A love for tequila and Latin culture prompted Brian Raab and Anthony Boyle to relaunch Scottsdale-based company Tequila Corrido, the “guitar pick tequila.”
Raab said Corrido represents a song or “a life story told through music.” Thus, each bottle comes with a guitar pick tied to the top. Raab hopes that everyone who drinks the tequila can “wear the guitar pick and write their own story.”
Tequila Corrido launched in 2008 but its founder, Brad Hoover, died two years later causing the company to become stagnant for about six years, Boyle said. But in 2017, Raab and Boyle decided to relaunch the company in hopes of fulfilling Hoover’s commitment to bringing people together.
“The best tequila is the one that brings people together. It can be a party, a birth, a birthday, a celebration of life; whatever it is, they remember it, and we want to replicate that experience and joy they felt during it," Boyle told the Business Journal.
While the tequila company had an initial setback due to the Covid-19 pandemic and is not yet recording a profit, the owners say they are now seeing rapid growth in retail and online sales through its website.
“We're only just starting, and our growth has been off the charts," Raab said. "In 2021-22, we saw 399% growth. This year, we're looking at well over 700% growth.”
Painstaking process to make tequila
The joyous drink comes from agave, found in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Tequila Corrido is made out of the Hacienda Vieja Distillery in Arandas, Jalisco, Mexico, a commercial and manufacturing center for agricultural products.
“We work at the Hacienda Vieja distillery, a distillery owned by the Banuelos family, a very renowned family from that region, and we utilize their facility to make our tequila," Boyle said.
Making tequila is a painstaking process that can take up to several months to develop. Each tequila bottle requires harvesting hundreds of tons of agave at a time. Raab said it takes approximately "6.7 kilos of agave to make one liter of tequila."
Each tequila is carefully handcrafted, going through a natural fermentation process that can take several days to weeks before advancing to the distillation process depending on the type of product. The agave plant is harvested, trimmed, pressed and distilled before turning into the final product.
“Our Blanco is about a 40 to 45-day process. Then when you go to the Reposado where six months, the vast majority of the industry, it has to go at least two and a half months. Our Añejo is at 18 to 20 months," said Raab.
Raab said the tedious process has yet to bring the company profits due to the rising cost of goods. Boyle said “all of our dry goods, from bottles, labels, agave, and freight has gone up over the last couple of years.
“I think we're probably a couple of years away," he said. When you start a tequila company the way we did, you really have to front-load all of your investment money because you're aging product out over several years. So what I'm currently paying for right now to produce much of it won't be done until 2024.”
Humble beginnings
In the company's early days, Raab and Boyle sold Corrido out of their car. Today, the pair have sold over 5,000 cases and are distributing Tequila Corrido in stores in 10 states. Raab said the company expanded to Nashville last month and will be available in Texas in October.
The company just signed with Republic National Distributing Company Arizona and will look to expand to Atlanta, Colorado, and New Mexico in the near future, Raab said. RNDC brings “over 50 sales reps” to the state and will help the pair in getting Tequila Corrido on more retail shelves, he said.
“You're going to start seeing us everywhere with the partnership with RNDC, and you'll start seeing it on the shelf. The opportunity to work with RNDC is going to be a game changer. This business is all about relationships; without those relationships, the company would be dormant," Boyle said.
In addition, Raab and Boyle have also partnered with Mike Watts, founder of Sunset Equipment, an equipment rental company that began in Arizona in 1977. Watts and his wife Cindy are philanthropists and have a college named after them at Arizona State University, the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions, for their efforts.
“Mike Watts is an extraordinary partner. What he's able to bring to us, how he's able to mentor us, what he has allowed Brian and I to do to grow this brand, has just been unheard of," Boyle said.
Rapid growth despite pandemic
As the company expands, Raab and Boyle said they will look to hire sales reps in every state. According to the pair, the number of hires would depend on the size of the state. The company currently has a dozen people on staff.
Along with in-store availability, Tequila Corrido is available to purchase on the company's website in 38 states. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Tequila Corrido was still new to the market and was only available in restaurants and bars. Raab and Boyle had to be flexible when they all closed down and created an online platform to help distribute their product. The company has a distribution facility in Scottsdale to ship its products from.
Raab and Boyle said the company's growth is due to their dedication to remaining true to their brand. Just recently, Tequila Corrido partnered with the Life is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas. Raab believes there is tremendous synergy between Tequila Corrido and Life is Beautiful because they both aim to bring diverse groups of people together in celebration of music and art.
"I think that Life Is Beautiful was such a great partnership because of what they do in the community for the arts, everything from their comedy shows and musicians to the artists involved. What Life Is Beautiful representative stands for is really symbiotic to who we are," Raab said.
As Tequila Corrido continues to grow, Raab and Boyle will look to “stay true to product quality and the brand's aesthetic.” Soon, they will release a new Cristilino that has been in production for about 20 months.
