

I just said, "Let's try and do this."

And if we're gonna do it, though, we're gonna do it really well.

And we're gonna make sure that no one's pouring ours down the sink, that people are, like, really getting a product that they are excited to drink.

And I think we bring very different skills to the table, Faith and I, which-- complementary and different skill sets.

And then there's a lot of things that we can just do really well together.

GARY: Sure.

FIONA: So we felt like together we could do this.

GARY: Was there a period of hesitation before jumping headfirst into this company?

FAITH: There definitely was, like, a period of hesitation of getting into it.

But then my background was in marketing and branding.

One of the things I saw was a lot of the labels, or the way that the messaging was, didn't feel inclusive.

You know, either a lot of the messaging was very, very anti-alcohol.

And for me, we didn't necessarily want it to be anti-alcohol because, for both of us, we still drink.

And for me-- GARY: Sure.

FAITH: I love great wine.

I love great craft beer.

And I thought that where Nouvie could be is more of an extension of the conversation around alcohol.

And so I got really excited after I started to taste different types of NA.

And I was like, "OK, there is.

There is this space."

GARY: In the younger generation, it seems like I've seen countless reports on how alcohol consumption has dropped almost like 50% or something like that.

Like, the younger people aren't really drinking much.

FIONA: Yeah.

GARY: And mocktail culture has really sort of exploded over the next couple of years.

So could this be the future in a way?

FIONA: Oh, absolutely.

I don't even-- I don't think there's-- GARY: Yeah.

FIONA: I think it is.

Like, I think we already can see that it is.

And I feel like a lot of people do talk about the younger generation, but I'm in my mid-40s, and the moms that we're friends with, you know, it's all the way up.

When I went low-alc, a lot of people were like, "Did you hit rock bottom?

Like, if you want to talk."

And, you know, there was... GARY: Right, yeah.

FIONA: ...a little bit of stigma.

GARY: "What happened?"

"Did you get a DUI?

Or..." FIONA: Yeah, yeah, a little bit of stigma and stuff.

And I was like, "I don't know that we all need this big reason to not be drinking alcohol."

It was like, I just kind of want to drink less, you know?

GARY: Right.

FIONA: Like, you know, when I'm out at an event, which I was recently, I'm all dressed up and I'm drinking a non-alc beer because that's the only option in, like, almost-- a ballgame with a non-alc beer.

I'm like, "Oh, this is where Nouvie should be."

GARY: What is step one?

Okay, now you've made the decision, which, in a lot of-- in a lot of cases is the hardest part... FIONA: Yeah.

GARY: ...to say, "I-- I see the problem, I think there's an opportunity, I'm really gonna do this."

FIONA: Mm-hmm.

GARY: Where do you even begin?

FIONA: I love this question because, honestly, the very first thing that we did was like, "What are we gonna name the company?"

GARY: A name first?

FIONA: Right, name.

Very first, name.

GARY: Okay.

FIONA: Very first thing was the name.

And now, here's where the lawyer in me comes in.

I was like, "It has to be a name that we can trademark."

And so we-- we had like a list of different words in French, and my, uh, high school French was, like, very handy.

Uh... [laughs] Madame Sudry, my French teacher, will be thrilled.

Nouveau was a word that was there, right?

So, that's "new" in French.

GARY: New.

Yeah.

FIONA: And then "vie", which is life.

And so we had all the list, and we were like-- GARY: New life.

FIONA: And then we were like, "Oh, new," and we're-- "What if we kind of push them together?"

And I know from other work and legal work that if you have created a name, it can be easier to trademark it versus a word that everybody's already using.

GARY: Sure.

FIONA: So we-- we were like, "Nouvie."

And so, our trademark just got approved recently.

So it took probably four years or so for it to get approved because we had preliminary approval, but we didn't yet have products in market.

GARY: Now you need a product.

FIONA: Yeah, the name is not gonna-- GARY: Like, okay, now we need something to support all this effort.

FIONA: Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So what are we gonna put the name on?

GARY: Where do you start?

FIONA: So, the research, I was like, "Let me see."

My search ultimately led me to Spain.

So, to a company that de-alcs, uh, wine.

So, went to Spain, and, um, I guess it's important to say, like, I'm not a sommelier, you know, which is obviously a wine, like, expert.

GARY: Sure.

FIONA: I am not-- that's not me, I don't necessarily have, like, a massive, like, wine education.

You taste the wine that's been, like, completely dealcoholized, so it's 0.0.

So then you're starting essentially with that as, like, a base palate.

GARY: Got it.

FIONA: And then you start to see, okay, a couple of, like, ingredients that we can add in.

Like, we wanted it to smell like wine.

GARY: Sure.

FIONA: You're adding back in the wine aromas and you're getting that kind of wine smell.

And then we add in a couple of other ingredients, and then they sent us back the samples that we had done, like, a little while later, and we all tasted them here and had some people, like, some friends and stuff taste them.

GARY: Sure.

We thought we were actually going to launch with the rosé, but actually we were like, "Oh, the white is better."

We still wanted to kind of tweak the rosé a bit.

We're like, "We're not going to go back to Spain."

That wasn't really the plan or the budget.

It was like, "Let's just launch with one."

And so the white ended up being the one that we went with.

GARY: Now you have, uh, one white wine that you're ready to run with.

FIONA: Yeah.

GARY: And that's your MVP.

FIONA: Yeah.

Yeah.

GARY: Or minimal viable product, right?

And you're going to take-- How do you-- where do you start with that?

FIONA: We initially were going to launch with cans, but we had a production issue with the cans.

So we had the cans produced and then they went off for testing and they basically-- there was like a contaminant in the cans... GARY: Oh no.

FIONA: ...where the lines hadn't been cleaned.

So we bas-- we could not run with that order.

Then we're like, "Okay, we're going to go to bottles."

And then we're like, "Right, well, we need a whole new label because the labels that we designed were for the cans."

GARY: Right.

FIONA: And then the serving size is different.

And back to the math, I'm like, "Who knew that I'd be doing, like, percentage maths of what's the DV, the daily recommended value of carbohydrates, and how many is in this, and what's the serving size?"

And so, yeah, so-- so hence the trademark getting extended.

We thought we would be launch-- you know, that we would have launched earlier, but we didn't.

But I actually think all this stuff kind of happened for a reason, because the bottles have been so well received, and they're in settings that the cans probably wouldn't have worked in.

And we've since launched cans, but I think to start with, and the fact that our brand is, like, sophisticated and, you know, like, a premium offering, the bottle was definitely the way to go.

GARY: What are the biggest challenges introducing a new product into market in such a crowded space?

FAITH: So, it's really interesting, because we talk a little bit about who our competitors are, and it's not necessarily all the time of another NA wine.

It's wine.

GARY: Right.

Challenging.

FIONA: And so, we-- a lot of times, we have to really educate, you know, our-- our buyer, whether that is a food and beverage director or even if it's someone in retail, or even our direct-to-consumer.

Our PR person would say, you know, "Liquid to lips.

Like, that's ex-- what you need to do, is get them to try it."

Because for us, as soon as people try it, a lot of times they're like, "This sells itself."

GARY: Done.

♪ ♪ GARY: What did you initially think?

What was on your mind when you first heard about what they were doing with this?

REBECCA: It made me think of Christmas time when I was a kid and... GARY: Oh, sparkling.

REBECCA: ...you know, the sparkling wine.

I was like, "Oh, it's going to be..." You know.

And so I was very shocked when I was like, "Oh.

This is-- this is not Welch's grape or whatever."

GARY: Welch's sparkling grape juice.

REBECCA: Yeah, yeah.

GARY: Yeah.

REBECCA: Not at all.

I'm like, this is very luxury.

This is very enhanced and just feels just-- and tastes just like regular wine.

GARY: Socially, when you're sitting around and drinking this, is-- is there any-- any difference?

I mean, with having real wine versus this?

REBECCA: Not really, especially they did such a good job with the labeling and the way that it's presented.

GARY: Yeah.

REBECCA: And depending on different events, you bring the bottle out, or the cans are a really good option when you're on the beach or you're going over for a cookout, and you can just bring it anywhere.

You don't have to worry about the glass bottle necessarily.

GARY: Yep.

REBECCA: And they both taste phenomenal.

It's very fancy looking.

It's very-- it seems luxury, like I said.

GARY: Yeah.

How are you selling it?

Now that you have a wine, you've got to sell it, right?

FIONA: Yeah.

I think maybe being an outsider kind of has its benefits.

We didn't necessarily-- you don't know, in a way, what you're getting into.

So we were like, "We'll just knock on doors with our wine and have people taste it."

GARY: Yeah.

FIONA: And we're like, "Oh, actually, this is-- people love it."

So we have probably close to 40 wholesale accounts already.

We have been-- GARY: You literally did that?

You went door to door with the wine, sampling?

FIONA: Yes.

Yes.

GARY: Amazing.

FIONA: We set up meetings ahead of time, but we were emailing, like, "Hey, we have a non-alc wine, it tastes like wine, no added sugar, people love it, can we come in and do a tasting?"

And they're like, "Uh, sure."

Our strategy primarily on, like, the on-premise, which is the bars, restaurants, hotels.

GARY: Yeah.

FIONA: Um, private clubs in Chicago, um, country clubs.

Like, having people taste it, having people try it, um, is kind of our number one thing.

♪ ♪ GARY: Candidly, what was your first impression?

PETE: I was a little skeptical, kind of, to bring it on board at first because I wasn't sure how we were going to be able to make it work with our new menu.

But we tried some different things.

And everything that we tried worked out excellent.

It's a wonderful product.

We are so happy that we could get them on board and-- and we're selling like crazy.

GARY: Let's talk about this sort of new wave in recent years of NA culture starting to kind of explode, including mocktail menus and everything.

What have you seen here?

PETE: In the past, you know, non-alcoholic drinks were just-- you'd have one on the menu.

GARY: Kind of like you had to.

PETE: Right.

GARY: Yeah.

PETE: And now we're seeing an explosion of people asking for non-alcoholic cocktails, looking for something that is flavorful, refreshing.

And Nouvie really pro-- you know, produces all of that for us.

GARY: Yeah.

PETE: And what we love about Nouvie is that it's locally owned.

It's a female- owned company.

GARY: Yeah.

PETE: Which is great.

GARY: Yep.

PETE: Fiona and Faith have been wonderful, and we are just so lucky that we were able to get them on board.

GARY: Where does the company sit right now?

Anything that you're really proud of, milestones that you've reached so far?

FAITH: We got into, you know, pretty much all of the top hotel brands in the world.

GARY: Incredible.

FAITH: Without having a distributor.

You know, one of the very first, you know, who've taken us on, you know, is Hyatt.

They've been, you know, pretty incredible.

But we got to do some really awesome things.

Like, we, you know, the Cubs cheered with Nouvie for their clinch last year.

GARY: Amazing.

FAITH: And, Nouvie partnered with a professional athlete in IndyCar as well, too.

And a lot of these partnerships and these accomplishments have been from people who truly believe in the product.

They absolutely love the product.

They taste it and they're like, "This-- this changes the whole conversation."

♪ ♪ FAITH: So we are going to the Dearborn.

It is a fine-dining restaurant downtown.

It's a really prestigious restaurant downtown, and they have a really, really prestigious wine menu as well, too.

So it was pretty cool that they were one of the first restaurants to really take us on.

GARY: Did you see them as kind of like the holy grail?

If we get the Dearborn, we can-- obviously you could use that to sell into other places, right?

Know what I mean?

FAITH: Yeah.

And so many international people go because it is owned by an Irish family.

And so there's a lot of international patrons who come in.

And so we really wanted to get in there so that we could really kind of hit a global kind of consumer base as well, too.

GARY: Why is Chicago the perfect place for this company, in your opinion?

FAITH: The startup community here in Chicago is so-- just supportive.

And then also it is like just a food city.

It's like this food hub.

They want to be, you know, a lot of times, the first when it comes to, you know, technology or when it comes to new concepts within beverage and food.

So, you know, I think this is a great place to be.

And, you know, we love just-- Chicago.

It's been our home.

I think the heart of, you know... GARY: Perfect spot.

FAITH: ...who we are.

Yeah, perfect spot for us.

♪ ♪ GARY: What does it take to get a new product into a place like the Dearborn?

SARAH: A little bit.

GARY: Yeah.

I can imagine.

SARAH: Our brand is very respected.

In order to get a product in here that's new, especially something that's coming new on the scene of what-- what guests are starting to ask for, definitely needs to taste fantastic and also be made in a quality way.

GARY: How is it being received from the time that you first put it on till now?

SARAH: Wonderfully.

GARY: Really?

SARAH: People actually taste it, "Are you sure this is non-alcoholic?"

GARY: That's what my reaction was, yeah.

SARAH: So we get that, and I think that's the goal.

You want this product to be really on brand with a-- with a-- with a proper glass of wine.

GARY: Yeah.

SARAH: So honestly, the feedback has been really wonderful from guests who are looking for that alternative.

GARY: Sure.

SARAH: And sometimes for guests who just-- they want to stay and continue the conversation, but maybe they don't want to have more alcohol.

GARY: Now, as a restaurateur, and speaking of the sort of downturn in alcohol consumption, how is that affecting, like, a business like this?

SARAH: Well, it definitely takes check averages lower, which affects your whole bottom line, as you would expect.

When you can provide a really nice alternative to an alcoholic beverage that is still made with great quality and great ingredients, guests will pay for that.

It's not that they're shying away from spending the money.

GARY: Yeah.

SARAH: It's just that they want an alternative product that's gonna provide them the experience that they would be willing to pay for with an alcoholic product.

♪ GARY: Did you guys self-fund all of this, or have you-- did you take on any investors early on?

FIONA: So we have, and just through family.

So it's ourselves and then family loan.

GARY: But no traditional, like, loans or anything?

FIONA: No, no.

GARY: Okay.

FIONA: And so we really-- we've done a lot of the work ourselves.

Because of that, we've been able to keep costs down as much as possible, and then, you know, really just kind of put the money into the inventory that we have.

GARY: What has been the thing that surprised you most in terms of challenges?

Like, was there something that you assumed would have been much easier than it actually was?

FIONA: Yeah, a lot of it, to be honest.

GARY: Yeah.

FIONA: I would say probably production delays were probably the biggest challenge.

GARY: Production delays.

Okay.

FIONA: Yeah, we thought we'd be launched earlier.

Spain is amazing, but the sense of urgency is a little different.

GARY: Okay.

FIONA: It's, I think-- GARY: Slower paced.

FIONA: Yeah, "mañana por la mañana", you know, it's a little different.

So I would say the production delays were just probably a hurdle that was a little unexpected.

GARY: So where does that inventory come when it gets shipped over here?

Where does it sit?

FIONA: We have a warehouse that we-- GARY: You do have a warehouse?

Okay.

FIONA: Yeah, we have a warehouse.

It's a wine warehouse that we're in, but we're actually hopefully going to be moving to a different facility that can do some additional services for us on the fulfillment end of things.

GARY: Oh, cool.

FIONA: So, again, we're kind of-- GARY: Do some shipping and packaging.

FIONA: Exactly.

And we're kind of just thinking about how do we take this to the next level?

What does the next stage of this look like in terms of the logistical piece of it?

GARY: Yeah.

FIONA: So yeah, that's kind of an exciting milestone as well.

GARY: Where would you like to see this company in the next three to five years, let's say?

FAITH: We want it to be one of the most recognizable non-alcoholic wine brands in the world.

GARY: In the world.

FAITH: That's where we really want it to be.

We also want to be relevant when it comes to culture.

We want to be in spaces that really, um, you know, just shift the conversation around alcohol, whether that's in museums or... GARY: Sure.

FAITH: ...special events, music venues.

You know, fine dining, you know, restaurants with chefs.

And then on the hospitality side, we want to be able to, you know, be in places that really want great wine on their menu.

GARY: Yeah.

Any advice to anybody out there that wants to, you know, wants to start their own product?

FIONA: I would say find your, like, community of people that can help you.

There's a lot of great online communities and also, like, in-real-life communities.

Startup CPG is an incredible community.

It started as a Slack group.

There's like 35,000 members.

GARY: Oh, wow.

FIONA: There's all these different channels.

And a quick story on that.

We're doing a festival.

We're doing Faces of Fitness Festival, which is like, they call it the Lollapalooza of wellness festivals.

GARY: Awesome.

FIONA: It's like Simone Biles is headlining.

There's workout classes, Peloton instructors, and we're the non-alc, with the exclusive NA wine.

GARY: Amazing.

Congrats.

FIONA: We'll do an NA mimosa it's gonna be so fun.

Thank you.

First up, I was like, "How do we keep that many cans cold at an outdoor festival?"

Like, we don't have industrial fridges or anything.

I was like, "How do we keep that many cans cold?"

So I'm like, "Start Up CPG, hey, we have this event," you know, and people were like giving kind of tips about what they thought we should do.

And then someone was like, "Those barrel coolers," you know, recommending those.

And then I posted in the Chicago group and this girl was like, "I actually have two in my warehouse."

And so within like a day or two of posting, I figured out what we should do and I was able to find someone that had the things that we exactly needed.

GARY: Nice.

FIONA: That's a great example.

So yeah, I would say find your community, um, and also just, like, believe in yourself.

And if you've been doing one thing, doesn't mean that that's the thing that you always have to do forever.

GARY: I love that.

FIONA: Yeah.

GARY: One of the many takeaways that I had from my time with Fiona and Faith was that, had they found a non-alcoholic wine that tasted good, Nouvie probably wouldn't exist.

And I believe this applies to nearly every great product or service that's successfully brought to market.

There's a gap, someone recognizes that gap, and then fills it.

And they did this on their own.

No outside investors or loans, just a belief between them and their families that this was worth the commitment.

And I believe that Nouvie has come along at exactly the right cultural moment because the conversation around alcohol is changing.

People are drinking less.

And maybe we're entering an era where people still want to be social, but they want the centerpiece of their gatherings to have less potential consequences.

And whether you don't drink alcohol or you supplement with non-alcoholic products, or you don't even give it much thought at all, always good to have options.

It was such an honor to have met these two amazing business owners.

And I have no doubt that Nouvie is well on its way to making it onto menus and shelves across the country.

For more information, visit our website and search episodes for Nouvie.

♪ Next time on Start Up, we head to Chicago, Illinois, to meet up with Kendra and Christine, the founders of Caviar Dream, a company that makes caviar more inclusive and approachable.

Be sure to join us next time on Start Up.

Do you want to learn more about the show?

Or maybe nominate a business?

Visit us at StartUp-usa.com and connect with us on social media.

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