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Topsail Insider
Hidden Ships Distillery
Guests: Andy & Amy Szwejbka, Owners of Hidden Ships Distillery
2024 Topsail’s Top Choice Awards:
- 1st Place - Favorite Craft Cocktails
- 1st Place - Favorite Full Bar
In this episode of Topsail Insider, we meet Andy and Amy Szwejbka, the husband-and-wife duo behind Hidden Ships Distillery. From their RV adventures across the U.S. to launching their Kickstarter-funded dream, they share their journey to creating a beautifully decorated, pre-prohibition-inspired cocktail lounge with award-winning spirits distilled on-site.
Discover how they balance family life, entrepreneurship, tours, tastings, and distilling, all while planning for future growth.
116 Charlie Medlin Dr. Surf City, NC 28445
(910) 803-0021
https://www.hiddenships.com/
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Hosted by Christa Schroeder
Edited by Jim Mendes-Pouget | jimpouget@gmail.com
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Speaker 1:Whether you're a local or visiting from out of town, celebrating a special occasion or just soaking up the sun with family and friends, it's always a great time at Surf City Line. Hello everyone and welcome to Topsail Insider. My name is Krista and I am your host. Today we are talking to Amy and Andy Zwebka. They are the husband and wife owners of Hidden Ships Distillery. Welcome, amy and Andy. Thank you so much for letting us come in here today and do this, including we just did a tasting, which was so much fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much for coming in today.
Speaker 1:Yes, everyone here knows Hidden Ships Distillery because it's a very popular place, and rightfully so. For those who may not know what Hidden Ships Distillery is, please give us the nutshell version of what you have going on here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we are Topsail Island's first and only distillery. We're actually the first in Penner County. We're what we call pre-prohibition inspired. So our cocktail menu features cocktails from the late 1800s or inspired by that era, I think. In our lounge area we kind of carry over that theme and feeling. It's a unique atmosphere for the area. We like to call it a little bit of speakeasy without being too too dark and dim, a little bit of coastal without being too bright, and so you kind of combine that atmosphere with the menu that we've created and that's what you get. We get a pre-prohibition cocktail lounge with the menu that we've created and that's what you get.
Speaker 1:We get a pre-prohibition cocktail lounge. You nailed it. I was thinking about how to describe this place. It's very velvety and warm feeling in here, but you still have a lot of fun here, with people coming during the day, and I came in the other day and they were playing cards. I was a little jealous, like that's what a great place to hang out. You also have like football and themed evenings and events here, so you did.
Speaker 1:you caught that speakeasy, darker vibe, but it's not too dark, it's perfect. I want to jump right into the backstory and then we're going to go through what you offer, from your cocktails to what you're distilling and your classes, which are amazing, and all that. But first let's talk about that backstory. So you did something that I only dream about doing. I dream about it. I even bought an RV because I wanted to do it so badly, but I couldn't get my family on board Before we get there. Where did you two meet?
Speaker 1:We met in high school? Where? At what part of the country? In Western New York? Where were you when you started the RV trip around the US?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were here. So my background, which we may get to. But I just retired after 21 years in the Marine Corps that was June of 2021. And so we were here. As I retired, we left North Carolina and then headed out on that trip.
Speaker 1:Was it a honey? Let's sell everything and just travel around the country with our children and show them everything? Or was it you had a plan in place that you knew ultimately would lead to hidden ships?
Speaker 2:I think we had a plan that the trip would only be one year long, so that was definitive. Some people that we met out on the road like do it. When they say full-time, they mean there's no ending date.
Speaker 1:For us.
Speaker 2:We were full-time for that year, but we knew that it was going to end, and so, prior to the trip, we had certainly dreamed of having hidden ships. We had spent some time thinking about it, planning. I had done some preparation prior to, but certainly nothing was solidified before leaving on the trip. Well, when we left North Carolina, we actually went basically straight to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. That was kind of our first major stop, spent 10 or 11 days there up in Kentucky and did a lot of the big distillery tours but also a lot of craft distilleries, because that's what we were more interested in seeing at that time.
Speaker 1:Okay, you were retired. You have a background in nursing. What made you do the jump from, or were you already thinking about a distillery while you were in the military?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. So our origin story that we like to tell we're here today because Amy and I had a great experience in early 2019. That was at another distillery up in North Carolina called Murto's Made. It's in Huntersville, so if you're in that area, go check them out and they have a similar business model with a back of the house distillery, front of the house cocktail bar. They're much more speakeasy though in terms of their lounge, much darker but similar business model. And that was early.
Speaker 2:2019 was the first time I'd kind of ever had a smoked old fashion. It was beautifully presented to us and at that point in my life, for probably the 10 years leading up to it, every time I saw a brewery open I would look at it and say, darn it, I should have done that, and that's certainly not to take away from all the unique challenges that are in that industry, but that was just my mindset. And so then we have this great experience at a distillery and I just started to research the craft distilling as an industry, doing as much as I could. The assessment I made from a business perspective was I think craft distilling is where craft breweries were maybe 10 or 15 years ago, just in terms of how often you see them or how popular they are.
Speaker 2:And so I thought well, if we're going to jump in, it makes sense to do that now. Again, I still had two years left to serve in the Marine Corps, so I did what I could. University of Louisville of course, louisville is the heart of bourbon country in Kentucky. That school offers a graduate program in distilled spirits, so that's an online program, nothing hands-on for distilling, but a great background in regulatory issues, legal issues. We're a very highly regulated industry, as you could probably imagine, and so it gave me a firm foundation in those concepts, but also branding, marketing, a little bit of operations. And then my favorite was the history of distilled spirits. I was a history undergrad so I really nerded out in that class.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's all starting to come together now, yeah.
Speaker 2:So really loved that one and again finished that course right at the same time as I was retiring. It was a two-year program and so finished up June of 2021, retired June of 2021. And actually when we went to Kentucky for the bourbon show, we stopped by the university. I was able to pick up my diploma.
Speaker 1:So that was fun Nice.
Speaker 2:Worked out.
Speaker 1:A husband and wife team, usually one has that passion? Yes, and the other person is very supportive.
Speaker 3:You educated yourself as well for distilling how did you get so immersed in it as well? Okay, so for 21 years I watched my husband provide for our family and sacrifice, and at that point, when he retired, I said you need to be doing something that you enjoy. There's no point in just getting any job. What is it that you want to do that you?
Speaker 1:enjoy.
Speaker 3:You know he's always been an entrepreneurial spirit. He's several businesses before even getting out of the Marine Corps that he's made work or has worked with, and I knew that that was something that he's very passionate about. He's brought several ideas to the table and sometimes I roll my eyes and sometimes I'm like, okay, he brought this to the table and I was like heck, yeah, like that sounds like a good idea. And he, of course, like he said, does a lot of research. He doesn't do anything from the hip. He brought the research with the distilleries, you know, coming right behind the breweries saying how they're the up and coming, our personal experience at that one distillery and then our multiple personal experiences at other breweries and distilleries, because we very much enjoy visiting those anywhere we go and all around the country.
Speaker 3:When we went for our year trip, for sure we hit up as many as we could. That's something we definitely have always enjoyed. So when he came up with this idea, I was like heck, yeah, like that's a good idea. There's nothing here in the area like that. It could be a really good thing and I am definitely on board and I want to be involved. He's definitely the lead here, like I lead our home, because we homeschool our children too. Somebody has to be there to do that mostly. So we definitely lead more at the house. But I was like I'm a hundred percent going to be involved and know more about distilling than than just like we have one you know what I mean I wanted to, so us going to, we attended Moonshine University.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so I did read that you were top of the class at Moonshine University, but I didn't.
Speaker 2:So I finished last but even if you finish last, you still graduate. Amy was the honor graduate graduating number one.
Speaker 1:Okay, but while we're talking about the Moonshine University, which totally doesn't sound like a real thing, but it is a real thing. Tell me about that. It's a shorter course. Why is that course so important to people who are going into distilling?
Speaker 2:It was actually during the RV trip. Again, I'd done, I'd finished up with that University of Louisville program had a foundation.
Speaker 2:About halfway through that trip, amy and I were talking about it and we had spent the last couple years dreaming about it. We had pages and pages of notebooks filled with possible names of a place Like we had. It was all in the dream kind of phase, but we made the first decision during that trip that kind of really solidified it and made what I call the first business investment, which was to attend Moonshine University it is a funny sounding name but I promise it's legitimate curriculum Again back in Louisville, heart of bourbon country, and so it's a six-day course that is hands-on distilling. So for Amy and I that was actually our first experience with working, you know, from grain through the whole process of distilling and then at the end of the week you get a bottle that you made aged one whole hour in a barrel, which we still have.
Speaker 1:How does that taste? Out of curiosity, you know it's unaged bourbon.
Speaker 2:They call it white dog for a reason, so so yeah, that was a great but that was it's.
Speaker 2:You know they call it white dog for a reason. So, yeah, that was great, but that was. It was important to me that we both attend that right, because it wasn't enough for me to just go and I would bring back the notes, and then that was part of Amy being heavily involved in the business and, frankly, I didn't want to be responsible for taking all those notes by myself, because she ended up gravitating towards some of the other classes, like branding and marketing, and she picked up on things that I would have missed, and so it was very beneficial and it wasn't cheap and I say it was an investment. It truly was for us both to attend. That was critical.
Speaker 2:One of the things I learned there was the staff. There has a core staff that they keep, but then they also bring in outside instructors for various topics, and a lot of those instructors were consultants for distilling, and so one of my takeaways was I need a consultant, and I knew I couldn't afford those consultants because they work with all the big companies and I didn't have that kind of budget.
Speaker 2:So we got back and I knew I needed a consultant. So I found one again in North Carolina. His name's Steve. He runs a company called Kindred Spirits Consulting, so shout out to Steve. He was the master distiller at End of Days Distillery down in Wilmington when they opened.
Speaker 2:So he was critical for our success in getting open, certainly, but put him on retainer basically as soon as we got back from that course. The thing about the course that was important was you know, you can't learn it all in six days, obviously, but really all it did was give us the confidence to think that we could pull it off. And so when we went into that course at least for me, I think both of us our plan was we'll do the course, We'll spend two, three years probably getting it up and running. That was kind of the game plan when we went into the course. And then we graduated the course and what we did instead was get back to the area and sign a lease for this place three days later.
Speaker 1:Wow, you know no business plan it did give you confidence, maybe too much, I don't know.
Speaker 2:We signed the lease, not a business plan in place, no funding secured, just again a belief that we would figure it out, and so that course was important. For that there was knowledge and ultimately allowed me to have better conversations with Steve, the guy that I was putting on retainer as consultant. So you know I trust him obviously with his knowledge, but now I had a foundation in that knowledge that allowed me to have better conversations, so it was a really important course for us.
Speaker 1:So you said you sort of gravitated towards the marketing here today. Have you guys sort of gravitated to different aspects of the business, like you prefer to run this part and you run that part? How have y'all divided and conquered.
Speaker 3:Divide and conquered is a great term, I think, and we kind of do that in our personal life as well, with the kids when he was in the military. But, yeah, same similar approach. There's a lot of things that we work on together and we almost always consult each other for pretty much every decision, even if it's right after the fact, we're both aware of everything that's going on at all times. Yeah, I definitely take the marketing, the social media, the merchandise, the events, that kind of stuff. Okay, when we were opening, I was in charge of, like, the decor and working with, you know, getting all that in place. I'm not a bartender and I never will be, so that's Andy's. Andy runs the bar, got it the bar and then the whole distilling side, like I'm aware and a part of the process, but he runs, he's the master distiller for sure. Okay.
Speaker 1:So since you're doing the distilling primarily when you have that recipe, especially award-winning recipes, you don't mix that up very much, right.
Speaker 2:No, I mean continuity across batches is what we're going for. We want a consistent flavor profile, because that's what becomes a customer expectation, right? So if they bought one bottle once, whether it's a year later or a couple years later, they would expect to have that same taste profile. It's important, so certainly important to us. So I would say no, we want to be very consistent with flavor profile. The only thing I would add to it is, like between batch one and batch two of vodka, for example, we didn't change the recipe, but we did refine how we filter it, and so that was not so much changing the the taste of it, but just kind of making a cleaner product.
Speaker 1:and so that's some of the smaller changes we made in between batches do you tweak the percentages like you were saying earlier, like this is 15% rye and you're like I think we need to up that just a little bit on the next batch, or is that deviating too much for your customers who already know what you're selling?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so something like that. You know, you mentioned rye or if we did a corn bourbon right. So typically a bourbon will have corn as a base, at least 51%, and then rye or wheat and then barley, and so for us we want to focus on making a weeded bourbon. We're going to keep that mash bill that's a fancy word for recipe we're going to keep that mash bill consistent. There are different tastes that come out for different various reasons, a little bit different in each barrel, a little bit different aging, and so that's a lot of times when we get to barrel blending, that's where you can kind of get that consistent taste profile because you're blending multiple barrels. But you mentioned kind of changing the recipe. We did tweak our gin recipe despite being award-winning it was but we saw an opportunity to just lessen the juniper a little bit and we were very happy with the results in batch two from that.
Speaker 1:The gin that won the gold award. After it won the award, you tweaked it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, since you talked about timelines, when I tweaked it I had already shipped it off for competition. I didn't know that it was going to win gold.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's funny.
Speaker 2:I think batch two is even better. I think every change we made was for the better.
Speaker 1:So the vodka won the gold recently.
Speaker 2:It was like two weeks ago right A couple weeks ago we got those results and then the rum, the gin, the gin. So we have two gold medals one for our gin that won at New York International Spirit Comp, and then vodka just won gold at something called USA Spirit Rating, which is an international competition. The way they run all of those is, it's all blind taste testing, oh that's cool.
Speaker 2:And you get a panel of judges. Typically three judges do blind taste testing of all your spirits, and then you get tasting notes and so they'll let you know what kind of things they're picking up on. And then they're great as well, and so you know you go against all the big distilleries that are still submitting their products to compete on those platforms.
Speaker 1:So after the competition and you've been awarded or not awarded, depending on who you are they give you. You said they give you notes, so like hey, you know you need to improve here, or hey, you killed it here. This was amazing.
Speaker 2:Most of the notes are just tasting profiles. So you mentioned that we did a tasting before we recorded this, so I tried to take them through some tasting notes, things that they may be smelling or tasting, and that's that's some of what I got back from those competitions. Uh, are tasting notes. Now there is one competition that the american distilling institute runs, called adi, and that particular competition is very, very big on saying here's what we liked, here's what we didn't like, and so that was. You know it's interesting to read and to certainly consider. Are there areas of improvement?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one of your earlier answers too. You mentioned getting the funding for here. Tell me about the wall over here, the wall of fame. Tell me about why that is what it is and how you got started here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So in March of 2023, which was about six, seven months before we opened last year we ran a Kickstarter campaign. Kickstarter is called crowdfunding. It's an opportunity for people to contribute financially at different levels of support, and so we had everything from a $2 sticker to, you know, a hat, a t-shirt. It was really an opportunity for people to show their support before we opened. But the wall of fame represented two levels of support. One, you know, for a hundred bucks. There's a plaque in the center. They can get their name on that.
Speaker 2:And then the larger tiles that surrounded those were really pretty affordable as well 250 bucks and you get your. What we liked about it was we saw a lot of business support, so a lot of those are local businesses that showed early support for us, which we appreciated, and really for them, 250 bucks for you know, a marketing tool, right?
Speaker 3:So they're up there forever.
Speaker 2:So that was, I think, a great deal for them. But we raised that money in March of 2023. And then we coordinated that actually with our soft opening. So we mentioned our one year anniversary coming up. We opened September 29th of last year, but on September 28th I used our soft opening as a tool and everyone on that wall is who was invited to that soft opening.
Speaker 1:So we called it a.
Speaker 2:VIP party, but I knew it was going to be our soft opening opportunity as well.
Speaker 1:And what are you doing for the one year anniversary celebration?
Speaker 2:Yeah, big party. We certainly hope so. I think it will be. We're throwing a tent up out in the parking lot. We're going to have a stage built out there. We have two bands on Friday, the 27th, and three bands on Saturday.
Speaker 1:September this month.
Speaker 2:This month a couple of weeks away, and then Sunday because the tent can't get torn down until Monday we decided to go ahead and host a little craft show as well.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Since the tent will already be up. So we kind of have a Friday, saturday, sunday schedule. So, yeah, we expect a big turnout for that.
Speaker 1:I just want to say congratulations, because I think you had a stellar year, and to be able to celebrate that a year later with the success that you've seen so far, and I think it's only going to get better. I just wanted to say my hat's off to you.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, it's impressive.
Speaker 1:Where do y'all live in the Topsail area.
Speaker 3:We live on the Hampstead-Surf City border.
Speaker 1:Okay, right there. And did you know that it was always going to be Surf City where you were going to open the store, or were you looking at other areas?
Speaker 3:We wanted Surf City. You did yeah, based on what was available. We were looking at different real estate. We searched Surf City first and then we started like well, maybe we have to go out to Holly Ridge or maybe we have to go out to Sneasbury. But when this became available, we knew immediately like yeah this is right.
Speaker 1:Was this development here, charlie Medlin? Was it up and running when you guys made the decision or it was just breaking ground here? Right, it was about half full.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, like all of these.
Speaker 1:This building was nothing.
Speaker 3:These last couple of buildings had nobody in them yet. Dirt floor still.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the building was here. What was the most challenging thing that you guys ran up against when you were opening?
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean, that's probably a loaded question. So I think we had a very, very great outfit in terms of construction. I had a great general contractor shout out to Steven Masonboro Construction just an awesome company to work with. And I'll tell you, I talked to other owners and they had horror stories about working with their general contractor and.
Speaker 2:Steven and his team. He was proactive about when problems came up. He he was helping me solve them and so can't can't say enough about it and you know you look at our timeline. We did it, I think, as fast as anyone can. We signed the lease July of 2022 and we were open by September of 23. So really about a 14 month start to finish. We didn't break ground. This place where we're sitting still had dirt floors on April 12th of 2023. And by September 29th we were open.
Speaker 2:And so when you talk about challenges, I think you know Steven had his kind of timeline for construction and what I did was I overlaid everything that we needed to do, particularly with the distillery side of the house, like when are we receiving equipment? When are we setting up the stills? When can we actually be distilling product? All that had to be synced very tightly in order to make the deadline.
Speaker 2:We got a federal license to be a distiller pretty early on and it's a bureaucratic kind of process and there's quite a bit involved, but frankly, it was pretty straightforward. That was at the federal level. At the state level, it was a little bit more stressful, and it was stressful because you can't apply for your permits until construction is over. So we had to act as if, throughout the whole process, that we would get approved for these permits, but not knowing until really the very end. So construction was officially finished August 30th. I had all my paperwork prepared in advance and I went up the next day. I drove my packets to Raleigh, I had an appointment to sit with them and I walked away with both the commercial permit to be a distillery and then the retail permit to run a bar.
Speaker 2:But all that had to happen so that we could actually make product, and we had already announced our grand opening, so we had a month which was September 29th 30th.
Speaker 1:September 30th, so August, you're getting the end of August.
Speaker 2:They call it a certificate of occupancy, when you talk construction and you're done, and it's all part of the permit process, and so we didn't get that, though, till August 30th, and I had a month then to turn on everything.
Speaker 1:I've never said that distilling equipment was pretty. It's really pretty. The copper and I don't know what he called all the vessels that you have back there. Everything is so it's pretty. So you had all of that in place and you had to distill a batch before you could do the grand opening. So let's talk about that batch. How long does it take from beginning to end to get a batch completed?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little bit different for each one. So vodka is the quickest and easiest when we put it in the still. It takes about six hours to distill it total and from each run. So you mentioned the copper back there, our copper still is 250 gallons and so after we get about 130 gallons after about six hours off of the still. But that's a very, very high proof, right? So we're talking 160 plus proof that 130 gallons. We have to proof it down. Proofing down just means we're adding water to get it to the right proof that we want to put it in a bottle at.
Speaker 2:So we get that off the still I mentioned earlier. I think that we take it through a four-day filtering process. So then we start that four-day filtering process and then basically after that it's ready to bottle.
Speaker 1:Do you bottle here?
Speaker 2:We bottle all in-house, and so that's vodka. Gin is very, very similar. Gin is really just like the tea of spirits. We soak botanicals in the still overnight and it's about 40 total pounds of botanicals for each batch and those go in brewer's bags, actually like big tea bags, and we put those in the still the night prior, we let it steep overnight and then we distill it the next day.
Speaker 2:But, same kind of process. About six hours total to distill it, getting about that 130 gallons off the still at very, very high proof Gin then takes a month to sit and so, if we go back to grand opening, I only launched with bourbon, bach and rum because the gin hadn't sat long enough. About a month later we did a gin release party mid -October because it needed that month before we could actually bottle that.
Speaker 2:I did bottle about a hundred bottles of it for behind the bar only, so it didn't have its full month. It still tasted good, certainly good to be in cocktails, but I wasn't confident to send it out in the world for bottle sales in the merchandise boom. So we held it for another couple of weeks before we sold bottles.
Speaker 1:Okay, so interesting. I know nothing about your business at all, so it's really cool to hear all this. Do you plan on scaling your distillery business in the future?
Speaker 2:I think the quick answer is we have some not plans. I'd still call them dream phase of what year five may look like.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But in our current space, which is certainly a small space, we have a lot of capacity for clear spirits. So vodka, gin and rum we could ramp up production quite a bit. So, to go back to the example I mentioned, 130 gallons of high-proof gin and vodka comes off the still. That 130 gallons, after you proof it down, ends up making almost 1,200 bottles of product, finished product. We distill about once a month, give or take based on production and based on sales. But we've been open a year.
Speaker 1:We're we're on batch three of vodka right.
Speaker 2:So we've done it three times and that's 1200 bottles. I could very easily, in our space, scale and produce 6,000 bottles if the demand was there.
Speaker 2:One of our focuses moving forward into the fall here, our next kind of phase of growth is really going to be focused on distribution across the North Carolina ABCs, and so we'll be focused on building that distribution, building those sales. And the way we do that is actually going to bars and restaurants that order from the ABC system and saying, hey, we're a North Carolina distillery, we're an award-winning distillery. Would you taste our spirits? Would you bring them in and put them on your cocktail?
Speaker 1:menu.
Speaker 2:And that's our plan to grow sales and we have the space to scale to meet those production demands. On the vodka, gin and rum specifically, I did not know.
Speaker 1:it took six hours to distill. How many gallons? Is that again About 130 gallons. I had no idea that it was that short amount of time, but then you age it.
Speaker 2:Right. So you know, vodka needs filtering. Rum doesn't really need any time after distillation, but rum to go back to it, we have to ferment that for four days on the front end, and so we do a rum wash, we ferment it and then we distill it, but rum is ready to go into a bottle right after. Okay, If it's our white unaged rum, Okay, so that's a little bit different. But six hours, I'll tell you, is fast. But that's also based on the fact that we have super efficient, well-made equipment. There are distilleries that you know 12 hours is a short day for them, and so we're able to do that, in part because we have great equipment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome as far as getting your stuff out and into other bars and ultimately distributed throughout the state or the US at some point.
Speaker 2:I would assume.
Speaker 1:That's a sales team, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, eventually for sure, and we won't look at out-of-state distribution until at least year five. We'll spend the next four years really focused on North Carolina. The sales team is a sales team of one, which is me right now. We do have someone that will probably assist us with that. She has a background in doing some of that and so we'll bring her in, but I wanted to be me. Right now, I am the number one brand ambassador for Hidden Ships.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, it's your baby.
Speaker 2:Certainly, you know, when we did tours, I started the tours and that was intentional and so you know I'll be the first one that's out there hitting the road. Here Again, as I mentioned, that's our focus this fall is to really put a lot of time of effort into hitting the road and going to have those, and I'll do those tastings, like we did earlier with bar managers that are doing the ordering.
Speaker 1:Tell me about the name and the logo and the hidden gem in the bottle. How did y'all come up with the logo and the name oh my goodness Hidden Ships originated.
Speaker 3:It's a nod to Topsail Island itself. So the folklore is that the pirate ships learned to hide, like at the sound side, on the inlets, so that when passing merchant ships went by, they would come out in an ambush and pirate as they would. The merchant ships soon realized they were doing this and started to look over the island for the ships and the only thing they could see were the topsails Right, so they called it Topsail.
Speaker 1:Island.
Speaker 3:So the hidden ships is definitely a nod to Topsail itself, and then some of our jewel tones and everything we have going on here nod to Pirate Because when we first came up with this, we were explaining this to our interior decorator like, hey, this is where our name came from Hidden Chips da-da. They're like, oh so you want a pirate theme bar? We're like, oh no, so it was a weird mashup to get them to.
Speaker 2:We didn't go with that interior designer.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, we hired someone else I was wondering if you had an interior designer. For sure you did, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yes, for sure, because I'm not this talented, but they were like I felt like it was going to be really challenging to be like okay, we'll combine our hidden ship's name with, like a speakeasy. Speakeasy yeah, but they did a beautiful job, incredible job.
Speaker 1:The colors in here it's turquoise. They've got the most beautiful tufted bar stools I've ever seen in a bar before. But, like we were saying earlier, it definitely does have that speakeasy feel. But you're still at the beach and we're still kind of light. But I do love the name and I love that you took that from the history of Topsail Island so lovely. I love the name and I love that you took that from the history of Topsail Island so lovely. So you have a little Easter egg that I want to talk about that I just saw today for the first time.
Speaker 3:Tell me about that we know we named it Hidden Ships and there's not like pirate themed, but we definitely kept a little hidden ship on the back of the label. So if you turn the bottle around and you look through, you will see a hidden ship on the back of all the labels. We also have 10 hidden ships in our bar, oh really. So we had little tiny ships, gold ships, placed within our bar. So if you're ever sitting at our bar, we had 10 little golden ships.
Speaker 1:If we find all 10, we get a free cocktail.
Speaker 3:There's 10 ships, yep, and then there's one buffalo, one golden buffalo.
Speaker 1:One buffalo One golden buffalo.
Speaker 3:in there too, one golden buffalo.
Speaker 1:All right, let's talk about your signature cocktails. Who came up with the signature cocktail menu?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the menu was my baby. So after I retired from the Marine Corps, one of the things that I wanted to do intentionally was to become a bartender, and specifically for the experience of being a bartender, but also trying to learn bar management as much as I could. And so I think I picked up while being a bartender at a couple of different places that there was this growing appetite amongst customers for return to some of these drinks right. So 15 years ago you couldn't walk into a bar and ask for an old fashioned not really. They wouldn't really know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:And now it's become much more common. It doesn't mean it's a good old fashioned, but they'll at least have heard of it and we'll make you something, and so that trend is increasing. Now you have a little bit more sophistication with a customer. They know what a Manhattan is, they may know what a Tom Collins is, and so one as I saw a desire to return to those drinks, and two, what I experienced as a bartender sometimes for people they're just very intimidated by the whole process of going to sit at a bar, walking up to a bar and ordering something because they don't really know what they want.
Speaker 2:They can't remember they had a drink once that they liked, but they don't know how to ask for it again. And one of the benefits of going with classic cocktails is these names have been around for a long time, so someone maybe they remember. You know what I did, like a Tom Collins. Let me just order that again, because I know I like it.
Speaker 2:So that was kind of twofold in that way. The other philosophy that I developed during that time was that if we've been making these cocktails for 150 years, there's a reason for it. It's because they're the good ones, right, like we stopped making the bad ones. Those recipes weren't saved, and so there's a reason these have existed and continued as long as they have, because they're good cocktails. There's a lot of bars now that try to create their own cocktails and good on them. I appreciate creativity as much as anyone else, but just because you create a cocktail doesn't mean it's going to be a good cocktail, and so we really focus on well-balanced, classically made cocktails, yeah. So I think what's great about taking cocktails from that era is that they are classically made right. When we say that, we mean three to four ingredients, but also really really well-balanced right. There's not going to be anything that's, you know, that's out of balance. Certainly that's important to us.
Speaker 1:So another thing that is really popular here in your bars the smoked drinks. It's fun to watch you guys make it and then the aroma that is left lingering in the air afterward. That wasn't done pre-prohibition, right? This is a new thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know, I say we're pre-prohibition, but then I pick and choose what I really want they didn't have TVs on the wall back then either, and we do, and so I will say that there's a lot of different ways to smoke a cocktail.
Speaker 2:There's some products on the market right now where you can put it right on the top of the rocks glass, and those are cool. And there's products that in the dome has like a tube that pumps smoke into it from like a little heating gun, and so there's those were kind of too modern for me. We decided to do it under the dome because even if they didn't do it that way in 1890, they maybe could have right. They had the tools and the resources right.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of why we decided on why to do it that way?
Speaker 1:What kind of chips do you use in there Like I'm only familiar with what you're smoking meat with when you go to buy your chips. Are these specialty chips for drinks?
Speaker 2:The good news is it's the exact same chips.
Speaker 1:Is it really?
Speaker 2:Yeah, same brand, nothing special, they're Cherry. We started with Cherry. I figured that we'd change it up, and we might still in the future. But again, from a customer experience perspective, we're trying to replicate experiences every time you come in. So if you had it one way and you liked it, we want to be able to replicate that experience for you the next time you come in, whether that's next week or next year, and so we've been sticking with Cherry Chips or the same brand that you would buy for your smoker at home to smoke meat on.
Speaker 1:You have this wonderful menu of drinks. Can anyone come here and order anything that you would get at a bar, no matter if it's one of the not so great cocktails?
Speaker 3:Yes, pretty much, for sure, you can order anything you want here. Pretty much Okay. We have our bartenders are very talented and even if they don't have exactly what you want, and they tell me what you want and they'll create something. I think that would be very comparable to what you're used to or what you like.
Speaker 1:For folks such as myself that we don't drink alcohol. Don't drink alcohol. You offer a really wonderful list of non-alcoholic beverages.
Speaker 2:Can you tell me a little bit?
Speaker 1:about those. Yeah, which one did I have, which one did I tell you?
Speaker 2:You had an NA non-alcoholic Negroni.
Speaker 1:Negroni. It was amazing, and what I loved about this drink was usually, if I do go into a bar, I'll ask for a mocktail, and the mocktails are syrupy sweet generally speaking. But this drink it actually did taste like it had gin in it, but a very mild flavor to it, but it wasn't frou-frou, it wasn't over the top, but it was. So it's such a nice flavor and it made me feel like I was having an alcoholic beverage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a better experience.
Speaker 1:Tell me about what you're using for those non-alcoholic beverages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so number one I'll just go back to. It was really important, amy and I, to have that on the menu, specifically for people like yourself that you mentioned. I do think there's a growing trend whether people that just want to be more health conscious, people that just want to drink less. Perhaps We've seen people say I'm going to go every other tonight, and so that's a technique that they use just to drink less, and so I think that's a growing trend as drinkers become a little bit more health conscious.
Speaker 2:So from a business perspective, it was important to us to have it on the menu. We went with a brand called Liars non-alcoholic beverages and I have a friend of mine who's been sober 12 years probably 14 years now and and he said he's tried all the brands that was his favorite. I said that's a solid recommendation, that's what I'm going with. So that's what we carry. We have two that are, uh, non-alcoholic bourbon drinks well, a whiskey, sour, uh, and an old-fashioned, and then oh, it's already flavored for that cocktail that you buy like a bottle of non-alcoholic bourbon, okay, or a bottle of non-alcoholic gin.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2:So it is a non-alcoholic kind of substitute for a base spirit. So we carry the non-alcoholic bourbon, the non-alcoholic gin. We also carry the non-alcoholic. They call it a spritzer, it's like an Aperol or Campari, and then one more. I forget the name of it off the top of my head, but it's like a non-alcoholic triple sec essentially so those are the four kind of products that we carry from that company and we're able to make four distinct and unique non-alcoholic cocktails with them. Okay.
Speaker 1:I loved it. I highly recommend that for anyone who is living a sober or semi-sober lifestyle that you come in and you give that a try.
Speaker 2:And just a note on that again, we fully support Dry January. No reason to stay home. You can come in and, as you mentioned, have a great experience with something that still tastes great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it tasted amazing. So mixing up these old school cocktails, you're right, is not normal for today, but you offer classes to help people who just want to come in and learn how to make these amazing cocktails at home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so just a quick overview on our kind of monthly class schedule. We do offer what we call Mixology 101. And frankly I don't like the word mixology, but people recognize kind of what we're getting at. We're teaching bartending skills and so we did name it that we have a charcuterie and spirit or cocktails pairing class and then a chocolate and cocktail pairing class, and then we offer that on a kind of a rotating monthly basis.
Speaker 2:But to go back to mixology, yeah, we want to teach certain skills that people can use at home, and I think people wonder you know, why would we teach those skills? Maybe people will come in less. Well, maybe I don't. I really don't think so. I think a great cocktail is like a great sandwich. Sometimes it just tastes better when someone else makes it for you. So for me it's not so much about, oh, people will come in less, it's more about teaching some of these skills because there is a desire to learn them, and so the class kind of changes up.
Speaker 2:There's always one drink that you have to stir, because that's a very specific skill set and why we talk about why we would stir and when we would stir a drink. And then there's always a cocktail that you have to shake, which again is another skill we have to teach when you would do it, why you would do it, what's the purpose of doing it. And in the class, not only do you get to make those two drinks, you get to drink them. So that's kind of a fun experience for the night as well, I teach one of the techniques we call speed pours in the industry as a bartender. Now speed pours is probably not anything you're going to need to do at home, unless you're talking like very, very big cocktail party. But really the reason I taught it is because now I think if you know that skill and you go to a bar and watch a bartender, now you kind of have a better idea of what's going on and it kind of makes it more fun for you just to watch a bartender.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because you were taught what speed pours are You're going to be counting them? How much was in that count? Did he overpour, did he underpour? So I think it's just a fun thing to teach people.
Speaker 1:So fun. Let's talk about the tasting tours. So you have the pairings which would be the charcuterie with a drink, a cocktail, but you also allow people to come in and tour the facility. Also do a tasting at the same time?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, so that's kind of our. We offer those tours every week on Friday, saturday and Sundays. People can go online and sign for that, sign up for that stuff. It is a five dollar tour, but we give you a five dollar shot glass at the end, so it's essentially free and you do get a full tasting with all six of the spirits that we offer so that the tour comes in.
Speaker 2:We have a fantastic tour guide right now. He's done a really, really great job of taking over that program for us. So you'll come in, you'll learn a little bit about the, the background of of the company. So things like where did the name come from? How did the logo come apart? We cover that because I think it's good foundational background information and then we give a very broad overview of distillation as a process. What are we trying to do? What are we trying to capture during that? How does that look for us here at Hidden Ships? So you get a high level view of the process. But then they all end with the tasting.
Speaker 2:And that was actually one of the things that Amy and I took from our tours in Kentucky during our RV trip was those companies generally all do a very, very good job of doing tastings, where they're really trying to teach you what you may be smelling, what you may be tasting. And what I've found over time with doing tastings with people is they really just lack the language to describe what they may smell or taste. Right, they kind of have an idea of what it might be, but maybe they're embarrassed to say what it is. They're tasting, and you know, if it tastes like Skittles to you, it tastes like Skittles, that's okay, but maybe we can teach you a better word, more language, to describe that, and so that was really important, that we incorporate that into all of our tours, and I think we've done that.
Speaker 2:I do think that makes us unique to this area in terms of other distilleries around us is we really focus a lot of attention on that tasting portion of the tour, and I think it goes back to just being that. Experience for people is they can remember some of that stuff what were they tasting, and so we've taught them something.
Speaker 1:And it is fun to learn the language of a new industry that you don't live and breathe and you don't know how to describe it I would definitely feel that way. How long does a tour and tasting take from beginning to end?
Speaker 2:About 45 minutes and we do them on the hour, Like Friday and Saturday I think. We start at 4, 5, 6 and 7 o'clock pm. Okay, and so you're going to start, you're going to get that background, you're going to get that distillation overview and then you're going to get that tasting at the end, yeah, and then a couple minutes to reset and then the next one goes so pretty much every hour in the hour.
Speaker 1:You also have some really great events here. I know that you had Vaughn Penn come in with the Chill Cats and did some jazz a jazz evening.
Speaker 2:She was great, loved having them.
Speaker 3:What other events do you have coming up that people can look forward to? So that was actually our first sort of big live music event that we've had a lot of people request live music. It's a little. We're a little hesitant or maybe a little more challenged, because we still want to keep the vibe of what we got going on here. There's a lot of great local artists, but they simply just don't play what would kind of match the feel. I can see that Because the music is the same era as the drinks, which is the same era as the decor.
Speaker 3:So they kind of keep that going. So Vaughn is fantastic and the Chill Cats are just wonderful. We're actually featuring them on a Friday night of our anniversary.
Speaker 2:Oh really, yeah, she's coming back. Yeah, they're our feature Friday night.
Speaker 3:We're going to have a jazz night Friday night. Do we need?
Speaker 1:to buy tickets for that. No, no tickets, just show up.
Speaker 2:Just show up, okay, I will mention, since we just brought it up, it is the same weekend as Salty Turtle. They're a big brewery at the front of this complex, that's right, yeah. And so it is their Oktoberfest weekend, so they will also have a tent with bands, and so I talked to the owners over there and have a beer and then walk on down to us. Don't walk down here with your beer.
Speaker 3:Finish your beer there and then walk to us.
Speaker 2:Get a cocktail here. We're going to have two outdoor bars. We'll have beer out there and we'll have simple cocktails.
Speaker 1:And then we'll obviously have the full bar indoors. I do want to talk more about the Buffalo Bills really fast. Before we close this up. You had to go through a process. You had to apply to be a Buffalo Bills site. Am I saying that right, your site? We're a Bills backers bar, a Bills backers bar. What sort of red tape or what hoops did you have to jump through?
Speaker 3:for that Wasn't that hard. I had to go on buffalobillscom and register and apply to become a Bills backers bar. We just promise to play all the games is really what we do, all right, and then to draw. You know, we have decor that we put out. We don't keep it up because we're not a sports bar, so don't keep it up like all the time.
Speaker 3:But we have it in the back. So on Sundays, or, like this week, it'll be Thursday and Monday nights we will open and we will have the game playing. So we have a projector screen that drops down.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, I was just looking around. I was trying to find when are you playing.
Speaker 3:It's a large projector screen that drops down, and we had our season opener on Sunday.
Speaker 1:How was the turnout Fantastic, do people? You got a lot of Buffalo Bills fans in the area, a lot of the Woodward, do they really? Yes?
Speaker 3:When we traveled for a year we would hit up and we'd try to find a Bills Backers Bar so you can go to a map that shows where all the Bills Backers Bar are. That's why you get registered with them to be on their little map. And we hit up several on our RV trip and we were always like, dang, they are everywhere. I didn't know that was a thing I know.
Speaker 2:And I bet all the sport-based fans have something similar. For us, I think the connection was Amy and I both being from Western New York, growing up there and then seeing it on our RV trip, seeing these Bills fans just come out of the woodwork. They do call it Bills Mafia for a reason, and so it didn't matter where we were. In the middle of Montana there's two people that live in Montana and they both came to the Bills backer game and so just everywhere we went Northern California all the way through.
Speaker 2:Texas, and so we, just because we observed it firsthand and because we grew up there is why we decided to do a be a Bills backer bar. Again, it's a tough balance sometimes because we're not a sports bar.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You can go anywhere in town almost and catch all nine games on Sunday. For us it was just hey, we're just going to do this Bills thing. Now, the rule is that we had to develop is, if there are other games on and a Bills game is not currently playing, I'll allow it to be on the TV, but no audio. It's still, it's house music during those other games.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of the rule.
Speaker 1:I got to go back to the RV one more time.
Speaker 3:You just mentioned that.
Speaker 1:RV trip. You're in an RV with the two of you, the four kids and the dog. When do you get sick of each other Like? When do you say, like I got to get?
Speaker 3:out of this RV. That didn't happen. Was there like?
Speaker 1:the three months were tough and then, after that, everything starts to feel normal.
Speaker 3:Nothing was tough about it. Really, I found the only thing I missed from our house was a fenced in backyard, like the fenced in backyard area is what I missed, because we had the dog and then the kids just to like peace of mind. But every campground is in. Places we were at had things for the kids to do yeah, the dog was on a leash the whole time, so that was like the biggest difference. But going from the house the 3 000 square foot house to the 40 foot RV, everything was just simpler.
Speaker 3:I think it would take me five minutes to clean up instead of two hours. That I would like I do it more often, but it was great.
Speaker 2:In terms of getting a single share, that actually didn't happen. Relationship-wise it was great and just to not be too cavalier about it, amy and I have done vacations where it's just her and I and like that happens Right.
Speaker 2:But but, truly on this RV trip. I don't think we experienced that. When I said well, I just kind of meant unique challenges to being on the road Right. So for me, and, and we went from tent camping to 40 foot fifth wheel, we didn't have a small RV. I bought the fifth wheel. I said, here I go, I guess I'm going to pull off with this thing, I own it now, but there's no licensing requirement. I watch YouTube videos, so just, we had to learn everything.
Speaker 2:And it felt like they say pulling your RV down the road is like putting it through a tornado, and so I felt for me there was, like always, something breaking in there something to fix. Everything's just a little bit different. I know how to fix a toilet, but an RV toilet's a little bit different right and so some of the mechanics of the legs on the RV were challenging.
Speaker 2:And so our relationship didn't struggle but, like some of that, it was just always there was a unique new challenge and it was so new to me I didn't have an answer to it. I'm going to jump on YouTube.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, so new to me. I didn't have an answer to it. I'm going to jump on YouTube. I feel like we traded some stressors. That was new, that was different. So we traded some of those stressors for some of the stuff that we don't have normally at the house anymore. We homeschool our kids. Obviously, we were traveling for a year, but we don't have the stressors of no more soccer practices, no more places we had to be at certain times we were free to do whatever we wanted, wherever we wanted, I think that's what I crave, I think.
Speaker 1:That's why I want to do it so badly. It's like get rid of every all the outside noise and just focus on the family and having fun. I'm so envious of that. How old were your kids when you're in that rv?
Speaker 2:so seven, nine, fourteen and seventeen did they have any complaints?
Speaker 3:the wi-fi oh, that was always the wi-fi. Yeah, we would get to like yosemite.
Speaker 2:There's no you can't, you can't escape that so our oldest, 17 year old. They graduated high school year early. I said don't rush off to college, do this trip with us. Yeah, it was a unique set of circumstances that allowed us to do it all right. I just retired, figured out a way to do it financially. I said don't run off to school, just do this. Do you have a gap year? Right, right, do it with us.
Speaker 2:I think he did surprisingly well for being cramped into a back cabin and with cause, all four of them shared like a single room back there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Bunks.
Speaker 2:RV bunks and they really did great, you know, together. And then it was, you know, smaller, everything's smaller, but it was the wifi that was like the biggest complaint.
Speaker 3:That was the 14-year-old.
Speaker 2:We'd get to a new RV spot and be like, oh, this Wi-Fi's buns Not going to be able to get on the Xbox.
Speaker 2:That's what he would call it Other than that. Yeah, I mean it was awesome. Amy mentioned the world schooling that we did that year, like I remember going to Mount Rushmore and the day we drove there we just learned about Mount Rushmore. We went to Custard, last Stand and we learned all about that. We really planned our route by national parks and the weather, so during the summer we were up north, during the winter we were down south, but then, in terms of route planning, it was you know what national park are we going to get to? And one of the really cool features that they have in national parks now is this app and Amy probably remembers the name.
Speaker 2:Gypsy. It's as you're driving GPS-wise. It knows where you're at in the park, so it's telling you about things that you're seeing. Oh, I love that, and so we would just drive through the park, and that was school for the day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we learned about anything from the landmarks and stuff that happened there to like. This lake now has invasive fish because of XYZ Started from a volcano. Right.
Speaker 2:Whenever? So, it was awesome, super great.
Speaker 1:I'm going to hold on to that dream.
Speaker 2:Although everyone's like sell the camper, I say do the opposite, sell the house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sell the house, I the house, I gotta work on them. Alright, so we're gonna wrap this up here. What is the one takeaway that you want listeners to leave this podcast episode with today?
Speaker 2:well, I would say, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably from the area. You visit the area, so make sure that you come visit us guys, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:This has been a pleasure. I enjoyed having my friends sit here and video with us, my new friend, ernie Mezek, and then we had that wonderful tasting and y'all have been very generous with your time and also your patience, because there was quite a few reschedules, and I'm really sorry about that. No, I'm good.
Speaker 2:You made it happen.
Speaker 1:You guys rock. I wish you the very best. Thank you very much. Thank you, Thanks so much. Hey. If you enjoyed today's episode of Top Soul Insider, please show your support by clicking the follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast listening platform. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Please also go to topsoulinsidercom and join our mailing list by clicking on the Make Me a Topsoul Insider button. While you're there, you can click the Send Me a Voicemail button and let me know exactly what you're thinking your message just might be on an episode of Topsoul Insider. You can email me at Krista at topsoulinsidercom, or call or text me at 910-800-0111. Thank you for listening and supporting Topsail Insider and our local businesses and nonprofits. These are our neighbors and our friends, and together we build a mighty and a beautiful community I'm super proud to be a part of. I'll see you around Topsail.
