Vero Beach Podcast - Meet Your Neighbors. Support Local. ™
Welcome to the Vero Beach Podcast—where we share the stories behind the businesses, makers, and dreamers shaping our community.
Each week, we’ll sit down with local business owners and community leaders to hear their journeys—the highs, the lows, and everything in between. From family-owned shops to bold startups, you’ll get to “meet your neighbors” and discover what makes Vero Beach such a vibrant place to live, work, and visit.
Because when we know the stories, it changes how we shop, connect and care for our community,
Meet Your Neighbors. Support Local. ™
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Vero Beach Podcast - Meet Your Neighbors. Support Local. ™
Indian River Distillery - Part 1: Building a Legacy, Crafting History
Ray Hooker sits down at Indian River Distillery to share the story behind Vero Beach's premier craft spirits destination. As a third-generation Indian River County resident with deep local ties, Ray brings an authentic Florida perspective that challenges the theme park and beach stereotype visitors often associate with the Sunshine State.
The journey from landscaper to distiller wasn't a straightforward one. After fourteen years building a successful lawn and pest control company with nineteen employees, Ray found himself seeking a creative outlet. What began as experimentation with home distilling ("allegedly," as Ray jokes) evolved into a full-scale spirits operation that celebrates both craftsmanship and local heritage. Now two years into business, Indian River Distillery has established itself as both a production facility and a cultural touchstone.
What sets this distillery apart is its unwavering commitment to quality and education. "Our cocktails aren't really fancy," Ray explains. "They are simple cocktails executed properly with high-quality ingredients." This philosophy extends throughout the business—from refusing to serve shots in favor of teaching proper whiskey appreciation, to naming products after historical figures like the notorious Ashley Gang. Each bottle tells a story about Florida's rebellious past, which Ray proudly acknowledges as part of the state's authentic character.
The family business—run with wife Mandy and 16-year-old son Chandler—maintains a loyal staff who've been onboard since opening day. This stability reflects Ray's leadership approach: communicate clearly, follow through on promises, and strategically drive the business rather than react to daily challenges. As Ray puts it, there's wisdom that comes with age, even if it trades off with the boundless energy of youth.
Visit Indian River Distillery to experience what Ray affectionately calls "the world's largest Mayberry"—a place where quality spirits, Florida history, and community values come together in every carefully crafted glass. Your taste buds and your appreciation for authentic Florida will thank you.
The Vero Beach Podcast & MyVeroBeach.com is presented by Killer Bee Marketing, helping local businesses in Vero Beach reach more customers. Learn more at killerbeemarketing.com
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All right, well, welcome back to the Vero Beach podcast. I'm Brian and.
Speaker 2:I'm Shawna.
Speaker 1:And today we are sitting at the Indian River Distillery with Ray Ray. I'm sorry, what was your last name? Ray Hooker, ray Hooker, ray Hooker, we're so excited to be able to sit down and learn more about your story and how the Indian River Distillery came to be. But before we get started, would you mind just kind of introduce yourself a little bit and tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3:Well, my name is Ray Hooker. I am from Indian River County, my dad's from Indian River County and my grandfather is actually born and raised in Indian River County too. I've been in the community for my whole life. I've been a business owner locally for 20 years now. I've been a Rotarian locally for 20 years now. I've been a Rotarian locally for 20 years, so involved in, uh you know, service work and uh, enjoy our little town.
Speaker 1:That is awesome, and you gave us some uh, some whiskey to be able to sit down here and enjoy as well. What kind is this?
Speaker 3:This is a, a blend of our first batch of bourbon we created and a 45% wheat that we hand selected out of Indiana. So in order to make ours last longer it's not quite ready yet we blend it with other whiskeys that we brought in, and this is a Ray Lynn's reserve, and Ray Lynn isn't me. Ray Lynn is Ray Lynn, one of the notorious Ashley gang, which I'm sure we'll get into a little bit later.
Speaker 2:We must get into that, because we want to talk about the scavenger hunt. Oh, yeah, yeah, we saw that.
Speaker 1:We saw that on your uh, on your Instagram. We'd love to hear you know about your story behind, where you know how you started the Indian river distillery. But before we go there, what were you doing before this Cause? I'm sure you weren't doing this, since you're like a little ladder.
Speaker 3:No, no, not at all. It was 14 years before this, so I think 2006,. Uh, we started a lawn, landscape and pest control company. And when I say started, we bought a trailer and mower and put it on a credit card. And pest control company. And when I say started, we bought a trailer and mower and put it on a credit card and I went out and started beating on doors and and finding customers. We did that for 14 years. We had as many as 19 employees and got kind of burnt out doing that. So we switched over to a hobby. Uh, we, we sold the lawn and landscape and pest control company and used that to fund the starting of Indian River Distillery.
Speaker 1:How did the idea come to you to actually launch this business?
Speaker 3:I'm going to say a lot of allegedly when I talk about this, or possibly, possibly. Okay, possibly there were some stills that were being made, possibly there were some stills that were being made and possibly, allegedly, we might have experimented around with that a few friends and myself and there was nothing really like this around and we thought it would be a great idea to do and it would be fun and I could be a little bit creative, Although I don't seem like a creative artistic type person.
Speaker 2:This is kind of my way of doing that. Are you happy to be working inside more so, as opposed to outside, when you were landscaping and everything?
Speaker 3:Yes, and the original plans for this were my production area was going to be air conditioned, and when costs started doubling and doubling, that went out the window pretty quick. So it's pretty hot back there too. It's not right out in the sun and, yes, this is much easier on my body than landscaping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. Well, I have to say, ray, like there's a business gentleman that I'm friends with and he's in Tampa area and we used to always meet on zoom meetings and I got to meet him in person and he saw me. He's like you look so much taller on your zoom meetings. I'm like dude, like that's because I raised my chair up to kind of, you know, be a little bit more like, you know, intimidating. Don't call me out. But when I pulled up and ray, like he has this jacked up old, that's an old f-250 out there, right, yeah, and I'm either. Either he has a ladder to get up in there. He's a tall guy and you're a big guy. So I was like wow.
Speaker 1:I was like, okay, well, sean, if you're listening, I I haven't challenged you to stand next to Ray, but uh, but no, it's, it's a really cool to be able to meet you in person and and get to get Getting into the spirits and crafting.
Speaker 3:No, no, I didn't, not until I started playing with it, and I think that was 2014 or 2013 we first started messing around with it. Fermentation always kind of interested me. I'm not a very big beer person, I'm not really big on wine, but I do drink spirits. I like spirits. My favorite spirit was single malt, but now that I've experienced a little bit more, I kind of like all of them. There's nothing really I don't like.
Speaker 1:You're going to educate me a lot, probably during this too, so explain the difference of spirits. So what is spirits, considered specifically?
Speaker 3:Spirits would be a distilled alcohol. Okay, so the distillation process is using heat and capturing the alcohol vapor as it comes off and then recondensing that vapor. So we know that alcohol vaporizes at a temperature lower than water does. So that's how we do distillation. So think of, if you're boiling a pot of spaghetti and you put the lid on it, the condensation when you pick up the lid and it runs off. That's a very simplified version of what distillation is. We capture all of that and try to make sure, through temperature control, what we capture is alcohol, not water. Through temperature control, what we capture is alcohol, not water.
Speaker 3:So you name the spirit by its base material. For one Rum would come from sugar cane and whiskey would come from grain. Now, single malt whiskey is a malted barley whiskey that's made from one distillery in one season. Bourbon is a whiskey that's made from at least 51% corn. The rest has to be another type of grain. It needs to be made in the US and it has to be put into a brand-new charred oak barrel. So think of whiskey as cola.
Speaker 3:Like a generic A generic term for things that are like this, and then all of the other names are the different types of it.
Speaker 2:So rye is a type of whiskey.
Speaker 3:Rye is a type of whiskey.
Speaker 2:Bourbon is a type of whiskey, but it's only made in America, right, correct?
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:What's another type of whiskey?
Speaker 3:Irish whiskey Irish, yeah. Scotch whiskey Okay. Malt whiskey. All of those are different types. Some of those are regional designations of where the whiskey would come from, but others are the type of whiskey that they are.
Speaker 2:That is so interesting. I feel like I want a notebook that I can take notes, because first of all I didn't know that's how distilling even works, so that was fascinating.
Speaker 1:Well, it's actually interesting too, Cause there was a time I went through where I couldn't like we used, I used to enjoy having a glass of wine, but then it would cause me to have migraines. So I was like, I don't know, let me try a bourbon. And uh, I can now luckily have wine again. But it took, like I don't know what, six years or something like that probably.
Speaker 2:Yeah, probably, so I could actually even do that.
Speaker 1:Try brandy.
Speaker 2:Once he found out how much he liked bourbon. Then we started perfecting our old-fashioned recipe.
Speaker 1:Now perfecting doesn't mean perfecting, like compared here, We've had your old-fashioned stuff here and it's not.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you how to make it. Okay, all right, our cocktails. They're not really fancy, they are simple cocktails executed properly. Yeah.
Speaker 2:With high quality, right With high quality ingredients.
Speaker 3:Well, that's properly. So if you don't overcomplicate it, if you just do it properly, you don't have to put the flare on it, you don't have to put gold sparkles on the side or light it on fire or any of those things. As a just a kind of an aside, we do a contract bottling for that. That's one of the things our license allows us to do. So people have brands, but they don't have a distillery, so they want to have a rum brand. Brands, but they don't have a distillery, so they want to have a rum brand. So we have a guy, mike Streeter, from Down Island Spirits. He lives down the road and we bottle his rum brand for him.
Speaker 3:Mike does really really nice rums, really unique rums. He goes and sources this really cool barrel from this place or this really cool barrel from that place and uh, one of the barrels we had come in, uh, a few weeks back, uh, the distillery was new Yarmouth, out of Jamaica, and I wasn't really familiar with it. Um and uh, I tasted the rum and it was really really nice. And uh, I was telling Michael, our bartender, who's a rum nerd, this is an 18-year-old from New Yarmouth and he says, well, that's Ray and Nephew and I said cool. And he goes no, it's an 18-year-old Ray and Nephew, that's the original rum from the Mai Tai from the 1940s. That was long lost. They don't have this rum anymore. They don't sell it on the market. So every Mai Tai that's been made since the 60s has been made with the wrong rum.
Speaker 2:Can we?
Speaker 3:make a Mai Tai Absolutely Wow. And we made a basic Mai Tai out of the proper rum. Mike made the almond syrup to go in it. We squeezed the fruit. Mai Tai is my new favorite cocktail. It's so good.
Speaker 2:I believe it. I believe it because when I came for our first visit, which I'll tell you about in a little bit, I had a daiquiri, which I've never normally ordered daiquiri. But when I saw it on the menu and I saw the description, I thought that sounds delicious. So I tried it and it was delicious. So fresh, so, like you're saying, simple, but you can taste the quality. Yeah, it's just. You know, there's nothing worse than a cocktail with, like, a bottled sour mix or a bottled wine juice.
Speaker 3:You can tell, absolutely Now is this like a familyled sour mix or a bottled wine juice? You can tell, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Now is this like a family-owned business too, Yep myself, Mandy and Chandler.
Speaker 3:Wow, oh, wow.
Speaker 2:How old is your son?
Speaker 3:16. Oh, good Wow.
Speaker 2:He's a little business, tycoon, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:He might not be little. I mean, is he as tall?
Speaker 3:as you, he's 6, two. Yeah, he's a big little kid.
Speaker 1:He's a big little kid. I like that. What have you loved most about running a family? Like doing this together?
Speaker 3:That's, that's hard to ask in the first couple of years of a new business, because the when you're running a business that way you're able to pull away and you can take time. And right now I can't pull away. You know, as much as I'd like to. I can more now than I could last year and it will get better progressively better over the next few years.
Speaker 3:I like having creative control over things. That kind of makes me sound like I'm a control freak, but no, I can do quality control really well on all aspects well, and you said you're two years in right now.
Speaker 1:Is that correct? So I mean, it is you're birthing this baby right now, so it needs your eyes and your hands on it to kind of make sure it's going the direction you want it to go need your influence absolutely talking about influence, what is the experience you're hoping to give the community of Vero here at the Indian River Distillery?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. I'd like to educate them on proper spirits, responsible alcohol use and our history and community.
Speaker 3:I love that, if you notice, you know we were talking a little bit before we got started about the historic aspect of all of our brands. Yes, because I want to use that as an education tool to people for our area. A lot of people don't know these stories and I get frustrated. I've dealt with people moving here for years and years with our previous business and just being out in the community. People look at Florida as Disneyland, as Miami as Jacksonville. They have no idea the history or the culture that is Florida. They see some of the things our state does in national media they say, wow, florida's a little not right. Yeah, we kind of are, and there's a reason for that. There's a reason for that. We definitely have a rebellious streak and we're proud of it. Yes, I love that.
Speaker 1:Have you ever read that book? A Land?
Speaker 2:Remembered. I'm so thankful that I found that book early in our residency in Florida because it did give me a whole different view of what Florida is, who the people are, where they've come from, what they had to conquer to even get to this place in history. I mean, if anyone hasn't read that book and you want to know about Florida, it's eye-opening and terrifying.
Speaker 3:I remember Patrick W Smith right.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's right Excellent book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it changes your whole outlook on Florida.
Speaker 3:It does. I used to carry those books in my truck and when new customers would come in from out of state, I would say this is required reading to be a customer of ours.
Speaker 2:That is so smart that's good. I think about different passages in that book. Every time I walk through old growth forests, when I walk through the places that haven't been tamed, I think the whole state was like this at one point.
Speaker 1:You're talking about, like having the customers read that, which I think is a great idea. Uh, how about your employees like your?
Speaker 3:team. Oh, we've all yeah, we've all read that we talk about things like that you know we stopped by before.
Speaker 1:We like to stop in, check out some places before we. You know well, we were going to reach out to you, but you reached out to us. We're like, yes, this is awesome, this is perfect, can't wait to have on the podcast. And here we are. But we came and the bartender I don't remember who it was working that evening.
Speaker 2:I wish I knew his name.
Speaker 1:He was awesome Older guy, Bill Bill Yep. Bill Yep, that's exactly who it was. He was amazing, so you could tell they really enjoy what they do.
Speaker 3:And that really comes through a Bill, michael and Kelsey. Kelsey is my niece, so she's not going anywhere unless I disappear in a hole somewhere. We're glad to have Kelsey. I love Kelsey to death. Kelsey is the young one of the group, so I like to harass her. Then we have Michael. Michael is 30, I believe, but most of his career as a bartender was at places like Disney or the Broadmoor in Colorado, so he has really good cocktail experience and he has a genuine creative side with doing all this.
Speaker 3:And that's kind of what you've got to have here. Sure, because we aren't a bar, we're a tasting room for a distillery. So we can't buy vermouth, we can't buy Campari, we can't buy all of these different things. We have to serve what we produce. So that makes you need to be really creative and you can't lean on some of the extras. We can't buy Curacao or orange liqueur, we have to make it. And then we have Bill, who you guys met, who I think he's 35 years in bartending, all of it on Bourbon Street. Wow, yeah, yeah. So Bill enjoys the slower pace of Vero Beach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I bet. Goodness, gracious, yeah, and he's probably like give me a challenge people.
Speaker 3:They've all been here since day one, really. That is cool, that's awesome. Retention of your team is a very big deal.
Speaker 2:I was just thinking that too. That says something about you and the culture you're building to keep a team for two years mean yeah, and it's your biggest investment, as it is absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Turnover kills you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you're just good to people, they want to hang out, you know, yeah, exactly that's awesome, and I love that you mentioned, too, like one of the things that you want to help with the community too is how to drink responsibly, too.
Speaker 3:That's an important thing, so I love you sharing that we don't sell shots when somebody comes in and wants a shot. No, let me show you what a neat pour of whiskey is and how to properly drink it. We don't do $2 shots. We don't do drink fast type things. It's not our vibe at all.
Speaker 2:It's really respecting your customers more than just the bottom line.
Speaker 3:That's what it looks like to me Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's beautiful.
Speaker 3:You got to sleep good when you go home at night. That's so true.
Speaker 1:So, as we get ready to wrap up this episode, ray, what would you say? I know you've been doing it for a couple of years, but you've been running a business for over a decade, so what would you say? You've learned the most about yourself since starting, like launching your own business. And now to where you are today.
Speaker 3:It's different doing it at 45 than it was doing it at 25. You're smarter, but you're older too, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's, that's really good. It's a trade-off, isn't it? It is.
Speaker 3:Trade-off like energy for wisdom sometimes, yeah absolutely Absolutely, and you know we were doing 18-hour days for months and months and months. That'll wear on you. I could do that in my sleep in my 20s and still go have a drink somewhere afterwards. Now it's a lot different.
Speaker 1:It changes, doesn't it? Yeah, I know I'm 46 now and I'm like, wow, you start deciding like what do I really want to do and what's really important?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And what is the one?
Speaker 1:key thing for you, as running a business like that helps you stay grounded.
Speaker 3:Two things, one being do what you say you're going to do. That is going to be a really big deal locally because, uh, vera beach and indiana county in general are very much a word of mouth town. This is the world's largest mayberry. It really is, it really is. So do what you say you're going to do, because everybody's going to hear about it when you don't.
Speaker 3:And two, this is really hard to do in the very beginning because it's chaos time for a business. When you're just trying to, you know you're plugging the dam, you're putting your holes in everywhere or your fingers in the holes everywhere. But you need to be to a point where you can drive your business instead of ride your business. When you're riding your business and your business is steering you, you're at the whim of what everything's you know, wherever you fly. At that time you need to stop.
Speaker 3:Do the important things what do I need to happen this year? What do I need to happen this quarter? What do I need to happen this month? What do I need to happen this week? And know that you're going to fail at a lot of those things. But you need to readjust, you know, change your plan. Okay, now I can't do that, so I'm going to do this and this, so you got to have a plan, and that's. I always have a plan in my brain. My brain is always full. I'm always thinking that, but I have to write it down. I know it, but everybody else around me doesn't know it. When everybody around me sees that I know it and sees we have a direction we're heading, that makes them more comfortable, when they're more comfortable, they're more comfortable in everything that they do, which makes them better. Now, I say this, but I fail at it all the time, but I'm trying to be better at it constantly.
Speaker 1:And that's key. That's key, right? I mean, you're owning where you fall short and you're trying to become better at that. And I like that idea because it comes down to communication with your team as well. If they don't understand, they don't have a roadmap or what your plans are, then they're at some point going to feel like they won't trust you, and trust takes you a long way it does Now.
Speaker 3:You're married, so you understand this. She's had arguments with you that you weren't even aware of before. And then you say to her Honey, why don't you tell me the rest of this conversation that we've had and tell me why you feel the way?
Speaker 1:you do.
Speaker 3:We do that too, but we do that as men and as business owners, with plans in our head. So we have all of these things going on that we're not communicating with anybody else, and it looks like craziness until we write it down and everybody sees it.
Speaker 2:Wow, that is such a good point All right?
Speaker 3:well, that wraps up episode All right, so this wraps up episode one.
Speaker 1:And next episode, we'll be sitting down with Ray to talk a little bit more about behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:Catch you next time, neighbor.
