In a recent interview with Hard Seltzer News, Ficks co-founder Ron Alvarado talked about the company’s origins, transitioning to an alcohol product, fermenting tips, and more.

HSN: Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how Ficks got started? I know you guys started off making cocktail mixers before you jumped into hard seltzer.

RA: Yeah, I had kind of an unconventional background for the industry. Both me and my co-founder were actually in finance, but both really had this kind of mission to make a “better for you bar,” and, to us, that was cutting calories, cutting sugar. So, what we did is we launched a line of cocktail mixers that were non-alcoholic on that mission…It was about half the calories of existing mixers, half the sugar and really just trying to kind of make that bar better for you. Eventually, that led us to this mission of, ok, if we wanted to put alcohol in a product and keep that same mission as a company, what would that look like? This was about 2017. We were just looking at like maybe…There were just a couple brands of hard seltzer at the time, and we really thought that made a lot of sense for us as [sic] a healthier cocktail company. And, that’s really what [sic] led us into making Ficks hard seltzer. 

HSN: What was the transition into hard seltzers like for you — because I know there are so many different laws — going from doing something non-alcoholic to doing something with alcohol in it, especially with your background in finance? 

RA: It was daunting legally, as you mentioned…Moving from something non-alcoholic to something alcoholic, there’s [sic] more laws, [there are] distributors involved, [there are] different people you can market to. It’s just a whole other ball game in terms of volume, as well as how you run your company. And, so, it was a good transition, I think, in terms of how we were running our business. In terms of having an understanding for running a bottled cocktail mixer company, there was a lot of common ground there and our supply chain — we were using real fruit for our mixers — that was our whole thing with our seltzers. We wanted to use real fruit juice for the seltzers because no one was doing that at the time. So, there [were] a lot of commonalities, but it was definitely like a daunting transition to move over into something that is much more competitive and much larger than the mixer space that we were in. So, that took some time to kind of get used to, and we were dealing with some pretty big competitors at that level too…In addition to that, we had to buy equipment to start making these. It was a whole different product, so it was a pretty different product line and almost a separate part of the business. 

HSN: Your website mentions roots in the Sonoma wine country. Can you talk a little about that, and if that kind of helped you get into the alcohol space and make that transition?

RA: When we kind of decided that we wanted to go out and do these seltzers, really, we had to kind of do it on our own because we were doing such small batches. We learned to make the alcohol ourselves in San Francisco. I would make it in my studio apartment in downtown San Francisco — which is a mess — but, over the course of a year, we really kind of learned how to make it. And, being so close to Sonoma and Napa from San Francisco, we had a lot of people in the industry that were able to lend some expertise on fermentation and some tips as we were trying to kind of find the right balance for our alcohol base that could be both smooth and rather tasteless for a hard seltzer. And, once we kind of figured that out…We’d been speaking to some of these groups during our R&D process. [sic] Eventually, we were able to kind of find a group that knew a lot about [sic] fermenting this alcohol at a really large scale, whereas we were more of on the studio apartment scale. We bought canning lines, we bought tanks. We set up essentially a “seltzery” in 2018 in Sonoma to really kind of prove that this idea can work. So, it was, I think, a nice blending between [sic] how things are done in wine country because we ferment oranges into alcohol, so it’s not too dissimilar to grapes…We were really able to lean on the expertise of people in the industry in that region, and it really kind of works its way through everything we do here — in that me and Mike, my co-founder, in a way [are like] winemakers as apposed coming at it from just a beer background, which a lot of larger breweries [are] now doing in the seltzer space…I think [it’s] really unique to our use of fruit, where that’s something that is [sic] a big part of the wine industry — understanding that — so, it’s been really helpful to kind of get going. 

HSN: Yeah, I haven’t heard of any hard seltzer brands fermenting from oranges. I’ve heard tons of cane sugar and malt, and [even] apple. But why did you chose oranges specifically, I’m curious? 

RA: It was some trial and error. We didn’t like the taste of the ones that were just fermented malt or sugar. Again, this was in 2017, so most of the big brands that you’ve heard of today — like the two or three biggest — they were around, and we just didn’t like the taste. It had like a bite to it, or like a chemically taste, and we thought that was really coming from both the natural flavors as well as the alcohol base… We wanted to kind of take this winemaker approach. So, we went out and tried kind of a variety of different fruits. The original idea was to [sic] ferment the fruit for each Ficks flavor for alcohol. But, once we tried grapefruit alcohol, we were like this is awful. It was really, really gross…During that process, we tried oranges. We were fermenting oranges and we would get to these really high alcohol levels, which is helpful because it lets you kind of maximize your tank time. You can get a lot of alcohol, more alcohol into the same tank if you can get the alcohol percentage really high. And, the oranges were just this great yeast nutrient. We used a champagne yeast, which is used to that fruit. So, it was something where we looked at [sic] competitive brands and said the alcohol is really standing out. We want…the alcohol to take a backseat to our flavors of the fruit. So, how can we find a smooth alcohol to use? [sic] The oranges were just kind of a unique thing through trial and error, and we haven’t altered that really since day one. 

HSN: Do you think consumers care if their hard seltzer is made with fermented cane sugar, malt, wine, or spirits? Do you find that the real fruit base resonates better with consumers, more so than malt base? I know exactly what you’re talking about — that like slight, weird kind of bitter flavor that some of the malt bases have.

RA: Yeah, I think they care, they just might not, you know, associate it to the alcohol as much. Like, people will [get the] chemically taste of a leading brand hard seltzer and say, “Oh, yeah, tastes a little synthetic or chemically or it has this bite,” and, so, they might not associate it to the base alcohol, but that’s, in our view, a big part of it, in addition to not using more authentic ingredients…We would do a lot of tastings before COVID and get to know what was really important to people about our hard seltzer, and the alcohol base is important because it makes for a better taste. But, really, what people identified with was after the fermentation, us adding fruit juice in for flavoring. That was something where people loved hearing our — what we call “farm to fizz” here internally — where it’s like hearing where the grapefruit were grown, how we bring them into California why we use red grapefruits as apposed to pink for our hard seltzer. So, that storytelling really resonated with people in a world where the leading hard seltzers were just using natural flavors or extracts…That’s something [we keep] on our packaging more, and we really try to tell that more to people because the alcohol base — while it makes a big difference on the taste — it’s kind of [sic] splitting hairs a little bit when you get too detailed. We’ve [seen] some brands have some pretty unique things that they use in their fermentation process, but, in the end, it seems like taste is kind of king on these things, and it’s a little bit hard to [sic] have that be your core message. 

HSN: Where is Ficks available currently, and what are your plans for expansion?

RA: We’ve had a pretty busy 2020, thankfully. Ficks is now available through California, which is our home market. We’re also available in Washington State, Arizona and Texas, so some big retailers that we’ve been getting into recently are HEB in Texas, Whole Foods in most of our markets, Railey’s, Safeway…So, Ficks is thankfully…we’ve been at this category for a few years now, but we’re just now starting to break into the shelves of some pretty big retailers. Kroger is another one, so I think our hope is that we continue expanding out. We really are concentrating on California given that’s our home, and we’re the first hard seltzer launched here in the state. So, we’re kind of trying to get on more shelves here and into some bars and restaurants, which are thankfully reopening now. But, the plan is to have this be a national brand where it can be viewed as the authentic ingredient alternative to some of these [sic] higher-volume brands, and I think that on kind of a small level in those states that I mentioned, it’s clearly working and…it’s differentiated from these other brands because of its fruit and the alcohol that we use. So, we have kind of no small plans for Ficks. We think consumers are really into it. We get a lot of e-mails from people in states we’re not in, so we’re just going to kind of keep working our way East from 2020 and beyond. 

HSN: I know you guys have a new flavor, your Mango flavor. What does the future look like for Ficks in terms of diversifying flavors and maybe coming up with seasonals or anything like that? Do you guys have any plans [for flavors] for the future?

RA: Yeah, we do. Thankfully it’s like the real fruit concept really applies to a lot of fun things. And, the mango is one where…Me and mike, we looked forever for the right mangos in different countries and, eventually, kind of settled on some Equadorian mangos. So, that’s just released and tastes amazing. We’re really happy to have that out. But, that same thing kind of comes down to where we look at it and say well, what fruits do we like, or are there other seasonal fruits? Like, our cranberry tends to be really popular in the fall. So, we’re going to be making kegs of that, but there might be some other things…where [it’s a] fruit that’s very regional or very time-specific…Thankfully, since we have such experience in working with these farms and kind of having a real fruit supply chain, we’re able to [sic] move fast on new flavors. And, so, I think you’ll see some new flavors from us next year, but all-around [we take into account] can we get the best fruit, where can we get it in kind of a scalable way, and what’s going to taste the best? As opposed to just, you know, for example, a strawberry. Like, is the strawberry using real strawberry going to taste better than these natural flavor ones that are [out] there? So, we’re always kind of comparing them to what’s existing on the market, but we’re just going to keep iterating on what tastes good…We do all of our fruit flavor development in house, so there’s always a lot of fruit in the Ficks kitchens. 

HSN: Anything else you want to add?

RA: Yeah, I guess we always like telling people where they can buy the products, I appreciate you kind of letting us say where people can find the product. I think our big thing is really having people…Ficks is a small — relative to these global breweries — independent company. And, so, our big thing is driving awareness and letting people know that we exist because, thankfully, when we’ve concentrated so much on the product — and that was kind of a function of not having much of a marketing budget — the product had to be so different that, when people tried it, they bought it again. So, we really kind of concentrated on that over the last couple of years. But, now, we’re really trying to drive this awareness to people that Ficks exists and to go give it a try, compared to what you might have tried before…Our big thing is really just trying to make people aware that the seltzers that you’ve maybe had in the past are similar to what we’ve seen in sodas and other beverages where there’s a lot of natural flavors, a lot of extracts, but there’s a huge difference when you, as a company, make the decision to do a little extra work, pay a little bit of extra money to use authentic ingredients as we do with our fruit…What we try to tell people is, if you hear about Ficks, one way or another, please, just go try it, and try it next to a hard seltzer brand you’ve tried before, and you’ll notice a massive difference in the taste when you use more authentic ingredients than probably what you’ve had in the past. So that’s kind of our big message to people is, hey, just go give it a try. We do blind taste tests all the time — or at least we did before [COVID] — but, when you compare it to other brands that don’t use real fruit, it’s really a big difference. So, that’s kind of our big thing just trying to educate people that this is the first hard seltzer to use real fruit in it for taste and that is impactful to the final taste to where you’ll definitely notice it.  

Stephanie Meade
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