Zach Sherman (00:12)
Hi everyone, and welcome back to Handling the Heat, the podcast by restaurantequipment.bit, where we dive into the real stories behind the people powering the food and beverage industry.

Today, we’re joined by Ray Bebuck, founder of Hooray and the brains behind Girl Beer, a bold, satirical, and customer-obsessed brand that’s shaking up the male-dominated beer space. Ray shares her path from investment banking to beverage entrepreneurship, the product-led process behind building Girl Beer, and how a rebellious brand voice is helping her team build real momentum in retail and online. From market gaps and flavor tests to branding, funding, and culture change, Ray provides a real look at what it takes to break into

a crowded market and build community through authenticity.

Zach Sherman (00:55)
Ray, Bee Buck, thank you so much for joining us here on Handling the Heat. Really, really excited to talk about you, hooray, hooray’s girl beer, and your journey to getting to where you are today. But before we get started, what’s something that you’ve eaten recently that you’ve really enjoyed?

Ray Biebuyck (01:12)
Well, first of all, great to be here. Thanks for having me. I’m stoked to chat. I’ve been kind of on a founder’s diet recently. I don’t know. I’m eating like a lot of like, ⁓

I’ve been eating a lot of gummy bears, I gotta be honest. It’s like a go-to fuel ⁓ midday. So I have tried probably just about every version of like gummy bears, gummy worms, like all of the new products that have come out, where there’s like no sugar, 10 calories, whatever, whatever. So ⁓ it’s kind of a lame answer, but it’s a very honest one. ⁓

Zach Sherman (01:54)
No, that’s great. And I’m

surprised you’re going for like the 10 calorie gummy bears versus if that’s the only thing you’re eating, getting like the Soylent equivalent with protein and all the nutrients and cool. Awesome. Well, ⁓ thanks for, thanks for sharing it. Ray, I’m super excited to talk about you, your background, how you got into, ⁓ the brewing world. And now with your obviously very successful hurray’s girl beer.

Ray Biebuyck (02:04)
I dabble all of them. I dabble in all of them.

Zach Sherman (02:21)
But can you talk a little bit about your, know you’re from Vermont originally, maybe dipping your toes into ⁓ the beer world by proxy of location, but can you talk a little bit about your journey to the beer world in general before we get into the hooray story?

Ray Biebuyck (02:25)
Yep.

Yeah, well, it all started when I was 18 and I had my first Bud Light. No, I’m just kidding. Probably though. Anyways, I, so I’m from Vermont, town called Rutland. And when I went to college, I was really ready to just get out of like rural Vermont and wanted something completely different. So naturally I went to NYU and just like,

Zach Sherman (02:40)
Hahaha.

Ray Biebuyck (03:05)
you know, threw myself at 18 years old into the, you know, busiest city in the world. And I studied finance. And naturally after school, went into investment banking. So, you know, sort of in this like finance and strategy world up until about 2020. And it was a great experience. I would say that my mind doesn’t really work in as linearly a way as needed to do kind of the same process.

day in, day out that I was doing in my time there. ⁓ And so when COVID hit, was sort of a disgruntled ⁓ former analyst and wanted something different. it was obviously COVID was a super difficult time, but my silver lining was I quit my job, I got rid of my apartment, and I moved back home to our family’s cabin on Lake Champlain. ⁓ I initially wanted to go build mountain bike trails.

⁓ in Jackson. Like I was really done with New York and corporate America. And my dad made a good point that I’ve, you know, one, never ridden about mountain biking in my life. And two, I’ve never held a shovel in my life. And I was like, these are all very valid points. So maybe I’ll like reset for a second. So I went back to Vermont and was messaging some founders. Hey, I’m around, you know, there’s COVID things happening for a couple of weeks. So while I’m here,

⁓

I’ll help out. I can make your financial model or whatever. And the founders of…

a brand there called Shaxbury got back to me and they’re like, fantastic, thanks for your resume, come in and label some bottles. And I was like, sure, they were vertically integrating at the time, so I walked into this big empty warehouse and I labeled a bunch of bottles. And I think they quickly realized that I could probably help them with some other things and so labeling bottles turned into me buying equipment, buying ⁓ supplies, ⁓

helping hire, helping fundraise, and ended up turning into a full-time role as a director of operations there. And while I was there, it became so abundantly clear that the industry is pretty male-dominated. think 2 % of beer companies are solely owned by women. And it’s no surprise. At one point in our investor deck, I had a slightly offensive photo of all of the CEOs

of the major beer companies in the United States. And quite literally, they were like cookie cutter images of like each of them, just like.

old white dudes. Sorry, it’s true, but it’s true. And I think that ends up translating into the products that we’re consuming, right? And in a lot of ways, consumerism and the objects that we sell and put into the world are a reflection of how we think others should show up in the world. And so oftentimes when things were marketed to women within the industry, it was done so in kind of this linear pandering way.

a way that just completely ostracized the entire demographic. I think we can think historically about beer ads in the 80s and 90s. ⁓

They certainly weren’t for women. ⁓ And so there’s clearly a lot of opportunity within the space. And I was seeing that in the way that we were coming out actually with a light wine product that was predominantly ⁓ made for women. I was, you know, no shade to the team at Tracksbury. They’re awesome. And I love them dearly. But I was one of maybe two full-time female employees at the time. And so… ⁓

You know, I’m kind of like, bros, what the fuck do you know about what women want? I don’t know. It became really clear to me that there was a gap in female-made, female-focused, female-led brands, and especially within beer. And so…

you know, looked into a lot of the data to validate this, ⁓ you know, ran, ⁓ surveys, you know, came up, saw some pretty interesting information around, you know, like 75 % of women felt like most beer was not made with them in mind. However, the majority of alcohol consumers under the age of 25 for the first time in history are women. So there’s a complete gap in the market of who is going to be, you know, from a,

a pure population standpoint, the next alcohol consumer and where the beer market was and has been heading. So ⁓ I decided to create Hooray in our girl beer line ⁓ to really challenge this in a bold, in-your-face way.

Zach Sherman (08:16)
That’s, ⁓ that’s a lot to take in Ray, but I think, you know, the, story for sure makes sense. And even if it wasn’t building, mountain biking trails and Jackson labeling beer bottles in Vermont feels of the same kind of path out of banking and New York city. But one of the things that, that is interesting to me is at Shaxbury, right? You, it sounds like you had a lot of autonomy to,

Ray Biebuyck (08:34)
Yeah.

Zach Sherman (08:44)
create that view of here’s all the cookie cutter white old guy CEOs for the major corporations that are brewing beer and all the statistics for sure make sense and wanting to find that niche that you can help bring forth through to front of mind for the actual consumer of these products. Why go off and do something yourself versus have something that’s sustaining

You know, and potentially funding, which I’m sure is, well, I mean, we definitely will get into at some point here, allowing you to like make those decisions versus saying here, me, Ray, I’m now ready to take the leap knowing that I have XYZ stat behind me to say, all right, let me just go out and do this myself.

Ray Biebuyck (09:29)
I mean, it’s a good question. think first and foremost, for the brand that I thought would need to be created,

Vermont was a difficult environment to launch a brand like what we were making. know, for Shaq’s Berry, it makes sense. They are an organic cider. There is a long history of apple orchards. They started by ⁓ forging wild apples in the forests of Vermont and making ⁓ this very like craft artisanal product. And for us, it was clear we really wanted to make.

a mass market brand and wanted to launch in a state where there’s a larger immediate market and they were more favorable alcohol laws where it is easier to self-distribute and California is really the place to do that. I also wanted autonomy. You know, it was clear that I felt like I had the skill set to do it. I had the experiences and although there is every founder goes in slightly

slightly

blindly, ⁓ I at least felt like I knew just enough to do it and had certainly the investor interest early to fund it on my own. And that was kind of the combination of those factors made me feel like, why not?

Zach Sherman (11:00)
No, I mean, that’s as good a reason as any, no, to, you know, get out there and do it. And I think for me, what’s interesting is now you have the market, right? You have the conviction, you have the dollars behind you. Yeah, please.

Ray Biebuyck (11:12)
Wait, what?

Can I interrupt you real quickly? One

more thing to add to that piece is I would also say if you’re, if you’re starting a brand that is focused for on women and for women, something that was important to us is have, always have a majority female staff team, executive team that is female, ⁓ you know, majority female investor based. And we’ve done that. ⁓ and I think in part it’s because we have the autonomy that we have.

⁓ And so it was very difficult to insert herself in a pre-existing company in any way. I wanted to be very authentic and to truly change the culture in the space. And I think being a new entrant rather than any sort of incumbent gave us the permission to do that.

Zach Sherman (12:00)
Yeah, no, definitely.

And you can’t say you are girl beer with the same cookie cutter white, you know, investor base or, or, you know, executive team for sure. I think that makes a ton of sense.

Ray Biebuyck (12:09)
Yeah, again, no shade to Shakhtar.

Great dudes, really, really great team. ⁓ But just, it’s a different. Yeah.

Zach Sherman (12:13)
Yeah. It was the jumping off point for you. So it’s a, you know, mutually beneficial.

⁓ but I think, so for me, what’s also really interesting is you’ve obviously have the statistics to determine, Hey, this market’s real. I know it’s real because I am the representative of that consumer base that we’re going after. You have the funding, you have the team and the investor team that you want to have behind you. How do you go about actually going and saying, all right, I have this, I have this idea. Now what?

Ray Biebuyck (12:43)
Oh my gosh, a lot of rumination. I think this idea came to me in probably 2021, deep COVID. it took a lot of time, surveys, conversations, reflection before really jumping into it. I really wanted to ruminate on what the solution would be and started out with…

thinking about the products that I would want to consume and prefer to consume and then run surveys on friends and ultimately larger sample sizes to really get an understanding of what’s the product, first start with product, right? And then kind of build out a brand thereafter. So I love light beer. I love a Corona.

And I’ve never really understood why some of my girlfriends really hesitated to drink a beer. Like I had some friends who would say, I would never drink a beer on a first date. Which is obviously a super extreme view. And those are the NYU girlies who are running around New York. But there are these stigmas that are tied to it, but it’s also the product that’s being created. I felt like these

was if there was, ⁓ if you could bring in more flavor into the category, I think a lot of the properties of beer align with what a lot of women are seeking in beverages and food more broadly, but there weren’t enough flavor options to really bring them into the category. And if you wanted to bring in a net new consumer, which is really where, ⁓

the vast majority of the opportunity is within beer. I don’t think I mentioned this before, but only about 25 to 30 % of beer consumers today are female. So there is this gap in the market and that biggest gap is bringing in that new consumer. So my thesis was flavor could be an interesting way and the fundamental properties are right beyond brand. Think like there’s a way to bring in more flavor to category. So I thought about, you know,

the flavors that I would like to see, very rudimentary. I I was mixing Coors with different juices in my kitchen and I was doing a terrible, everything tasted so bad. I was like, there’s something wrong here. But I at least got some directional idea of where we could go. that, I was really interested in like, yuzu or orange or some clementine.

some sort of like citrus, maybe some sort of botanical, I mean as loose as that. And then I, you know, just as a like broad data capture surveyed a thousand people to see how female identifying respondents would react to a flavored light beer versus blinded descriptions of other drinks that, you know, they were typically gravitating towards.

So ⁓ I found that like a flavored light beer with yuzu or.

or flavored light beer with clementine or a flavored light beer with lavender was ⁓ preferred, they would be more likely to purchase based on flavor description than the ways that canned wine were being marketed and described, hard seltzers were being marketed and described. So I knew by far, it was competing most heavily with hard kombuchas, which at the time were really having a moment.

like, okay, there’s something here. At least from just the concept of flavored light beer, it’s interesting to women.

And that was enough for me to really have a jumping off point point. Then I started DMing a bunch of random brewers. And I was living in San Francisco at the time. I had moved away ⁓ from Vermont, but was working remotely for Shaxbury and started ⁓ some of this sort of data collection. ⁓ And…

I just slid into a bunch of DMs. I found people with potential backgrounds who could help, and with a lot of trial and error, ended up getting connected with the former, who was effectively the CEO, or sorry, the COO, ran production at Junshine, a guy named Greg Peters. And he is the…

the best at what he does. He’s an unbelievable brewer, ⁓ unbelievable operator, and understands a lot of the flavors that I was thinking about working with. And so…

We worked with just some dude who home brews his family owned a vineyard up in ⁓ Northern California. And we worked with him on some of the early pilot runs. ⁓ And we, again, really liked the concept of Yuzu, ended up working with pineapple to round out the flavor a little bit, and a blueberry lavender. ⁓

to as just a jumping off point. We were like, I don’t know, this sounds good. I would drink it. Sounds amazing. Let’s see where it goes. So we ran some pilot runs, early pilot runs and had product that we could then blind taste test. we blind taste tested hundreds of people versus other popular products from, ⁓ you know, like White Claw, ⁓ like ⁓ Bev, which is a canned wine company, Athletic. ⁓

you know, Sierra Nevada, Coors Light. We just tested all these products against each other. And we were winning. Eventually got to a place where we would win over both beer drinkers and non-beer drinkers, male and female, on flavor versus all of the other products that we buy and taste tested. ⁓ It was by far the most preferred, just on flavor profile. And so we’re like, we have something.

Zach Sherman (19:09)
Wow.

Ray Biebuyck (19:11)
here.

Zach Sherman (19:12)
Yeah,

no, that’s incredible. And I think what’s really cool, Ray, about the way that you talk about all this is it’s all very customer focused, you know, and we’ll talk about the branding here in a bit, but like the customer and product fit needs to work in order for any amount of branding and the best packaging and, you know, best social media strategy. The way that you talk about the, I mean, bootstrapping and getting,

The June shine COO is an unbelievable, you know, strike of luck. But I think in addition to that, making sure that you keep coming back to who’s the customer, who do I want to give this to you? It was you and your team for the majority of it also, which I think is obviously helpful when coming up with something, but making sure it always comes back to why do people actually. Choose us versus someone else is potentially the most important thing that I think people miss a lot, especially in the food and beverage space where it is so easy to just.

Rely back on, do I have the right colors on my, my can or on my package?

Ray Biebuyck (20:11)
Yeah, yeah, no, I completely agree. And if you are trying to capture a new consumer into a category, you fundamentally need to rethink the way the product is made. There’s clearly something going on with… ⁓

either the flavor profile or the way people feel when they drink something or the characteristics. And so we were ready to do the hard work of really innovating in the ways that our consumers needed in order to come into the category. it really does take that amount of work. Bill, ⁓ the CEO of Athletic is a mentor of mine and he talks endlessly about thousands of blind

taste tests that he did to get the product to where it needed to be and he’s created an incredible business around it. It has to be product-led or else someone’s gonna try your product and never buy it again if it doesn’t.

Zach Sherman (21:12)
Yeah.

And any of the branding becomes inauthentic at that point because you’re basing it off of this, you know, house of cards almost.

Ray Biebuyck (21:20)
And I’ll say there are a lot of bad beverages out there. I am just shocked to buy the products that people put on the market. It genuinely, I don’t fully understand it, ⁓ but it happens.

Zach Sherman (21:33)
Yeah,

no. And it will continue to happen and you need more people like you who have conviction, not only in the market development, but also in the actual product itself. But I think, you know, now Ray, how long has it been since ideation through to the multiple taste tests, would you say?

Ray Biebuyck (21:49)
I think it’s been about a year and a half. It was about a year and a half of really getting product to a place where we needed it to be, getting the licenses we needed, getting the chain retail interest was big. We wanted to launch with chain retail, which is definitely like a decision. I think there’s a lot of…

My personal view, misconception within the broader CPG category that, you know, you need to start in bodegas and start small and then scale up. There are a lot of partners that are willing to work with you. Whole Foods was an early bet, you know, believer in us and worked with us on creating a limited footprint in which we could self-distribute and really get quality velocity data that helps us understand where a consumer is. So that’s kind of just an aside, but the chain retail lead times can be, you know, nearly eight

nine months. getting chain retail interest was important. And then, you know, hiring, making sure we had the infrastructure to launch. So it takes a long time, you know, it’s one thing to have. ⁓

product and a brand but it’s another thing to operationalize it in a way that allows you to work and scale quickly and create a brand that doesn’t just resonate with people in LA and OC, which is where we launched, but you know, be able to move out of there very quickly.

Zach Sherman (23:14)
Yeah,

no, and having that big box in foot in the door and being successful, ⁓ which I’ve seen all the, you know, the, the things off the shelves. I’ve had an opportunity to try the blueberry flavor. I’m a fan of it. So I can definitely, you know, attest to putting your foot in the door and then trying to grow from there. But I think part of that has to definitely do with your social media or marketing presence, Ray. And, and we’ve kind of skirted around it this entire conversation because we’re getting to the point now where it’s like,

The customer base is there. The product is there. The flavor is there. You’re on shelves. How do you blow it up? And I think what you have done is a almost, you know, it, it, feels like it’s a masterclass and I know who my customer is. Let me just find them immediately and tell them exactly what they want to hear kind of a marketing strategy, which ⁓ is really difficult to do, especially when.

you are going up against not only other brands, right? But content creators who are putting out their own things themselves. So can you talk to me, about the content and marketing strategy ⁓ in general for ⁓ her A’s Girl Beer?

Ray Biebuyck (24:28)
Yeah, yeah. So I think when you ever have the name of something polarizing like a girl beer in your product, ⁓

It needs, you first need to figure out like design and the way in which you want to communicate aesthetically the product. And we actually ⁓ created like a burner TikTok account and we’re running all of these ⁓ posts and ads to figure out really what the reaction would be. And we found if we over feminize the product, it’d be, you know, kind of misconstrued because our brand voice is very satirical, playful humorous, fun. We always wanted to lead with that. ⁓

And I guess that’s kind of an aside, you know, just for a moment. We noticed that there weren’t a lot of female-focused humor brands. You know, you have like Liquid Death and Dude Wipes and Happy Dad and all of these brands that were predominantly for dudes, although, you know, women obviously consume them. ⁓

And they were allowing a space for men to be messy and chaotic and playful and have fun. I think there were certainly fashion brands out there that I think do a good job of that. And a couple of CPG brands that I think are exceptions to this role. the most part, nothing that had really scaled in a noticeable way. we’re like, is one, authentic to us. That’s who we are.

to clearly an opportunity to reach women in a new way and really flip the narrative of how products are marketed to women, which is usually done in this like aesthetic, like this is how you should act and this is how you should be represented in the world. And that didn’t necessarily speak to me. Like I wear like skeleton sweaters and like, like, I don’t know. I like just don’t really resonate with the very like polished aesthetic brands that are out there.

⁓ So humor was interesting and we found through this, going back to the TikTok piece, found through our Burner TikTok account that if you have a very like minimal brand that allows the consumer to impose their imagination on what it means to them, you have more room to play, but also allows the brand voice rather than the brand aesthetic to really speak through. So we have a very like minimal parse back kind of industrial

branding, very almost like brat inspired. ⁓ And it allows us to really lean into copy and this like brand character that we’ve developed. And it gives us more wiggle room, both on shelf and in the algorithm to stand out because I think a lot of brands will lead with design rather than voice. And more and more folks are trying to find community and themselves within

product and you’re very limited in what you can do if you’re if you’re focusing predominantly on aesthetics. ⁓ So that was the first piece and it very naturally translated into our socials around this subversive, rebellious, humorous kind of punk brand. You know I think we describe it as like uninhibited ⁓ and it’s really just our team. Like our team is just this way.

⁓ This is what’s funny to us, it’s what’s funny to our friends, and we’ve led with what we like to see online and what we think is funny, and it’s kind of as simple as that.

Zach Sherman (28:16)
Yeah,

no, and I think what’s really, that’s super interesting thinking about the voice versus the actual physical product, as well as like differentiating, like how do we come across in store or, you know, in a fridge or at a party to the algorithm. And I think that having that differentiation and having both blend across each other so that when somebody sees it, they can think back to, you know, I hate Connor or one of the other, you know.

many fun quips that y’all are putting out there, think is, is it’s a tree. It’s something that a lot of people are trying to do, but definitely are not able to do. Are you, do you think Ray that the.

Obviously with among your friends among your team, right. It’s built for that. And it’s obviously, obviously resonating on the algorithm, right? Like I see all these things pop up on, ⁓ my tick tock and I throw it like, and it’s like, I am a potential customer, but I’m curious, like, have you gotten feedback from your active customers? So people that the content resonates with.

that say, Hey, I found this from social media. wanted to be involved with it. This is exactly who I am. It speaks to me. I want to be your friend, Ray. want to sit on the couch and shoot the shit about skeleton sweaters or whatever else. How has that conversation been not only with your team and with your group, but with the customers that you’re going to reach out to?

Ray Biebuyck (29:47)
Yeah, I mean, honestly, all the time, ⁓ which is really. ⁓

Zach Sherman (29:51)
Awesome.

Ray Biebuyck (29:53)
really cool to see. They’re definitely, well, it feels like there’s, there is starting to be a bit of a cult following with some of our followers who are regularly engaging and really the brand really resonates with them. I think probably felt similar frustrations about the beer category broadly, but also about the ways in which things are branded to women.

So that’s been certainly ⁓ good feedback. I think we’ve been running a couple of campaigns that have clearly resonated really well and I think very simplistic, clear.

copy that is in our tone of voice. our whole sort of, for those of you that don’t know, we banned Connors from consuming our product. Like, no, we, on our packaging even, it says, buy girls for everyone, except for you, Conner, you know what you did. And I’m not at liberty to say what Conner did, but what I can say is that that sort of messaging resonates with…

Thousands of comment Connors who have posted on our on and commented on all of our content But also with a lot of women and it’s just it’s playful. It’s fun. It’s easy ⁓ They see themselves in that kind of messaging you know even from our billboard like we had a billboard going out to Coachella and It’s so many people like dozens and dozens of people tagging us in photos DMing us. my god. I saw this and now I need to go buy this so

So it’s cutting through the noise. We’re speaking to consumers in a way that’s clearly a little different than what you’d expect of most brands and how you’d expect a brand to act and behave. We want to act and behave in a way that ⁓ brands don’t and are told they shouldn’t.

Zach Sherman (31:49)
Yeah. And it’s obviously

working. And I think it is rooted in the authenticity and the customer understanding, both because you and your team are the customers, but also because you’ve done the due diligence to say that this is the customer, this is who I want to reach out to. And the network effects to use a business schoolie kind of term is very cool to see.

Ray Biebuyck (32:10)
Yeah, and I thought

you know, on that just as a quick sidebar is, you know, I think about 70 % of our Instagram followers as a proxy just for our consumer are female. So about 30 are 30 % are male. And I found that a lot of guys one love the product. It’s flavored like beer, that’s something that doesn’t really exist in the

beer ecosystem at scale. ⁓

There are some like one off skews, but for the most part doesn’t, you know, isn’t really a thing. and they think the bit, the bit’s really funny and they like participating in it and they see themselves and in the brand in their own ways. And so that’s been really cool. And I think very intentional in the way that we’ve positioned this is that it can speak to so many different people. Yes, girl beer is the product, but, it’s

branded in a way that’s almost subverting the name. ⁓ So it works. ⁓

Zach Sherman (33:15)
Yeah.

No, definitely. And I’m proud to call myself part of the 30 % of beer girl enjoyers. So awesome. ⁓ Ray, well, think obviously your, ⁓ passion for the brand, your passion for the community that you’re building and the effectiveness of the product in the space is, ⁓ super interesting and it’s great to see your success. What is next would you say for girl beer and for her?

Ray Biebuyck (33:21)
Yeah.

⁓ we a lot of stuff. we’re very busy. ⁓ we’re in this interesting,

Juncture in the business where we’ve been self distributing for the better part of you know, the last seven months ⁓ and That obviously limits your your scale We’ve we’ve very intentionally limited our footprint to focus on velocities making sure we’re understanding The accounts that we’re in so that as we scale we have a playbook And we’ve really been honing that playbook over the you know last half year in that self distribution Come the fall. We have some major change

retail mandates, which is really exciting going into mass grocery. And we’re signing with a distributor now, which is really exciting. So it unlocks that next available path for scale. ⁓ So, you know, we’re expanding markets, expanding chain retail and ⁓ expanding the team ⁓ to make sure that we can support that. So really focusing on ⁓

really across the board, ops, marketing, sales, we’ve all made, we’ve made hires in every department to make sure that we are adequately supporting this next phase. ⁓ So hiring new sales reps, hiring a head of marketing, ⁓ hiring a head of ops to make sure that we’re doing this well. So. ⁓

Yeah, and as part of that, interesting media partnerships that are potentially on the horizon.

Zach Sherman (35:21)
That’s

amazing. Well, Ray, very awesome to watch your success over the last ⁓ couple of years and super excited to see how this continues and the rise of Girlbeer and Hurray. So thank you very much for chatting today. Very much appreciate it.

Ray Biebuyck (35:38)
Thanks, Zach. You rock.