Tito Beveridge Has the Best Job in the World
Tito Beveridge truly lives the American Dream. Fifteen years ago, he was broke with a few failed jobs behind him, but today he runs a successful business selling Tito’s Handmade Vodka around the world, and he built it completely by himself. He pioneered a path through territory that nobody had navigated before him– the microdistillery business. Recently he came by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about how he built his company. Excerpts from the interview and an audio clip appear below.
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Ron Bennington: I was actually telling this to my producer…have you ever seen this tv show called Shark Tank? I don’t think you would have gotten anybody to think you would have been able to make a run out of this.
Tito Beveridge: Yeah, I started off and I saw these boutique wineries and micro breweries, and I thought that the next thing should be a micro-distillery. And I went out and I tried to raise money a couple of times. Everybody thought I was crazy so nobody would put in for years. And I just ended up doing it on my credit cards and kind of boot strapping it from nothing.
Ron Bennington: What kept people from investing in you?
Tito Beveridge: Well first of all there weren’t any legal distilleries in Texas. Never had been in the history of Texas so they just figured you couldn’t do it.
Ron Bennington: They more or less looked at it as moonshine, right?
Tito Beveridge: Yeah, I even went to the TABC and they said yeah you can’t do it. And then I got the code and I read the code and there wasn’t anything in the code saying that you couldn’t do it. So I went back to them and they finally got somebody that had read the code, and they said “yeah, you’re right but you’ve got to get a permit from the ATF, from the Feds.” So I went to the feds, and there weren’t any little distilleries in the United States. So I had to go through all of their code. It took me a couple of years just to get legal so I could sell some. And then distribution, you know, there’s always one or two big distributers in every state and they wouldn’t take me on in the beginning.
Ron Bennington: Well the entrepreneur story is always that story of the guy who is willing to keep walking through the shit when he should have quit. There was enough reasons for you to quit, so why didn’t you?
Tito Beveridge: I’m a hammer head. Im a geophysicist and geologist by education. I’d worked in the oil and gas business. I used to roughneck before I went to college. And I got out and did all kinds of stuff. I went and worked as a seismic data processor. And then I went down to Venezuela and Columbia and I ran heliportable dynamite seismic crews. And I just, I’d get on these projects and it’s that whole oil field mentality of man, don’t call me again, just get it done.
Ron Bennington: So those kind of jobs actually helped you.
Tito Beveridge: Absolutely. I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t had that other experience. I built dynamite magazines– I was certified in explosives. When you make liquor, people don’t think about it. You do beer and wine and that’s all fun and giggles. But when you distill, you’re actually boiling flammable liquids. It’s like boiling gasoline, you know? If you don’t do something right– there’s many people have been burned up.
Ron Bennington: This is science.
Tito Beveridge: It’s the real deal. It’s like having a bulk gasoline tank terminal, except you’re trying to heat it up. You’re trying to boil it you know? And then I’d worked in the environmental business for awhile after I got out of the mortgage business. Actually I did the oil business, and then I got in the environmental business and then I got in the mortgage business and into the vodka business. My time in the environmental business, I dealt with all of these regulators. The EPA, water commission. I read a lot of code. And then after awhile you get to see that the government officials, they’re just guys doing their job, making a paycheck, they’ve got a wife and kids just like everybody else. They’re just regular people, you know? So the intimidation part kind of starts fading away and you realize they’re just trying to do their job, you’re trying to do yours.
Ron Bennington: And you have to learn that language…to make them be able to do their job. Not just, hey you figure it out for me…you had to be the guy who read through this stuff.
Tito Beveridge: Yeah, a lot of times you find out that a lot of them don’t have time to have read the code. So if you read the code, it’s a big advantage. They realize you’re not jacking around.
Ron Bennington: So when you got into this…the other part of the story that’s so funny is the fact that it’s not tequila, it’s vodka. Everybody thinks tequila in Texas but you went in another direction.
Tito Beveridge: I started making flavored vodkas for my friends for Christmas presents, and I actually teach people how to do it at titosvodka.com– how to do their own infusions at home. I started off doing a habernero infused vodka, and then I did a black cherry raspberry the next year, and then I did an orange flavored one the year after that. And then I went to the liquor store and this was back in like ‘94 and it was like, man go look at all those Stoli’s that are on the shelf – they’re not doing any volume. You’re going to be out of business before you get in the business. And I’m talking to the guy and he’s showing me all these vodkas. And he’s like, man this is a really tough category– it’s really competitive. But If you could do something really smooth that a girl could drink straight you’d probably have something. Cause a guy’d buy a girl some vodka and then he’d probably drink it to. So I’m like, well how do you make it smooth? And he’s like shit I dunno, you’re the guy who wants to get in the vodka business, you figure it out. And so here with my oil background we used to McGuyver all kinds of stuff, and I can pretty much build just about anything I can think of. So I built a little sixteen gallon still and I started brewing all different kinds of grains; wheat and rye and sorghum, malted barley, and corn, potatoes, fructose, sucrose, dextrose and I’d brew it in these little six and a half gallon kind of water jug carboys and then pour it in my sixteen gallon still and I had a little propane catfish broiler. I’d heat it up, with copper condensing coil. It was like a real moonshine rig. And I’d cook it off in that. And I took every vodka on the shelf and put them in these jars and labeled them 1-86, and I had them on the kitchen table. And my friends would try them, and we picked out the two best and I kept trying to beat them until finally no matter what bottle I’d put them in, when I put it up against the other two that we thought were the best, my friends would always pick Tito’s and that was kind of the beginning of Tito’s Handmade Vodka right there.
Ron Bennington: And we’re talking how long ago?
Tito Beveridge: That was happening about ‘94. And I ended up trying to lease a building and nobody would lease to me. I ended up buying twelve and there quarter acres out in the boonies in Austin, in Travis County, the most liberal county in Texas. And it just had mesquite trees and cedar on it, and I got a ditch witch, brought in a water line, and borrowed a friend’s temporary electric pole. And my friend’s would come out and help me build a shack. And I built a hundred and seventy five gallon still and started getting my permits you know from the state and feds. And then finally I got everything all legal and everything and then I found a little wine distributor. I was their first liquor in April of ’97, and so this is our 15th Anniversary of Tito’s Handmade Vodka right now. And I kept thinking that this was such a great idea that somebody’d put some money into it, but nobody ever would. And it’s depressing. You know? You gotta work really hard selling, trying to raise money and you don’t get any– it’s depressing.
Ron Bennington: That’s the thing about entrepreneurship, you have to be really good at so many things. You’ve got to not only have this product, but a unique product. You can’t say I made this as good as Stoli’s, you’ve got to be able to beat them to get into the market.
Tito Beveridge: And the other thing is like– I didn’t have any money. So I couldn’t — I came on the market before Grey Goose and Belvedere and Chopin… I was out before they were. So I was trying to beat Ketel One. I thought it was the best tasting, so I set out to beat them. But I didn’t have any money so I had to put it into a stock bottle, and I was dating this vegetarian girl at the time, and she made me use this recycled paper, and I had to have a cap I could throw on by hand. This copper cap that I could stick on by hand, on the bottle. I did all the little pot still on the logo, I did it in Corel Draw and I picked out the fonts in Word Perfect and I did the whole thing myself f, you know? Everybody thought I was just nuts.
Ron Bennington: But you’ve got to get it into their hands and get them aware of it. What do you do about marketing?
Tito Beveridge: Oh man, I started off..hell, I’d be walking out of a grocery store and somebody’d be walking out at the same time, I’d go hey man you drink vodka? He’d go yeah I drink vodka. I’d say, hey go put up your groceries, and meet me at that red Trooper over there. I’d pull a hot bottle of vodka out from under the seat and we’d sit there look around for a test tube, and I’d pour him a shot, and we’d be sitting there drinking hot vodka in a parking lot. I’d go, see that liquor store? You can get it right over there. I said, I’ll tell you what, if it goes down good hot out of my truck you can imagine what it’d be like with a little ice in it.
Ron Bennington: So you’re really doing this door to door almost.
Tito Beveridge: I was a one man show. I started off, I was a one man show, and then I had one employee for about two years, and then I had to lay him off, and then went back to a one man show again. But I’m chain hoisting barrels to the ceiling and gravity training them into the still. You know it was just a mess. Bottling by hand, and carpel tunnel syndrome. No forklifts or anything so I had to do everything. My back’s all jacked up.
Ron Bennington: Were there times where you were like, shit, I got to quit.
Tito Beveridge: Oh yeah. You’d wake up in the morning and you’d be all happy and you open your eyes. All of a sudden you realize you’ve got nineteen credit cards, and you’re lying on the applications. Immediately your stomach just knots up. It’s just living with stress for years.
Ron Bennington: You know, it used to be that you would be an entrepreneur so you could build this thing– have it for your family– but now it seems like as soon as something comes up, one of the big guys comes in and buys it. And I’m sure you’ve been offered to sell, but why don’t you?
Tito Beveridge: It’s my baby! I’m Tito. I make Tito’s Handmade Vodka. The rest of my life, I’ll have a bunch of people come up to me, “oh dude you’re Tito? You own Tito’s?” “No, I don’t own Tito’s, I used to own Tito’s but I sold it. I started it.”
Ron Bennington: You meet so many people in their early twenties who feel like they’ve wasted their life. They’re already saying, oh my god, I’m behind where I’m supposed to be.
Tito Beveridge: You want to be an entrepreneur in this day and time, the best advice I can give anybody is take a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle, put what you love to do on one side and just list it. Put what you’re good at on the other side and just list it. And go find a job that incorporates all those things. And whether you make a ton of money or not, it doesn’t matter. But if you end up being really happy every day of your life, by the time you hit your deathbed you’re looking back on your life going, god man, that was a hell of a ride. And that to me, is what it’s about.
Ron Bennington: I love it man, make a life instead of thinking about making money.
Tito Beveridge: Yeah. I think everybody is just all into making money, and really it’s just make a job. Make a job that is your life’s passion. I mean, I love my job. I have a great time. It wears my ass out, you know, but I love it. When I go out to the distillery, I’m like walking around with a couple of test tubes in my back pocket, I take a little taste of this batch a little taste of that batch. When you’re Scottish, Irish, German, Welsh and Polish, and you do that every day for a living– you’re just like, I’ve died and went to heaven. That is fun. And then you go hang out in a bar, actually stick some ice in it and you’re like, God dog, I love this job, what a hell of a job. And then there’s girls around, there’s air conditioning. You go to hotels and stuff where everybody’s got their teeth and fingers in everything, you know? I mean I love the whole deal. I think that’s the secret of Tito’s Handmade Vodka. That’s why I make it so good I think. It’s a filet mignon at a pot roast price. Just make it really good, charge a fair price where regular blue collar people can afford it. I look at this country and I see people just bitching, they got their tits in the dirt, just like oh my God everything’s gonna be just horrible. And I look at it like we live in the greatest country in the world. I think people just got to just get over themselves. Go out there. I mean it’s okay to sit there and make a mistake, have a failure or two. Most entrepreneurs that make it, they’re like me. They’ve got three four five failures under their belt. They just get up, brush themselves off, come on, it’s another day. Let’s get started again.
Ron Bennington: Well finally there’s a Texan I’m ready to vote for. Tito, congratulations to you, fifteen years. Let’s do this as a book. See you next time through.
Listen to a clip from the interview here:
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You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio. Not yet a subscriber? Click here for a free trial subscription.
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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.
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Visit Tito’s Handmade Vodka online at TitosVodka.com and on twitter @titosvodka.
