FOOD & WINE DISTRIBUTION WITH STEVE KRIARIS | E035 PODCAST

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ABOUT THE GUEST

Steve Kriaris is a renowned entrepreneur and philanthropist based in Toronto, Canada. Raised with a strong connection to his Greek heritage, Steve's entrepreneurial journey began in his early twenties when he identified a gap in the Canadian market for quality Mediterranean products. He introduced natural Greek mineral water in 2000 and expanded his company to include fine wines, beers, and spirits. Today, KOLONAKI Group consists of three divisions: Kolonaki Fine Wines, Kolonaki Fine Foods, and Kolonaki Fine Lifestyle.

Steve's passion for creating exceptional products led him to establish his own wine label, Thalia, sourcing grapes from Crete. Recognized for his achievements, Steve received the Business Achievement Award from The Hellenic Canadian Board of Trade in 2012. Through KOLONAKI Group, Steve embodies his love for travel, exploration, and storytelling, offering consumers a taste of the Mediterranean lifestyle.

Steve’s Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/stevekriaris/
Steve’s’ LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-kriaris-a052796/?originalSubdomain=ca
Steve’s Twitter (X):
https://x.com/SteveKriaris
Steve’s Website:
https://kolonakifinewines.com/
Steve’s Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/steve.kriaris/

George Stroumboulis sits down with Steve Kriaris in Toronto, Canada on the Invigorate Your Business Podcast to talk about all things specialty foods, wine distribution, entrepreneurship, representing major Champagne brands and so much more.

“Like I wake up in the morning two hours earlier just to go to work and work even harder when somebody’s telling me you can’t do this.”
— Steve Kriaris

MEDIA RELATED TO THE EPISODE

George Stroumboulis sits down with Steve Kriaris in Toronto, Canada on the Invigorate Your Business Podcast to talk about all things specialty foods, wine distribution, entrepreneurship, representing major Champagne brands and so much more.

George Stroumboulis sits down with Steve Kriaris in Toronto, Canada on the Invigorate Your Business Podcast to talk about all things specialty foods, wine distribution, entrepreneurship, representing major Champagne brands and so much more.

George Stroumboulis sits down with Steve Kriaris in Toronto, Canada on the Invigorate Your Business Podcast to talk about all things specialty foods, wine distribution, entrepreneurship, representing major Champagne brands and so much more.

George Stroumboulis sits down with Steve Kriaris in Toronto, Canada on the Invigorate Your Business Podcast to talk about all things specialty foods, wine distribution, entrepreneurship, representing major Champagne brands and so much more.

George Stroumboulis sits down with Steve Kriaris in Toronto, Canada on the Invigorate Your Business Podcast to talk about all things specialty foods, wine distribution, entrepreneurship, representing major Champagne brands and so much more.

George Stroumboulis sits down with Steve Kriaris in Toronto, Canada on the Invigorate Your Business Podcast to talk about all things specialty foods, wine distribution, entrepreneurship, representing major Champagne brands and so much more.

ABOUT THE “INVIGORATE YOUR BUSINESS” PODCAST

The Invigorate Your Business with George Stroumboulis podcast features casual conversations and personal interviews with business leaders in their respective fields of expertise. Crossing several industry types and personal backgrounds, George sits down with inspiring people to discuss their business, how they got into that business, their path to the top of their game and the trials and tribulations experienced along the way. We want you to get inspired, motivated, and then apply any advice to your personal and professional lives. If there is at least one piece of advice that resonates with you after listening, then this podcast is a success. New episodes weekly. Stream our show on Spotify, YouTube, Apple, Amazon and all other platforms.

ABOUT GEORGE STROUMBOULIS

George Stroumboulis is an entrepreneur to the core, having launched several ventures across multiple industries and international markets. He has held senior-level positions at progressive companies and government institutions, both domestically and internationally, building an extensive portfolio of business know-how over the years and driving profit-generating results. George’s ability to drive real change has landed him in several media outlets, including the front page of the Wall Street Journal. George was born in Toronto, Canada to his Greek immigrant parents. Family first. Flying over 300,000 miles a year around the world puts into perspective how important family is to George’s mental and emotional development. With all this travel to global destinations, the longest he stays even in the most far-out destination is 3 days or less - a personal rule he lives by to make sure he is present and involved in family life with his wife and three daughters. To read about George’s global travels, stay connected with his blog section.

FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT

George Stroumboulis - Host: 00:00

Welcome to another episode of Invigorate your Business with George Stroumboulis. Today's episode comes from Toronto, Canada, and I get to sit down with a wine expert who has built a national distribution center where he's servicing the entire country of Canada and now into the United States. Steve Kriaris has sharp business acumen and has just developed an impressive business, so we're going to dive into everything you need to know about the distribution of food, alcohol, and beverage products on today's episode. Starting now, my name is George Stroumboulis and I'm extremely passionate about traveling the world, meeting new people and learning about new businesses. Join me as I sit down with other entrepreneurs to learn about their journeys. This episode of Invigorate your Business starts now. So we're rolling. We are in the wonderful city of Toronto, we are, yes, and I'm sitting here with Steve Kriaris, who is the founder president, CEO of Kolonaki Group.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:07

I am yeah.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:07

Kolonaki Group is a national distribution company of alcohol, beverages, fine foods just curating, you know luxury wines and different spirits and champagnes from around the world right, multiple countries and just over the years talking with you, following each other socially and just circles, your business acumen is just extremely sharp. How you're operating your business, how you survived, especially in this space, coming out of COVID and just launching an online business and then going down in the States Like just I'm excited that you're here, so I appreciate the time.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:46

My pleasure In your city. Thank you for having me.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:48

Right, even though I was born here, it's your city.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:49

I get it. Well, you never want to be back again.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:52

Yeah, absolutely, there we go. So, steve, talk to us. How do you describe Kolonaki Group?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 02:06

Kol Nike group in 2000. So it's been my 24th year in business, uh, importing Ioli water. That's how I got in the business. Uh, also nicknamed the water boy back then. Okay, I was 29 years old and I just want to try something totally different, because I was in the bar business at the time.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 02:14

Was it before Billy Madison water boy, or is that okay?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 02:18

And so, uh well, the Greeks would call me on it or less. Everybody else called me the water boy, also nicknamed Steve Violi in the city by everybody. That was my last name. And then we got into some alcoholic beverages and then more fine foods, and then now we're at about 200 different SKUs in the fine food world and about 100 different SKUs in the fine wines and spirits business.

02:43

So the pandemic in many ways helped my business. In many ways it didn't, obviously for the obvious reasons, because we're so heavily invested in food service on premise that when those all closed down, there went all the business sort of thing. But we picked up many other ways because we had two things on our hands A, we had time to build our online platform, which went live like 16 days prior to the lockdown. So the timing was exceptional and we did some pretty amazing things online, which helped us get discovered by a lot of people, because when they're all at home searching for products, our name kept popping up more and more and more. So we had some pretty intense sales on the online world. And the other thing that pandemic gave me was time. Right, it forced me to stop, it forced me to think, it forced me to reevaluate it, forced me to look at the products you're selling today and is this the future, kind of thing, right? Are you going to take this and you're going to grow these brands, sort of thing? Right? Where are you going with the company?

03:30

And so one of the things that we're always had trouble with was um, you know, what does kola nike do? What is kola nike group, right? So nobody knew what it did, or because it doesn't say in the name what it was and stuff, and and I used to always say, oh, it's called an Ikea group only for those in the know. So every once in a while, when I would go to Greece, called an Ikea for those that don't know, is a the first ever aristocratic suburb in Athens, and so it's like the Yorkville of Toronto, if you will. And so I always wanted to associate the name of the company with just premium quality, et cetera, and in those days, every time you walked to one of the cafes or bars and restaurants, I only water was being served in all those little restaurants and bars and stuff. So it kind of was perfect name, and I love hanging out in the in the area as well.

04:11

So I was like you know what, for those who know they know my 29 year old ego self of mine saying you either know Konaiki or you don't sort of thing. Every once in a while I would go to like I I'd walk to Kolo Naki and it'd be like one of those street signs saying Kolo Naki this way and I'd stand up and you know kind of point at the sign and I'd post on social media and it used to get the most comments and likes of anything else that I posted. It's like, oh my God, it really exists.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 04:32

You know what I mean, that's what it is.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 04:33

But if people do know, like Kolo Naki, Of course, for those you know, like Acropolis Imports or something like that, right? So I just wanted to avoid all the cliche names that had to do with the previous generation of how they're doing things and I just wanted to go something totally modern, totally premium, and I just stay at that, which is kind of our mindset as a company and the ethos is we just got to keep selling all the premium products from wherever we're sourcing them from, sort of thing. And then what the pandemic did with the time was it allowed me to finally stop and say, okay, kola Nike Group has now blossomed into much more than just importing water. So we finally were able to rebrand and we created Kola Nike Group of Companies. Okay. So then we have one division which is the Kola Nike Fine Foods and Beverages, so it's kind of a non-alcoholic importing company. We did a national agency called the Nike Fine Wines and Spirits so that we isolated the actual alcohol business so we can become an agency across Canada and look to expand in different markets.

05:33

And then the last one which was supposed to go live in the pandemic, which was called the Nike Fine Lifestyle. So we have a third division which we didn't go live with because, if you remember my prediction back then, we got a couple of months after this. Yeah, so the third. The third option was to do the last component, which was supposed to be agro tourism, ino tourism, and then be able to sell everything that's non-consumable goods. So it could be like, you know, clay plates from eos island or something it could be like cutlery, could be napkins, could be like all the different things that you buy in the home purses, jewelry, etc. From, etc.

06:02

From Greece, and then you get everybody into a plane, you fly to Greece, you tour the islands or wherever you're going to take them. Amazing, they pick up all the different things you want olive oils, whatever and then you come back and then all your goods would arrive to your home. The problem was during the pandemic we were trying to get this going every time and the extension of the lockdowns, I couldn't get anyone on a plane. So eventually the lifestyle division had to just be put dormant for the time being and stuff. So we've left it dormant since then, but it's one of our projects we want to get into in the future is to be able to offer agritourism, inotourism, in Greece and the southern Mediterranean.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 06:35

That would be remarkable, right?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 06:36

Yes, and it kind of follows part and parcel of what we're doing right now. And then you can actually take them to the olive groves, get them to make some olive oil, take them to the vineyards, see how the grapes are growing and whatnot, and then learn firsthand what's going on there.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 06:54

Because you're essentially already doing that, from tastings and going out there and educating people. Even though you have this large company right now physically large space, hundreds of SKUs, clients, you're in the best clubs, restaurants across across the country you still make it a point to have wine tastings to bring people to curate. You know and do that. Yeah, do you do. You need to do that is that why you become so successful, just being on the ground level for me, everything has to be about grassroots, like I started.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 07:18

Grassroots like knocking on doors myself, delivering out of my honda accord in the trunk. You know I what I mean Just going door to door, knocking on doors delivering water just to get the ball rolling. So I know that. You know, as an owner, operator, entrepreneur, you need to also be at that ground level too to understand what's going on in the market and listen in to see how the market is changing and evolving. Because the market has changed and evolved, right Like when I started back in 2000,.

07:39

Internet didn't exist, we didn't have online stores, right. So you had to go knock on doors like a classic salesman, if you will, and then just hit up everybody you could and get as much volume going as much as possible, right. And so everything's evolved and changed. So I either evolved and learned the new way or just perished, kind of thing, right. And many people in the industry have perished over the years because they weren't able to evolve, and that's what I find.

08:01

So, for me, evolution was a big thing for us. So the division of the company and then having two different divisions was great. And then, um, fast forward, just another year. Uh, we own a few of our own brands wines, fine foods, etc. And forever in a day I've always wanted to kind of find a place or a way to kind of house those under their own little portfolio. And then I discovered this greek word called Oroma, which is the Greek word for vision or foresight. Yes, and it was told to me by someone about four years ago in the pandemic, three four years ago in the pandemic, and I just fell in love with the name.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 08:36

Yeah.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 08:37

And I said I don't know what am I do with this name, but one day I'm going to open up a company that's going to be called. And so we ended up opening up Oroma group of companies Yep, because now I have forward thinking, and so the first division was Oroma Brands. So now all of our brands are under the umbrella of Oroma Brands, and that was year one was last year, and we just launched Oroma Brands Ike, so we have a Greek company now.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 08:56

Okay.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 09:00

So we'll officially be operating out of Greece as an official Greek company, which is exciting. We just got that done about a week and a half ago and our first shipment just left in Greece about a week and a half ago. Congrats, perfect timing, thank you.

09:08

So I actually printed off the bill of lading and I framed it and put it up on the wall in the office and the first thing you see when you come in is our first ever bill of lading for first ever shipment leaving Greece under the brand name of Orama the Greek company, right, and for listeners, orama, o-r-a-m-a.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 09:24

Correct, just so they okay. Yeah, dude, that's exciting. Yeah, so there's so many ways we could go from here. You start this. You have your three divisions. Yeah, right, you're growing, you're in the states, but actually finding the product, right, you're not. It's not just greece, right, you're bringing in from italy, from france, from new zealand, right, all these kind from the us, yeah, and not just wine, not just water. We're talking champagne, we're talking everything. Talk to us, how do you even go about, like a typical cycle of finding the right producer of wine, for example, getting them on the shelves here at the LCBO? Like, what does that process even look like? And then what are the costs? Do you pay for it? Is it on the LCBO? Like, how does that process even look like? And then what are the costs? Do you pay for it? Is it on the LCBO? How does that work?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 10:08

Okay. So those are two questions there. So the first one is how do you vet a producer and stuff? I'll start by saying that not all of my selections were ever successful. Okay, that's for sure. So you do have brands that you think are going to be the next big thing. You bring them in and they don't actually make it anywhere. But you learn. If all I can ever ask for from my mistakes is to learn from my mistakes, then eventually you learn, you figure out. Like you know, one time I had a producer that I thought was the next big thing and as I was growing his product he started running out of product and I'm like hey, dude, I need like 500 more cases. He's like I can't get you 500 more cases, I need three months to make 500. I'm like what? So then I realized I should have asked the question what is your volume? How much can you produce with this product? Right? Not knowing that upfront?

10:50

Which seems like common sense, but when you're growing, you just, yeah, you just want to run, right, you want to take the product and run. So I take it and run, and then all of a sudden it's like wait a minute, he doesn't have enough supply for this product. So now thing I asked right away is you know how much volume are you producing? If I think it's going to be a big brand, I need to know what the capacity is. You know, maybe even visit the winery or the production plant, or that's all level or whatever it is, and understand to know, because now, over the years, I can walk into a place and I'll know whether it's legit or not, kind of thing. Right, like most suppliers, oh, I can do that.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 11:21

No problem, figure it out later.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 11:23

Yeah, so I've learned from my mistakes and stuff, but I mean there have been many brands that have been very successful for us, as we mentioned a couple of little while ago, and yeah, so a lot of. It is my visceral gut. I need to think that this brand needs to be in our market. And then why? You know, what problem is this product solving? There has to be a reason why. What's the why and why you bring a product here right, not just because you think it's great. It has to solve some sort of a problem. Maybe it's a missing varietal, maybe it's a quality of olive oil, or maybe a region of a you know in Italy that no one has heard of before, or something.

11:55

When we launched Armando Brignac Champagne Ace of Spades, which is Jay-Z's brand at the time, I launched it with Sovereign Brands.

12:12

I was dealing with Brett Barish and Scott Cohen at the time and I was not even in the champagne space at all. But I have a lot of relationships in the club industry, the hotels, etc. And when I was being interviewed to take on the brand because at that level they interview you, of course, you don't just go there and interview them, sort of thing the first thing they asked me is what champagne brands do you work with? And I said I don't work with any champagne brands. They're like so what makes you think you can sell this champagne brand? I said that's the only reason why I'm going to sell the champagne brand. I go because it's me against them and they're like oh okay, when I looked at it like that, I said no, I got to fight all the big brands with the champagne brand that we're going to have in our hands. So and you know, that was part of the whole the confidence you need to have in yourself and what you believe in and stuff.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 12:50

And then we brought in a champagne and so hold on, you're just touching over that, but that's a big deal. Uh, jay-z champagne brand, yes, one of the hottest in the city, right, ace of spades, right Like. And not just the champagne, the way it's presented, everything, yeah, flashy, everything that comes with that. Before that you were wine, foods, water.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 13:08

Before that, I was just everything was imported from Greece, okay. And then that year it was around 2010,.

13:14

A very pivotal year, yeah, as you know from my history 2010 was a pivotal year, and what happened was I expanded, and so Armando Brignac Champagne was in our portfolio, and at the same time, I met Mikhail Aratus from New Zealand, and I'm like I really want to sell your New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc in my market. So we were on the phone and I'll never forget I was in the house at the time. We can say whatever we want here, right?

George Stroumboulis - Host: 13:36

Absolutely yeah.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 13:39

And it was my son, peter, and I had a new crib for him and I was on the phone with him. In one year Didn't have any earplugs back then. And I have tools in my hand and I'm building the crib. It was like 8 pm at night and New Zealand is like 16 hours ahead or whatever it is. And I'm talking to the guy, the producer, on the phone and he's kind of interviewing with me back and forth, and I'm crib.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 14:01

The kid's got to get the bed in half an hour, okay, yeah that's great.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 14:05

Sure, no problem at all. And then you know we hit it off and stuff. And then I've I've become very good friends with the McKeel over the years and stuff.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 14:10

The crib never made it like it crashed the next day, but the bar stayed up.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 14:17

I got the contract, and so we brought it in and stuff and um, and that was great too. So, and then from there, once I became comfortable with having brands that were not from Greece, cause in the beginning, I think, okay, being Greek, they got to have new products. No, it's the opposite actually. So it's what can I bring to the other brands? And that's what I learned early on. And then from there, we just kept expanding into other products from other regions, and now in our wine portfolio we have wines from about 10 different countries Portugal, italy, Spain.

14:43

We have an amazing producer in Spain that we work with, called Ego Bodegas. Ioana is the owner operator there and she's an amazing person to work with. We met many years ago at ProVine, which is the biggest wine fair in the world in Germany. Okay, and we hit it off and she's like you know what, let's do this, and we did it. Now in our category, it's one of the most successful Spanish labels, called GORU in the category, and that's been exciting for us. And, yeah, we just keep going. So we took the ace of spades and once we got listed even though no one we believe would ever achieve this, because we were being bashed left, right and center for the first two years. You know everybody hated on us.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 15:17

Who's everybody Like in the industry?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 15:19

It's BS. Who's Jay-Z? Why it's BS? Who's Jay-Z? Why are you selling this stuff? For where do you think you're going? A million and one different things and for me I love that stuff. Like I wake up in the morning two hours earlier just to go to work and work even harder when somebody's telling me you can't do this, You're feeding off that right yeah totally Absolutely.

15:38

And so I'm like you know what Fuck that I'm going to wake up and approve you guys can do this. And then I eventually got listed at the LCBO and then within one year we were double Cristal's numbers in one year, yeah, so it was a huge success and the brand. At that point everybody just shut up and said, okay, this is now becoming the next big brand, which it did in in that, in that price band category, and at one point I can tell you there were multiple venues clubs, bars, hotels restaurants everywhere that were just carrying the product, just carrying it.

16:09

Yeah, and it was. It became a thing and it actually grew almost like a grassroots movement, like in the sense that Ace became like a Toronto champagne in a way, because of the whole way. We started selling out of my trunk believe it or not, that's crazy Going around to places and delivering out of my car, believe it, and so, and that's how it started. So it kind of became its own thing within Toronto and I think we became like the fifth biggest market in North America for the champagne brand. Yeah, so that was great and um, are you kidding me Like?

George Stroumboulis - Host: 16:35

did you ever get to meet Jay-Z I?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 16:36

didn't know. No, okay, no, the closest I got was meeting, uh, sebastian Besson, who was the CEO of Sean Carter Enterprises, who eventually bought Armand de Bignac from Sovereign Brands. So I mean, he worked directly under Jay-Z and I knew with the chain of command what was going on, which was great, and they were a great team as well. And we expanded, they grew the brand and then eventually he sold the champagne brand afterwards for a huge sum of money, which is amazing. But I stayed loyal, as always, to Sovereign Brands, who started Armand de Magnac, and then eventually they launched another brand called Bel Air Bel Air, yes, which you may have heard about, and that's with Rick Ross and another half a dozen very popular artists.

17:17

And we launched Bel Air here and it was kind of the same thing all over again, like what is this product and where is it from, and and who's behind it and why are you doing this for, and whatever, whatever. And I said you know what? Just let me do my thing. The cool thing was that, learning from your mistakes with Armand which took me probably an extra two years to say, to kind of prove we could do this I was able to get Bel Air into the market much faster. And then within that category, we became the number one sparkling rosé in the sparkling rosé category here in Ontario and we blew away the competition in that category. Yeah, and we were number one and we ran that for probably almost eight years straight nonstop and the pandemic is what really blew us up.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 17:55

For both of those.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 17:58

So, before the pandemic, armand got sold, so we no longer worked with the brand, but I mean, I'm still a big supporter because it's one of the brands that put me on the map here in the city and in the country, for that matter. And then Bel Air did the same thing for us. And then during the pandemic because you're always growing every brand you work with, obviously and then right when the pandemic came, everybody stayed home. They all went shopping at the LCBO or the SAQ in Quebec and they're all just buying up Bel Air and drinking at home. And then I looked at the numbers and I would see the weekly numbers coming in and it's like, you know, you're up 14% year over year this week versus last year. Okay, then the next week would come in, you're up 21%. It's like, wow, okay, interesting, next week come, you're up 22%.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 18:36

While the world's shut down.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 18:38

Yeah, and I'm sitting at home watching the numbers week after week coming in, because you get weekly reports. Yeah, and I was just mesmerized. And then at one point I think we had we're up like 110% week, week over week, year over year. Uh, as the brand kept going over and over and over again, the numbers were just like it was insane how much champagne we're selling at the time. Uh, and you know, it was the right product at the right time, the right promotion behind it and we had done all the back end work.

19:03

So when the pandemic hit, yes, all of our online business shut down, but everything we had at the retail business blew up for us. And then, going back to the fine food side, we then had retailers calling and saying hey, I know you guys have olive oil, for example. I said, yeah, and I'm like how'd you guys get our number? They go we just researched you guys online and we know you have these olive oils. We're out of olive oil. We can't get olive oil in the market, for example, because the shipments were a big issue. People couldn't get stuff shipped out to them. Containers locked up Container everything.

19:31

So basically, china bought all the containers, they shipped them over to China so that only their goods would get into the North American market, especially in Europe, and then the rest of Europe got shut out with no containers. So there was a lot of delays. So may the best man win, or whoever had inventory won the battle here. It wasn't really about price at that point, it's just do you have stock or do you not have stock? And you had stock at the time, yes and no. But what was great was when they called and I did have stock all of a sudden you see like 300% increase in your sales, because they would just buy up whatever you had at that time, sort of thing, and eventually we would just keep doubling down our orders. So from 2021, 2022, 23, like, we just keep increasing orders by a hundred percent every time until you got the point where you're saturated now with inventory and then you're like, okay, well, the demand now has slowed down, we have too much inventory, sort of thing.

20:18

So then 2023 was the year for us to kind of cut back on what we're ordering, to kind of realign our buying patterns to be more in line with where we're going today. So we had. You know, 2023 was our uh, our best year, pretty much to date. Amazing, this year we're already up 20% over last year, which is kind of exciting as well. Uh, not easy. Not easy because, as I was mentioning before, like for me, right now, growth is amazing. We all love growth, I get it, but it's also it can become more difficult, because now you're putting more stress on the operational side of the business. Right, because now it's like you're doing one fifth more than what you were doing last year with the same staff. Yes, right, so now there's a lot more work to be done.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 20:57

And how much can you push that until you need to add more staff? You don't want to overhigh, it's a balancing act.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 21:03

It's a balancing act.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 21:04

Just really quick on that point you had mentioned. Even during the growth you're ordering to keep up with demand. A lot of the times when you're just growing it's so hard to even control inventory. When money's coming in you're like just order, order and then you get into that period where there's a slowdown. I'm sure you had to do a whole inventory evaluation on Expiring products.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 21:23

Yeah, dates are coming up. In two months we have like 6,000 cases. What do you got to do with them? We've got to move on as fast as possible. Fire sale.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 21:28

Yeah, exactly, yeah, absolutely, really quick. So Jay-Z right. Going back to that, then Bel Air was whose brand?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 21:37

Well, sopran brand started the brand, but Rick Ross was one of the main people behind the product.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 21:41

Yeah, so, aside from there's ego there's, can I get it? And you won those brands essentially to represent them and grow. Were they good products, like compared to the Moet's and the Cristal Like, did you actually enjoy the value?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 21:52

for money. I love the products. Yes, okay, uh, which is important to me. Uh, and you know, I have to tell you one thing, especially when it comes to the liquor business actually this relates to pretty much everything, but especially in alcohol is what emotions do you evoke from the product? Right, and so one of the things that I've seen with Armand is like the people who are coming to us in the beginning when we're selling on the streets, they were just so happy to part with $300 to get a bottle, to know that they were buying one of Jay-Z's champagnes that's what it came down to or that Beyonce had in one of music videos. So we would have girls showing up and they were literally counting 20s and 10s to get $300 together to buy one of the bottles and go home and do like an Instagram reel or story or whatever the case may be, sort of thing, and because it evoked an emotion in them.

22:37

That's what it came down to. But the reality is that $300 a bottle retail, in the clubs is a thousand. Not everybody can afford that. No, so the firestorm that occurred with Bel Air, when Bel Air came out at $40 a bottle fair not champagne from champagne friends, but it was a sparkling wine from Provence at $4 bottle is accessible to everybody. So now what? I I'll never forget this. I was sitting with Brett Barish in a job, our vital store in Soho in those days he was a huge Varvatos fan as well, and we're just talking about getting Bel Air going.

23:10

And then he's like, are you okay if we do like three times the volume of Bel Air? I'm like, yeah, that'd be great, I go four or five times the volume, he goes, yeah, he goes. If we can do that, he goes. We're set. I said, okay, well, we ended we ended up doing 20 times the volume, or 25 times the volume of Armand.

23:24

But it's all relevant to dollars and cents. Right, it's $40 a bottle, so there's a difference in the value there. But what we realized with Bel Air was people were coming in and saying, no, no, I don't want a bottle, I want to take all six bottles. So we're buying by the case sort of thing. Right, and it's the same thing. They you're drinking a very expensive wine from Tuscany or a Barolo or a big wine from Napa Valley.

23:46

Right, there is something involved, there's an emotion involved in the whole consumption of that product. Is it better than other wines? Maybe, maybe not right, but the reality is you're emotionally attached to a lot of the brands out there and we see it all the time with people who have wealth. They want to go and buy a Mercedes because they feel that there's an emotional connection, that there's a status involved and all that stuff. Is the Mercedes better than another German car?

24:10

Maybe, maybe not, but the reality is it's emotion. So emotions are always involved in everything we do, and so one of the great things that these products do and a lot of brands work that's one of the things we work on from a marketing perspective is just getting people emotionally attached. So, going back to what you're saying about, you know tourism, once you go to a vineyard like if you go to Greece summer and that's in a vineyard once you go to the vineyard and you spend the day there, you're going to be emotionally attached to that vineyard and those wines and what that wine means. And you know, I was there that summer when they were doing harvest kind of thing.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 24:38

You know and you'll never forget that story.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 24:41

So you're emotionally attached, emotionally involved, and that's the beautiful thing about products that we consume a lot of times is there's a lot of times that emotion evolves.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 24:48

So to that point on emotions. Do you think, once talking about liquor brands, casamigos, george Clooney, right Jay-Z selling his brand when they actually sell the brand? Do you think people?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 25:01

leave the brand? I don't think I know.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 25:04

Okay, so explain that.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 25:05

Both brands have.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 25:06

Because I roll my eyes now where I'm like okay, what celebrity is launching which tequila brand?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 25:10

It's just the market's flooded. It's out of control. Out of control.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 25:12

So what is it? The minute someone drops it does it lose its luster?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 25:16

Well you lose the street cachet for starters, and typically it's some big corporation that's buying the brand because they're the only ones that have the money to buy the brand at those dollars and cents. And then sort of what ends up happening is that you lose the emotional connection to the product, right? So if you look at Armand, the brand that sales now, they're down like 50% right, and sliding even further down, sort of thing. Right, bel Air is down 40% Once it left from our hands and it was no longer the street brand that we're getting out there and selling to people and whatnot. And now it's become this big corporate brand. I can just buy any Corbin I want at this point, sure, this brand more, right. So no one's attached the brand anymore, sort of thing. Right.

25:54

And then when that happens, the sales do go down amazing and then the question is how do you get it back up again? There's no silver bullet there. It's gonna take lot of work and a lot of money if you can ever achieve it again. That's the problem that I find is the cyclicalness of all these products. They usually get about a 10, 12-year lifespan.

26:11

I mean Armand had a longer lifespan because it was one of the original ones right when Jay-Z first aired it in his music video called Show Me what you Got. He has a briefcase with him in the casino and they bring him Cristal and he says get it out of here. And then it's like they bring them a bottle of ACE and he's like give it to the girl across from me who was he was playing poker with Uh, and so it had a longer lifespan because that was the first time we ever got introduced to somebody having sort of a challenge with a brand and then bringing out his own brand and then making into what it became sort of thing. So I mean Jay-Z the way in many ways, for many people to make millions and billions off of liquor brands. You know, because he did that back in the 2008, whatever it was. Yes, right, so you know, but jay-z is jay-z because for that reason but before that there was a lot of just talking about hip-hop.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 26:54

A lot of rappers were using their own beverages, yeah, but they weren't making money. The hennessy was like an industry, but nobody was on the brand side, right like Like actually benefiting from it. So Jay-Z comes out. He actually has a financial interest in this. So let me ask you if, knowing the cycle, are there other brands that you're looking at to bring in, knowing that these fade out over time?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 27:16

Yes, there are what I can tell you today, publicly. Now it's official. Now we just signed with Curtis 50 Cent, so we now represent his champagne brand and his cognac brand. Congratulations, thank you, thank you. So our first shipment arrives in Toronto, probably in about two weeks time.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 27:35

Three weeks time.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 27:36

Yeah, so we're really excited about that, can?

George Stroumboulis - Host: 27:38

you share his brand?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 27:40

Le Chemin de l'Oie is the name of the champagne and Branson Cognac is the cognac brand. So they're going to be in the market very soon and he's coming to visit as well, so I'm excited about that. He'll be here early July, so it's going to be.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 27:53

That's incredible man. So this is the next one and the product. You like it. It tastes.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 27:57

Yeah, they sent me all the samples. We tried it with the whole team. Everybody loved it. Packaging is great and I think the market's ready for what is the next brand in that segment, because everything else has been purchased and bought up by the corporate guys. So I think it's going to be good timing, man. Good luck, continued success. Thank you.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 28:19

Let me ask you how does it actually work, so, when you're representing a big brand like this and we could talk about the smaller wine brands- as well what's the business side of it? In that you order one case, for example, it physically comes here, do you, as Steve, who owns this group, pay for that case, and then you so the dollars and cents are in Canada.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 28:41

For the majority of Canada outside of Alberta, of course, everything has to go through the liquor boards. So the only importer on record are the liquor boards. So in this case, in Ontario, it's the LCBO. So we say to them I want to order 50 cases of the champagne round numbers. The LCBO creates a purchase order, sends to the producer. The producer sends it over from France, it ends up in their warehouse and there's a couple of distribution channels that we have as an option. One of them is what they call consignment, where we are able to go buy the case from the LCBO warehouse and then deliver to the restaurant or the consumer.

29:13

Or you might call and say Steve, I want a case of your champagne, no problem, george, here's your order, I bring it to you, you pay us and away we go. The other option is when you get a listing on the shelves where the same idea where you purchase orders placed, they pay the supplier, then the purchase order arrives. When it arrives, it gets taken out to the LCBO retail stores and then it gets distributed to 10, 20, 30, 40 locations, whatever it is, and then consumers can go in and buy one bottle at a time, which is great, and then you also get the visibility right. So when you're in the champagne category, buying other champagnes oh wow, there's a new champagne in the market, sort of thing, right. So you get the majority of the 15 million consumers that are buying alcohol here in Ontario for us.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 29:51

See, I didn't know. Being from Canada, I didn't know that's how it works. So does that benefit a distributor where the government is essentially fronting?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 30:08

Well is, the barrier to get in the market is very low because you're not putting up your own money, right the challenge?

30:10

is though you're only making a commission. Yes, Can you live off a commission? For the most part, the answer is no, especially in the beginning. So it takes about 10 years to actually build an actual established agency. And then at the 10 year mark and I didn't believe the person told me this many years when I first heard it, but at the 10 year mark, and I didn't believe the person told me this many years when I first started, but at the 10 year mark that's when you actually will see that, okay, I have enough commissions coming in from multiple brands that I'm able to sustain the business and grow now. And that's kind of what happened to us, Right?

George Stroumboulis - Host: 30:35

I got you so. So, essentially, when you said your three divisions in your company, the agency is like a rep agency, correct. And then when the LCBO buys, you're selling, you're getting that commission Correct From that Correct, that's incredible, yeah. So then it's just kind of leads into the next conversation on someone wanting to get in this space. Right, you're going to filter out a lot of people on it's not one, two years. Get rich quick, it's a long game. You started this over two decades ago, correct. Delivering started with water. How did you even get the water? Like, how did you think at the time?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 31:09

So I was at. It was summer of 1999, I guess it was yeah and I was in Glifada, Villa Mercedes, my last night out with my cousins and we decided to order a bottle of Johnny Walker, like we always did back in those days Red. No, I think they drank black label because they're the snobs from Glifada.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 31:27

Yeah, yeah, okay. So they drank black label all the time, because I drank a lot of red in my young days On the islands. It was all red, all red yeah.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 31:37

So they bring the bottle and to our table comes a bottle of Violi in the glass bottle Glass, yeah. And I'm like, hey, who ordered the water? He's like, oh, nobody, he goes. When you order a bottle of whiskey, they bring you a bottle of Violi. So the first thing that hit me was he just said it by name. Like in 1999, nobody knew any water brands. No-transcript. This is actually really good water, right. So that day it's like a light bulb. It went off my cause I was in the bar business back then, right, I wasn't even in the importing business and, um, light bulbs went off. My have the typical entrepreneurial, visceral gut thing going on and I'm like this could work, this could work, this could work. I leaving the next day, old airport in Athens, and if you remember, there was like the um, what's it called? Olympic cafe with a pink neon sign or whatever, where they had like toast, yes, like frappe and whatever, like chickens running around, basically, well, we're on the beach at those times.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 32:35

Right, it was amazing, we got that airport.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 32:36

But uh, point was we were on the beach at those times, right, it was amazing to be at that airport, but the point was we were walking to the airport. I go to the cafe and I sit there and she goes, and she goes into the fridge and she brings me a bottle of Ioli carbonated water. I'm like this stuff comes carbonated. So I took the bottle with me and I brought it home, called up my lawyer, john Sotis, I said John, listen, I got this idea and I'd love for you to give me some consulting on it and let me know if this is the. You know, my next big play Gets back to like a what five days later, like Steve listen, go do the research.

33:04

He goes. It's a long-term game to build a water brand, he goes. But if you're successful, you know it could work in your favor, sort of thing. And here's the stats on how many. I'm going back in 2000 now, how many licensed establishments in Ontario are owned by people of Greek descent? And the number was like 35% of all licensed establishments were people of Greek descent.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 33:24

In the GTA Toronto, in Ontario, in Ontario, in Ontario.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 33:27

And it gets smaller outside of Ontario, but still it was a very high disproportionate to how much population we have.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 33:33

So really quick. Of the licensed businesses right, small businesses 35% were of Greek descent. That's a huge one in three businesses.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 33:43

One in three businesses were people licensed holders. So, like, all the steakhouses were owned by Greeks and for the most part, many of them still are today. Kind of thing. Right, all the family diners and mom and pop restaurants in all the small towns they were all owned by Greeks. All the Greek restaurants in those days were all owned by Greeks. Right, even Italian restaurants were owned by Greeks. All the Greek restaurants in those days were all owned by Greeks. Right, even Italian restaurants were owned by Greeks at the time. Right, they don't tell you that, but that was the idea.

34:02

And then I remember looking back and I was doing some research on all the different distributors that were in the market and let's say there was like 20 distributors, ten of them were owned by Greeks, because I realized how big their market was to be able to sell to all these different places, like you know Empire, kronos, demence, kariba, like the list of going on and on with distributors at the time. And so I was like, oh my God, there's so many distributors out there and there's so many Greek owners and this has to work. That was my theory, but the reality was I lost my shirt for the first three years. Why I couldn't make money because, number one, there's no money in water. It's very small margin, so you need to drive major volume. That's the first thing. The second thing was I went looking back now. I went to my distributors too early on, which cuts your margin because they're not there doing deliveries. I should have went direct to the consumers at the beginning and then built up enough of a bank to get myself established, and I didn't. So I would go to distributors and I would I have to go and sell the water anyways for them to go make the delivery for me, which was kind of an oxymoron at the time, just killing your margin, killing my margin, yeah.

35:06

And then I was just spinning my tires all day long just trying to grow, grow, grow, grow. And, um, that being said, I was dealing at an export manager by the name of Constantine Kornprobst and he was we're still friends to this day and he's like listen, since you're going to the restaurants, I have alpha beer, bring in the alpha beer. Go to them with the case of water and the case of beer, so you can make two deliveries, one delivery with the same with two products. I said okay. So I bought in I don't know like a pallet of beer, whatever. It was 80 cases at a time and we sold the beer pretty quickly. I bought in two pallets and became four pallets and became 10 pallets, and we bought into wine and then it just kept growing, growing, growing.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 35:43

And early on.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 35:44

I remember I'll never forget. Looking at the numbers, I was like, okay, I make a dollar a case on water and I make $4 a case on beer. It's very simple I got to bring in more products, expand my portfolio and get into higher margin goods and sort of stuff. Right, and we did, and that's what got me out of the red after being in the in the red for three years.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 36:02

And you didn't want to give up in the first three years? No, I didn't want to give up. Did you see the bigger play? Or at the time it was like I have my restaurant bar and then I can make money off this, or was it?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 36:12

I'm going to be in district In 2004, I got out of the bar business completely. I just said to my brother we're going to part ways because I just need to focus on this business full time. And that's what was the pivotal changing moment for me. Right Was going into the Kola Nike full time, because 2020, 2021, and 2022, sorry 2001, two and three it was part time, full time, and then in 2003, I made the decision to go full time. So in 2004, I sold off my share of the business at the bar and I was full-time doing this, and then the beers had come in and stuff, and then we just started hustling and I was making more moves, bringing in more revenue, which is great. Got myself out of the red, which is great. The first two or three years I was still living at home, so I had a small little home office and my dad at the time was paying my internet, believe or not, because internet and computers were very expensive back then I couldn't afford the internet bill.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 37:01

This is early 2000s. Yeah, 2001. Any kids at that time?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 37:04

no, no, my daughter was born a few years later, my son in 2008, nicole 2006 and uh, which also changes your game, which I'm sure you saw the same thing, the clarity changes as soon as you have children. Purpose getspose gets defined.

37:18

Feeding more people? Absolutely. What are they going to be like when they're at this stage? That kind of thing, right? So a million things go through your mind. So what ended up happening was I was still working from home. I had a logistics warehouse that I would go to every day, load up and go make deliveries, and then, as we expanded and kept growing, everything just kept growing bigger and bigger for us. And then we just bought it more fine foods, more alcohol and vice versa and then it just kept growing bigger and bigger and bigger. And today we're doing about probably 50,000 cases of beverage alcohol and about 60,000 cases of fine foods and beverages that we're importing into our warehouse. And yeah, that's incredible.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 37:51

Yeah, that's incredible. Physically your warehouse, so you're stocking a lot of the product too so you're stocking a lot of the product too, like everything non-alcoholic is in our warehouse.

38:01

So eoli you still represent. Really quick, on just water in greece, right, like I've probably the last four or five years, I've become a water snob, right, and it's just people they'll laugh at me, right, I'm like first thing I'll look at if, if I'm traveling, purified or mineral, and I'm like if it's purified I I won't even buy, I'd rather Right, and that's a whole other conversation Grease in general, right, the water. So correct me if I'm wrong. The actual government States you cannot sell a bottle of water more than X. I think it's like 50 cents.

38:32

Euro cents in the you know the convenience stores. It's a government, but the water they have is phenomenal. Yep, and eoli is good, but like any other brand you, you get, it's just, it's so good, right? Uh, eoli I'm obsessed with when I go somewhere and I see it's in a glass bottle, it's so good. Yeah, right, any input you have, just on water in general, like when it comes to like why is the only gnome like? Why is it a good?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 38:59

eoli is uh. For starters, it's an artisanal well, and if you look at central greece and lamia, it's just surrounded by massive mountains everywhere and the water takes about 20 years to actually come out of the earth. So right from the snow-capped mountains, the rain etc. It travels through the actual mountains and then it comes out the side as a natural spring. That's there, wow and so, and it goes right into the bottling plant and then gets bottled. So you're talking about a very natural water that has not been adjusted at all, because many waters are adjusted for flavor profiles and too many chemicals in and out of the brands, and so it has the highest levels of magnesium, potassium and calcium, which are three things that the human body is in dire need of all the time.

39:39

So when you consume aioli, if you ever do want to do the test one day, just drink and chug the entire bottle. You can chug the entire bottle. If you do it with other brands, a lot of times you will stop halfway through, not because you're not thirsty, but because what happens is all the different contents in the water. When it gets to your taste buds, it starts triggering things in your mind telling you I don't need more of this. So you stop consuming the water because you can't drink a whole liter, but with aioli because you're you're in need of all those chemicals. You need to have the potassium, magnesium and calcium inside of you trace elements, what they really are, okay, uh, and then your body absorbs all that. So it's telling you, give me more, give me more, give more sort of thing so you can drink the entire bottle on its own.

40:15

Oh, oh, wow, and that's the main difference, right there.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 40:17

You really are the water guy, right.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 40:19

I've said this pitch. I don't know so many times in my life, but I'm actually interested when it comes to water like it's what we consume the most in the day.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 40:26

Make sure it's good what's going in there. Absolutely yes. Uh, let's talk wines a bit right so. I saw, several years ago, you had Gary Vaynerchuk. You were at one of his dinners here in Toronto. I believe he was launching his own wine brand. We launched it with him in Canada.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 40:39

Okay, so the fact that Gary, who's Shout out to Gary Vee, if I'm even allowed to do that right now, I'm hopeful that he watches this. Hey, let's try to link him in here. Let's try to link him in, yeah.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 40:48

But like that's a big deal. Gary's a social genius he's proud of, yeah, and he taps on to you like how does that even happen?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 41:02

like that's got to be a pinnacle of appreciation, though, absolutely absolutely right and uh and um, when he launched the brand I got connected to him through a friend. We had also had the dinner prior and that was kind of nice. And then I went to new york and met him in his new offices and stuff and I got to actually sit with him, which is very rare for a lot of people One-on-one. He doesn't sit in meetings very often either, but you know it was a great moment and listening to him speak was great. It's very motivational.

41:28

He's helped me get motivated through a lot of my difficult times, especially in the early on years, and for me when I brought on his brand, it was kind of a personal thing because I mean, you know what this is a guy that's also helped me stay motivated during dark times. And so bringing his brand into Canada for me was a big deal. And then literally I think within 12 months, he ended up selling the brand for a big chunk of change. That quick, one of the fastest sales ever in history. For we'll call him a celebrity brand owner no way.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 41:57

Yeah, yeah, no way. Yeah, did he learn anything from you about this market, or wine, or anything?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 42:04

He learned how difficult it is because of the monopolies, so getting into the market was difficult, but once you're in the market, you stay the course of time right, which is great. One of the things that I did appreciate about him a lot was very early on, like he was doing live videos from his office in New York. You know, hey guys, I'm in Canada, LCBO, Cola, Nike Group. Here's their website. Visit them, Call them. You want the product, it's there. So this day, we still have people who email us about the brand. Well, for all the brands for Armand, for Bel Air, for, you know, his wine brand People still email us to this day asking us you know, I can't get any more, when can I get the brand? Or whatever.

42:37

Because in those days when the brand arrives and then he made the video podcast and he put it out to everyone saying call this number or, you know, go on their website and email them. Our, our online hits went through the roof like a thousand times or something. It was crazy From his community, of course, and uh, cause. And then you realize how powerful his reach was at the time. Yes, and prior to that, a quick little story was we were at the dinner downtown at a steakhouse and we're having Thalia wine, one of the wines that we own and sell here in the market and now globally under Oroma, and he posted a video about Thalia saying Greek love or whatever I love the wine or whatever. So that was kind of a nice thing for him to do. I didn't ask him to do it or anything While whatever.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 43:17

So that was kind of a nice thing for him to do.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 43:18

I didn't ask him to do it or anything, and while he's plugging his wine like that's a big deal Plugging At the time he didn't have the wine yet. Okay, it was just that we were at a dinner for a California producer that I work with, whom he knew, and he's like okay, I'm going to come, I'm going to have dinner with you'm at. I saw that I remember seeing this one and he goes out and he says hey, toronto, I'm here on this street. You know, I hope to see you, for in one hour the whole street was gridlocked, isn't that crazy?

43:48

There was probably 300 people, 400 people outside of the restaurant At nighttime right At nighttime like 11 pm, and they blocked the streets, and they block the streets and they're all there and taking photos, selfies, you know, asking questions, which is always kind of great, you know, and he was awesome.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 44:05

And not a sport athlete or actor like someone that helps and change people's perspective in life and everything.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 44:10

For business motivation. You know, I'll never forget this one video he did. He was in a car driving, rolls down the window, a girl girls comes the door and says you know, gary, being three words or less, give me some motivation. He looks at it, goes.

44:19

You're gonna die exactly, yes, and and it's like, wow, oh, my god. So she was blown away and it's written, I believe, on his wall yeah, uh, in his office in new york and stuff because of that, I put it on my wall in my office, right, and it's a reminder, right, like it's just, it's so.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 44:34

Time is limited, right, and most people that walk in my office are like dude, that's kind of dark. I'm like it's the opposite of dark, it's the opposite.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 44:40

Yeah, live, because we will be there. You know, absolutely not living your best. Life is dark. It's dark, you know, just sitting around, just existing, existing.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 44:49

Yeah, that's dark, absolutely. I see a common theme. You say hey, from your failures you keep learning and you keep applying it to your next deal and your next deal. But there's brands that come here. Do you now filter and say what's your plan? If I'm taking on your beverage, are you trying to sell this Like? What does that look like? Like, did you know Gary Vee was trying to sell it? Because you're putting sales and marketing Not at that speed, not at that speed.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 45:12

I don't think he even expected to go that fast, to be honest. But then they came in early on before it became something super big and I'm like, let's scoop the brand now while it's still affordable for lack of a better term, gotcha Affordable in that space. And then I think the advantage that they got out of that was they got to utilize Gary as the marketer for all their other products as well. Sure, right, so it wasn't really the buying, just the brand. It's a California wine. It was a great wine, okay, wonderful. Yep, there's a lot of great wines and brands out there, but the reality is you got Gary Vee and for me that's the priceless part. Right, it was having him join that team and then having you know, vaynermedia and all that stuff doing work for developing other brands out there. Right, absolutely, which is what they're great at, sort of thing, and I think that was the value proposition for them.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 45:58

Yeah, and then do you think like moving forward, do you factor that in on what's your plan?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 46:07

Like the 50 cent, what's your plan? Obviously, they're trying to sell it and get a B Of course, right, of course, so you know that and you just try to latch on and help grow that.

46:13

Yeah, my goal is to help them grow the brand, build it, develop it. You know, build a foundation in the market for them. Which is what I learned to do early on with Brett Barish and Scott Cohen was, you know, let's build a foundation for the brand and then just take it to the next level and then, if it sells, it sells, which is obviously the idea and then to have legs for sustainability, right. So with 50 cents brands, it can be the same thing. You know, grassroots all over again, and then just build the brand for them. And then I want to say go along for the ride, for lack of a better term, it's a great ride, great brand, it's a great brand. Yeah, I learned a lot from them too. Right, that's the other thing. You got to remember that everything that I'm applying to all the other brands that I'm working with, the do's and don'ts of Armando Vignac champagne, and I'm like what the hell is this? And he's like, well, this is what you can do and this is what you can't do with our brand. I've never seen one of those in my entire life. So he goes, so study this before you move on, sort of thing. I was like, okay, always ask me how'd you ever even manage to get the brand, sort of thing. So before I even got to the interview, questions of you know, uh, what am I gonna do with your champagne when I get the champagne?

47:24

I was on the uh, I guess their mailing list, getting newsletters from them, and the newsletters were coming out saying you know, I'm minding the brand champagne bubble now in like I don't know China or whatever it was, or Philippines, or Greece or Cyprus or whatever the case may be, and stuff. And I would email them saying, hey, I have an agency in Canada, I'd love to work with your brand whatever. No response, no response, no response, okay. And then finally I mean you know what Screw this? I'm sick and tired of emails anyways. So I just picked up the phone because Scott Cohen's name was the bottom of the email and I said, hey, can I please speak to Scott Cohen? And they're like you are, my name is Steve. I have an agency in Canada Call a Nike group. They're like call a Nike what I'm going to call a Nike group. They're like okay, does he have an appointment with you? I said no, but I want to speak to him.

48:15

He eventually came on the phone, which was great. I've been emailing you. I go. You don't reply to my emails. He goes. You know, please forgive me, he goes. We get like a hundred emails a week of people asking us for the brand, so he goes. It's impossible to go through all the emails and I'm like you know what I get it, and then it was only through phone calls that we kind of just to everybody who's listening if you're trying to start out with something is don't give up, keep trying, and if what you're doing is not working, try something else. That, for me, is a big thing.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 48:46

That's great advice.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 48:47

Yes, Change your course of action If it's not working. Don't keep banging your head over and over again. Change the course of action, try something different. Yeah, so in my case it was the phone. Maybe try something different. So in my case it was the phone.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 48:58

Maybe I'm just better on the phone than I am in writing emails to people, so that helped me a lot Plus your persistence right, like you didn't have a resume of champagne before this right and then when you actually won it did you feel kind of like imposter syndrome, like shit can.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 49:14

I even do this. Did you ever have that doubt, was it? What's the guy from Virgin Branson, branson, when he says if an opportunity comes along, take the opportunity first and then figure out how to do it later? Same idea, right? Like, if the opportunity comes, just take it and you're going to make it work, no matter what. Like don't sleep, work 18 hours a day.

49:30

Who cares what's going to really happen to me, right, like you know, and in the early years, I was working, working, working and never working out, which is another problem, right. So A you end up putting on weight, you become sluggish you know what I mean. But your, your, your, your excuses while I'm working. You know 12, 18 hour days. So I got to build a company, right, and then a few years back, I'm like no, my health has to come first. So then that had to shift towards. You made a couple of bucks. What good is it if your health is deteriorating and you're pretty much half dead, sort of thing, right?

50:07

So my physical aspect of life has changed in the last few years and I've learned to eat better, work out every morning whenever you can, sort of thing and stuff, and that has helped me focus more on business as well. So it's amazing how, you know, I went to the gym this morning at 6. And I was so gung-ho to come see you this morning. You know what I mean, because I felt great yes, you know, I was getting dressed, feeling great that I'm going to see George this morning. You know what I mean. And that whole morning routine is amazing, what it does changes everything Absolutely.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 50:36

And it's hard because when you are busy and you're eating like shit and you're traveling and you're doing all this, you don't have a clear mind, Correct. And it's hard and it's an easy excuse to. Well, I got kids. I got this.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 50:47

Come on, man, and there are times when you can't avoid it, like you're traveling. You're going to be along the 401 because, I don't know, I live on the 401 sometimes. I used to go and build the brands out in Montreal, like back and forth. Montreal was like nothing for us. Sure, one day in, one day out, sort of thing, right. But where are you going to stop? You're going to stop at a Tim Hortons, wendy's or whatever. So there are times where you're not going to eat.

51:05

Well, I get it, you know what I'm saying, and. But at the same time, you still have to focus on the overall aspect of living a healthy life. And it's not, it's all that stuff, it's the circle you live in. It's very important, right? Is you know, do you have, like people that are bringing you up in your circle, or people that bring you down in your circle, sort of thing, right? Or you don't think they're bringing you down, but the reality is maybe, through conversation, that sort of, gives a negative aspect to you each day. You know, I don't. I may be smoking with you 25 times in my life, but'm pumped Same. I'm ready to go right now.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 51:36

Same right and you got to feel it. Misery loves company Absolutely and I find, like, even the littlest thing of like, everyone just wants to like, keep it and, like you said, it's like that drop in the bucket. It just adds up and you find yourself just in a negative space. There's too much negativity out there already, absolutely. I want to talk about wine. Our last startup, when that sold, one of the partners bought me a case of 48 bottles of wine, asshole. You know I'm a vodka guy.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 52:09

Anyways.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 52:10

I'm not a wine guy, so it's like the worst gift ever but I get it.

52:15

We're living in New York city at the time with my now wife, then girlfriend, fiance, and I just put them in my alcohol case and every time she would cook I'm like just go grab a bottle and she would cook with red wine. If I moved to California, we ship everything over. Her boss is visiting us now from New York. She's cooking for him. He goes over. He's like Dina, are you cooking with this bottle? And it was either Caymus or Insignia. It was one of those. And she's like, yeah, and I'm like we're not wine people, I still have these. He's like, yeah, and I'm like we're not wine people, I still have these. He's like what I open up the case, he's going through it. It's like this is a $300 bottle, this is a hundred.

52:50

I knew nothing about it ever since then. I'm like, okay, I and I would like to know, but today I always default to what's your house wine if you're in Greece. Right, I'm simple yeah, high level, like what's a good way? I guess how do we frame this question? What is your personal favorite wine type of wine?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 53:08

I get asked this a lot. I try and look for wines a lot of times from smaller producers, if I can, boutique producers or just family-run estates sort of thing. I tend to see that they have a lot of nice wines. The challenge with those wines, though, is that, because they have small production, the cost of buying one of those wines typically might be like 50% or 100% more than the average bottle of wine. But it's okay, because you're getting a good bottle of wine. You're supporting the smaller producers that are out there.

53:31

Sure, I mean, I do believe that life is short, drink bad wine. So, in that case, try and drink better wine. It doesn't mean you're going to buy the $100 bottles of Signet or anything like that, but I mean I find that when I'm having, if we're out for dinner, for example, and we order a nice bottle of wine, a decent bottle of wine, the dinner goes better. Okay, the food and wine pairing is much better. You know, the gastronomic experience you have is much better, right? So a good bottle of wine can change your entire outlook of how your dinner ended up happening that day. Okay, and that, for me, is a big thing, and I know, I noticed that when I have you know not so good wines or wines that didn't pair with my food, then the meal is not what it should have been, whereas if I had a little bit of a better wine, I noticed the meals always go off a lot better.

54:13

The food tastes better, everything's just better really yeah, but your palate knows right, yes, my palate knows, but I mean the reality is, if a wine pairs, like if a white wine, for example, pairs really well with seafood, your palate knows as well right right, right, if you had red wine with seafood like this doesn't go really well, doesn't go okay.

54:30

So it doesn't matter what I know, you know what you know. You know what works, well, what doesn't. You don't want something sour or not sour, right, uh, you also you know what you like. People always say to me you know what should I drink? And I'm like it doesn't matter what I think you should drink, just find, find something that you like and if that's what you like, then drink that right. And then try and go down exploring that path. If you like wine from Santorini, for example, then drink a wine from Santorini and try and explore other wines from Santorini until you find that niche of what you really enjoy, sort of thing, right? If you like Barolos, okay, have a Barolo brand if you will, and just see what it is that you like and the different price points that you're comfortable with and then try those wines, sort of thing, right. And that's kind of my advice is just follow the path of what you like and then you go down your own exploratory path for wines.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 55:15

Okay, that's great advice. You have a bias towards Greek wines, right?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 55:20

I do, I do yeah.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 55:21

Okay, so, but you're also representing from Spain, from Italy, other countries, new Zealand. I didn't know. You own Thalia Wines. Thalia Wines, that's a great. It's typically white wine, white red, rosé and rosé. Okay, how do you even get into owning your own wine brand, like, how does that happen?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 55:48

Okay, I was. 2007 is when I got the idea. I think it was 2008, 2008 or something, whatever it was in a restaurant in Montreal with at the time it was Girobacillou was there, skouras was there, I believe Vivliahora and we all went out to a restaurant. It was a David McMillan restaurant in Montreal. After the Greek Wine Roadshow, we all went there for dinner and David was a very famous chef in Montreal and a great personality.

56:11

He was sitting there talking to us and he goes in kind of his very larger than life way. He's like you know, I don't understand you Greeks. And now at this point I was like what? So you know, your back goes up. You're like ready to go? What's the guy saying to us right now? And he goes. You're like ready to go? What's getting into us right now? And he goes. You know what happened to your category? He goes. You guys went from like plunk wine, retina, all this cheap stuff, nothing really good he goes. And now you went all the way to like you know, you know like kiryani, like all these amazing producers making all these amazing wines, he goes. And you kind of left the middle ground empty, huh, and he's like what the fuck? He goes.

56:48

Like when Portugal took off, he goes. I had, like you know, an army of $10 wines that I could bring into my restaurant, sell by the glass and get people into Portuguese wine. Same with Spain, same with many Chile, etc. Etc. Right, that's how they developed the country, was? You guys skip that whole thing and went right to having premium wines. Clearly, the entrepreneurial light bulb went off, went home that night. I'm like I have to create a brand that we're proud of. 750 ml, $10 retail is my goal. I'm going to work backwards, find a producer in Greece that can do this for me and then away we go. Yeah, so I start. So that was the genesis from the chef, absolutely Wow. When David came on and told us that at the end of the night, for me I was like I have to create a brand. That's going to be the Greek $10 brand that we're all proud of.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 57:28

So the Thalia brand is your brainchild, Correct? By the way, Thalia is just such a great flowing name.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 57:35

Well so when we're deciding on the name. Oddly enough, I was in the US Fort Lauderdale and I was going to visit some of the liquor stores at the time and I came across two wine brands that I really liked, aesthetically looking, and I started Googling all the wine brands that I loved, took pictures of them all, and they were one of the brands called Kate and Casey, I believe, at the time, and I ended up Googling and I found that the girl who was the artist for both these two brands that I loved was a girl from California, and I emailed her up and said, hey, I'm trying to create this brand of wine. Yada, yada, yada. I came across two labels Apparently they're yours. She goes, yeah, she goes. And Kay and Casey just won the best wine brand, the best wine label in California, or something. I'm like congratulations, that's great. And she goes okay, she goes. I would love to work on your project. You know, what do you need from me? She goes. Do you want to see my portfolio? I said, no, I go. I've already seen the two brands that I like. She goes, okay, she goes. What else do you want to know? I said have you ever had Greek wine before? She goes no, I go, have you ever designed a label for Greek wine? She goes no, I go, have a Greek label or Greek wine, et cetera. So she ended up designing the first round of Thalia for us, which we ran that for about 10 years, the first branding, and we had different names. And then I kind of did a small study group and when I showed everybody the labels like 50, 60% all chose the name Thalia and all chose the design that she had at the time, which was interesting. So I said, okay, my visceral gut wanted me to go this way.

59:07

Everybody has now said that's the brand, the way the brand should go, because I wanted a name that was simple, easy to pronounce, it didn't have to have this long drawn out, extracurricular, you know Greek name that no one can say. And I needed to have a French varietal paired with a Greek varietal, paired with the Greek varietal, because in those days nobody really knew Aeritico, assyrtico, moscovillero, malagousia, etc. So I said, okay, I'm going to do a blend with Syrah, for example, and at the time we're bottling Crete, so it was Syrah and Cotsyphalli, as an example, sauvignon Blanc and Dillana were the Cretan varietals and so we ended up launching Thalia and it did well. It's now the number one selling Greek wine in the LCBO for Greek generalist wines, which is exciting. That's huge, yeah. And then again, during the pandemic, having time on our hands, we ended up doing a rebrand of Thalia and now we have the new bottles, you see with the circles that are on the circles, yeah, beautiful.

59:59

And ever since the rebrand went live, we jumped like 30 percent in sales, just off the aesthetic of the brand itself, which is really exciting for us, and so that became. At the time when we first launched I'm going back over 10 years ago we were in $9.95. Today we're $12.95. Okay, but still it's that feel good $13 wine that you can still be proud of, tastes great, drinks great, and it's screw cap glass bottles. And so it's the wine if you look at poor by the glass or have as a house wine, if you will, whatever the case may be, or take to someone's home and still be proud of anything better wines, of course, are worried, but I'm saying so like at that $13 price point, even if, whatever it is, can you give that as a gift, or if someone comes over, you're pouring that and it's.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:00:43

It's a respectful wine absolutely it is okay. So, and one of the things I noticed, in the Greek category.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:00:46

So when it comes over, you're pouring that and it's a respectful wine, absolutely. It is Okay, absolutely. And one of the things I noticed in the Greek category is the Greeks take so much pride and good for them and produce these amazing brands and amazing wines at the top level, right. And then I don't know what it is in their mind they have the whole Hema bulk theory for the cheap stuff and they just make it look cheap and make it taste cheap, right. And I'm like every other country in the world because you got to look at everybody else, see what they're doing and understand where the difference is and the cavities. Every other country in the world, france, etc.

01:01:13

Yeah, they all make premium wines that are nice. But I mean their entry-level wines are fantastic, like spain has wines that are, like you know, two, three euros a bottle, that are phenomenal products, really taste really well, great packaging, etc. And I'm like you know what that's the difference. Their buy-in at the low level is always going to make you feel good about buying that wine, say, for 10 US somewhere. You know ABC liquor in the in Florida or whatever, right, so they're going to make you feel good about buying that wine, whereas a lot of the Greek wines in the lower price points were very I want to say kitsch looking, if you will, and not something very attractive. So you're not gonna. You better be a hardcore Greek to buy one of these brings no house, right, because it's a logic, maybe or whatever.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:01:49

Yeah, yeah.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:01:50

And so the whole role with Thalia was how do we modernize that right? So if you go back to 2008 when we launched Thalia so now it's been quite a few years like we were the first ones to actually come up with a red white and a rose Out of the gate. Out of the gate, three colors, you know, three different blends and literally, if you look at the greek category, today, everybody now makes a red white rose wine as an entry-level price point. Okay, you know. And we started launching the white which took off the fast forest in this little very like teal color. Yes, and today, if you go to the lc, it's been copied probably 20 different times that people just took the same CMYK, whatever it's called, and they just applied it to all their brands Ontario wines, italian wines everybody's now using that same teal color on their white wine, sort of thing Imitation is flattery, right, it is yeah, or whatever that saying is.

01:02:42

Totally, and so when we did the relaunch and the rebranding, for us we wanted to stick true to the idea of what Thalia really is and being one of the nine muses of ancient Greek history, and so we wanted to take the inspirational side of that and just rebrand it. We did, and it's growing and now we're in like three or four different countries. It's now officially under the portfolio of Automa brands Amazing, which is exciting, and yeah, and we're going to grow that slowly but surely. Amazing and all the other amazing products we have in our portfolio, yeah, which I'm really excited about.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:03:11

We could talk for hours.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:03:12

There's two more things I want to cover before.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:03:14

I know you got to run as well Kids and running your own business. And then I just want to talk about the city of Toronto and the player on the map that it's become like just a global city. But talk to me just kids in general you have a son and a daughter, teenagers, a couple of things Like how is it running a business? Like you are the guy like since we've been together now, uh, your phone's been ringing off the hook.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:03:37

Like this is life right.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:03:38

Uh, how is it just managing kids, making sure you're present, educating them, leading them and running a business, and still growing that, and then do you even bring them into the business as well?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:03:50

So now that the teenagers this becomes a reality, the whole. You know what's a succession plan and what do you do with the kids and whatnot, right? So on the bad days I'm like you do whatever you want, just finish your school and don't get into my business, sort of thing, right? And then on the good days, it's like you know, I can't wait for you guys to take over the business, sort of thing, right?

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:04:06

That's if you worked out that morning or not. Where's your mindset?

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:04:10

And so um, uh. So my son, Peter, is going to be a 16 this summer and Nicole's going to be turning 18. So she's going to university. So you know very interesting times for both of them.

01:04:20

But one of One of the things that I did very early on for them and I think it's to their advantage and to mine as well is I would from time to time bring them to work with me In our business. In the consumption world. We're not open as a business 24 hours a day, but people are always consuming product all the time. So you might run out of something on a Saturday and say, hey, steve, I just ran out of water, wine, whatever. I need product for the weekend, I'm out, sort of thing. So from time to time you head back to the warehouse, you load up your car, you go drop off a special delivery to some client that needs their product for the weekend. So I would take my kids with me and I would actually say, okay, we're going on deliveries today. What do you mean deliveries? We're going to go, we're going to lift up a case, we're going to put in the car, make an invoice, turn the computer on here's the customer's name, you know and do the whole thing step by step. Amazing, and I know just because they already understand computers to begin with, that's one.

01:05:09

So for them it was very easy to understand. You know how does the mouse work? What am I doing? Where do I click? Click here, click there. Actually, better than we do for that, absolutely In many ways. And so, okay, let's go load thing. What do you mean?

01:05:23

Get paid? They got to pay you. How much? So you know, when they were younger there was a lot of cash around. So you know the bills, I don't know, $300, for example, and they pay you $300. They would look and see $300 of cash and it's like a lot of money, no-transcript, right, the end of the year, sort of thing, right, and so very early on I tried to explain that and kind of instill what it means to make money, right and so. And as they get older which is quite amazing they start you more important questions. And it's also because they're getting educated now in school and they're like, okay, how much of that is profit or how much of that is expense, right, and then you see the questions as they evolve.

01:06:13

So, going back to your question about being involved with the kids, I've always kind of had to get them involved in what I'm doing because I want them to know when I say, hey, I can't come home tonight till 9, 10 PM before you go to bed, this is what I'm doing, or these are the people that I'm with, sort of thing. Right, here's my team, cause, you know, I started by myself and today we have like 14 people working for the company. 11 of us are in the office alone, right, and so from time to time it comes to the office they'll meet the whole team, sort of thing, and hang out and get to know who they. Tonight we have an event we're working at, you know, down at this St Lawrence market or whatever case may be, and stuff. So they understand the place, the people, what's going on around them, the family that helps dad make money and support Absolutely.

01:06:54

Right, and it's like another family you have there, right? Cause you're also responsible for everyone in the office too, so you've got to make sure that their mental health is great. They're financially making money right, which is important for all of them, Because if your staff isn't making money, guess what they're going to get a job somewhere else, right? If they're not, and if they are making money, they're not happy, guess what? They're going to job somewhere else, right? So you need to understand that too, right? So, and I try and instill a lot of what the ethos that we grew up with into our children as well, so that they understand no matter what you do in life, you you got to be the best you can. Don't just go half after things, right. Make sure you're doing everything properly if you will, and always keep your head up. Stay honest. There's no easy money, because if it's easy come, easy go.

01:07:32

Absolutely, and I learned that in the bar business very early on. We're making so much money. My brother and I in the bar business and we literally had legit shoe boxes of cash. I looked back and I said, look, what happened to all the cash? But the cash coming in, cash going out, sort of thing right and it was no control. Made a lot of money, spent a lot of money, had a great time no doubt right In those days and stuff but the reality was I teach them control of money is one of the most important things. If you can control your money, then eventually it'll pay you back dividends over years Absolutely.

01:08:00

No my God.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:08:11

Well, and they're going to comment on you know you're spending too much you're doing this because they've had harder times, Absolutely Right.

01:08:14

So that's amazing that you're getting them involved. Last chat, and again, there's so much talk to me about Toronto. Right, I was born here, grew up in Niagara, moved when I was 19. So even though I'm from here, technically I don't know the city. We're doing a lot of business here. Every time I come up, you know there's, I think, 200 plus active skyscraper cranes top five in the world. It's booming. Cultures are here, the best brands, everything's here. You're living in the heart of the city operating your business here.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:08:50

Just talk to me why should people around the world be excited about Toronto and want to visit it? For one thing, toronto is always evolving, right? I mean, the first major city in Canada was Montreal and then eventually, with the referendum and stuff, a lot of the exodus occurred and then people moved to Toronto and then Toronto now is just like a rocket ship taken off. So you still have a little bit of the old of Toronto and a lot of these great small little pockets in the city, and then you also have the new Toronto, the modern Toronto, the development of Toronto and all the new cranes and stuff and the towers that are going up. Investment major companies are all invested here, et cetera, et cetera. Real estate firms are all invested here. All the major banks are here, right, so the wealth is here, if you will, there's a lot of opportunity in the city. Are there the downside of Toronto? Of course there are right. Crime is slightly spiking up a little bit, but then again, within major cities it's common, but on the overall global scale it's still a very safe place to be, right. Any way you slice it, it's foreign to us to hear about crime. But then again you're in a city with 5 million people. We surpassed Chicago's population. Yes, with 5 million people, we surpassed Chicago's population. In 10 years we're going to be another 3 million people living in the city probably is my guess. So Ontario will be at 20 million people and it'll probably manage almost 50% of all the commerce in Canada. And the reality is we just go about our own business. And it's funny because we talked about this earlier today.

01:10:00

And every time I travel throughout all of Canada and the US and everywhere I go, but especially in Canada, every time I go there, they say, oh, where are you from? Oh, you're not from here. I'm like oh, why do you say that? Oh, I can just tell by your mannerisms or the way you dress, or whatever. You're from Toronto. I'm like, yeah, I'm from Toronto and they have something always bad to say about Toronto nonstop.

01:10:18

And you guys never think about us. And this Vancouver was a big one with this one. Last time I was in Vancouver, like, oh, you guys never think about us. And I said we don't really ever think about Vancouver. I said, to be honest, we don't spend that much time focusing on Vancouver. I go because it's not part of our daily agenda or grind. I go. You guys are the ones who are constantly bashing us and we don't even think about you guys in any way. Shape have so much of our own stuff going on in the city that we're just staying focused on all that. I mean Noble's coming to town too. There's a lot of major hotels and restaurants being built in the city Right. There's a lot of great operators in the city.

01:11:01

We've talked about many of them, and you know, and Toronto's becoming there'll be open sort of thing, right. So it's everyone's kind of come into the city because we're realizing and I don't want to say we're the New York of Canada, because I hate comparing New York to Toronto New York is on a whole different level, different vibes different, everything different, everything Right.

01:11:16

They're on a different hemisphere for that matter, yep, but in our world, in the fiefdom that we live in here in Canada, toronto is Toronto still. Any way you slice it, it's a great city. There's a lot going on, there's a lot of opportunity here for those who want it, and what I realize is, if you want it, you can have it here. If you don't want it, those people are going to be long gone in a matter of like five years from now.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:11:38

Yeah, yeah.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:11:39

There's no more passive income anymore in the city. Here you got to go all in and you want to have, you know, grow and be successful and all that stuff, and the opportunities will always be there.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:11:47

Absolutely. It's exciting coming here, Like I love coming here, and every corner you're like man. I don't remember this. There's new developments. There's everything.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:11:55

Nothing's the same anymore.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:11:56

Nothing's the same, and when I come and visit my family here, you know if I come with my kids, I'll leave them at my mom's and I could fly to New York. Do meetings come back in 45 minutes? Like it's just, it's a great place. I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for sitting down with me. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. Kolonaki Group, we're going to share all your links, thank you. Social media Instagram, what's the best way? So you have an online portal as well.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:12:27

I just want to make sure we have colinikefinewinescom colinikefinefoodscom, so you can look up all the brands we work with there. There's an online portal that we do all of our online sales from Canada, us, europe. We're shipping to Australia now as well, which is really exciting. Our online business is here to date it's like double last year, sort of thing, so that's growing, which we're really excited about.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:12:41

Can I buy? If I live in California, can I buy Thalia wine and that can ship across border.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:12:46

Alcohol is a little tricky because they get across the border, so we have to get through some customs issues. But otherwise yes.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:12:51

You're working, okay, we're working on that, that's for sure.

01:12:53

All right, man Fine foods are everywhere and that's great and I appreciate the time oh fine foods, really quick, just so, group the food baskets right and it is just, it's been a hit culturally. It's not like we're just buying Greek food and we're sending it to Greek clients. It's like, you know, italians, American, like just everyone, and like we, we get, like, this deluxe basket and it has everything from the wine, the oils, the different snacks and the foods, and it's been a huge hit. And I even have clients like all right, you know where can we get this from? Can we do that? So I love that side of the business, because you're also introducing people to food that they don't even know exists. Correct, right. And then it's like oh, you know what I love? Pasteli, yeah, like that was in there. So I love them. Man, I'm a big fan.

Steve Kriaris - Guest: 01:13:42

Yeah, I mean, and I thank you as well for the support and stuff and what I cause we do get feedback, just so you know, and like, a lot of people are like, oh my God, I had no idea you guys had this honey or this olive or whatever the case may be, and then a lot of times we'll actually see them ordering online and then getting shipments back to their homes, which is which is also, I guess, ultimately the ultimate to try their products.

01:14:02

So once you try their products and you expose them to stuff, it's a whole different world out there and it's funny we're just talking. When I mentioned seeing you today, they were already talking about what new products we have coming in the market in the next three or four months to have them included in this year's round of baskets. So you have all new stuff or whatever.

George Stroumboulis - Host: 01:14:26

I love it. I'm Thanks for listening to this episode of invigorate your business with George Stroumboulis. Please hit the subscribe and like buttons and follow me on all the main podcast streaming channels. Also, please share your comments when you can. I appreciate your help in expanding this network to a worldwide audience. Until next time, stay invigorated.

CONTENTS OF THIS VIDEO

00:00:00

HOW TO BECOME AN EXPERT IN THE SALE OF WINE

Becoming an expert in the sale of wine involves developing a combination of knowledge, skills, and experience in various aspects of the wine industry. Here are some steps to help you embark on the journey to becoming a wine sales expert:

  1. Educate Yourself: Start by learning about different types of wines, wine-producing regions, grape varieties, winemaking processes, and wine tasting techniques. Consider enrolling in wine education courses, such as those offered by organizations like the Court of Master Sommeliers, the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET), or local wine schools.

  2. Gain Experience: Seek opportunities to gain hands-on experience in the wine industry. This could involve working at wine shops, wineries, wine bars, or restaurants with extensive wine programs. Exposure to different aspects of the wine business will deepen your understanding and appreciation of wine.

  3. Build Your Palate: Develop your tasting skills by regularly sampling a wide variety of wines. Pay attention to the appearance, aroma, flavor, and mouthfeel of different wines, and learn to identify key characteristics and quality indicators. Keep a tasting journal to track your observations and experiences.

  4. Stay Informed: Stay up-to-date with industry trends, new wine releases, and emerging wine regions. Follow reputable wine publications, websites, blogs, and social media accounts to stay informed about the latest developments in the world of wine.

  5. Network: Build relationships with wine industry professionals, including winemakers, distributors, retailers, sommeliers, and fellow wine enthusiasts. Attend industry events, tastings, and conferences to network with peers and learn from experienced professionals.

  6. Obtain Certifications: Consider pursuing formal certifications in wine sales and service to enhance your credentials and credibility. Certifications such as WSET, Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW), Certified Wine Educator (CWE), or Certified Sommelier can provide valuable knowledge and recognition in the industry.

  7. Develop Sales Skills: Hone your sales and communication skills to effectively engage customers and drive wine sales. Learn about sales techniques, customer service best practices, and the art of storytelling to create memorable wine experiences for your clients.

  8. Specialize: Consider specializing in specific wine regions, grape varieties, or wine styles to carve out a niche for yourself in the market. Develop expertise in your chosen area and become a go-to resource for customers seeking recommendations and advice.

  9. Continuously Improve: Commit to continuous learning and professional development to stay at the forefront of the wine industry. Attend workshops, seminars, and educational events to expand your knowledge and skills, and seek feedback from mentors and peers to identify areas for improvement.

  10. Passion and Dedication: Above all, cultivate a genuine passion for wine and a dedication to excellence in your craft. Approach your work with enthusiasm, curiosity, and a commitment to providing exceptional service to your customers. Your passion for wine will be contagious and will inspire trust and confidence in your expertise as a wine sales professional.

ADVICE ON STARTING YOUR OWN ECONOMICAL WINE BRAND

Starting your own economical wine brand can be an exciting venture, but it requires careful planning, research, and execution. Here are some pieces of advice to consider when embarking on this journey:

  1. Market Research: Conduct thorough market research to identify consumer preferences, market trends, and gaps in the market that your brand can fill. Understand your target audience and their preferences in terms of wine styles, pricing, packaging, and branding.

  2. Define Your Brand: Clearly define your brand identity, including your brand values, positioning, and unique selling proposition (USP). Determine what sets your wine brand apart from competitors and how you will communicate this to consumers through branding and marketing.

  3. Quality Control: Prioritize quality in all aspects of your wine production process, from grape sourcing to winemaking techniques and packaging. While aiming for an economical price point, ensure that your wines meet quality standards and deliver a satisfying drinking experience to consumers.

  4. Cost Management: Implement cost-effective production practices and supply chain management strategies to keep production costs low without compromising quality. Explore options for bulk wine sourcing, efficient production methods, and affordable packaging solutions to optimize your cost structure.

  5. Branding and Packaging: Invest in eye-catching branding and packaging that reflects your brand identity and appeals to your target market. Consider creative label designs, bottle shapes, and packaging materials that stand out on the shelf and convey the value proposition of your brand.

  6. Distribution Strategy: Develop a strategic distribution plan to reach your target audience effectively. Explore different distribution channels, including retail stores, online sales platforms, wine clubs, restaurants, and events, to maximize your brand's visibility and accessibility.

  7. Marketing and Promotion: Develop a comprehensive marketing and promotion plan to raise awareness and generate excitement around your wine brand. Leverage digital marketing channels, social media platforms, influencer partnerships, and tasting events to connect with consumers and drive sales.

  8. Price Positioning: Determine the optimal price positioning for your wines based on your production costs, target market, competition, and perceived value. Find the right balance between affordability and quality to attract price-conscious consumers without devaluing your brand.

  9. Compliance and Regulations: Familiarize yourself with wine industry regulations, licensing requirements, labeling regulations, and tax obligations in your target markets. Ensure that your wine brand complies with all legal and regulatory requirements to avoid potential setbacks or penalties.

  10. Continuous Improvement: Stay agile and adaptable in response to feedback from consumers, market changes, and industry trends. Continuously evaluate and refine your products, branding, and marketing strategies to stay competitive and grow your brand over time.

Starting your own economical wine brand requires dedication, perseverance, and a willingness to learn from both successes and challenges along the way. With careful planning and execution, you can create a successful wine brand that delivers value to consumers and builds a loyal following in the market.

HOW TO BECOME THE DISTRIBUTOR FOR MAJOR ALCOHOL AND CHAMPAGNE BRANDS

Becoming a distributor for major alcohol and champagne brands can be a lucrative opportunity, but it requires careful planning, industry knowledge, and relationship-building skills. Here are steps to guide you through the process:

  1. Research the Market: Start by conducting thorough research on the alcohol and champagne market. Identify major brands in the industry, their market share, distribution networks, and target demographics. Understand consumer preferences, trends, and demand drivers in your target market.

  2. Understand Distribution Channels: Familiarize yourself with the different distribution channels in the alcohol industry, including wholesale distribution, retail distribution, on-premise (bars, restaurants, hotels), off-premise (liquor stores, supermarkets), and online sales platforms. Determine which distribution channels align with your business model and market objectives.

  3. Develop a Business Plan: Create a comprehensive business plan outlining your goals, target market, distribution strategy, sales forecast, operational plan, marketing strategy, and financial projections. Your business plan should demonstrate your understanding of the market opportunity and your ability to execute a successful distribution business.

  4. Build Industry Relationships: Establish relationships with key players in the alcohol industry, including suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and industry associations. Attend industry events, trade shows, and networking functions to connect with potential partners and learn from industry insiders.

  5. Secure Licenses and Permits: Obtain the necessary licenses and permits to operate as an alcohol distributor in your jurisdiction. Requirements may vary depending on your location and the type of alcohol products you plan to distribute. Ensure compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements to avoid potential fines or penalties.

  6. Identify Potential Suppliers: Research major alcohol and champagne brands that you wish to distribute and identify potential suppliers or manufacturers. Reach out to these companies to express your interest in becoming a distributor and inquire about their distribution requirements, terms, and conditions.

  7. Negotiate Distribution Agreements: Initiate discussions with potential suppliers to negotiate distribution agreements. Be prepared to demonstrate your capabilities, market knowledge, and distribution network to convince suppliers of your value as a distributor. Negotiate favorable terms, including pricing, payment terms, exclusivity arrangements, and marketing support.

  8. Develop a Sales and Marketing Strategy: Develop a sales and marketing strategy to promote the brands you distribute and drive sales growth. Utilize a mix of marketing tactics, including advertising, promotions, social media marketing, influencer partnerships, and tasting events, to raise awareness and generate demand for your products.

  9. Build a Distribution Network: Build a distribution network by establishing relationships with retailers, bars, restaurants, and other potential customers. Develop a sales team or work with sales representatives to effectively reach and serve your target market. Provide training and support to your distribution partners to ensure they represent the brands you distribute effectively.

  10. Provide Excellent Customer Service: Focus on providing excellent customer service to both your suppliers and customers. Build trust and credibility by delivering on your promises, addressing customer inquiries and concerns promptly, and maintaining high standards of professionalism in all your interactions.

Becoming a distributor for major alcohol and champagne brands requires persistence, dedication, and a proactive approach to building relationships and driving sales. By following these steps and staying focused on your goals, you can position yourself as a trusted distributor and grow a successful distribution business in the alcohol industry.

MORE ABOUT THE EPISODE

  • From Humble Beginnings to Global Business Tycoon: Steve Kriaris Luxurious World of Wines and Spirits

  • Crafting Luxury in a Bottle with Steve Kriaris

  • The Wine Visionary's Guide to Global Domination

  • Raising a Glass to Innovation and Success with Steve Kriaris

  • Steve Kriaris on Mastering the Wine and Spirits Industry

Embark on an enlightening journey with me, George Stroumboulis, as I sit across from the trailblazer Steve Kriaris of Kolonaki Group. Steve spills the secrets behind his ascent from humble beginnings to becoming an industry titan, overseeing a portfolio of over 300 luxurious wines, spirits, and gourmet offerings. Together, we dissect the strategic maneuvers that catapulted his brand to the forefront of the market, including the fortuitous launch of an online presence just as the world pivoted to digital amidst the pandemic, leading to a staggering surge in brand visibility and sales.

As the conversation flows, we meander through the vineyards of success, from the gritty days of door-to-door hustle to the grandeur of international partnerships. Steve elucidates the art of curating a magnificent lineup of producers, mastering the balance of supply and demand, and the instinctive pulse one must have to thrive in the volatile tides of the global business seascape. Delight in the stories of how Toronto's champagne scene sparkled under Steve's influence, and how strategic thinking and grassroots marketing catapulted local brands to the top, even amidst the unforeseen whirlwind brought by the pandemic.

Concluding this session, we reflect on the profound bonds formed between customer and brand, the Greek touch in Ontario's culinary sphere, and the generational legacy of family within the business realm. We delve into the wisdom imparted by Gary Vee on building brands, the significance of maintaining entrepreneurial health, and the serendipitous joy of wine discovery. Join us for this captivating episode, and make sure to engage with our community by subscribing and following for more stimulating conversations that promise to enrich your entrepreneurial spirit.

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