413. Four Branches Bourbon

Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon. And I'm your host, Todd Ritter.

We've got a great show for you today. So grab your favorite pour and join us.

Hello listeners. This is your fellow roadie, Matt Simons, AKA DJ Seven Foot. And I want to invite you to the next big bourbon event in Louisville, Kentucky on October 24th. It's the inaugural United Spirits elevated bourbon fall festival. I'm going to tell you all the details at the break. Stick around.

All right. Listen, so we got a really great show for you today. We've got a new distillery on the show that hasn't been on the bourbon road before, and we're pretty excited to have them here. And we're going to introduce you to these guys. I've got Todd with me today. Todd, welcome back.

Hey, glad to be here, Jim. Looking forward to talking to Harold under down and RJ Casey today. So let's, uh, let's jump right into it.

All right. Well, Harold and RJ, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks. It's an honor to be here for sure.

Thank you. Thank you, Jim and Todd.

All right. So you guys are with four branches, bourbon out of Bartstown, Kentucky, and, uh, you've got a great story. It's a story we definitely want to hear about, but, uh, before we get down that road, I would like to say that you did send us some samples or a sample in fact, and Todd and I have both poured it in our glass. And I'm going to assume for the moment, RJ and Harold, that as founders of the company, you both have it in your glasses as well.

Yes, sir.

Sure. So we're going to get straight to that whiskey. If that's okay with you, let's do it. All right. Let's check it out. And this is the four branches, bourbon founders blend handcrafted with four grains. It's good to have a four grain bourbon in my glass again.

Nashville's about 65 corn, 15 rye, 10 malted barley and 10 aged wheat that goes into that four grain blend.

It does have a lot of vanilla. It does have a really nice fresh note to it though. Like a, like a, a spring freshness, like a nice floral, floral spring freshness. but I'm picking up that vanilla and the oak is coming through a little bit on the nose. It's very nice. A little bit of spice on the bag, but that might just be barrel spice I'm picking up. Kind of nice.

This is a 96 proof, correct?

Yes, 96. All right.

Let's taste it. Cheers. Yeah.

Cheers gentlemen. Cheers.

Oh, that's nice. It has a little bit more spice on it than I thought it might. It sits nice on the mid palette.

Yeah. It's really soft. Nice and nice viscosity for 96 proof.

Oh, we can sit, we can sit and sip on this for a while while we're talking. This is really nice guys. Good job. Yeah.

Yeah, actually, uh, we were very lucky to work directly with Steve and Ali. He, uh, he, he actually, we were doing some tasting. We had Dan, we were just talking about him at Bardstown bourbon company. And, and, uh, so we started our session and we're like, Hey, look, you know, Steve's going to come in and say hi. He's super busy. In fact, he wasn't even supposed to be here, but he heard you guys were in and he's got to check on a couple of things. And he popped his head in and of course, like all military guys, we were just totally giving each other crap and kind of cutting up a little while we were going through the process. And he's like, who are you guys again? Like, what's your story? Tell me a little bit about your company. And so we just started talking to him and he was there for a good two hours. And he's just amazing. Like, you know, just watching him taste bourbon, like 50 year bourbon, you know, Hall of Fame legend. It's just, you can't help but learn from him. And he's just a great guy. So it's pretty cool. He was the guy.

I think it was his idea. RJ when he said, Hey, you guys are four branches of the military. Why don't we just go ahead and add four grains? Let's put in some wheat. And he gives Dan the look, you know, a little bit of a nod and said, Hey, let's put some, some wheat into this. And he said about 5%. And then we tasted that and he goes almost there. He said, give me 10%. So he, he did that and he goes, okay, now we're talking, we've got something here. We've got something special, but we're very blessed, very fortunate. To have him walk into the room and really kind of hang out with us and use his expertise, hall of famer, it was awesome. It was a great time.

Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, are you really just brushing over the, once he got that 10% going? You're not going to tell the story because I'll tell it.

Well, I didn't know if we had that, you know, I had the time to get into that. Oh, you talking about me knocking back the, uh, yeah, let's, let's don't do that. We got to hear it now. RJ, go ahead. Tell them what happened.

Literally, 5%, we basically all tried it and they had quite a bit. And he's like, go 10% and Dan was like, we don't have much weed. But let me do this. And so he does his thing. And so he had a little bit, just a little. He goes, OK, guys, this is the final blend that he just talked about. So let's all try it and we'll go from here. But he hands it to Harold. And it was such a small, minuscule amount. I mean, it was, it was, it was one of those kind of vials. Like it was almost like that. And it was about that full. And so Harold takes and he's like, Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. He just puts all of it in his mouth and he's like, Oh man, this is good. You guys got to try this one.

Harold, as he tilts all the way up, all of us like,

He goes, oh, you got to try this. They're like, really, Harold? That was for all of us. Like, oh my goodness. And we were like, damn it, Harold. So that's probably going to be our first t-shirt. Yeah. So Dan had to run out, grab more wheat, and it was fun. And we got more time with Steve Natalie, so nothing beats that. It worked out, but it was amazing. Like once we all tried it, we're like, that's it.

What a great, well-rounded team down there. I mean, those guys, Dan is great, Steve's great, and their CEO is a retired military guy as well. So I mean, it's a great company, great company and so professional and just amazing. You guys made a really great choice there. I appreciate it.

It was kind of funny, actually, the first trip to Bardown as four branches, I was actually still overseas. I was in Eastern Europe and the three of them showed up and they met Mark Irwin. And he was a former Delta Force commander. And I had read an article about him becoming a CEO of a distillery. And so I'm working on Extraction 2 on a movie. And so I get this text, and it's, hey, what movie are you working on? And it's from the guys. And I'm like, well, guys, you know I'm working on Extraction 2. And they're like, oh, what country are you in? And I'm like, you know I'm in Prague. And they're like, Hey, do you know chili Palmer? And I was like, and I was standing right next to him. Just so happens. I was like, Hey, chili, check this out. And, uh, and we took a selfie and we sent it to him. And then those guys, the three other three founders and marker when all took a selfie too, and send it back to us. Cause you know, Mark was like, Hey, chili, one of the guys from the unit is over there right now. Like, I wonder if they're on the same movie. So small world story.

Oh, that's pretty cool stuff. Yeah. So, uh, let's talk a little bit about, uh, kind of the, the concept behind, uh, four branches, kind of how you got started. We know you, you finally ended up, uh, partnering with barstown bourbon company. Can you tell us a little bit about, um, kind of the beginnings, how things started?

Well, RJ, you want me to run down the list here how we got connected?

Go for it.

Yeah, I met Rick Franco. Rick Franco is a US Marine. He graduated from VMI, and then he was a Marine Corps officer for 10 to 12 years. I met Rick and Mike Trott both down in the Bahamas. I was working down at Baker's Bay, which is a golf resort down there for the Richie Rich. And they sent me down after the hurricane. You guys remember Dorian back in 2019 that really set over the top of the Bahamas and spun for about two to three days. It was a mess. So it tore the place up really bad. So I went down there to help run the workforce for the restoration project for that property. And Rick was a contracted security person down there at the time. I met Rick and we were working on and off together because Rick would work about 90 days and then he would roll out and another security guy would come in. And then Mike Trott was actually the VP of Discovery Land Company who owns and develops these magnificent properties all over the globe, right? From Scotland to Hawaii to, you know, all over the states and down in the Caribbean. But anyway, so we all met down there and I've worked with those two guys for about probably two years. And it was Rick's idea to start this bourbon company. But what he wanted to do was, hey, let's buy a barrel and bottle it, put a label on it, and sell it on Facebook. So we all kind of sat around with looking at it and said, I don't think you can do that, Rick, because there's lots of regulation when it comes to selling spirits, right? So we basically decided, hey, we're going to start our own brand. So Rick Franco was the person with the seed of the idea when he was driving home from work one day. He reached out to Mike Trott and told the story. And then Mike and him said, hey, well, we've got Air Force, we got Marines, let's call Harold, US Navy, and let's talk about it. And then we've all known each other for probably a decade and been deployed all over the globe. And I'm sure our boots has touched the same past or footprints on and off across all of these different globe. And you look on the back of our bottle, a world globe map and it's like indiana jones and all of those dots are what we've been deployed all over the basically the world and and and you know we kind of like two ships passing in the night right i'm sure we all probably were in afghanistan at at within 30 days of each other, same in Europe, in the Pacific and Asia. So it was really, it all came together. And then we said, okay, let's do this. We've got four branches of the military. And we're definitely not giving the Heisman to the Coast Guard or Space Force, but it just turned out that, hey, we're four branches of the military and we built that. And it's been an awesome ride. And you guys know how hard business is. We come from the military, we transitioned into the civilian world and we all had jobs then. And recently, you know, Mike has stepped away from his job and he's our managing principal. Rick still works, RJ still works. I just worked and I was in Bahamas still about probably I stepped away from that Bahama job in April this year. So now I'm full-time, four branches running the East Coast. And as you can imagine, every time we go into a market, it requires the four founders for us to come in and do sales blitz and meet our distributors on the ground and really push the brand, right, and do a bunch of tastings. Liquid ellipse. And so that's how the whole four branches was started. If you look at the label, black and silver label. That four is not just a number. If you look at the bottom piece of that, it looks like a foundation mark going across. And you can see it on our website, fourbranches.com. We explain what that four really is. That arch going across the bottom is U.S. Army. First found in 1775. And then the centerpiece coming up, That is what you would see from a shoreline looking at a mast of a ship or a con of a submarine coming out of the water. That's U.S. Navy. And then the horizontal piece, the thin piece coming across, is like a bayonet knife affixed to a rifle or a sword representing Marine Corps, the lenist and meanest. And then the swoop up in the sky is, of course, Air Force providing air cover for all services. And then you see that black spear in the center and, you know, RJ Special Forces, I'm a retired Navy SEAL. So that spear is like paying, you know, our respect to the US SOCOM, right? Special Operations Community. And you hear it lead from the tip of the spear, right? So that tip of the spear, the piece that you can see is honoring our men and women that are deployed around the globe, defending our freedoms today. And the piece that is missing is for our fallen. So that four really, it's, you know, it's our roots to the company and hopefully one day we can put that on a shirt or a hat and it'll stand by itself and people see that and I guess four branches permit. Right, so that's the story. And we've been in the market for about a year and a half now, and it's taken us about three years, three and a half years to get to this point. And like everyone knows, building a company from the ground up, there's nothing easy about it. The hard piece of it, we have to raise money. And we've raised probably about 2.5 million right now. And we've got about 7,500 cases of this founders plan out. And we just came out with an LTO, limited time offering, and it's called Black Ops. And we're getting ready to hit the market with that. DTC, Directed Consumers, online. You can get a bundle, a book, Rick Prado, and we'll talk about that a little bit later. But I'm going to stop here and we can get into Black Ops. But that's our story, Jim, basically in a quick, you know, That's an amazing story. It's been awesome.

Yeah. So what I was going to ask though is like, obviously you've come together, you, you four guys, but like, how did your own individual bourbon journeys kind of start? Like what got you into bourbon in the first place? Or was it just like, Hey, let's start a bourbon company.

And that was kind of the kickoff, but I think all of us have a different journey. It led us to bourbon. I'm not sure about Harold, but I know like Rick and I just becoming, like in Special Forces, I was on a combat dive team. You know, when you're around the water, rum is kind of the thing, right? Just being around the water and being around dive teams, I started with rum as far as spirits go. It wasn't until I went to the agency years and years later that I discovered bourbon, basically. It was introduced to me and I was like, oh my goodness. It was kind of a crowd. A lot of them were Scotch and or bourbon or just bourbon or Scotch, but it was one of the two if you were at the agency. Being in the dynamic section I was in, it was a really cool discovery and it's been an amazing journey. I think that helps me appreciate being in rooms with Steve Nalley and my guys and us coming out with our founders blend and that whole journey and then LTOs like Black Ops. which I guess we're going to talk about soon, but there's so many things that we all want to do with bourbon. And it's amazing to sit in a room with Steve Nally and say, hey, blending's an art, you know, just like distilling is, you know, you can distill and you can, he goes, hell, I can, because one of the things that came up was age. And Steve was like, hey man, you know, being in the bourbon business over 50 years, I can make a four-year taste better than a 25. It's how you finish it. So there's a real art to it. And then when we started, we sourced our bourbon from Indiana and Kentucky, had it all shipped to Bardstown. He said, blending's an art too. If I blend it wrong, if I use part of these three mash bills and I add too much of one or too little of another, it's not going to be your founders line. So we have to be really careful. And it's like, like I said, you can't help but just soak the knowledge up when you're around guys like, you know, Jeff Hotmeyer, who is, you know, with the guys at Bardstown, that whole cruise is amazing. So it's been It's been wild. And then you talk to bourbon experts around the country and even other countries, and you start telling your story and they taste it and tell you what they think. Everybody's palate's different. So it's been an amazing, amazing journey.

Well, you know, with me with with bourbon, you know, I got a little bit sideways on whiskey right out of high school. And when I did that, it kind of messed up my You know, I didn't want to smell it. I couldn't even smell it. I'd get sick to my stomach. But as I got older and as I was sitting in the Bahamas, I was drinking some scotch and I'm like, wow, I kind of like this smoky taste of this scotch. And then I kind of migrated back over to Woodford and other American bourbons. And I really started understanding what it really means to sit down with friends and to reflect. Because in the military, unfortunately, we still have the issue with suicides and people taking alcohol in the wrong direction. And sometimes they can't. can't turn that around because they're in a bad accident or something catastrophic happens in their lives. But for me, it's just setting out on a porch and just kind of thinking about your past, right? And I'm very fortunate that I finished my 30-year career in the Navy. You know, of course, all of us has had friends that didn't come home or weren't able to finish their careers. And that's very sad. But when I sip, you know, Four Branches Bourbon, and we have a slogan, you know, one of our ethos at the company is, We serve honorably, drink honorably, and then we finish that with saying, we don't want you to drink to forget anymore. We want you to sip to remember. And remember the ones that are no longer with us, of course, but always remember the happy times in our lives and the celebrations that we get to have when we go to graduations, we go to promotions, weddings, and everything that we do just every day. After I finished cutting the grass, I'd love to look at the lines and the grass. And it, you know, it just kind of brings it all back to, you know, when you're sipping to remember, you know, there's lots of happy things and lots of successes in life that we shouldn't be sipping to remember. And enjoying the bourbon.

Yeah, I think that's powerful what you just said there. Yeah, definitely.

And with a cigar too. I like to, my wife don't really like me smoking cigars too much, but I enjoy it when I'm out here. I was just out on my speakeasy. My wife actually built my speakeasy here on the side of the house. And I had my son, Josh, the oldest, he's a F-35 pilot out in Lamar, California. Two of his friends was here flying an Oceania show. So they had an F-35 here doing a demo and they were both sitting over here and I was introducing them to four branches. And, you know, it's times like that that really kind of, you know, helps, you know, when you wake up in the morning, you got to have a purpose and then you just, you know, keep on keeping on.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, Todd, what do you think? A good place for us to break for the half and come back after a break.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it is. Yep.

All right, folks, we'll stick around. We're going to continue sipping on this Four Branches Urban Founders Blend, and we will be back after the break with more from Four Branches. So stick around.

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Hey roadies, welcome back to the second half of the show. We're here with RJ Casey and Harold Underdown, or Branch's Bourbon. And yeah, it's, uh, what we've listened to is just, it's a great story. And these guys, uh, first of all, let me say, you know, I appreciate what you've done for our country and thank you for serving our country, I'm sure. And please pass that on to the other two founders. But, uh, yeah, let's, uh, let's dig into some more of this.

I really like the way this sits on the palate. It does maintain that softness on the front. I really like that a lot. This has got, I would say, for a new bourbon drinker, a very low barrier to entry. It's very easy to take that first sip. It comes across very nice and soft. It's very floral. And I think for that reason, it would appeal to somebody who is maybe not ready to take on the higher proof whiskeys just yet.

Right, right. So Harold or RJ, what's the MSRP on this particular bottle?

Right now, it's $89.99. OK. And of course, we're in discussions about that right now. So moving into 25, and then we're definitely targeting some sales prices, 79.99. We're in the NEX, and hopefully shortly it'll be in the APHES. And of course, that's gonna bring the price down even more. Right here at my NEX here at Oceana, I can pick up a bottle for 78.49. So that's a great price. And like I said, we were talking about bringing that MRSP down to about $79.99 instead of $89.99.

Yeah, we definitely weren't able to do that because of how expensive barrels were when we first started. Things are coming down, our business is growing, we're doing a lot better. So we've definitely been in discussions to pass that savings on to our customers. And we've seen it as low as 73 at Patrick Space Force Base. And then we've seen it as high as like 99.99 in DC at one of the high end stores. So there's variations depending on what store you find it in.

Sure, and I think for the most part, people understand that with volume and with experience, you're able to play with the price a little bit more. So as you start to increase your volumes and cover more states and you're able to do a little bit more with price, it's tough in the beginning, I think, for a small startup to really get their prices below where you are. I think you're at a fair price for somebody who's just getting started. And one of the things that I noticed with it is it has this nice, well-rounded, mature flavor. Can you tell us a little bit about the ages of the spirits that went into making up the blend?

Yeah, actually. So we source our bourbon from Indiana and Kentucky. Our youngest bourbon is over four years and our oldest is over nine. So and we asked Steve and that's when he kind of told us, hey, I can make a bourbon. You know, it doesn't matter the age, but people are going to ask you that. And, you know, it's important to some people because the way we blended these three mash bills in one and your founders blend, it sits right at seven years.

What led you guys to decide on a 96 proof? You'll see obviously a lot of 80 proofs and 90 proofs. What led you to sit at that 96 proof spot?

We had a sliding scale on that, right? So we were in the tasting room there, the chemistry lab. We started out about 80 proof. And then we tasted that and we kept moving to the right. We went up to around 95. Oh boy, that's really good. We got up to about 110. We're like, wow, that's getting a little hot. So we backed it off. And then we fell on 96 because in the military, if you get a four day weekend, it's a 96 hour liberty. So we kind of went with 96 because it has that military heritage to it, with that 96 hour, four day off. And we really liked it. I mean, we really loved that 95, but the 96 was the number we were settled on.

I think it works really well. So you guys talked about the MSRP. What states can our listeners find you in right now?

Seven states, we're in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arizona, Florida, Virginia, D.C., and Maryland. And you also can find us online through DTC, Speak Easy, in 30 states. So you can go to our website, fourbranches.com. We have a tab there, Find Near Me, and it'll bring up all the stores that we're in in your state. And then if you if you're not in one of those seven states, you can order it through DTC if your state allows that. Because like you said, Todd, some states don't don't allow that.

So kind of unbeknownst to you, I found you guys are available on Sillbox dot com, too. So it was at eighty nine ninety nine plus shipping. So for some of those people not in that state, it's it's available for them to order through Sillbox, which is it's a very popular site. There's a lot of folks that use

Yeah, I was going to say also with our price, as far as drink honorably and different things that is the soul of our company, one of our other things as a company we wanted to really get into was our give back component. So we actually give back to four different charities. Some you've heard of, like Folds of Honor, they're pretty much on the back of milk cartons by now. I mean, they're everywhere. So we're helping them out. And then there's charities that you definitely have never heard of, like the Third Option Foundation, and that's in the CIA Officer Memorial Foundation, and then the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. We have, like I said, a huge give back component, so part of that money that you're spending on our bottle goes to those charities to help out.

And RJ, you just did the Special Forces event out in Texas. I think you guys had that silent auction and went for $26,000, so that put us over $400,000 of give back. which is, you know, that's a nice chunk of change.

Yeah. For having been on the market only about a year, actually a year and a half now, you know, and to get back 400,000, like we just want to keep that going. So. That's a really important part of our company as well. So yeah, we were out at the Staccato Ranch in Texas and I'd never shot a staccato. They're kind of like legendary as far as weapons makers. So we were out there doing a, it was called the Great American Shoot and they run it once a year and that it's run by the Special Forces Charitable Trust. So all the money at a huge auction. And so there was a flag that was jumped in to the 80th anniversary of D-Day. And then I jumped in several bottles along with my friends, jumped in several signed bottles. And so I brought them home to give to certain charities. So one of our bottles went to that charity. And yeah, it was an incredible event.

Wow, fantastic. That is awesome. So you guys had mentioned in the first half about a special offering that you have that is releasing, you called it Black Ops. Can you tell us a little more detail on that and when it might be available to our listeners?

Absolutely. Black Ops is a tribute that we're paying to one of our brand champions, Rick Prada. He was a Cuban young man. He was 10 years old and his mom and dad basically got enough money together, put him on an airplane, got him to Miami for his safety. So he was in Miami as an orphanage for several months. And then he was sent to Denver, Colorado, to another orphanage. And he stayed there for probably a year or so. And then his mom and dad finally got out of Cuba into Miami and purchased a house and started their lives there. And the first thing they did, of course, was sent for Rick and bring him back from Denver, bring him home. So Rick kind of grew up in a Miami area. and then he joined the U.S. Air Force and he was a para rescueman. And he did that, RJ, what, about eight years, eight to 10 years that he was a PJ in the Air Force?

Ironically, he was in the Air Force Reserve down at Homestead near Miami. And one of the Hurricanes chased that unit up to Patrick Space Force Base where I'm currently in right now. So, unknowingly, we're in the same PJ, but the agency recruited him after all.

And then he transitioned over to the agency, the CIA, and he got into the anti-terrorism unit and did that for 20-some years, 24 years. And then with that being said, with his background, he wrote a book and into books titled Black Ops. so you know doing the dirty work around the globe right to control some of these bad guys so we we said hey we're gonna come out with a limited time offering bourbon the bourbon we had we had some nine-year-old 21 rye and we took the nine-year-old and and finished it in four caribbean rum barrels and that set for about 60 to 90 days. And we just bottled that right behind our third round of founders plan. So we just bottled about 183 cases of that. And Rick and his wife was out in Barstown with us. We had dinner the night before, and Rick came in and signed about 10 cases. It was great. And I said, hey, you feel kind of like a movie star. He says, I really do. He says, I'm so overwhelmed right now as far as with the success of his book. And then we rolling out this LTO, Black Ops Bourbon. It's really good and we'll make sure you guys get some of that too so you can taste that because it tastes really great. You pick up a little bit of that molasses from the rum, setting in those rum barrels. It's just really a great finished tasting bourbon. So that's going to hit the market probably around mid-October. And we're going to be selling it through our DTC, most of about 190 bundles. We're calling them bundles because what you do is you purchase a book and that bottle, and then we'll take proceeds from that and that'll go directly to Third Option Foundation. So, we're very excited about it and we don't think it's going to last too long because, you know, I think once people get a hold of it, you know, and we kind of cut down to how many bottles we're going to let people buy and all this stuff. So, we just went through all of that, you know, like yesterday.

Is that going to be available through your website only or through Bardstown?

We've got 190 of those bundles that we're going to back up probably at our DTC site. And then we're shipping 20 cases to Virginia. I think Kentucky's getting 10 cases. Florida is going to get about 50 cases since, you know, Florida's heavy military, especially with SOCOM, Tampa, Jacksonville, Pensacola. So that should fly off the shelves hopefully. And like I said, all the money or give back on that will all go to the third option foundation. So it'll be awesome.

I'm really looking forward to that. So can't wait to try it. And I've not heard of the book. How long has the book been out?

RJ, you know, is that it's about a year.

Oh, no, it's been a couple of years. So, and they've already he's Rick's been approached about movie possibilities. He's in talks with a couple of different production companies. And I think it's been out for two solid years and maybe even a little more. But we did want to help him and we wanted to spread the word. And yeah, it's it's a great project.

So we talked, we obviously tried your, uh, your founders blend. We talked a little bit about your black ops. I'm sure there are some other things that are in the works that you guys are, your brains are probably spinning with all kinds of ideas of things you'd like to do. But in general, let's just talk about the future of four branches. I mean, where do you see the company going? I mean, what's 2025 going to mean for you guys in terms of, uh, presence in the market? Do you expect to have, uh, more expressions that are not special offerings, like more part of your core offerings. What's 2025 look like for you guys?

Well, that's a good question. We just had our ops call today, and our biggest push for 2025 is to be careful about expanding our market outside the seven that we're in right now. We feel like we've got to drill bit underground in some of these states, but we haven't really drilled that deep. all of our subject matter experts that we have on our little panel when we get together on Wednesdays and we talk is, hey, let's don't get too froggy. Don't try to jump into Texas. Texas is like three states. California is the same. What we'd like to do is eventually take down the East Coast a little more and go to North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. But we're getting a lot of people reaching out to us from Texas wanting us to come into Texas. So we have to be very smart strategically and not get way out over our skis because it takes a lot of money to invest in marketing and boots on the ground sales personnel when you roll into a new state. as far as another expression, if we're looking at doing another skew, but that may not happen until 26. We really, I think most of our focus next year is going to be understanding how we did in OND this year, October, November, December. If we did really well, we're going to continue to drill in the states, the seven states that we're in and making sure our foundation's nice and solid before we start branching out into other, you know, like Texas or South Carolina. I think that's what it's all about. It's all about having enough money to write it. Do we go out and get a small business loan or do we continue giving up equity and looking for a big investor to come in so we can really expand like we want to? But I really think 25 is gonna be more of the attention to detail and putting concrete in our boots and getting the job done because we haven't scratched the surface in Florida yet. We've got to get down there, we've got to tell our story, we've got to get into APs, we've got to get into NEX, which we are, but we've got to really make a presence down there. That's going to require me and RJ, since we're basically the East Coast guys, we're going to have to do a lot of traveling. And I'll shut up, RJ, and let you talk a little bit on our 25 way forward.

Yeah, no, actually, I think it hit the nail on the head and we're not just going to go deep in those states, we're going to go wide. So all the four corners of every state we're in and every region we're in, we're going to hit that pretty hard and get super established there before we tackle another and another. Hopefully the East Coast will have that by the end of 25. There's different investment points we're going to hit before we hit other states past that. But it's really exciting. When we hit the DMV or Maryland, DC and Virginia, to meet up with the team there and just attack on all those fronts and all the historic intelligence and all the corners that you are in Northern Virginia. in DC. We went to like the Army Navy Club and the Army Navy Country Club and Martins Tavern and all these historic OSS well-built Donovan spots. It's just been an incredible journey and we look forward to going wide and deep in those areas. So yeah, I think that's going to be our 2025.

You know, Jim, you ask about any other LTOs, we're looking at doing another LTO and we're going to, I think we're going to tip our hats to the Coast Guard. You know, I don't want to get too far out in front of our marketing side of it, but we get a lot of emails from the Coast Guard saying, hey, you guys left us out. We didn't leave you out, but we're going to come up with a LTO that's going to, you know, hopefully, uh, pay, pay our respects and, uh, to our U S coast guard who protects our coast around our beautiful country. So they do a great job. So we want to, we want to do that.

Got to take care of them coasties as well.

And if Space Force wants to come on board, we're going to have to get a bourbon barrel up in space. And that's very difficult, right? Yeah.

I think they've already done it somewhere. Yeah, they've done it. I think it's got some sort of exorbitant price, but I know it's been done.

Yeah, no chances. We've been talking to him. He's the four-star general in charge of Space Force. And there's some historic things we want to tip our hat to, too. So there's a lot in our future. a lot of plans, a lot of excitement. I think each thing we come out with, I think people are going to be really happy with it. Yeah.

Well, guys, it's been great. We've really enjoyed drinking your whiskey and of course, meeting some new friends and hearing about your brands. It's always nice to expose a great organization like yours to our listeners and allow them the information they need to get out there and give you guys a try. So somebody sitting out there now, they're listening to this episode. They're like, okay, so where can I find these guys? You know, where's their website? What's their social media handles? What's the web address for that DTC of theirs? Can you, can you spill all that information for our people? They've got their pencils ready. They're going to write it down.

I'll start with our website. So, um, if you, if you take the four, spell it out and it's four branches.com. So. fourbranches.com, but to spell out the four, you'll be all set. And all our social media is on there. Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook. We've got a couple different social media platforms. We're not really social media guys, but we all have individual Instagram accounts and LinkedIn accounts and everything. And they're all spider-webbed. It's pretty easy to follow if you get on our website.

We also have some merch. We got a little bit of merch. Actually, after the first year, my wife and I are gonna take on that, the merch deal and it's, you know, t-shirts and hats and coins. You can get glasses. You can order the glasses, the rock glasses with the four branches etched on it. And I think we're gonna have folds of honor etched on the other side. You can get that on our website as well as part of that bundle deal. And, um, of course the hats, t-shirts, hoodies, and all that stuff will be, be there, but we're going to hopefully improve that in 25. So we'll have enough swag to take care of you, uh, especially as we move into fall.

I was going to say, you guys have a great motto that would look great on the shirt.

Oh yeah. Yeah. We want to definitely get that. We want to get to four branches and have underneath it, sip to remember. And then, uh, you know, serve honorably, drink honorably. Yeah. I love that.

All right, guys. Well, it's been a blast to have you on the show today. Like I said, it's always great to drink a new whiskey, especially with new friends. I think Four Branches is an amazing brand. I think it's got some really solid leadership. You guys have a great outlook on life. And I think that our listeners are going to really like sharing what you have to offer. So I think you've got a great start. You've partnered with a great company in Bardstown. You can't go wrong with Bardstown Bourbon Company. I think with a partner like that, your future is bright and your whiskey is really good. So people are going to love it. And, uh, I wish you guys all the luck in the world. Thank you for coming on the bourbon road. Keep us up to date with everything you're doing and we'll be sure to share it out to our listeners.

All right. Thank you, Jim and Todd. And you guys, uh, we're going to try to get you, we're going to try to get you some more juice. I know that was a little thimble.

We appreciate what we get.

Absolutely. Well, you can find the bourbon road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, tick tock threads, all those things. We try to do it all. We do it the best we can, but we always have fun doing it. Every single Wednesday we come out with an episode. Uh, sometimes it's just Todd and I tasting through some whiskies. Other times we've got guests on like our friends here from four branches. Uh, it's always a blast, but the best way to make sure you don't miss the show is to scroll up to the top of that app. You're on hit that subscribe button every week. You'll get a notification and letting you know that them jokers, Jim and Todd have dropped another episode and we're going to get you through a drive or cutting the grass or whatever it is that you do with your headphones on. We'd love to be there with you. So make sure that you check out our next episode. It's going to be a doozy, but, uh, we love you guys. Oh, one other thing, the bourbon roadies private Facebook group. We'd love to have you join. It's a great thing to get in there and sort of hang out with our listeners and share pores and share, uh, stories and pictures and all that kind of stuff. It's a lot of fun. Uh, we hope you guys will check it out, but until the next time we'll see you down the bourbon road.

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