Bartesian reaches $100 million in sales

Bartesian, a company that created an at-home cocktail system, has scaled to $100 million in sales within its first three years. Ryan Close, Founder and CEO of Bartesian, discussed how he achieved this on a recent episode of Business Trends Today.

Transforming Home Cocktails

Bartesian launched in 2019 and now sells through its direct-to-consumer platform, Amazon, and major retailers. The company’s product is a countertop appliance that makes a bar-quality cocktail at home with the press of a button. The countertop appliance holds vodka, whiskey, tequila, and gin in four reservoirs, and customers drop in a capsule with the bitters and juices for one of more than 70 cocktails.

In about 20 seconds, the machine pours a mocktail, single, or double, and a drink that would probably cost $25 at a bar comes out to a couple of dollars at home, Close said. “The reason we built Bartesian wasn’t to make people drink more alcohol. It was to make people drink better cocktails, right? It was to improve the experience,” he said.

The idea for Bartesian came from Close’s years in the hotel industry, where he and a couple of engineer partners kept asking why a hotel room could offer a good cup of coffee on demand but not a good cocktail. His research pointed the same way, since data from Mintel and other research firms showed people ordering cocktails at bars and choosing beer and wine at home, where a $30 bottle of bitters or fresh pineapple juice usually wasn’t on hand.

Close pitched his idea to roughly 100 venture capitalists in San Francisco, but they all said no, wanting a commercial play aimed at hotels and stadiums instead. He believed the consumer market would scale faster and raised early money by showing investors letters of intent from retailers that would buy if Bartesian could produce the product.

Overcoming Production Challenges

Getting to a working product took three or four years in a garage and an incubator in Canada, and most early versions didn’t work. Close once stood in front of 15 or 20 executives with a prototype that wouldn’t turn on, but the thousands of cocktails he served at shows drew the same reaction every time, with people’s eyes lighting up. Most of the money Bartesian raised went toward awareness for a category that didn’t exist yet, and the company has spent tens of millions of dollars on it.

Bartesian was named to Oprah’s Favorite Things at launch and went viral on TikTok, and it stayed back-ordered for its first three years. Even so, Close estimates that only about three out of every 100 people in the United States know the brand exists.

Scaling Business Success

Manufacturers and distributors carried the working capital burden early on, since Bartesian couldn’t get bank loans as an unknown company. They were willing because the product had already essentially proved itself, and Bartesian has since taken that part of the model over. The appliance wins customers, and the capsules keep them buying, so Bartesian keeps adding new cocktails and seasonal packs. A major competitor’s later entry into the category helped too, since awareness was the company’s most difficult problem.

Customers have driven about 80% of the accessories Bartesian has launched, through emails and Facebook groups where users asked for menus, rimming sugars and salts, and garnishes. The rimming sugar and salt line is now a multi-million dollar business.