The MHW Mark Podcast

MHW Turns 30

• MHW • Episode 54

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0:00 | 52:29

Spirits are high as the MHW team celebrates 30 years of serving clients in the beverage alcohol industry. Host Jimmy Moreland welcomes the largest panel ever assembled on the podcast, including cohosts Brigid McCabe and Cassidy Poe. Longtime listeners will recognize podcast alums Scott Saul and Maryann Pisani, and we hear from Debra Rosen, Tonya Romero, Lauren Jankiewicz, Dawn Cavallo, Fanny Cuevas, Alexandra Morey, and Cheryl Tittle.

More info about MHW at https://www.mhwltd.com/
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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the MHW Mark Podcast, where we take deep dives into various aspects of the alcohol industry. My name is Jimmy Moreland. MHW is a US and EU beverage alcohol importer, distributor, and service provider. Listeners, friends, it is good to be back. We had a nice holiday break, and I hope everyone here and out there did as well. And now we are back and we are kicking off 2026 with a bang. We have some celebrating to do and we have a lot of introductions to do. But first, let's introduce our co-hosts for today. Welcoming back the Dream Team. We have Bridget McCabe and Cassidy Poe. Welcome back, friends.

SPEAKER_12:

Thank you. Welcome back after a nice holiday season, everyone.

SPEAKER_11:

Yes, thanks, Jimmy. Happy to be back.

SPEAKER_01:

Everyone have a safe, happy holiday.

SPEAKER_12:

Yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, very good. I understand we've got a little bit of celebrating to do, a little bit of a landmark here at MHW.

SPEAKER_12:

Yes, we are celebrating an important milestone in the MHW history. And uh we're very excited because I think this might be the first time that we have over eight of MHW's longest standing employees. Not all, but we have a very great group here, and we are celebrating MHW's 30th anniversary of being in business. So this is a quite an iconic company. There's been a lot of beverage alcohol history made over the years, and we're excited to touch on a little bit of that, as well as some fun experiences and stories that this team here that has grown up with each other in a way. Some working from being interns, some right out of college, and now some of the most experienced people in the beverage alcohol category. So I feel very humbled to be with this group and very excited to share some of these stories over the years.

SPEAKER_01:

And for listeners out there, you'll probably hear some familiar voices, especially if you are a client or some kind of vendor that works with MHW. And you'll probably hear some people that you haven't heard before, some behind-the-scenes folks. And uh so it'll be a nice little opportunity to meet some new people right here on the podcast.

SPEAKER_12:

I am going to go ahead and pick on Marianne Passani.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome back, Marianne.

SPEAKER_12:

Hey, how are you there? Welcome back.

SPEAKER_01:

Good to be here.

SPEAKER_12:

You have so many great stories. I think you'll really kick it off for the team.

SPEAKER_10:

One thing that even some of the folks on the team who have been with us over 15, you know, almost 20 years and over 20 years might not realize we started out doing everything manually. Everything we did was handwritten on paper. We managed our clients' accounts in steno books. And a lot of people on this call probably don't even know what a steno book is, but it is a book that stenographers used to use. It has two columns and it flips up like this. And that's where we kept everything in pencil. But the young lady who did not was not able to make the call, Fran, our first employee who began in 1995, who is still an MHW employee. I don't know how many companies could say that, but that is a pretty unique statistic we have. And she did everything handwritten, handwritten checks. I kept track of everything in these steno books. And I was actually brought in to move our information from Excel and Steno books to QuickBooks. Again, a long time ago, we no longer use any of that. So any clients listening, please feel assured we're using much more modern technology today. But that is how we operated, and the pencils did have eraser, so we could fix things. But that is how everything functioned very, very, very manually. So I can remember the first email address we got, and it is still in use, and I don't know who has it, but there are people out there who still email me at service at mhwltd.com. We had one email address because we weren't sure if we needed more than that. So that was all we had for the entire company.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm still not sure if you do need more than that.

SPEAKER_10:

Who needs one group in box? Could you imagine? There's accounting folks on the team. And can you imagine if what you were doing today you were doing in a paper book?

SPEAKER_05:

No, thank you. I'm happy when they got rid of the paper in general. I used to have to file and attach and put everything away. And I remember those days.

SPEAKER_12:

Yeah, tell us a little bit, Don. So so who you hear right now is Don Cavallo. Uh, give us a little intro, Dawn, and if you have a memory that you're you're thinking about here that resonates with you.

SPEAKER_05:

Tagging onto Mary Ann's memory when everything got switched over to electronic at some point. This happened when I was an intern. I used to have to take every invoice, find the bill of lading, attach it to the invoice, filing in it, a massive filing cabinet, and we used to have boxes and boxes and boxes of paper all over the office. And then we'd have to ship them out to Iron Mountain. And it was a lot of paper. I used to always say, if there was a fire in MHW, we we would be in trouble. We would all need to run out that door as soon as possible. And then everything got switched to electronic, and we no longer have those massive filing cabinets all over the office anymore. Would you consider it an upgrade, right? A massive, massive upgrade. I mean, that from that was our upgrade, I guess, from Steno books and all that was the paper, and then that got moved to electronic, which was fantastic.

SPEAKER_12:

And I I think a little bit about um things like gallonage reporting and taxes and from the repeal of prohibition and how the three-tier system came about. There's been a lot of changes on the regulatory landscape, but there's been a lot that's stayed the same that has been critical over the years for reporting to the state and on the federal level. So, Tanya, if you don't mind, I pick on you here. There's a memory you'd love to share.

SPEAKER_14:

Sure. Um, I was conversing yesterday with another person who handles tax reporting as well or who did as well. And I was thinking we were talking about how when we sent something to a state, it would be a FedEx package or practically a box of hundreds and hundreds of pages. And in order to get enter that information into the hundreds of hundreds of pages that we had to send them monthly, we had to print about a thousand sheets of paper to look through to dwindle it down to the hundred pages we actually reported to the states. So, you know, we had a recycling bin in the office where you could recycle the paper and things. I am glad to say, no more recycling bin at MHW. All the returns are done in a computerized format, making life so much easier, so much more efficient for sure.

SPEAKER_12:

That's a good one. Very nice.

SPEAKER_01:

It makes me want to ask, generally for the group, what do we think collectively? If we can maybe pick one thing, what is the single biggest change that you've seen internal to MHW, not in the broader industry? Is it simply the computerization of the company operations, or is there maybe something bigger?

SPEAKER_02:

So I can jump in there.

SPEAKER_01:

This is Alexandra Morey.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep. I would say it would be a change, a shift from clients calling. When I started at it with MHW, uh, we did have email set up at that point, Mary, and I remember that. However, um, our client's preference was to call the office when they had an order, when they had a question, they will not email you. They will call you. Um, you know, I remember getting orders, inviting them down on the notepad, like a carbon copy notepad, entering the order, some French wines that were very hard for me to write down in. Sometimes our clients would take their time spelling them for us, so that's we didn't shift the role line. Um, you know, now clients prefer to send things via email. Some of them do call us, but most of the communication is sent via email. I I do miss the times that I used to um heat send receive on my email box so I could see, okay, why am I not getting emails?

SPEAKER_04:

Alex, I'm happy over here because I remember this as well. And it's very funny.

SPEAKER_05:

You and I used to sit there just in send receive, send receive, send receive. No more doing that. Nope.

SPEAKER_08:

We get too many emails these days. When I was, this is Lauren. Um, when I was training at MHW, I was always told to hit send receive, send receive to make sure we get those emails. But also touching on all of that like carbon copy and paper, um, closing I know is a very big topic here. And when I started, closing was tons of tables and papers, and we were we had to like staple and paper clip everything of all of the financial reports um and different reporting for our clients to make these like hard copies and mail them out, and we would have bagels delivered or lunch delivered or dinner delivered, and nobody could leave the office until closing was done.

SPEAKER_01:

Um this is closing in an accounting sense and not in a sales sense. Am I correct there?

SPEAKER_10:

It was just the way we moved from one month to the next, but we had to physically make these copies and then collate them for the hundred different clients into stacks, and all of a sudden you'd have, you know, uh 14 pages of a 16-page report, and then oh, these two pages got stuck in this client's pile, and we'd have to, so it was this massive assembly line to, you know, um to collate and do that. An another big change, of course, came with COVID and the move to remote working. So Tanya and I can talk to remote working from many, many years ago. When I began, our office wasn't large enough to hold me. So John Baudet, our president and founder, would bring boxes of uh information home, boxes of um invoices and things for me to enter into QuickBooks at his house because it was the office wasn't big enough to hold me. And um then when Tanya started working for us, she had her first child shortly after beginning working for us, and she was eager to come back. But she was a new mom and she wanted to be home during the day, so she would come into the office after we all left. So it was similar to remote working, as she'd be you'd have, you know, you'd know Tanya was in the office because you would see from when the alarm was set, and she might leave at one in the morning. Wow.

SPEAKER_14:

That's a funny story, Marianne, because I don't know if you remember, there was one time I was in the old office, and so when you left, you had to set the alarm. So I was in the office and it was upstairs, and I'm working, everything's all fine. And all of a sudden the alarm starts going off for the front door because someone on their way out had set the alarm for the building, and I was still in it. So when I started moving around, the alarm went off.

SPEAKER_13:

So the police came and I'm standing there and I don't know what to do. I'm just working. I actually work here. Why did the alarm go off if you work here? And what's the code? I don't know. I don't have the code. I know the code to the alarm, but I don't know how to make it stop. Oh, that was uh trying to explain to the police department why I was in the building.

SPEAKER_12:

That is great. Another longtime member we have of the accounting team is Debbie Rosen on the line. So, Debbie, I don't know, I'm sure you have very similar experiences to the rest of the team. Is there anything you'd like to share in terms of a memory that sticks out to you?

SPEAKER_09:

Well, very similar to everyone else was closing was very important. Um everybody had to participate. And I was actually one of the last desks available because we grew so rapidly from I guess 2004 when Tanya was hired, till I was hired. So it was empty when Tanya was there. And by the time 2007 came, we had so many employees I got the last desk, then there were desks in the hallway. And so there was really no room.

SPEAKER_12:

Um that is great. That's a testament to your client service. And two bathrooms.

SPEAKER_09:

Two bathrooms.

SPEAKER_05:

I remember that.

SPEAKER_09:

Right? There were uh folding tables set up for people to work in the hallway.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, this is Alex again. That will be we will call that intern row. That's where we would set up all of our interns for the summer. Um, we had like a a good amount of interns that would come and help us throughout the summer with closing, with the various tasks that nobody really wanted to do. So that will be where we would set them up, and we will be like, yeah, you will be here on intern roads. This will be your spot. But yeah, we got creative with the space as well. I remember Marianne's office. At some point, we had to move Marianne. I think Marianne graduated to move to the second floor, but then we got really creative with the space and set up a team for a large client that we had started working with at the time. And we set up, I don't even know the size of that office, Marianne, but it was tiny. Yeah. We set up four desks in that office. We had four humans in that office, and um, it was this young lady that was very tall, and you could see her feet coming out of the desk. So, you know, that was that was quite uh interesting. But I do miss those days. Those those were the fun, good days.

SPEAKER_10:

Yeah. We were in very tight quarters and we kept expanding, we kept taking on space from other buildings. But it when when I first started, I remember looking at the building and thinking, what was he thinking? He's never gonna fill this up because it was half empty. And at a certain point, myself and friend Viraldo, who's not on the call, we were both part-time at that point, and they moved us upstairs to share an office way before the point that Alex is talking about when I had my own office when I graduated, and they threw a going away party for us to go upstairs. And we were leaving everyone. So they had a going away party, they had cake and balloons, and we got cards and for our going away because we're moving to the other level.

SPEAKER_12:

That is amazing. And just for context for the listener, now we are, I think, nearing 200 employees at MHW. So if you think about just the rapid growth that MHW has had, and it makes me think a little bit about um client meetings back in the day because clients love to meet in person, and we didn't have as much of the virtual syncs as we did after COVID. So I'm gonna go ahead and pick on Scott Saul here. Scott, do you have any fun client meeting stories or any interesting inquiries you've gotten over the years?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'll start. I do want to chime in on one thing that I'm here 29 plus years. So, from a personal anecdote, there are times when I was at a pulley's wedding, and now their kids have graduated college and they're in the workforce. So that's kind of been painful for me. Um having these little kids come into the office and blow bubbles, and now they're uh they're in the workforce already. So I guess I'm showing my age. Um, some of the interesting things also is if you look at the company now and you look at the company then, so we have a marketing and business development team, huge team now. Back in the day, it was John Bodette and myself.

SPEAKER_12:

Yes, you know, then we the original and the better, the better marketers.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we have we have Cheryl and a 15 plus compliance team, and at the very beginning it was just me, you know. So then the county team was basically Francette, I guess, and John. So uh obviously the company has grown uh leaps and bounds. Client meetings, there are just so many to uh look back on. Yeah, celebrity clients, just clients with new innovations. Well, Hynotic was a was a brand that we we um a client of our came with and literally selling bottle by bottle for quite some time in New York and eventually got put into a rap song, and it went from like zero to 200,000 cases in in a very short period of time. So there's those kind of success stories that you you don't normally see. It's lightning, sort of lightning in the bottle, and eventually the brand got sold. So those are the kind of things that as a company where you you we look to incubate brands, and that's a prime example of a brand being incubated from zero, literally, from bottle by bottle, to hundreds of thousands of cases to a client doing very well on the sale of the of the brand.

SPEAKER_10:

One fun uh celebrity story was uh Dos Hombres, which is Brian Cranston and Aaron Paul. We were working for a while talking to them, but not talking to Brian and Aaron, talking to their people about bringing in this brand, and they did not tell us who it was. So there was a meeting scheduled in the office. I unfortunately was on vacation. We had no idea who was coming in, and the next thing you know, Brian Cranston walks in the door and the place is going crazy, and we're trying to be like, all right, everybody stay cool, you know, like don't be don't be running at them, you know. So that was really, really funny. And another very funny meeting in our office was we developed a product for Teresa from The Real Housewives of New Jersey. And anyone who's familiar with The Real Housewives know it's all about drama and fighting and blah blah blah. And they came in and actually filmed us at uh a conference table in our uh old offices, and we also filmed the launch of the product at Brotherhood Winery, which is the oldest winery in the US, and that's who developed the product for us. And we went up there and they had like a party and they had all the housewives there and they were fighting over different things. John Baudette made it onto the show. The rest of us did not. We're in the background and places, but yeah, those were some, those were some fun, you know, celebrities that we really got up close to. I don't know how much a celebrity, you know, real housewife is, but it was a celebrity at the time. But we've gone on to do other, many other celebrities and other housewives too. So that's been something we've always, you know, been excited about. And, you know, staff would get really thrilled. And some some celebrities are really good about coming in and taking pictures with everyone. One example of that was Isaiah Thomas, I believe it was. He came in and he stood and he took a picture with every single person in the office. A lot of people didn't know who he was, but they still took their picture.

SPEAKER_00:

We also handled a brand uh Avion Tequila. And at the time they came to the office, they were launching the brand, and they were in quite a bit of rush. And we learned later on that the rush was surrounding a TV show, which was Entourage. And at the time we didn't know that, they just needed to try to get to market really quick. And we try to, at the time, pulled a lot of strings at the federal level and at the state level and get the brand registered and available for the market. So by the time the show aired and the product became basically part of the show, they wanted to make sure it was available. And a lot of people thought it was fake when they first saw it, but it was a real brand and became available pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_10:

That one was real exciting because it had a draw from you know, the the people watching the show were calling in, you know, to their distributors, their retailers, how do I get this? And then they were calling us because. When they went on the TTV, they saw we were the importer. And you know, and at the time my kids were in their 20s, and the entrance was a huge show with kids in their 20s, and all of their friends were calling, can your mother get me a bottle of this? That is great.

SPEAKER_01:

I do want to throw another question out there. It's very similar to the last question. Sort of looking back over the last 30 years, what do we feel is the greatest change that we've seen in the broader bev alk industry?

SPEAKER_12:

One thing that strikes me as everyone was hopping onto this recording is uh other than you, Jimmy, it's Scott that's the male on this call. And so one interesting thing about the beverage alcohol industry is it's always been a little bit behind in terms of diversity, having, you know, women have leadership seats and management seats and really be client service-facing. You know, typically you you would hear when I first started, at least in the industry, you would be the sampling girls and things like that. But MHW has really been pivotal to the history of uh beverage alcohol because John Baudet and Scott and Marianne and the rest of the team really championed a legacy of women and uh you know, giving opportunities that were just greater than an intern role and giving people space to grow. And I think um diversity is also another big one. So I haven't checked the stats lately, but I think we are majority female still. And when you look at sort of the makeup of our staff, it really is all different backgrounds, ethnicities, you know, religions, beliefs you name it, whatever it might be. So I don't know if anyone wants to chime in on this, but that's something I'm really proud of to work at a beval company that sort of was the first to do that.

SPEAKER_00:

I have a very quick funny story about that. We had a call, a client, um, who, well, I should not say he was a potential client. Uh he I fired him before we hired him. Um, he spoke to somebody from the uh business development team, happened to be a young lady at the time, and he called me soon afterwards. And I I I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit, and he says, I want to deal with you. And I said, What's the problem? He says, I'm not gonna deal with any women, I just want to deal with you. I said, Well, I have to be honest with you, 95% of this company is women, so you're you're kind of you kind of have to deal with it. So, but he now he wound up not being a client. And I I also told him, I said the young lady you spoke to was the owner's daughter. So he he did not, they did not become a client, let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_10:

It definitely has, uh Bridge, you're totally right. When I used to go to conferences, I really felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was one of the few women who were not doing sampling or in a little skimpy costume somewhere or doing tastings and things. I was one of the few women walking around in a suit and now, you know, going to the event, to the same event this past um January. What a difference, you know, what a difference it is when you look out. In 2018, I want to say, I went to uh women of the mind and spirits events, and there were 800 attendees, 90% women. And when they asked how many people in the room held a C-suite position, there was eight of us. So I would bet that today if you held that same conference and asked that same question, you would find out that there was a lot more than eight people in the room. So I think that's great, and but still it's a very recent development from 2018 to today. It's not really like this happened in 2000. This is a pretty recent development, but definitely the industry has turned, and I think we were way ahead of it in our makeup of our staff and and our executives. And I'm sure Jimmy, before when we were doing our introductions, you heard a lot of I started as an intern, I started as an operator. Most folks on this call started at a very entry-level position, and they are all the managers and directors, and you know, have moved up the ranks myself from uh intern working part-time to the COO and the CRO positions. So that's kind of important for us.

SPEAKER_01:

Can I ask you about that? Is that something that's unique to MHW? Is it something that's unique to the Bevelk industry? That idea of sticking with a company for a long time? Because as a millennial, it seems to be like career hopping is the way that you climb the ladder. But that doesn't seem to be the case at MHW. Is that unique?

SPEAKER_10:

Yeah, I I do think we're unique in that, and just from a company standpoint, not necessarily a beverage alcohol standpoint, you will find a lot of people in the beverage alcohol industry have worked for the same entities. It's not that big of an industry, considering, you know, when you walk into a liquor store, how many things you can see. In the US, it's not really that large of an industry. So it's a very loyal industry. Once you're in the industry, you generally stay in it. But do you usually stay with the same company? Not necessarily. There have been companies in this industry that have great loyalty. I would say somebody like Beam, I would say somebody like Sidney Frank, they had great loyalty over the years and people worked there for a long time. I wouldn't say that's today's mantra, but MHW that has been something as a small growing company. We were able to, when there wasn't room for advancement because we were very tiny, we were still able to keep our employees and keep um very happy employees over the years. Not to say we don't have a lot of stress and we don't have a lot of pressure and people work very, very hard, but they have enjoyed growing with the company. And going back to again, the young lady who's not here, Fran, really holds basically the same position she's always held because she never wanted to, advancement wasn't something she was looking for. She wanted a good, steady position. But her family was more important to her than you know, working at something that was high, high pressure, and we allowed her to work remotely quite often, as we did with someone like Tanya way before COVID. And she enjoyed that and was able to do that and raise her family and still be a very, very good contributing member of the staff. So we've MHW as a company has been very loyal to our employees as well. We were able to provide Alex at some point when she was working for me many, many years ago. She had a childcare gap in the afternoon. So we allowed her to leave earlier every day to make it home for her kids. So and there was she wasn't the only one. There was probably three of them that we made that accommodation for, which I don't know that a lot of companies would do that.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right, Marianne. Um, and the other accommodation that was made for me at times was there were times that I didn't have childcare. So I would bring my daughter to the office, and you know, she would come sit down next to me and watch me work or help sort out papers and thought that she was working. So that was an accommodation that was done for me and others at MHW as well. So it was always something appreciated and not at the time, right? Not something that happened in other other companies.

SPEAKER_10:

An interesting offshoot to that is her daughter became a very valued member of our company. She actually left our employee last year, but she worked through high school and college for us and then onward after college for a number of years, as did her son, who was again, we were very sad to see him go when he moved on for advancement. And Fanny, who's on the line, often had issues and needed to bring her son in. And he is a current employee. Saw him last night at our holiday party. So that has been also all four of my children were interns at some point. Uh, my one daughter being a full-time employee for a little while. But yeah, so we were very open to that also. You know, as we got larger, we had to be a little more careful, insurance-wise, and things like that. But we did always allow. Um, Lauren's niece used to come often with her sister, who also worked for us. So we did allow that, you know, realizing that people have lives and they want to do a good job. And sometimes it involves their kid has to come first, you know.

SPEAKER_07:

Marianne, hi, it's Cheryl. Cheryl's head on compliance, started in 2002. I can say one of the evolutions that I've seen since I've started until now, and I know a lot of the folks who started around the same time that I did would agree, is just recognition of the service provider space and what we do. When I applied to MHW, it was a general customer service uh job. I had no idea what I was getting into, much less that I would be here over 20 years later. But traditional importers ran the space. Service providers were practically non-existent. We were among the very first, and so no one could really place us in the industry in what we did. And we didn't receive, I think, in the beginning, a lot of the recognition and the accolades for the solutions that we brought to clients that couldn't place with a traditional uh importer. And now, because of the marks that we've made in the industry, other service providers have popped up. This is a space that everyone recognizes when you say MHW, you don't have to launch into a whole explanation of what we are, it's instantly recognized, and that was not the case back in the beginning. And I think that's also the reason why me personally, and I think others have stayed with the company so long because it was like we had something to prove. We all came in on the ground level, we knew the promise of the company and what it could do for the industry. And with every client that we won, it felt like a personal victory for all of us. Every route to market that we expanded into that wasn't currently our traditional route to market felt like a win. And so I think milestone by milestone, as the company began to grow, I I mean, even the titles have changed. When I started, it was just specialist and executive management. There was no in-between. You were either the most very entry-level or the highest person at the company. And you know, it was through Alex and myself and people who have been there longer, we started to grow and advance and said, okay, there needs to be a supervisor level. That was a big thing back then. We don't have that much right now. And then the manager level and the director level, all of that started to evolve as the years went on. And of course, people have come and gone and contributed to MHW. But one of the things that I think is really unique about MHW as a company, I've had four titles now here at MHW. If you've been here 20 years, you know, I have sisters that tease me all the time. Like, no one does that. Like, are you like you're like an alien? And I say, well, I've had about five jobs in this one company. So if I had the same job from beginning to end, I'm not a lunatic. Of course, uh, I would look to expand and grow elsewhere, but there is a real opportunity that if you're talented, if you're invested, if you really have grit and show heart, whether you're here one year, I've had people who are here one year that have killed it and made a name for themselves, or you're here 10 years, you really have a place for you here and you're recognized. So I think for me, that's my personal favorite thing about MHW and this industry, the evolution of it, um, the fact that regulators really, by the work that MHW does and the clients we take on, regulators are almost trying to catch up to build rules for what it is that we want to do because we touch so many different dynamics of hires. And so seeing the evolution of all of that, the staff, the recognition in the industry, and how the regulators and laws have responded to it has been probably my favorite things about my career here at MHW.

SPEAKER_08:

Very well said, Cheryl. I can kind of piggyback off of that. So I'm Lauren Jenkowitz. Um, and to kind of touch on what Cheryl said, for me, I definitely agree. It's we're in an industry that's constantly evolving and changing. And I'm sure all of us here can say that basically every day we learn something new, which is what I love. You know, regulations are changing, processes are changing, and it's not something that you can like log on every day and know really what you're going to be doing, because everything is again constantly evolving and changing. But for me, I actually started MHW when I was not 21. I was 20, fresh out of like college, really didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. And my interview was actually really for myself, just to kind of get that experience. You know, I was pushed just to, hey, my sister used to work here, and hey, you know, like go on this first interview, get that experience. I honestly didn't think I would get the job, and I got the job, and here I am today. But also for me, it's about the relationship. So everybody on this call is more like family. I think we're all kind of like connected because we've been here for so long. So it's like we work together every day, we see each other when you know we're in the office or when we were in the office every day. And so for me, I kind of grew up with MHW. And again, the people on this call, I would definitely consider my family. I see them more so than aunts and uncles and cousins. Um, so I also think that that's something that's you know super beneficial and great about MHW, that we're kind of like a close-knit family company. Yes, we're growing, but we still kind of keep that family dynamic.

SPEAKER_07:

And we also embrace the new people, right? They're fresh, they bring new ideas. We love the way they contribute and the way they say, okay, you've always done it this way, but try it this way and see what happens. And they volunteer their ideas, and that's what helps evolve our policies and just the way we do things, because sometimes when you are doing things a certain way for a while, and then you have a new employee that comes in, you know, from with a different background, different experience, they force you to look at things in a way that you say, okay, we could be better here, we could evolve, we could push this forward, and it they also make us challenge ourselves. So that's another thing, too, is some companies have employees that have been there a long time, and then the new people come in and don't feel like they don't have a place. They feel intimidated by the legacy of all the people who came before them. And we make it so that people feel safe to bring their ideas, you know, again, whether they've been here, you know, a few days, a week, a year, they feel safe to bring ideas to their managers. Now we can't implement everything, but there have been some ideas that came out of uh new employees that have been groundbreaking and just recognizing um the new folks with our rookie of the year awards and things like that have I think is very beneficial.

SPEAKER_11:

I'd love to chime in just as a newer employee. I've been with MHW almost four years now, I think. My first job out of college. And like everyone's been saying, it really has always felt like a family environment to me. And that's something that I always really loved. And as a newer employee, I think I've worked with almost every person on this call on something at some point. And I think that's really awesome that you know, a newer employee can have access to our C-suite executives. And I'm I used to have one-on-one calls occasionally with our CEO. Like that's and I would tell people my age that, and they'd be like, Well, why are you talking to them? You know, and everyone's always just so willing to share knowledge and teach me things. So I'm actively growing in such a great family company environment at MHW, and I've really appreciated that.

SPEAKER_14:

I I think it comes to respect and appreciation, and certainly MHW shows both, and the employees show that to each other. And there are multiple times along what the lines of what Cheryl is saying, clients bring us a situation and they're like, well, we'd like to do this, and it's not the norm. It's not, you know, something the regulators have written into the policies of, you know, yes, this is allowed, no, it's not. And it's about finding that answer together and not only giving the respect and appreciation to each other, but also to our clients and working with each other so that we can work with our clients and be the best that we can every day.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, one of one of the things I I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to our clients themselves. It's their innovation they bring to every day things that we haven't even seen. You know, and they present us with a product and they present us with challenges of getting something approved or that possibly somebody else couldn't do. And uh we have I've pretty much been at the forefront of some new types of products, and uh it it allows the team to grow both on the regulatory side, on the compliance side, because we deal with not just the TTB but the FDA. So I I we have to give a shout out to the clients and their ability to bring new products to the table that maybe the public hasn't seen before. And we help, you know, and I always said if we if we don't have the answer, we'll get it. We'll find the answer.

SPEAKER_10:

And that has also created some of the loyalty because our our our staff and our employees are very loyal to our clients. They very, very care very much about providing them with really good service. We have an internal expression that, like, please don't do the client's laundry because people get so anxious to please that they're doing everything for the client. And one of the stories goes back to a client whose offices were right around the corner from us, and it was a warm July day on a Friday afternoon, and I went out for a walk, and there was the president of that company walking his dog. And our old offices, we had a small backyard, and I said he said he was going out east for the weekend, so he brought the dog from the city to his office, and he thought the dog would like just behave in the office, and he wasn't. And he was like, Like, I really have some important calls this afternoon. I said, Oh, I'll take him back to give me a water dish and I'll take him back to our office and put him in our yard. And he was like, Oh, really? So I did. And our president came in and he's like, You know, there's a dog. It's like, oh yeah, we're watching him for the president of XYZ company. And he was like, Wow, we're really doing everything. And I was like, Yep, we've expanded. So that has been that kind of is uh a sampling of how we always try to find an answer. Generally, it's not to watching a dog, but you know, maybe it's something like bringing in the first absinthe legally to the US and assisting someone where you know Scott was really um vital in that, you know, or creating new categories like Kassasha, which I still can't say Scott, but it was considered a rum, just part of the rum category. They wanted to be on their own category, and we were part of that move. And and the employees get very invested in those things and are excited to see them happen, whether it's the first time a product comes in or something like that, creating a whole new category.

SPEAKER_12:

Right. One of the uh people on this call that I really want to shout out is Fannie Quevas, because if you think about the amount of product and shipments that we do. deal with on a daily, monthly, annual basis after 30 years. I mean, it's millions and millions of shipments. And just the miracles that I have seen and the team has seen Fanny and her team make happen. I just wanted to open the floor, Fanny, and see if there was any memories you wanted to share in just, I mean, there's no other way to describe it, the miracles that you've worked for clients.

SPEAKER_03:

It has been uh a long journey. Um when we started we we have we have all types of clients right now experience like I have here clients that want us to go to their um garage and count inventory. When we didn't know that they have the inventory there. We have clients that want to fly uh product in private jets from one warehouse to another warehouse and we have clients that want us to go and get a helicopter and get a container from a vessel that caught on fire in the middle of the ocean. So those things are has been yes true stories that we have gone through a lot. I have a team that is really committed and in and our clients like you know trust us a lot on on all the shipments. It has this like especially this past year with all the uh the tariff and and things and the changes but we as everybody was saying like the evolution is has been a lot we do used to do everything like by hand we have to scan papers to the brokers and we have to send manual uh breakdowns to the warehouses to inbound the product and now everything is done uh electronically via ASN so it's been amazing and the evolution has been very noticeable at MHW and yes it is a lot of tons of cases and a lot of containers per year and the key here is to keep the client happy and and do the work as best that we can.

SPEAKER_02:

Bridget um Alex again I can tag along here a little bit when it comes to like performing miracles for for clients um in a way right when there are events and our client will forget to place their sample order and then we have to get a helicopter to come and pick up the product to make sure that a certain product makes it eventually and pick up the product and deliver themselves as well we we've done that we arranged um special like warehouse opening on on the weekend on a Saturday had our staff um drive all the way to the Hamptons to the lever for a special situation so you know our staff is committed right um when there's a problem when we need to get the product to a location it doesn't matter um what happens the first thing is how do we fix it? What do we do? How do we help our clients? So the commitment to what like that our team has to the brands and our clients is really something special and we admire a lot.

SPEAKER_12:

I love that and I there's so many clients that I've met over the years. I mean I've only been here about five years but even just going to trade shows or when clients come into the office the longstanding relationships that many of them have and you know it goes past just the work that we do together. I, you know Scott, I don't know if you want to talk to going to France and how you know having an opportunity to really with the friendships you've established you know go to different clients wineries and the clients really view us as an extension of their brands and I think that speaks true every time we we see a client and a lot of our growth of our business is client referrals and that's something that I think speaks to the team's commitment and dedication and ability to make you know the impossible happen.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah you know it's it's it's it is a relationship business. It's a hospitality business and a relationship business and having been here for almost three decades and working with some of these clients for well over 20 years they become more than just clients so they become friends. I've been to family functions and you know uh the day-to-day sometimes you know there's regulatory compliance is not very sexy you know but um although we I find it sexy but uh most people won't um so the opportunity to have built all these relationships and I could go to a client Italy and if they hear you if I say I'm going to Italy it'd say well you have to come stay with us or you have to come to the winery. We'll set up a luncheon. So we import from 80 different countries. So I don't think there's a a country we could go to that wouldn't be a client wouldn't show us their hospitality. And that's the best part of this so it's more than just a client relationship. It's not just providing a service.

SPEAKER_07:

In a lot of industries and even in this industry and other companies compliance is simply a department in which paperwork is filled out and submitted and that's the end of it. It's purely administrative and at MHW we've turned compliance into a customer service delivery option for clients. I know that my team is personally invested in the brands that they help bring to market you know they they ask how is that brand doing you know it's more than just filling out papers to get a compliant and approved to sell they're really invested in the outcome and if a client is not doing so well you see the look of disappointment on their face because they have been invested with the brand they hear that the stories from the clients the startup and there is a personal connection I think in every department not just compliance but also in accounting right in in areas where you don't think there will be a lot of client service or investment in our clients to do well because maybe they handle finances or they handle a brand labor registration or they do taxes and they're not necessarily the customer service team processing orders. But I think everyone is really personally invested and really want to see clients do well. And when they're not um we're we're also disappointed the same way our clients are so I do think there's a personal investment there that makes us unique as well.

SPEAKER_01:

We've been looking backwards at the last 30 years as we celebrate and remember how about the next 30 years and I kind of want to pick on who I believe is the youngest person on this call. Cassidy I want to single you out but I also do want to hear from the group if we've got any sort of particular not we're not looking for forecasts or predictions. That's a different podcast altogether but um just feelings as we reminisce about the last 30 years what do we feel hopeful about or what do we envision for ourselves as we look for the next 30 years of MHW.

SPEAKER_11:

It's funny you mention that Jimmy because uh we had as some people mentioned earlier we had our holiday party last night and I looked around and I was like wow I think I might finally not be the youngest person here entirely at all of MHW. It feels like I've been the youngest for as long as I've been there. But anyways the next 30 years I think is very exciting as everyone's mentioned like so much has changed in the past 30 years. So I'm excited to see how everything changes in the next 30 years. And I know a big theme that we've mentioned here is growth within the company and how people have been kind of given that space to grow and our company itself has grown entirely. So I think for me specifically it's exciting because we mentioned how the sales and marketing team was pretty much non existent when MHW started. It was a lot of word and mouth and now we Bridget and I have we have one other team member named Joel too for marketing and the sales team is five or more people I think now. So I'm really excited to see how our team grows and I know that there's so much more that we can do for our clients in the industry entirely as we grow. I don't know if Bridget wants to touch on that as well.

SPEAKER_12:

I think that's a great point Cassidy and I think you know it's it's wonderful working with um Cassidy and Joel and as we see the beverage sphere changing over time and MHW is becoming a little more generalist. So we're servicing non-alk beverage business we're servicing um you know different kinds of unique packaged beverages and so we're really seeing a lot of innovation and that you know coming at the hands of consumers demand. And I think having uh folks on a team like Cassidy and Joel that see what's coming up and kind of can give us a heads up and work with us in that next stage is really going to sort of like bring us to the next level and you know all the folks that are on this team that have over I want to say 200 years of combined MHW experience, not speaking even to beverage alcohol experience in general there's probably many more decades on top of that it's going to get us where we need to go and it gives us you know the iconic legacy that MHW has but just continuously adapting for the future and putting clients first and what um the industry is is innovating upon.

SPEAKER_00:

I will add a personal note I just looked at the actuary table for life expectancy so I don't know if I have 30 years.

SPEAKER_10:

On that note I was going to say I know I won't be here for another 30 years but it's really exciting for me to watch the development of the folks on this team who will eventually be taking my place and even Scott's place. I know he's not running out the door but um it is really exciting to see a lot of people on this call I hired many many years ago and seeing their development over the years is really just so rewarding and the fact that they're gonna take the helm sooner rather than later is really exciting to me and I I know that the next 30 will be in very good hands because of the folks on this call.

SPEAKER_02:

And I would say a big thank you and shout out to Marianne and Scott for you know their leadership their mentorship they are they're always being available for all of us and they you know like Marianne said she hired me. I originally applied for accounting the CFO at the time thought that I had a better chance in operations so then she wrote me to Marianne and look I'm here 21 years later but both Marianne and Scott have been instrumental in my growth and all the learnings that I had at MHW so I'm very thankful for continue to have them here.

SPEAKER_14:

Thank you Alex Yes I will absolutely say Marianne Scott have been a cornerstone to the MHW evolution for sure. And I definitely appreciate all the help and guidance that I've gotten throughout the years as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for thanks Tanya I will say that it's good to know that if a solar flare hits us tomorrow and knocks out the global power grid, we have the experience and expertise right here on this podcast to break out the stenopads and start processing client orders by hand the old-fashioned way. Exactly thank you to every expert on this call for sharing your experiences and thoughts with us as we celebrate 30 years of MHW. Big thanks to Scott Saul, Marianne Pizzani, Deborah Rosen, Tanya Romero, Lauren Jenkowitz, Don Cavallo, Fanny Cuevas, Alexander Morey, and Cheryl Tittle. And thank you to my co-hosts as always, Bridget McCabe and Cassidy Poe for helping out and keeping this show on the road. And thank you listeners for joining us on the MHW Mark Podcast. This podcast is produced by me, Jimmy Moreland with booking and planning support by Cassidy Poe and Bridget McCabe. It's presented by MHW find out more at MHWLTD.com or connect with MHW on LinkedIn. We have some new and interesting content ideas cooking including new formats and platforms so stay tuned for that we will be back in your feed as soon as we can and we'll see you then. Cheers