============================================================
TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
============================================================
[00:00] SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:06] SPEAKER_02: Hello, I'm Mario Tonigus, managing editor of Canada's podcast.
[00:10] SPEAKER_02: Joining me today on Calgary's podcast is my guest, Mark Freeland, who is founder of Two Rivers Distillery in Calgary.
[00:19] SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining us today, Mark.
[00:20] SPEAKER_02: Good morning.
[00:22] SPEAKER_02: All right, let's talk about Two Rivers.
[00:24] SPEAKER_02: Tell me just a little bit about the background to that.
[00:27] SPEAKER_02: One did it start and just what do you guys do?
[00:31] SPEAKER_01: Well, we started in 2018 in Calgary here.
[00:37] SPEAKER_01: And for me, it was kind of a desire to utilize all of the really top-notch natural ingredients that Alberta has.
[00:47] SPEAKER_01: So plus they changed the laws in 2012 that allowed smaller distillers to open in Alberta.
[00:55] SPEAKER_01: Before that, you had to produce at least a million liters a year.
[00:58] SPEAKER_01: So obviously a small distillery could do that.
[01:01] SPEAKER_01: We had two distillers in the province at that time.
[01:04] SPEAKER_01: So when they changed the laws, it kind of opened up the floodgates to anything.
[01:09] SPEAKER_01: There was no longer a minimum requirement.
[01:11] SPEAKER_01: So Alberta having top-notch grains, especially barley.
[01:19] SPEAKER_01: I thought that there was a real opportunity to do a whiskey distillery.
[01:25] SPEAKER_01: And I love gin and I love the cures and I love so many other things it turned into a nightmare of many, many products.
[01:34] SPEAKER_02: So what kind of, maybe run through the list of like what do you guys make?
[01:40] SPEAKER_01: Well, we're known mostly for our gin.
[01:43] SPEAKER_01: Our London Dry gin is a 12-bitanical herbaceous and spicy style London Dry gin.
[01:49] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[01:50] SPEAKER_01: One of wards in California, London, England, all throughout Canada.
[01:55] SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of what we're known for.
[01:58] SPEAKER_01: But we're also known for having a new product almost every few months.
[02:04] SPEAKER_01: So the nice thing about being small is you can really indulge your, I don't know, your wants and your creative.
[02:14] SPEAKER_01: So if I find, if I find, I, I taste something or a lot of times my wife and I, well, not so much anymore back in the day we go for dinner a lot.
[02:24] SPEAKER_01: And there'd be something cool on the menu that I taste and I go, I wonder if I could translate that into some kind of alcohol.
[02:31] SPEAKER_01: So a lot of products have actually come from from that.
[02:35] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[02:36] SPEAKER_02: So Mark, as looking at your background, your, you a vest.
[02:42] SPEAKER_02: So sketch one graduate history archeology.
[02:46] SPEAKER_02: Yes.
[02:47] SPEAKER_02: And then you also worked in the residential construction area for a number of years.
[02:53] SPEAKER_02: So how did somebody with that background end up doing what you're doing now?
[02:58] SPEAKER_01: It was, I don't know, it called to me.
[03:01] SPEAKER_01: I've always been interested in the boost business, especially in the manufacturing side.
[03:09] SPEAKER_01: I grew up playing music professionally.
[03:12] SPEAKER_01: So I've been in bars since I was 17 years old.
[03:15] SPEAKER_01: And just they're on it all in, in, in, and I've always had an interest for it.
[03:19] SPEAKER_01: If honestly, as far as spirits were concerned, I didn't really start developing a passion for that until my early 30s.
[03:26] SPEAKER_01: But by the time I was getting into my late 30s, it was already an idea in my head that, you know, this would be really cool to open up a brewery or a distillery or something like that.
[03:39] SPEAKER_01: And then when they changed the, when they changed the laws, then it really, it really started picking away at me.
[03:45] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that was where it came from.
[03:46] SPEAKER_02: All right. And you mentioned me in your musician.
[03:49] SPEAKER_02: Tell us a little bit about that and your career there.
[03:52] SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, it's, I don't know if it's really been a career.
[03:57] SPEAKER_01: It's been more of a, more of a distraction, I'd say, anything we were, we started playing when, when I was in great six.
[04:07] SPEAKER_01: And I've played with some pretty talented musicians in my life.
[04:10] SPEAKER_01: I've been blessed with that right out of high school.
[04:13] SPEAKER_01: My drummer and I, we, we packed up our gear and in his dad drove us to Edmonton and, and dropped us off at out of buddy's house.
[04:21] SPEAKER_01: And we joined the band and started touring full time.
[04:23] SPEAKER_01: We were playing six nights a week for about a year and a half with the high.
[04:28] SPEAKER_01: And we were going to be big rock stars and, and you know, after about a, after a year of the Anada's going,
[04:33] SPEAKER_01: I don't know about this.
[04:36] SPEAKER_01: This is pretty hard life. So I decided to, to pull the pin on that and, and move back to Saskatchewan and go to, go to university.
[04:44] SPEAKER_01: But I still played my whole, my whole time through that and, and then after university, I was recruited for a job out in Calgary and construction.
[04:55] SPEAKER_01: And, and I came out here and ended up hooking up with my old drummer again and started playing in the Calgary scene.
[05:01] SPEAKER_01: And, and after, after a few years here, I don't know if you've ever heard of the bands. I could baby they were, they were, yeah, they're pretty popular in the 90s.
[05:11] SPEAKER_01: They were about to record their third studio album and read the guitar player approached me and asked me if I wanted to join the band and play bass on that.
[05:22] SPEAKER_01: So I ended up playing with them for, for a couple of years to you and, and, you know, that, that didn't really do anything.
[05:29] SPEAKER_01: So now we just do it for fun.
[05:32] SPEAKER_01: So you still play?
[05:34] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We actually play, we play once a month at the distillery.
[05:38] SPEAKER_01: It's pretty, it's pretty funny. I usually don't tell people that because it, it, it could sound a little bit pathetic.
[05:44] SPEAKER_01: You know, hey, come to my distillery, watch me play. Most people will be like, who is this idiot? I got you socks ready.
[05:50] SPEAKER_01: So, so I always had to keep that on the download and then when people come out and play they go, oh, you're playing.
[05:56] SPEAKER_01: It's awesome.
[05:57] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's, it's fun.
[05:58] SPEAKER_02: And you play rock?
[06:00] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we do, we just do covers. We play pop music where everyone in the band's huge like we're huge,
[06:06] SPEAKER_01: you two, and Brit pop fans, we do George and
[06:09] SPEAKER_01: Cole and all kinds of, all kinds of, lots of, all kinds of fun stuff. We're children at the 80s. So, we play lots of that.
[06:17] SPEAKER_00: Canada's podcast is your gateway to success in the world of entrepreneurship.
[06:22] SPEAKER_00: Start listening today. Canada's podcast.com subscribe now.
[06:26] SPEAKER_02: All right. So I love my music along my whiskey. So I'm going to come down there and visit you one day.
[06:31] SPEAKER_01: It's fine. Yeah, the boys in the band. It's a pretty stacked band. They're drummer played played for a while with them.
[06:41] SPEAKER_01: Oh, what the heck is the band? Big sugar.
[06:43] SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
[06:44] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah. And then our singer played into recording acts as well. He's very, very talented. He's got a theater background as well.
[06:52] SPEAKER_01: So he's a, he's a monster. It's fun. It's so not work.
[06:58] SPEAKER_02: Exactly. Right. So, where are you from and Saskatchewan?
[07:04] SPEAKER_01: Well, I was originally I was born in southern Ontario. My family is in Kingston.
[07:10] SPEAKER_01: And we moved to Saskatchewan in 1981. There was, there was, my dad was driving taxi part time at the time.
[07:18] SPEAKER_01: We weren't making it up. He wasn't making up money to support family. So we packed up, packed up the 77 Chevy and Palafor.
[07:27] SPEAKER_01: We were going to board our boat and drove out to Saskatchewan. Yeah. So, so we were there. I was there from 81 to 9.
[07:35] SPEAKER_01: No, about 2000. That's when we moved to Calgary. So we moved to Prince Albert Saskatchewan.
[07:41] SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes. He is. Yeah, right on, yeah, right on the right on the North Saskatchewan River. Small town.
[07:46] SPEAKER_01: All of the three years.
[07:48] SPEAKER_01: All of the three years. Yeah. Yeah. Mike McDaniel was playing hockey there when I went to high school. So that was pretty cool. He was pretty good.
[07:55] SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So, what do you think you learned, you know, from living and being in Saskatchewan that's helped you and your career, what you do.
[08:10] SPEAKER_01: You know what Saskatchewan and people love to love to beat on Saskatchewan a little bit.
[08:17] SPEAKER_01: But I tell you, the people there are the hardest working, most honest people that you'll ever meet.
[08:23] SPEAKER_01: And if somebody there doesn't like you, they'll tell you to your face. And if they do like you, they'll tell you to your face.
[08:31] SPEAKER_01: Right? Like it's just the work ethic there too is strong. Like very like everyone, everyone wants to work.
[08:39] SPEAKER_01: You know, growing up. Yeah. All of my friends in high school had jobs, you know, and they'd be on a Friday night with all everyone wanted to go party.
[08:49] SPEAKER_01: But we'd be like, oh, you know, Ross is working at at turbo until nine o'clock and and how it ease over at a and w.
[08:58] SPEAKER_01: So we got to wait till I work. It's hard work before we can go out right. So yeah, I don't know. I think I think you know, just work ethic.
[09:08] SPEAKER_02: Honestly, honesty, right? Just just good salt to the earth people. So loyalty to right because you can't find more rabid bands say for the football team for the writers and where right and yeah.
[09:26] SPEAKER_01: And just the pride of being from that province, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People. I consider myself more from Saskatchewan than I do for Monterey to tell you the truth. That's got.
[09:37] SPEAKER_01: It's, you know, I don't I don't remember. Oh, I remember a lot for Monterey, but Saskatchewan is definitely where where I grew up. So yeah.
[09:44] SPEAKER_02: So being a business owner like obviously you went through a difficult period of time there as everybody did like through COVID.
[09:56] SPEAKER_02: Maybe can you talk a little bit about that journey? Mark and you know, going through COVID in the last couple of years.
[10:05] SPEAKER_02: I know it's been tough for a lot of people. I, how's it been for you and what have you done to survive, I guess?
[10:14] SPEAKER_01: It was it was fun. It was it was definitely. It was a challenge. I tell you we were well, we during our build.
[10:24] SPEAKER_01: It's hard to open a distillery in Alberta. It's really difficult and in Calgary, especially it's very, very hard. And I had done my my due diligence before because I'd spent 20 years in construction.
[10:39] SPEAKER_01: So I knew and it was and I wasn't like I was in construction management in the executive. So I knew how to set up different businesses and all that kind of stuff through that.
[10:49] SPEAKER_01: So when you by when and did my due diligence before even planning to open the distillery and it still took us about 11 months over budget.
[11:02] SPEAKER_01: And you know, we blew our budget out by by twice as much as concerned just because the city of Calgary wasn't they didn't really know what they were doing as far as the facilities were concerned.
[11:12] SPEAKER_01: So they just kept changing and driving the feed and all that stuff. At the end of the day, at the end of the day, we opened about well, almost a year later than we were supposed to.
[11:23] SPEAKER_01: So we we we got all of our licensing from from the aglc and we're all we're allowed we're able to open our tap room on December 23rd, 2019.
[11:36] SPEAKER_01: So two days before Christmas, $500 in the bank. And in two days before Christmas and we're just like, right crap.
[11:48] SPEAKER_01: So so so we got through that.
[11:51] SPEAKER_01: January had to go beg and plead with some shareholders to get enough get enough money to float us until springtime. And we're like, okay, come springtime will be fine.
[12:00] SPEAKER_01: And we were just about we had done collaboration spirit with village brewery in town and we were going to do the official the official launch for that on I think like on St. Pat's Day or whatever and then everything got shut down for cold, right.
[12:21] SPEAKER_01: Right before that. So you know, I went home, I went home to my wife and I said, well, we're screwed. Right. Like I said, like there's or there's no, no chance we're going to survive. We don't have any money.
[12:33] SPEAKER_01: And if we're closed, I mean, we can't pay our bills. So so that was that was tough. That night though, I usually never watched the news. But for some reason I watched the news. I guess I don't know. I just needed needed to watch news. And they are talking about the global shortage of hand sanitizer.
[12:51] SPEAKER_01: Or that. So I googled what the WHO rescue was for and I'm just like, I could probably make that. So next day, I got up, came into work, called CRA excise and said, listen, I think I could probably make some hand sanitizer here. You know, what do I need to do? She goes, she goes, I'll send you over your licensing today for it because we you need to make it. We need it.
[13:18] SPEAKER_01: You have to pass the global blind. There's some hoops to jump through, but it was amazing how fast the government could get our licensing to us when they when they wanted to. I found that I found that very, very interesting.
[13:30] SPEAKER_01: It takes a long, long time, but they got that to me really, really quick. So that was that was quite quite, quite illuminating. So yeah. So so I kind of flipped this switch at that point and and just started making hand sanitizer.
[13:48] SPEAKER_01: We I had had enough made that we released it April, like right early April, April 1, April 2. And we had lineups or
[13:59] SPEAKER_01: building for people coming at it. Yeah. So it really saved our bacon. It was a short term thing. We've it only lasted for a couple of months for us because once the big guys were able to get their their big bulk in.
[14:11] SPEAKER_01: We dried up because they had you know the news video paying attention and not to them. So so by that that helped us survive.
[14:20] SPEAKER_01: But then you know it just kept dragging on. He'd be open for a little bit then you get shut. You'd be open with restrictions and and we're just it was it was we can never get traction.
[14:32] SPEAKER_01: And of course we're brand new business. We had no branding. So for us, we had in taking a bunch of extra loans out just to just to just to survive over COVID.
[14:44] SPEAKER_01: But you know, in retrospect, I and I always tell people I go for the first year that we were open and there was a COVID year. Honestly, I don't think that we would have done a lot more sales, even if there was in COVID.
[14:58] SPEAKER_01: But just because we were so new and actually we did get some some press from the hand sanitizer. So I looked at our sales at the end of that year and I was like, well, you know what would we have done better?
[15:13] SPEAKER_01: I don't know. But year number two year number two is what is what killed us as a business because that was the year that we should have been you know ramped and not a little bit having people in the
[15:24] SPEAKER_01: tasting room and out that year was just just terrible. So so by the time COVID was all over, we were in a position where it was just like, you know, back to square one sort of thing and it accumulated a bunch of debt.
[15:37] SPEAKER_01: And so the sudden your monthly payments are more and you know, then you're like, Oh, I need to sell X amount more bottles just to make these monthly payments. So yeah, it's been it's been this this business, this business night.
[15:52] SPEAKER_01: And I always tell people, well, there's I've never been in a business in my life where you you can't just set a plan and then implement it and then focus on it, where you spend extended amount of time.
[16:07] SPEAKER_01: You're constantly pivoting in this one. And and that and it's exhausting.
[16:15] SPEAKER_02: The truth right. So yeah, it's nothing, but I guess it's it's necessary. Right. Yeah, no, there's no other choice. Yeah, what do you think got you through all this?
[16:29] SPEAKER_01: My wife personally, personally shoot for rock. And when I would come home and as I can, you know, this is I just I don't know if I can do this anymore. She's like, you can do it.
[16:40] SPEAKER_01: So I have a glass of wine.
[16:43] SPEAKER_01: Hang out. You can do this. So so yeah, she was good. I think I think as business wise was some of the pivots that we did and I tried and I've I've done almost everything here myself.
[17:03] SPEAKER_01: So we've kept our our wages really low, which which has also handcuffed the business as far as growth is concerned.
[17:11] SPEAKER_01: But it's allowed. It's allowed us to keep our nose just above water.
[17:16] SPEAKER_01: You know, I put a lot of personal money into the company to keep it solvent, right, just to keep the keep the the wolves at base sort of things. So we've seen a good increase in sales from year to year.
[17:29] SPEAKER_01: So even over cold, we were showing an increase in sales.
[17:32] SPEAKER_01: The number one focus always for this company was to make sure that the spirits that we were making were the best that we can make them like the best quality possible spirits that we could do.
[17:45] SPEAKER_01: And I think that that has helped us a lot. It's not the easiest way and it's not the cheapest way to do it. But you know, I look at my return customers a month and in we have a really high percentage of return customers and I think if it wasn't for that, we probably would win bankrupt the long time ago.
[18:06] SPEAKER_01: We're sure so.
[18:07] SPEAKER_00: Join our thriving community of like-minded individuals who share a passion for success and innovation.
[18:14] SPEAKER_00: Canada's podcast.com subscribe now.
[18:17] SPEAKER_02: When you look at the industry, Mark, you know, we see a lot of distilleries. We see a lot of breweries out there.
[18:29] SPEAKER_02: What is it, I guess, about the consumer today that I kind of wanting this types of stuff that want that craft whatever whiskey or that craft beer.
[18:41] SPEAKER_01: I think I honestly think that there is there's a portion of the population that is very focused on that the look of our population, right?
[18:52] SPEAKER_01: I think they really they they're interested in that. That's I think that's a pretty small portion of the population. Like maybe 10 or 15%.
[19:01] SPEAKER_01: Then there is 60% of people that are either way they're not really sure about it, but you can convert them to the religion craft because they've, you know, every week I have somebody in here saying, wow, you know, I had this bad experience with genuine. I was a teenager.
[19:19] SPEAKER_01: Like I had I had a jade here. Everyone has, right? He was his his daughter had brought him in for a touring tasting this weekend.
[19:29] SPEAKER_01: He's in his 60s. It he goes, I had you know, I had a bad experience in my team, team years with Jan and I said, I think it's time to get over it.
[19:42] SPEAKER_01: So we did the tour and and we did our tasting. I always take the people through a guided tasting and teach them how to taste.
[19:49] SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of times people will just take it and go and you know, it's just a shot. So you have to it's like tasting wine or anything or beer.
[19:56] SPEAKER_01: There's a correct way to do it. And by the end of it, he bought a bottle of gin. He left because I love gin. I go, well, there's good gin and there's bad gin.
[20:05] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just like anything else. It's good beer. There's bad beer. Good wine is bad wine. I said, so you know, you can't just say I had a bad experience once and you know, and never do it again.
[20:15] SPEAKER_02: So I think that's all that's true. Yeah. So we come up with the ideas for for the different kinds of spirits.
[20:25] SPEAKER_01: Originally, originally, I was only going to do a maybe handful of spirits, right? You have to vodka is the base bear for for all the vodka is in most of cures and for jins.
[20:38] SPEAKER_01: So I always knew that I was going to have at least one vodka and one gin. And then the focus was to get as much whiskey in the barrel as we could because whiskey has to age for a minimum of three years in Canada.
[20:52] SPEAKER_01: Right. So, so to get for a small distillery like us to unless you got major financial backing, which we don't, is to sell white spirits and tell you brown spirits already.
[21:05] SPEAKER_01: So I always was going to sell gin for sure. Just I'm a big gin fan. And and I worked really hard to develop our gender.
[21:16] SPEAKER_01: And then the recipe was about 18 months in in over 50 recipe runs to get our gin to to where I wanted it to be. So I always knew that that was going to be something but kind of the focus was going to be whiskey while I found during cold it that you know, I I needed to really pivot and pivot and pivot and pivot and pivot and not just ended up adding more flavors to our to our portfolio, right?
[21:44] SPEAKER_01: So I started off with regular vodka and I was like, well, I tried this espresso vodka that I that I that I really liked. And I was like, well, I want to try that and see if I can make one myself. So, you know, I distilled some some vodka with some coffee beans in it. And I was like, well, that's interesting. And then that I'm like, okay, well, let's see what we can do with this.
[22:03] SPEAKER_01: You know, a couple months later is to point was like, okay, that's good. And then and then we're making seizures and the tasting room. And we're doing spicy seizures. And I'm just like, well, I don't I make a spicy vodka instead of using to basket. So I'm like, well, you know, I had to have an arrow vodka before and I was like, well, I know that there's there's places in Alberta that grow jalapenos. So I checked.
[22:29] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's there's a boxburn vegetables are felt they're out of. Oh, yeah, yeah, they're out of left bridge. He's got two big greenhouses down there and he grows jalapenos and they're hot.
[22:41] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So I ended up getting some jalapenos from them now. Our jalapeno vodka is one of our one of our best selling vodka's. And then our seizures really took off. We we had put our seizures in a contest in this was in 2022.
[22:59] SPEAKER_01: And they were voted it was voted the best season in Calgary. So one of the main ingredients in any seizures pickle juice. Obviously so so I was like, well, maybe I should do a deal pickle vodka. So everything just kind of kind of evolves like that in the beauty about a distillery of the size of that I can indulge it because because I don't have well for one thing I don't have a group of people that I need to convince the only person have to convince us this idiot.
[23:27] SPEAKER_01: And if it doesn't work out, I only have myself to blame. Yeah. So usually for any of the small stuff, I'll just do a really small batch and then see if it sticks and if it sticks, then we then we make more so.
[23:42] SPEAKER_01: Oh, cool.
[23:42] SPEAKER_01: It's evolved. It's evolved that way into way too many products. Way too many products.
[23:48] SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, I have I'm looking forward to tasting. I my wife successfully bid on a silent auction item at an event we were at recently and it was garlic.
[24:02] SPEAKER_02: It was a garlic vodka and I'm really curious. I know being Italian. I'm really curious. I wonder what that's going to taste like. I haven't said I haven't cracked open that bottle yet, but did well.
[24:18] SPEAKER_01: Come on.
[24:19] SPEAKER_01: I do. I actually do a garlic vodka for the Caesar shop in Calgary. Oh, cool. Yeah. So she it's her own it's her own label.
[24:30] SPEAKER_01: Rachel's label and I only make it for her. So she sells it at this she uses the black garlic the fermented garlic. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty it's nice. It's really nice. It's pretty garlicky.
[24:43] SPEAKER_02: I look forward to you. As I said, coming down one evening, I'll check out a few of your drinks and check out the music. I look forward to that.
[24:54] SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Well, thanks much Mark for joining us today on. Thanks for having me appreciate it. All right. That was Mark Freeland who is a founder of two rivers to stillery in Calgary. I'm Mario Toneguzi managing editor of Canada's podcast today with Calgary's podcast. Thanks for joining us.
