IT company executive Heather Manley is spending discretionary income on alcohol in a big way.
Manley, owner of Crooked Water Spirits, is the first woman to operate a certified spirits company in Minnesota, according to Women's Business Development Center. She doesn't have her own distillery yet, but she is working on that.
Crooked Water Spirits continues a family history of spirits related businesses run by her grandfather and grandmother.
"In tandem with Crooked Water, I run On-Demand Group, an IT consulting company in Minneapolis since 2006; family-owned company that I bought from my father. It's been around for 19 years. I also run Heather's Dirty Goodness, which is a seasonings company, [with products in] Kowalski's and Cub Foods. Five seasonings all about grilling, meats, pasta. They are all-purpose, they can go on anything," she said.
There are about 55 On-Demand employees, while Crooked Water has "two: me and my CMO, chief marketing officer, Rhett Ambrose," said Manley. "What's nice is that we are trying to wrap up our brands, creating recipes because all these are our [spirits] recipes from scratch, and leveraging the infrastructure from Norseman and Yahara [distillery partners, based in Minnesota and Wisconsin, respectively]. Outside of us getting in there and bottling, it's just a lot of waiting. Doing the research and development on future products; marketing; waiting for distribution. Until we have that distillery it's not going to take a lot of labor investment."
Her own distillery "is my goal," said Manley. "We were going to try to start one in Excelsior but we ran into a lot of roadblocks; a little more of a conservative town. Now we are opening our options and worrying about getting these products out and building the marketing and product line base — and then we'll worry about a distillery."
Until then other distilleries will produce her spirits, which include Abyss Gin, making its debut at the end of this month, and L'Eau Grand, a charred French oak-aged vodka, scheduled to be released in late November. Lost Lake Bourbon and King's Point Bourbon are already available at more than 50 liquor stores and restaurants in the Twin Cities, including St. Paul's Happy Gnome, where we got together for drinks, but not really, as you will see in my startribune.com/video.
Q: Why is it important for Crooked Water to be 100 percent woman-owned?