Dee Charlemagne Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Each week, we talk to the coolest culinary personalities around, the folks shaping and shaking up the food scene. Joining me in the studio today is Dee Charlemagne, the co-founder of AVEC, a non-alcoholic canned beverage you can drink straight up or use as a mixer. I know a lot of you pay attention to food and drink trends. So you might know this already, but the non-alcoholic beverage and mixer categories are booming. Dee joins us to talk about AVEC's place in this beverage space and what she brings to the party as a very modern entrepreneur. Dee is super smart and fun and I can't wait for everybody to meet her. Here's a little AVEC ASMR for you. I'm about to pour myself some of the jalapeno and blood orange flavor, which I've never tried before.
Before we get to Dee, let's thank Costa Brazil for supporting today's episode. Founded by the designer, Francisco Costa, Costa Brazil is skincare and aroma for the body, the spirit, and the earth. Costa Brazil just opened a pop-up shop in Soho in New York City this week at 146 Green Street. You can visit and explore the world of Costa Brazil from its gorgeous facial oils, I love a facial oil, to its lush eau de parfum. The popup is open now through Sunday, June 26th. We co-hosted a fun event Monday night with Francisco and Sophia Roe to celebrate the opening of Costa Brazil. It was a great night of Brazilian beauty, food, drink, and music. Chef Ione Cavalli made empadinhas and cheese bread and other delicious Brazilian specialties and we also had brigadeiros, those gorgeous Brazilian treats, from Mariana Vieira of Brigadeiro Bakery, also in Soho. It was a very sweet way to end the evening. Again, if you're in Soho, stop by the Costa Brazil popup. Otherwise, you can visit livecostabrazil.com to learn more.
I mentioned earlier that Dee from AVEC is a modern entrepreneur. Well, the new issue of Cherry Bombe Magazine is out and it's all about entrepreneurs. We talked to dozens of them to get their stories and their best advice. If you've launched your own business or brand or thinking about launching something special, don't miss this issue. You can order a copy of our magazine through cherrybombe.com or pick up one at places like SCOUT of Marion, Iowa, Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York City, or Book Larder in Seattle.
Now, let's check in with today's guest. Dee Charlemagne, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Dee Charlemagne:
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Kerry Diamond:
Do people ask you all the time, "Is that your real name?"
Dee Charlemagne:
People ask me if it's my real name, if I'm related to Charlemagne the God on Instagram, if I know if I'm a descendant of Charlemagne. You get a lot of questions. If my family owns a vineyard.
Kerry Diamond:
Dee, let's jump right into it. What is AVEC? Give us the elevator pitch.
Dee Charlemagne:
Sure. AVEC is changing what you mix with your spirit. We make drinks that you can mix with or without alcohol, but the hook is that everything is low sugar, low calorie, and made with real ingredients. We take inspiration from around the world, so think a yuzu lime and lemongrass instead of your basic vodka soda or hibiscus and pomegranate instead of that cranberry juice. But we're basically looking at the mixer category, which has been Coke, Sprite, Red Bull for so long and innovating there. Each of our flavors has not secret ingredients, but fun ingredients that help balance it out when you pair it with a spirit or make it like an adult drink when you have it solo. So we have Yuzu Lime, which has lemon grass, we have Ginger, which is ginger, pineapple, agave, allspice, like a tropical rum punch, we have a Hibiscus Pomegranate that has cinnamon and lime, really delicious, Grapefruit Pomelo, which I call my all day friend, but have it for breakfast. You can have it with mimosa, you can have it as a paloma, and that has black pepper and vanilla as well. And then we have a Jalapeno Blood Orange, which is the one that people probably see when they first go to our website and jump for joy, but it's jalapeno, blood orange, has calamansi, smoked salt, lime, like a spicy margarita.
Kerry Diamond:
What is your go-to AVEC drink?
Dee Charlemagne:
Really depends on the day. I'm loving right now the Yuzu Lime because it's summer. It's zero sugar, zero calorie, super crisp, dry when you pour it on its own. You can make a dry mojito with it if you add a little mint or you can just straight up serve it with a little tequila and you're good to go so, that's what I've been liking.
Kerry Diamond:
It is summer in New York. We went from winter to full on summer.
Dee Charlemagne:
As we have my entire life. People are like, "Oh my God, global warming." And I'm like, "It is happening, but New York always does this cruel thing where it's hot, cold, and then maybe you'll get a blizzard suddenly and then it's hot again."
Kerry Diamond:
You launched AVEC in the middle of a pandemic, but I would love to know when the idea was actually born.
Dee Charlemagne:
The idea for AVEC came over with Alex, my co-founder, actually. He's tall, British man, had an idea for the spread of remixer company. And then how we met was at business school at Columbia in January, 2019. We met the first three hours of business school. So the idea was really born over the course of 2019. It was pre-White Claw summer, so this whole better for you drinking thing wasn't really a thing.
Kerry Diamond:
Pre-White Claw summer. I love it.
Dee Charlemagne:
Pre-White Claw summer, Pre-hard seltzer. We were like, "Hey bartenders, we think people want to drink a bit healthier." And they were like, "You guys are crazy. Drinking is a vice. No one cares about calories or sugar," and then hard seltzer summer.
Kerry Diamond:
What did you have to change about your launch because of the pandemic?
Dee Charlemagne:
Yeah. My background is in advertising and media. I worked for agencies like Ogilvy. I worked for Vice, the media company when it was just becoming a media company. I worked for a female-founded agency called Joan named after Joan of Arc, Joan Jett, all the badass women named Joan. We were trying to start a media company there, so career has really been launch brands and put them in culture. So we were more like, "Okay, we're going to be at MoMA PS1. We're going to be at all the cool community-led parties in New York City and that's how we're going to launch." And then the pandemic happened and we were like, "Okay, we're going to launch DTC online. AVECdrinks.com though, it's going to be a cool experience, so let's at least start there.
Kerry Diamond:
You launched as direct-to-consumer?
Dee Charlemagne:
Yes. Yes, which was never really the plan. A lot of people want to launch that way because it was the playbook of that era still, but our plan was to be more with people, literally. The name means with in French. We wanted to be with people, but we launched on the internet to start out with.
Kerry Diamond:
The DTC brands are having a tough go of it right now.
Dee Charlemagne:
They are, they are. I can't say that I didn't see it coming. When you come from media, you saw the downfall of media companies with Facebook and it was only matter of time.
Kerry Diamond:
How did you finance the launch?
Dee Charlemagne:
We did a friends and family round. That also was not initially the plan. We wanted to do a bigger seed round, but it was March, 2020 and we were about to go on our final spring break of business school and we were like, "Are we really doing this business? Oh, we're not going on spring break. Oh, it's a pandemic. Oh, this thing isn't lasting longer than two weeks," so we did a small friends and family round to start out with and that got us through our first year. And really, 2020 we thought was a soft launch, but we got some good press on day one.
Kerry Diamond:
And you sold out really fast.
Dee Charlemagne:
Yes we did. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's step back and talk about your education for a minute because you have some pretty major schooling on your CV. You studied sociology and psychology at Harvard. Why did you pick those majors?
Dee Charlemagne:
I'm from the Bronx originally, grew up on the last stop on the 2 train. My parents are immigrants from the West Indies, Jamaica, St. Lucia. Went to school in the Bronx my entire life, went to an all-girls school in Harlem that still exists called Young Woman's Leadership School. Was going to graduate early in New York from high school and just go to a community college or something until I was of age. I looked very young and looked younger then, so I was not ready for college. And my vice principal at the time had gone to Phillips Exeter Academy, the Harvard of boarding schools. My family was like, "What is that?" and I was like, "What is that and what is New Hampshire and what is a boarding school and what am I doing?"
I basically fought tooth and nail to not go to Exeter, got off the wait list a week before school started. So within a week, as a 13-year-old, was transported from my schooling in the Bronx, Harlem, New York City to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and I think that's where I got into this world of psychology, sociology. How it's all impacted, how are different people interacting? I come from one world and I remember sitting in a class and my dad used to manage the Food Emporium on 14th street. He was the produce manager. And the first day of school, I meet this guy and he's like, "Yeah, my dad owns Tyson Chicken." And I'm like, "Oh, yeah, cool. Yeah, my dad sells Tyson Chicken," but we were all in the classroom together figuring out how to learn and how to grow together, so I really got interested in just how the human mind is formed socially. A lot of my psychology degree was actually studying infants and whether they were sexist, racist, if they understood categories by the time they were 10 month old, so I was in the developmental psych lab working on that, so I've always just been fascinated by how different people interact.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you appreciate it at the time or was it only in retrospect?
Dee Charlemagne:
I think I hated Exeter for a month because I was like, "I don't want to be here." I didn't even go to school with white people until then, to be honest. I was in school with all black and Latino people till I was 13, so I was just a little shell shocked, I think, of just what's going on. So I was like, "If I'm mute, they'll send me home." And my good friend, Allison, who's now one of my best friends was like, "I know you're not mute. I hear you talk on the phone to your parents and friends. Let's come out." And once that happened, once I found my people, I loved it in the end.
Kerry Diamond:
Sociology and psychology. Tell me a little bit more.
Dee Charlemagne:
Yeah. So the psychology was because I was just obsessed with when do people start even understanding their inner group? How do you arrive there? We're not born being like, "Hi, I'm a woman or hi, I'm a black woman or hi, I'm whatever," and I think particularly in college, I was very much a feminist before it was cool, I guess. And I was like, "I'm a woman first," so I identified purely woman-led, versus I didn't have a lot of black friends, even at Exeter, which was weird. So just these dual identities, I found really interesting and I was like, "How is identity formed by society and in our mind?" I didn't know what career that would lead me to, but I knew I found it interesting, so that's what I did.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, then Columbia business school.
Dee Charlemagne:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Why business school?
Dee Charlemagne:
So when I graduated from Harvard, I started my career in advertising. So I worked for WPP, which is a big advertising glom. How did I end up in advertising? I knew I didn't want to wear suits. Everyone was recruiting for banking, consulting. Those required suits. WPP came to present and they were like, "It's three years, three different global geographies, and we take you to a Chateau in France." Of course, I was like, "Great, sounds good. Sign me up," so I did a year in New York, a year in Hong Kong, and a year in London and then I came back and was still working in advertising. I worked on Starbucks, which was amazing. Worked on BlackRock, worked on Unilever, a bunch of different clients, NASCAR, first NASCAR race via work, fascinating. But again, my job is to be a cultural insight person, follow the top 20 Starbucks people in four different states, what do they have in common, which was really interesting, but fell in love with the-
Kerry Diamond:
The top Starbucks, meaning customers. What did they have in common?
Dee Charlemagne:
They're risk-averse.
Kerry Diamond:
Risk-averse.
Dee Charlemagne:
Risk-averse and or routine-based, so they want to know, "I'm getting my double pump blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," and it's consistent consistently, basically, or they also had a relationship with barista, so Starbucks is one of the most human, I would say, beverage companies out there.
Kerry Diamond:
You think it's because they ask your name and ...
Dee Charlemagne:
Yeah, but it's moments of genuine connection is the mantra internally at Starbucks and how do we create that moment?
Kerry Diamond:
Did they all have weird signature drinks or were they just like going for black coffee?
Dee Charlemagne:
Some people had just basics, but a lot of them would have their thing that they figured out. But yeah, I went to business school after that advertising career because seeing Starbucks, you could see how marketing and business went hand in hand. Working at a new agency, I said I worked at Joan, seeing the agency form, you could see the business side, so I say business school is a very expensive confidence boost. Let me be confident talking about accounting and finance and all the things, so I actually took a lot of more hardcore number classes in business school than I probably should have, but I just wanted to know how a balance sheet works or how other people who grew up in consulting and finance, what a model is.
Kerry Diamond:
So the goal wasn't to launch your own business one day.
Dee Charlemagne:
The goal was to have that confidence boost, but I actually wrote my essay on black women and how they were the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs. And I either needed to, because of my background, find a way to be a funder or a founder and business school was going to help me decide which one I wanted to be.
Kerry Diamond:
When you say you wrote your essay, that was your admission essay?
Dee Charlemagne:
My admissions essay. So at the time, there were only 20 black women who had raised over a million dollars in VC funding and because of my media background, I had interviewed, I think, 15 of them. And I was like, "This is a problem. People need to know the code on how to get there or there needs to be people at the table that look like us to get there," but I really love doing things, as we just talked about. I've always had a job, so just doing diligence on a company wasn't going to cut it for me. I needed to build something, I think, first.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, so you weren't necessarily sure that you'd be an entrepreneur one day when you started.
Dee Charlemagne:
I knew I would one day.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, you did?
Dee Charlemagne:
I just didn't know that it would be right after business school.
Kerry Diamond:
Or in the middle of business school, practically.
Dee Charlemagne:
Yeah. Shout out to Alex, my co-founder, to be honest, another little confidence boost there. But when you go to business school, for most people, you take on a lot of debt. So I did not think that I would have the risk tolerance, wherewithal, financial capability as a woman, I think in particular. We interviewed a lot of women at business school. What happens? Why don't we become entrepreneurs the way men do right after business school? And a lot of it is managing risk and when do you want to have babies and, I don't know, just thinking about things a little bit differently. And I was like, "Yeah, I should have a little bit more gumption. It's going to work. Let's do it. You can take a risk. What's three years, four years, five years to figure something out?" Over the course of a lifetime and a career, that's nothing, so we can do this. We can do this. Gumption all the way.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you have other entrepreneurs in your family?
Dee Charlemagne:
When I was growing up, my dad actually had a music studio, so a rap studio, with my uncle. He was a producer. They did some Jay-Z tracks, some Mary J. Blige tracks, so it was a pretty legit studio back in the '90s, but that's probably where I saw entrepreneurship happen most. And my dad has always been, "You can do it. Go out on your own. Why would you work for someone else?" Yeah, not a traditional entrepreneur. It's not like my family had their own business, but there was always a hustle.
Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned that you and Alex were set to launch in March of 2020, while you were still in school. So you graduated ...
Dee Charlemagne:
We were going to raise in March of 2020 and then launch in the summer of 2020, which we did. We just didn't launch in the same way-
Kerry Diamond:
But you were still in school at the time.
Dee Charlemagne:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
That's so fascinating. Were you able to turn AVEC into a school project?
Dee Charlemagne:
Not really. We took classes related to entrepreneurship so we were in the track, but our recipes were made at home to start out with. We did a summer pitch competition from the business school and that's where we got our first 10K, that's how we got professional formulas. And then we knew right after school, we were booking the co-backer basically two days after graduation, the day after graduation, it ended up being, but we graduated virtually and then we're in Gowanus canning. It was just a weird time. The subways were empty and everything, and we were like, "Okay, cool. We have 40,000 cans now. Let's go for it."
Kerry Diamond:
Are you still bottling in Gowanus?
Dee Charlemagne:
We are not. We're bottling in Vermont now.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, you are?
Dee Charlemagne:
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
So you get to travel back up to that part of the country.
Dee Charlemagne:
Yes, exactly, New England. And we're in Boston, so I get to travel. Our key markets are New York, Boston, Chicago, LA at the moment.
Kerry Diamond:
Your old stomping grounds.
Dee Charlemagne:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about AVEC today. How big is the company?
Dee Charlemagne:
We have five people now, four and a half, let's say. We've grown off of the internet. We were never intended to be an internet business. DTC is always hard and retail is where people are discovering new drinks. We believe our occasion is drinking at home, so we launched in Fairway in New York, which is a big chain. We're launching Binny's in Chicago, Total Wine, so we're trying to grow the retail footprint so that you see the cans, I think are really beautiful and our best piece of advertising, so if you see them on the shelf, it's easier than seeing them on the internet. It's not natural, I think, to buy drinks on the internet, always.
Kerry Diamond:
The cans are gorgeous. Who did the design?
Dee Charlemagne:
Because I came from advertising, we were able to get a freelance designer. His name's Toga Cox, shout out to Toga. We just worked on it, Alex, me, and him, and I think you can see the diverse perspectives come in. Alex is British-inspired, Australian, Canadian. I'm from the Bronx, New York. Toga really wants to be in music, so there's some of that cultural reference. But yeah, it was really fun. It took a while. We're very, very anal about brand look. It takes a long time.
Kerry Diamond:
Have you raised additional funds?
Dee Charlemagne:
Yes. We did a pre-seed round of 1.1, so that put me in the thing I wrote my business school essay about, which was quite cool. That was a big moment for me.
Kerry Diamond:
Congratulations. Tell folks what pre-seed means.
Dee Charlemagne:
Pre-seed is, and it always changes.
Kerry Diamond:
And that's P-R-E S-E-E-D.
Dee Charlemagne:
It's your first round after what people say, your friends and family round, so after you raise from the people you know. This is your first outside investor round and then there's obviously a seed round after it. And each of these have revenue benchmarks as you go. Typically to get to seed, you have to have over a million dollars and recurring revenue annually. And then it evolves series A up to, I don't even know what the series go to anymore, series Z.
Kerry Diamond:
What are your goals in terms of growth?
Dee Charlemagne:
We never wanted to be a coastal brand, so a lot of the cooler beverage brands will always just stick to New York and LA and major cities. And we really believe that drinking culture in America's changing and we want to be part of that and a tool in that, so we want to grow nationally. That's our goal over the next two years, to have this big national footprint and to even get Americans to understand what a mixer is. We're mixer 2.0. We don't know what to call ourselves because it's something you can drink on its own and it's something you can also mix with spirits and we think the world is going to enter this more flexy drinking. Everyone's eating meat sometimes, not eating meat sometimes. That's what's going to happen with alcohol, we think.
Kerry Diamond:
You said drinking culture is changing and that's part of it. How else is drinking culture changing?
Dee Charlemagne:
It's just a little more conscious than it was before. People say mindful drinking or sober curiosity or things like that. But it's also like if you're drinking alcohol, it's more premium. People are trading up to premium spirits because they're caring about quality. In college, I was filtering vodka through a Brita filter.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my ... You were?
Dee Charlemagne:
Yeah. Triple distilled, like Grey Goose, obviously. Versus our employees now come out of college and they're drinking Hendricks and Tito's and they're drinking premium spirits. I think the palates have changed. People are more globally inspired. If you're having beat juice, you're not going to go to the bar and be like, "Okay, just give me Coke." Those are the three ways we see it changing, but the thing we like to say is that human connection is the most important thing for us and so drinking together is what we're trying to preserve. A lot of people stop drinking or stop socializing because it's so unhealthy and if we can give them a tool to kind of keep doing that ...
Kerry Diamond:
I'm surprised that more restaurants don't have mocktails on the menu.
Dee Charlemagne:
That's changing.
Kerry Diamond:
It's changing, but not fast enough. I've eaten out a lot recently and I'm so surprised that it's not an option.
Dee Charlemagne:
Well, start making a list.
Kerry Diamond:
I should.
Dee Charlemagne:
Go there and pitch them.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. All you folks out there who are chefs and mixologists and restaurateurs, I'd love to even just see one mocktail.
Dee Charlemagne:
Yeah. A lot of chefs, shout out to chefs and beverage directors, are coming. They're loving AVEC because it's giving you that global ingredient. It's well curated. It can be as curated as a wine list. There's this amazing restaurant in Chicago called Esme and they have a $400 tasting menu and AVEC is one of the non-alcoholic options, so they're really curating their food.
Kerry Diamond:
That's cool.
Dee Charlemagne:
A lot of places, Tonchin in New York, which is Michelin star ramen, carries AVEC, but it gives you an option and it also gives you an option that is if you're not drinking and I'm drinking, it's not this weird moment. "Oh, can I have a mocktail?" And then I'm like, "Oh, should I drink? What can I do?" Versus both of us can have an AVEC and it can be like, "Hey, can you spike it?" and you can just have it solo and we're having the same experience, which is cool.
Kerry Diamond:
Are there any fun mocktails or cocktails in New York City with AVEC?
Dee Charlemagne:
Tonchin is my favorite at the moment, just because it was cold, now we're getting warm, but yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
And spell that, in case people want to look it up.
Dee Charlemagne:
T-O-N-C-H-I-N. It's a Japanese ramen chain that's in New York. It's in Midtown. It's not far from here, on 34th street. And the Yuzu Lime with ramen is out of control delicious. Chez Ma Tante, which is famous for its pancakes and brunch, they serve us in a shandy, which is really cool. And then Sauce in the Lower East Side just has a full, natural cocktail list so you can choose your own adventure. I think the best part about AVEC is when you're hosting, you put it out with a bottle of vodka. You put them all out and people just start playing and that's really cool, so that's what Sauce offers.
Kerry Diamond:
I love it. What is your ultimate goal for AVEC?
Dee Charlemagne:
I walked down the street and it happened the other day and someone put it in our Slack group and I was like, "Oh my God, it happened." And you see two people having an AVEC. And one person was having it as a high ball, like an adult drink with alcohol. And the other person was having it as an adult zero proof treat. And so that's the dream where, you walk down the street and you see other options that aren't just these big conglomerates dominating, like Coke and Pepsi and Sprite. There's a healthier option, adult option. And it's like creating conversation. We try and use an ingredient that you don't know with an ingredient you do know. A lot of people are like, "What's a yuzu?" It's like if a lime and a lemon went to Japan and had a baby is how someone described it to me, so now I use that too. But it creates a little moment of discovery too, as well. It's not just your basic, "Okay. I have a lime soda."
Kerry Diamond:
But do you want to sell?
Dee Charlemagne:
Yeah. Someone big buy me. I'm ready. If you have an offer, come find me. No, I would like to sell it. I don't think America's the kind of market where you can be a CEO of a beverage business forever. The pipes of beverage have been built since the 1900s, if not before. You need to sell. It's crazy how hand to hand combat the beverage world is. I go on ride alongs with our distributor reps and it's like, "Okay, I got to wake up at 5:00 and be in Boston by 9:00," and we're going door to door to door to liquor shops to get orders and that's how the biggest distributor-
Kerry Diamond:
They still do it that way?
Dee Charlemagne:
Yeah, is getting orders, going to the grocery store, merchandising. The best use of times are actually that hands on thing and you just can't scale as a small ... We're five people on a good day. We just can't.
Kerry Diamond:
It sounds like it's still very old school.
Dee Charlemagne:
Very old school. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. Interesting. You mentioned the hand to hand combat. What is your advice for dealing with such a crowded category?
Dee Charlemagne:
It's interesting because depending on what category you think AVEC sits in, everyone's like "It's so crowded." We're a not ready to drink, we're not a pure play mixer, and we're not a non-alcoholic. So we sit in the middle and that's what makes us stand out, I think, is that we can play in all these different categories and it doesn't feel weird. But the biggest thing I would say is just to know who your tribe is, I think, just finding who your people are. The brands that have done it well have found, "Okay. I'm for the person who wants the ritual of drinking and we're replacing that with something non-alcoholic," or "I'm for the person who never wants to think about the traditional way of drinking and wants to do something totally different, so I'm building something different for them." I really like Lyres. They're building a full bar for people who want alternatives to alcohol. They have a non-alcoholic absinthe. It's cool that you're able to make an absinthe drink non-alcoholic. And then you have the Ghias of the world, which are just creating this aperitivo category for the people who like this European lifestyle vibe. I don't know how to describe it, but there's a person. You can see that person. I think people who just find their tribe and stick to it and don't get too lost in the trends ...
Kerry Diamond:
So to go back to your marketing advertising days when you were following those Starbucks super fans, if you had to follow the top AVEC customers for a few weeks, what do you think you would learn?
Dee Charlemagne:
Oh my God. I've talked to so many of them. There's always something weird about the AVEC customer, weird in the best way.
Kerry Diamond:
And that's said with love, for you AVEC customers out there.
Dee Charlemagne:
It's said with love, but it's always like, "Oh, I work at insurance company full time and then at night I'm in a rock band," or "Oh, I'm an art curator, blah blah, but at night, I love throwing barbecues and inviting everyone over." They're willing to bring people together and they're introducing their friends to new things. They're often the person that will bring something new to a party but they're set in their ways. There's a classic but trend setting aspect about them, which I find really cool.
Kerry Diamond:
Anything fun coming up this summer?
Dee Charlemagne:
The one fun thing we did is we launched a shirt collaboration with Tombolo. They make these modern Hawaiian shirts, but they're very cool. So we got an artist, Lydia Ortiz, who I know from my Joan media days, to illustrate, inspired by our hands that are on the can on the jalapeno blood orange, so we have these really cool cabana Hawaiian shirts that I love. I normally have one on. And then we're launching a new flavor, which I won't announce yet, but I'm very-
Kerry Diamond:
We don't get the exclusive?
Dee Charlemagne:
You don't get the exclusive.
Kerry Diamond:
Come on, Dee.
Dee Charlemagne:
Maddie would kill me. But no, I'm really excited about the flavor because again, we're trying to take something that America loves a good sweet thing and how do you make a really, really sweet drink something, light, bright?
Kerry Diamond:
Right, that's not a sugar bomb.
Dee Charlemagne:
Not a sugar bomb, so I think the mocktail menus are going to love it.
Kerry Diamond:
How do you resist the pressure to do newness constantly? Everyone's always like, "What's new? What's next?"
Dee Charlemagne:
I just think there's always a new angle. If you come from a world of storytelling, as I do in psychology and sociology, one story can be told seven different ways, so that's what I try and do. It's not new, but there's a new angle here and until those are exhausted, I don't really feel pressured.
Kerry Diamond:
My next question is, do you have any great advice for other entrepreneurs? And that's a good piece of advice because I do think people feel that there always needs to be newness, but are you really examining every possible story angle?
Dee Charlemagne:
But yeah, my entrepreneur advice is always know your relationship with money because people don't talk about it.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh that's ... Oh, wait. That's a whole new topic you've just introduced. Explain more.
Dee Charlemagne:
I just don't think I appreciated how much my relationship with money and growing up with someone without generational wealth, AVEC is truly a risk for me. I don't have any more savings. I gave up a luxury advertising career. I'm not doing anything that the normal 33 year old's doing at the moment in terms of saving and having a house and all this stuff. And I just think I didn't realize how much my relationship with money would come up when thinking about a business and how to run a business budget. Are you able to take risk or are you not? And so a lot of that is based on how you personally are dealing with money. In business school, my question for all entrepreneurs who came was, "How do you pay your rent?" which I got in trouble with one time because one person was so offended that I asked. And I'm like, "If you're not taking a salary," and we glorify the entrepreneur who's not taking a salary, giving everything for the business, "How are they living?"
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. No, it's a great question. I don't think people necessarily want to know the answer because it could get ugly. How do you take care of ... And this is a softball question, Dee. How do you take care of yourself mentally and physically?
Dee Charlemagne:
For me, I just try and work out consistently. It's really important to me to see my family consistently. I'm a Peloton person, I will admit. I was before the pandemic, though.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you have a favorite instructor?
Dee Charlemagne:
Alex Toussaint. Me and my mom went to his live class for her 50th birthday, so I do a lot of that. And I just try and see, when I say my family, that includes my friends. I really think my core friend group is my family. So if I don't see them, I start feeling a little off kilter and they'll know to call me because I'm pretty good about staying in touch with people. My best girlfriend in LA was like, "What's going on? I haven't heard from you. You must be extremely stressed out this week." And I'm like, "I am. Thanks for bringing me down a notch." But yeah, I'm trying to get better at a routine. That helps. Five minute a day meditation, I used to do that, but since becoming an entrepreneur, it's hard to make routines when your day is different every day.
Kerry Diamond:
How can the Bombesquad support you?
Dee Charlemagne:
Well, follow us @AVECdrinks. If you're having a party, bring us. You don't always have to buy us. We're also down to just throw fun parties and bring people together. And I always ask for feedback, which you never get. What did you like about this podcast? What did you think about this podcast? What do you think about the flavors? You never get feedback and everyone says ask for it, but no one actually gives it.
Kerry Diamond:
And if people want to give you feedback, how can they find you?
Dee Charlemagne:
@AVECdrinks and then cheers@AVECdrinks. Cheers is, we check that email all the time.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I love that. Cheers@avecdrinks. Okay, folks. You can all write to Dee.
Dee Charlemagne:
Cheers@avecdrinks.com. There you go.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell her the Bombesquad sent you. You know where we can meet, that I have not gone to yet, my bad, is Boisson.
Dee Charlemagne:
Oh my god. It's our number one store. I love going to Boisson. There's a weird rule in New York where you actually can't sell non-alcoholic drinks with alcoholic drinks, so you can't buy rum and Coke in the same shop. It's illegal. Weird prohibition law, grocery lobby, I don't know. It's a rule.
Kerry Diamond:
We don't have wine in supermarkets, which people are always shocked at.
Dee Charlemagne:
Yeah, exactly. Boisson has essentially curated a booze-free booze shop. There's also Spirited Away in the city, which is great, and Minus Moonshine, but it's basically a shop of all booze or low 0.5% options. Everything from your functional stuff, it has ashwagandha leaves and it'll give you a little buzz to AVEC to NA spirits. And it's our number one store in New York because if you're going through the lens of getting a non-alcoholic spirit, you're not having it neat likely, and you're not wanting to mix it with something crappy. We love Boisson. They're expanding nationally, so hopefully more cities soon.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. Well, Dee, thank you for your time.
Dee Charlemagne:
Thanks.
Kerry Diamond:
Great talking to you.
Dee Charlemagne:
Thanks for having me.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. That was fun. That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Dee Charlemagne for joining us today. You can learn more about AVEC at AVECdrinks.com. And thank you to Costa Brazil for supporting this episode. Visit livecostabrazil.com for more. Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Thank you, Joseph Hazan, studio engineer for Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center and thank you to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu. And thanks to you for listening. You are the bombe.