From the outside looking in, it would appear Joel Hauer is living the dream.
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He's the founder of Liquor Loot, an online business that offers a huge variety of whiskies by the bottle - that is, the full bottle or a special 60ml bottle - allowing consumers to sample the best of Australian and world whiskies at a fraction of the price for a whole bottle.
For instance, an Australian whisky tasting pack featuring 60ml samples from Starward (a two-fold double grain from Port Melbourne), Upshot (a premium taster from Perth) and Corowa (Characters wine cask single malt from this Murray River producer) is on offer for $79.
His Whisky Loot portal alone features whiskies from nearly 100 distilleries, covering Scotland, Ireland, Canada, America, Japan, India, France, England, and Australia.
Brands big and small are included, from Adelaide Hills 78 Degrees Australian whiskey to The Glenlivet, from Mortlach 21-year-old Single Malt Scotch Whisky ($1100) to Lark Symphony No 1 Tasmanian Malt Whisky, and everything in between.
Consumers can buy one-off tasting packs, or subscribe to the service for monthly deliveries. If you like a taster, you can buy a full bottle from the website, at a discounted price.
While the business is now five years old, it's just hitting its straps now, with the 2020 pandemic certainly giving it a boost.
Whisky was the forerunner, and the company expanded into gin (Gin Loot) in April, offering more than 145 gin products online. Among the brands are many boutique Australian distilleries, including Adelaide Hills, Manly Spriits, Wolf Lane, Fonzie Abbott, Never Never, Poor Toms, Nosferatu, and Kangaroo Island Spirits
Hauer, who is based in Sydney, says tequila, rum and vodka are next, with plans to launch the online company into Singapore by the end of 2021.
Before creating Liquor Loot, Hauer ran his own digital marketing company. It was his personality curiosity, and passion, that made him change direction.
"I was travelling a bit," he says. "I came across friends on a trivia night. They were interested in whisky. I was getting interested. I would go to their place and drink as much of their liquor cabinet as I could...
"I would read the labels about the rolling hills of Scotland and think 'that doesn't tell me anything about the taste'. That is what I wanted to know.
I would read the labels about the rolling hills of Scotland and think 'that doesn't tell me anything about the taste'. That is what I wanted to know.
- Joel Hauer, Liquor Loot founder
"I wanted a cheap and accessible way to do that trial and error. So it really came out of a personal need and talking to friends. And getting strangers to validate the idea from an online perspective."
Doing research by buying shots of whisky at pubs was expensive, as Hauer found out. So he developed a model where consumers could sample the best, at an affordable price.
"I was in digital," he says. "I knew subscription models. Once I had the problem, I could figure out the next step."
His timing could not have been better.
"Four or five years ago the signs were there that spirits were growing faster. That is, premium spirits. Obviously, COVID has been very fortuitous," Hauer says. "It is something that people are thinking more about, what they are consuming. They want to know the distillery, they want to know the ingredients. There's a bit of a movement, especially in the 35-55 years old, that they want to have the premium experiences and want to know more."
Realising how important product knowledge was and then figuring out how to convey that information was a key factor. "We actually pivoted to one more of education, essentially that takes people on a journey," Hauer says.
The Liquor Loot consumer offer is slick and smart, both online and in real time. The sleek box that carries the three samples looks like a real treat, a gift. The 60ml bottles are identical - no blaring product branding - so it makes "blind" tasting obvious. The tasting notes, all on a single card, are punchy, informative, intelligent and brief, focusing on aroma and taste.
"To make the model work we had to have a uniform approach," Hauer says of the simple, clean-looking bottles.
And the suppliers went with it.
"Every distillery thinks their product is the best, they think their product will stand out on merit," Hauer says of the logic that convinced distillers to supply product without strong branding, to the point that Liquor Loot runs its own bottle line to put product into its own bottles.
Hauer speaks with great respect for Australian distillers. He's concentrated his early efforts on building strong relationships with many of them, and they have grown, too.
"We have a big goal to increase listings on shop side," he says of the business. "And work with up and coming distilleries. Just looking at the amount of [Australian] distilleries with liquor licences in the last 12 months, there is a boom coming. We have outpaced Scotland in distillery growth."
He laughs at the notion he is head taster, having stepped back as the business has grown. Of course, he still enjoys a dram of whisky most nights.
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