This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features JW Wiseman, founder of non-alcoholic craft cocktail company Curious Elixirs.
Image Credit: Nick Kova. JW Wiseman, founder of Curious Elixirs.
Launched in 2015, Curious Elixirs generated $2.2 million in its first five years — and skyrocketed past $50 million in the past five years. The brand has served millions of customers in some of the best restaurants in the world, including Daniel and The French Laundry; at nightclubs like House of Yes; and in their own homes through its direct-to-consumer business. The brand is projected to do $176 million in revenue by 2030.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle?
Helping clean food startups like Daily Harvest and Chomps get their first million customers through my marketing firm Good Business, along with opening a bar called The Whiskey Brooklyn and the nightclub OUTPUT. It took about five years before we had enough steady cashflow for me to commit full-time to Curious Elixirs.
Related: How to Start a Side Hustle With Facebook, From 4 People Who Did It and Are Earning More Than $1 Million a Year
When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?
Working in nightlife and being a huge cocktail nerd in New York City, I’ve loved hospitality for ages…and ended up drinking too much. One winter’s night in 2012, I had over 20 drinks, and the next day I didn’t even have a hangover — that was so scary. I changed my relationship with alcohol and started drinking less. But I still wanted to be social and have an elevated cocktail experience — it literally did not exist at that time. So I set out to create it.
What we did was craft complex cocktails without alcohol using the world’s best ingredients with inspiration from cocktails new and old. We collaborated with bartenders, food scientists and herbalists. And Curious Elixirs was born.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Curious Elixirs
What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground?
Tinkering in the kitchen, reading books on herbs and taking a chance to make something that had never existed: a booze-free craft cocktail with herbs and adaptogens to help you unwind.
While working on an early hibiscus negroni recipe one Sunday morning, the name just struck me out of nowhere — Curious Elixirs — and I kept working on it until it was finally ready for testing at parties in Brooklyn and Queens.
Related: ‘Hustling Every Day’: These Friends Started a Side Hustle With $2,500 Each — It ‘Snowballed’ to Over $500,000 and Became a Multimillion-Dollar Brand
Back then, we had a hotel in Rockaway Beach called Playland Motel, and for opening weekend, I made a Curious Elixir. I didn’t even label it as non-alcoholic, but people kept drinking that far more than the booze. I knew I was on to something.
To more about the non-alcoholic space, I sought advice from hospitality pros, while also apprenticing with food scientists. I learned how to adapt bartending craft mocktails to then scaling beverage production, with clean-label ingredients of the highest quality from around the world.
Related: Has Dry January Really Lifted Non-Alcoholic Beverage Makers’ Spirits?
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced while building your side hustle, and how did you navigate them?
When Curious began as a business in 2015, many of the alcohol-free ingredient extracts that make a drink bitter or spicy — like gentian in our Curious No. 1 or ancho chili in Curious No. 2 — didn’t exist yet. Creating these extracts and blending them to make sophisticated non-alcoholic cocktails takes years of effort and experimentation.
Another challenge was filming Shark Tank in 2018, and having the segment not make the show. Curious Elixirs was ahead of its time, and the sharks just didn’t understand what a massive opportunity the non-alcoholic segment was going to become. It’s still early even though we’re 10 years in. At the time, we were often running out of product to sell, so it’s a blessing in disgu