This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features JW Wiseman, founding father of the craft non-alcoholic cocktail company Interesting potions.
Photo credit: Nick Kova. JW Wiseman, founding father of Curious Elixirs.
Launched in 2015, Curious Elixirs generated $2.2 million in its first five years and has surpassed $50 million in the last five years. The brand has served hundreds of thousands of shoppers in some of the best restaurants in the world, including: Daniel and The French Laundry; in nightclubs like House of Yes; and in their very own homes through direct consumer service. The brand is expected to achieve revenues of $176 million by 2030.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What was your day job or important occupation when you began working on the side?
Helping clean food startups like Daily Harvest and Chomps reach their first million customers through my marketing company Good Business, in addition to opening a bar called The Whiskey Brooklyn and a nightclub called OUTPUT. It took about five years before we had a regular enough flow of money for me to commit to Curious Elixirs full-time.
When did you begin your side business and where did you discover the inspiration for it?
Having worked in nightclubs and being a huge cocktail nerd in New York, I’ve had a love of hospitality for years… and ended up drinking too much. One winter night in 2012, I had over 20 drinks and the next day I didn’t even have a hangover – it was terrible. I modified my attitude towards alcohol and began drinking less. But I still desired to socialize and have a higher cocktail experience – that literally didn’t exist at the time. So I began creating it.
What we did was create complex cocktails without alcohol, using the world’s best ingredients, drawing inspiration from cocktails recent and old. We worked with bartenders, food scientists and herbalists. And thus Curious Potions was born.
Photo credit: courtesy of Curious Elixirs
What were the first steps you took to interrupt away from the game?
Tinkering in the kitchen, reading books about herbs and the likelihood to make something that never existed: a non-alcoholic craft cocktail with herbs and adaptogens to provide help to calm down.
One Sunday morning, while working on a recipe for an early hibiscus negroni, out of nowhere the name got here to me – Curious Elixirs – and I worked on it until it was finally able to be tested at events in Brooklyn and Queens.
We had a hotel in Rockaway Beach at the time called the Playland Motel, and I had Curious Elixir ready for opening weekend. I didn’t even describe it as non-alcoholic, but people drank a lot greater than vodka. I knew I used to be onto something.
To learn more about the alcohol-free space, I sought advice from hospitality professionals while interning with food scientists. I learned find out how to adapt craft bartending mockups for then scaled beverage production using clean labels and the highest quality ingredients from around the world.
What were the biggest challenges you faced in building your side team and how did you overcome them?
When Curious launched in 2015, many of the non-alcoholic ingredient extracts that make a drink bitter or spicy – like the bitters in our Curious No. 1 or the ancho chili in Curious No. 2 – didn’t yet exist. Creating these extracts and mixing them to create sophisticated non-alcoholic cocktails takes years of effort and experimentation.
The next challenge was filming Shark Tank in 2018 and the incontrovertible fact that this segment didn’t appear on the show. Curious Elixirs was ahead of its time, and the sharks simply didn’t understand what a huge opportunity the soft drinks segment would develop into. It’s still early, regardless that we’re already 10 years old. At the time, we frequently ran out of product to sell, so it was a blessing in disguise that it didn’t air.
Photo credit: courtesy of Curious Elixirs
How long did it take for you to realize stable monthly income? How much did the side hustle earn?
Thanks to my experience with the national Daily Harvest program, we introduced Curious Elixirs with a monthly subscription called The Curious Cocktail Club. People loved the drinks immediately, so we kept it consistent from the starting, but it was small from the start. In the first five years of working with Curious Elixirs, we earned $2.2 million.
Curious was also ahead of the curve because we were creation curve. It took five years before Curious could pay me enough to focus on it full-time… that was in January 2020.
When the pandemic hit, we had two waves of novices to non-alcoholic options: those that reduce on their alcohol intake right after the quarantine went into effect, and then a second wave of people that drank too much during quarantine and decided to “sober up out of curiosity.”
What does growth and revenue appear to be today?
Curious will soon be 10 years old. We made about $176,000 the first yr, and now we’re comfortably north of eight-figure revenue each yr at a 30% CAGR (compounded annual growth rate). Curious Elixirs is proud to have just surpassed $50 million in revenue over the past five years at 20.8x brand growth – all without any outside investment.
Photo credit: courtesy of Curious Elixirs
What do you enjoy most about running this business?
Our mission has all the time been to vary the way we drink in social situations, and this process has really accelerated in the last few years! People are waking up and discovering that life without alcohol might be more enjoyable, creative and memorable.
What is your advice to others who want to start out their very own successful side hustle?
Get began today. Right now. Take five minutes and build extra effort with small, consistent actions. And all the time be curious!