Let’s get something out of the way upfront: Direct-to-consumer (DTC) should be a launchpad — not a landmine. But for too many adult beverage brands, it’s the latter. You build a beautiful brand, your story resonates, your bottle looks great on a bar cart... and then the orders start coming in. Cue the chaos: late deliveries, regulatory nightmares, warehouse meltdowns, refund requests, and a customer service inbox full of “where’s my order?” emails. Sound familiar? You’re not alone. In the last two years, I’ve worked with dozens of emerging brands — from tequila to canned cocktails to adaptogenic elixirs — and nearly all of them stumble at the same point: getting the product from warehouse to consumer legally, quickly, and cost-effectively. This isn’t a minor operational detail. It’s the difference between DTC working for you — or working against you. And if you’re a founder or brand leader who's feeling buried in the operational weeds, wondering if there’s a better way to scale this mountain, I’ve got good news. There is. Let’s break it down.

By Michael Halsey, First Step Beverage Walk into any liquor store and you’re in a graveyard. Bottles everywhere, each with a story, a hype cycle, maybe even some awards. Most of them? Dead brands. A few are zombies—still technically alive, but hemorrhaging cash while waiting for an acquirer who will never show up. Here’s the kicker: it’s almost never because the liquid sucked. I’ve tasted some of the best tequila, RTDs, craft lagers, and “functional wellness tonics” from brands that don’t even exist anymore. They failed for one simple reason: they never figured out how to build a real business. And that’s the part no one wants to talk about. Beverages are a knife fight in a dark alley. One wrong step—signing with the wrong distributor, going all-in on a doomed DTC bet, letting ops bloat—and you’re done. But the survivors? They’re not lucky. They’re disciplined. They’ve traded hype for sustainability, vanity metrics for KPIs, siloed fiefdoms for integrated leadership. They’ve built a new playbook.

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