Gin, tequila and — of course — whiskey. You now can drink non-alcoholic versions of all three of those spirits at five Louisville area bars.
ALT Distilling soft launched its first line of NKD LDY products over Valentine's weekend. The beverage development company is rolling out 100,000 bottles under the brand, pronounced "naked lady," which will be distributed from Kentucky via a direct-to-consumer fulfillment partner.
President and CEO Becca Gardner, who co-founded ALT Distilling in 2020, said the company has been working with a community of bars to come up with cocktails that will ensure patrons will have a good first-time experience.
"For us, a big part of it was creating and building relationships," she said. "Over the past six months, we've spent a lot of time visiting different restaurants and meeting really cool bartenders to get their feedback on our products. Now that we have something to work with, it's opened a lot of doors."
Dressed as conversation hearts that read "Let's get NKD," Gardner and her sister Jenny dropped off gift baskets of the bottles at ShopBar, Gold Bar, Meta, Expo and Barn8 over the weekend.
"We're authentic. We're silly. We're a little different... And so when I'm thinking about messaging, it's all been about how we can put our best foot forward and showcase who we are right out of the gate," she said.
Louisville is just the first stop on the NKD LDY tour — the company will be going to one city, one bar at a time to promote the line of products. Nashville is next, and New York and Los Angeles are planned for this spring.
Gardner said the ALT Distilling's strategy is to use the in-person bar experience to drive people to its e-commerce site, drinknkdldy.com, which will be live on Friday, Feb. 18.
"Right now we're starting with these three products, but we already have plans to do a couple collaborations with other non-alc brands to make canned cocktails," she added. "We're really trying to make sure that we are offering customers great, non-alc options in the ways that we learned they want it. We're trying to be intentional with the products we do next to see where there are gaps."
ALT Distilling, one of KY Inno's Startups to Watch in 2022, is also planning to close its pre-seed fundraising round by the end of March. Gardner said some of the company's original investors are putting in more dollars, and she's already getting interest from venture capital firms that would like to invest in its forthcoming seed round.
