Meet Andi Whiskey: Food & Beverage Branding Agency Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Andi Whiskey and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Andi, have you ever found yourself in a spot where you had to decide whether to give up or keep going? How did you make the choice?
Never give up. That’s just it. If you must end a current path that you’re on, make note of your successes and failures on the project, and change your trajectory. I’ve started and stopped a lot of businesses. I didn’t give up on any. I had to pull out of opening a salon/coffeeshop concept after putting over $40k into it, and finding out I had been screwed over in part of my investments into it. But I took the lessons learned, wrote them all down, and am preparing to redo part of that concept in the future in a way that will work better this time. I didn’t give up. I just changed paths because I didn’t like the path I was on. I’ve closed big businesses that were successful, profitable, and growing, because I realized that if I kept going, I wouldn’t be happy with the trajectory I was on. Don’t keep going just because you’re already on a certain path. And don’t give up. You can still keep moving forward, just in a different direction. A lot of businesses are facing the end of their current paths, potentially. Think about what it’ll take for you to overcome the current trials. Is it a path you’re willing to go down? Are the costs worth the potential outcome? Or is it time to take what you’ve learned from your current path, and start out on a new one? 

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
We are a brand consultancy agency for the hospitality industry, with a focus on bars and restaurants. I teamed up with a beverage director that shared the same mission to help the food & beverage industry out and we have been killing it since the second he and I started working together. Turns out if you can get passionate creatives to work together, the world’s your oyster and nothing can stop you. I’ve run a lot of businesses over the past couple decades, and each time, I hone my skills as a business owner. The skillset that has been the hardest but has made the biggest impact has been learning how to build up a killer team on the same mission as me. I have shelves and shelves of books on team culture and management; I call them my “learn how to play well with others” books. It’s not easy and every business owner struggles with it. It’s taken me decades to wrestle with the fear of building the right team. It makes you feel vulnerable, to hand your hopes, dreams, and aspirations over to the responsibility of other people. But I learned that if you take that risk and surround yourself with the right people, you can go a lot further and accomplish a lot more. A rising tide lifts all ships. The more I’ve shared my mission with others, the more we’ve all succeeded in accomplishing it. And that’s become the mission for our agency in our industry. When we work with our clients, we share that passion to be team focused with them as part of the programs we provide. No business that I’ve run or worked with has ever failed because they took up our mantra of, “The team comes first.” You can only do more and do better when you shift your perspective to be team-oriented in business. If you work with us, we show you how to empower your team to do more, elevate their skills and positions and succeed with you.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I have an entire bar crawl mapped out, thanks to my experience working with local bars and restaurants. To name a few of my favorites, we’d definitely be visiting Williams & Graham, Green Russell, Room for Milly, Hooked on Colfax (my favorite coffee spot), and Seven Grand. We’d also do a handful of distillery tours, because there are amazing distilleries here in town. I have loved getting to know the people at Mile High Spirits, The Family Jones, Laws, and Branch & Barrel.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Before moving out here, I was able to make a killer connection with Katie Bonneau of Bon Communications, and she’s been an incredible resource, help, and friend since moving here. She’s on a similar mission, like ourselves, to help the food & beverage industry survive and thrive. And if I may, the second shoutout goes to the creative director of our agency, Nate “Nemo” Niemerowicz. If it weren’t for his trusting my crazy ideas and running with them, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

Website: https://twistandtailor.com
Instagram: instagram.com/twistandtailor
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andiwhiskey/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/whiskey_media
Facebook: facebook.com/twistandtailor
Other: My personal instagram, where I talk about running businesses: instagram.com/andi.whiskey