Cigar Rebel

Industry Discussion - Wilde Cigar + Culture

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You are listening to the Cigar Rebel podcast. In this episode of Cigar Rebel we are joined by Nathan and Jace from Wilde Cigar + Culture. Join the conversation as we take the time to enjoy one of life’s luxuries on this quirky journey we call life.

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SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Cigar Rebel community, where indulgence meets authenticity. This is more than a podcast. It's a gathering place for those who savor life's luxuries with an unapologetic passion. Here we celebrate the fine art of living through rich flavors, bold spirits, exquisite cigars, and unforgettable experiences.

SPEAKER_05

Welcome, Cigar Rebels, to the podcast. I'm Mel.

SPEAKER_06

And I'm Kevin, and we're coming to you live tonight with an industry discussion that we've been excited about for a while. We're here at Wild Cigars.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, so uh if you have gone to a lounge, you know you can tell within probably the first 30 seconds if it's a good one.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, you really can. You know instantly where you're at.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, so before you even go into the humidor, before you look at the shelves, before you know what brands uh they carry.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, absolutely. And so tonight we're coming to talk with a group of owners of a cigar lounge that really know where it's at and how to build the right culture, the right environment, and really grow a cigar community. And we're really excited about that tonight.

SPEAKER_05

Yes, so it's not just about the cigars, but we're also gonna dive into the culture.

SPEAKER_06

Absolutely. So, Mel, what are we smoking tonight?

SPEAKER_05

So, tonight we are smoking the Sumatra Royale by the Elevated Humidor. It has a Sumatra Havana hybrid wrapper, a Sumatra Habano binder, and Nicaraguan fillers.

unknown

Yep.

SPEAKER_06

And so we're gonna go ahead and get this cut and light and jump right into conversation. Our cutting tonight is brought to you by Big Sky Cigar Company.

SPEAKER_03

Now Big Sky Cigar is bringing that spirit back in.

SPEAKER_01

Yellowstone River to the Boldigorn Fall. Madison, the roof black with Lino.

SPEAKER_03

And he from Nicaragua, San Andreas too, Ecuador the And every box helps our veterans, men, with warriors and quiet waters. We lend a friend's hand. It's heritage burning in every draw. Big sky cigars, Montana's pride and low.

SPEAKER_01

Big Sky Cigar. We're heritage full with everdraw.

SPEAKER_02

Ask your local tobacconist about Big Sky cigars today. If they do not carry them, the shops can reach out to Brad Fraser to set up a new account.

SPEAKER_05

As always, a huge thank you to Big Sky. So before we dive into today's uh topic, we've all lit the cigar. How is everyone feeling about the cold draw? Now that you've got a couple draws off of it.

SPEAKER_09

This is a nice cigar. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

So any flavor notes you guys picking up tonight or Mel?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, so on the cold draw, I definitely get some woodiness or some earthiness in there. Um and now that I've lit it, I'm going to take a couple more draws on it and give the honest. I've smoked the cigar so many times, but being live, I'll smoke it live as a lit a couple minutes ago before everyone knows.

SPEAKER_07

And the woodiness is carrying through. It's very woody and really nice. Yeah, definitely very woody.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, there's there's a little bit of that earthiness, you know, you're saying woodiness there, then I would get just a savoriness overall. There's just I think it comes from the oiliness of the wrapper. Um, this is Sumatra Havana wrapper that's actually grown in Nicaragua. So it's Sumatra seed that is actually hybrid blended with a Creolho, a Criollo. And so um it's grown for us and one other cigar company there outside of Estelle. And so I'm really excited about smoking the cigar. And we kind of planned for this cigar because uh one of y'all's tobacconists loves this cigar. And so it made for a fun one to jump into. But Mel, let's jump right into the topic tonight.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, so as Kevin had mentioned, tonight's episode we really want have wanted to do for a while because cigar lounges are one of the most important parts of modern cigar culture.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, absolutely. They're not just places you buy cigars anymore, they're places where you go and you build community, you get educated on cigars and the cigar culture, and it's a place that's almost like the modern day bar of the 1800s, early 1900s, where you bellied up to the bar and built lifelong wrench friendships. Um, bars aren't that today. Today, bars are where you just go land. But the cigar shop has kind of taken over that I'm gonna drop off there on the way home, I'm gonna go there on a Saturday afternoon and build some lifelong friendships. And so we're really excited to get into that tonight.

SPEAKER_05

Yes, 100%. And I think when it comes to cigar lounges, um, especially the people who run them, uh, owners and the tobacconists, they you guys do so much more, everyone does so much more than just stocking those shelves.

SPEAKER_06

Absolutely. You're creating a space, a mood, a trust level, and you're building a culture, right? And so tonight we're gonna explore all those things.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah. We're gonna look at it from the inside out.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, so let's welcome our guests here tonight. We have Chris Noteboom and Nathan Siegel of Wild Cigars. So welcome. How's it going?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, so before we jump into your journey too far, I would love for each of you guys to tell the rebels out there about Wild.

SPEAKER_07

Go ahead. Um, I mean, I almost opened a shop back in 2008 in Denton. This is I come from an entrepreneurial family and background. We have a construction company, and and so my dad's always encouraged that and has helped work with me. And of course, I worked with that company. And so I've been mulling this over since really college days, undergrad. Nathan and I both uh went to college in Abilene, Texas, which is home to belief, still operating to this day, great place. And uh, I remember I was about to leave after graduating, and I asked Bill, the former owner, hey Bill, what's what's it take to start a cigar shop? And he said, Chris, don't do it. And uh, like in most cases, I don't listen, and uh, I'm very defiant, and uh, so I it was always mulling about, yeah. And then all of a sudden, in in 2016, I found myself back here in Burleson. This is my hometown, and uh Nathan and I started talking about well, Burleson seems like it might finally be ready for a cigar shop because it takes a certain population density, it takes a certain income level to really support a shop. And Burlson's like everywhere around here is growing incredibly fast. Um, it's the biggest suburb on the south end of Fort Worth, and so we started working on it, and um eventually, you know, we were we kind of lucked out in a lot of ways, and things broke our way, and we were able to find this spot, which is beautiful and fantastic, and build it out, and so but yeah, it's it's always been there, and it really comes from uh our days back at the Leaf, and we didn't know each other then, but we were both there, and it's the sense of culture and community that you kind of talked about in the opening that cigar shops are one of the last great third places, as we talk about these days, or the small D democratic space in that there's a spot for everyone here, right? Yeah, you know, we've got cigars from budget bundle stuff all the way up to 30, 40, 50 dollars, and then we've got drinks all the way from a couple bucks all the way up to 25, 30 dollars. Yeah, everyone can find their spot where they fit in, and then once we're in here, the thing I always noticed is that every other dividing line in society melts away, and suddenly you can be sitting at a table and you've got a school teacher and a baggage handler from the airport, and the CEO, and you know, a random dude, you know, a random chick, whoever. Absolutely, and they all can all talk because we share this, yeah.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah, absolutely. Like we actually got to know each other at Michael's Tobacco in Ulysses, and like it's he's exactly right, it was all about community there. That's what made me fall in love with cigars, getting to know people. Um, like that I would normally never hang out with. There was businessmen, teachers, everything there.

SPEAKER_07

Like, we had our own little group, and we were a very diverse little group. Michael's was like the start of my second chapter into the cigar world. A good friend of mine had become one of the managers there, and so I started hanging out. But I didn't know anyone, I was like 26 in grad school in Denton, and I would just come down on my off days and hang out. And the first person who befriended me was a CEO of a large tech company, and just sat next to me one day and just started talking to me. Yeah, and over the next couple years, all the guys at that shop, all these older guys that would hang out during the day when I would go sometimes, almost like just took me under their wing. So I didn't have to, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, I always call that um hanging out with people who are just wise in life, right? Yeah, right, absolutely. Like you learn so much from them because of the experiences they've had, and there's nowhere you can go get that level of mentoring, or um, I might even go a little further and say discipleship, yeah, absolutely than from these people that have just lived life. Yeah, and it happens in a cigar shop every single day.

SPEAKER_07

Every day, yep. Every day I find myself in conversations that I would have never expected. You know, it's just you never know when you're gonna find that common thread with someone, and next thing you know, it's been two hours. You've been just sitting there having cigars and nice cocktail and a good conversation, which I don't think we have enough of these days. We don't have good conversations anymore. There's something about cigars that kind of break down those walls a little bit.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah. We talk a lot about cigar time, you know. There's not really uh like you're saying, two, three, four hours goes by and you don't even know it.

SPEAKER_06

So I say there's coffee shop time and then there's cigar shop time, and they're not the same. No, they're not. I was at a coffee shop yesterday and I kept to myself the whole time. Yeah, yeah. No, that's awesome. So I want to break in with a second. Sorry, that but totally unplanned, but there's a lot of overlap that I don't know that I knew a whole lot until today.

SPEAKER_05

I was gonna mention as well. Go for it. Go for it. You're talking about it.

SPEAKER_06

So um Mel and I met in Abilene. I grew up in Abilene, um, and uh the leaf has been a part of our story getting here as well. Yeah, uh, Mel was their banker for Phil for all those three.

SPEAKER_05

I would see Bill almost every day, except for one who's on vacation.

SPEAKER_06

It's great. Um, and then I became friends with Jay, the owner currently, um, after, and so I said I had the conversation with Jay hey, I'm launching a cigar brand, and this is what we're doing. What would you do if you had given any insight? And then when we got ready to open the cigar shop that we own, I had the same conversation with him. So it's just an interesting overlap.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, because Texas is huge, but it's also quite small.

SPEAKER_07

It really, really is I was talking to one of our customers a couple weeks ago, and I mentioned that the three main people here who run this place, Nathan, me, and Kim, all went to college in Abline. And this guy was like, I'm from Abline, I didn't know you. And so we talked about Abling for 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, so it's just a funny uh it shows how large the industry is from a consumer perspective to how small it really is from those of us in the industry. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, it's one of the things I like about the cigar industry is it's a nationwide industry, and yet you go to trade shows and stuff like that, and we all kind of know each other because it's not that big overall.

SPEAKER_06

So, our first night here at Wild was on y'all's first anniversary. We happened to drop in that night. Um, we had had a cigar. Chris, I met you, Nathan. You were running the register that night and didn't really know or mention anything, and then it was really a few years later, um, maybe last year at PCA that I really started talking to you, Chris. I talked to Nathan several times, but had never really interacted with you other than hello.

SPEAKER_07

Right. Just in a yeah, I'm not here as much as they are, so I still have to have the day job.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, no, it's uh but it's just one of those things that this has been a part of our cigar journey, um, just in having a place to land and enjoy cigars and not feel like we're out trying to shoot a podcast, we're out trying to sell cigars. Uh, we know Kim, we know um as bartender, um Marissa. Marissa. I always get it right when I see her. Then I'm when I talk about her, I always want to say Miranda. And but yeah, you know, and so it's one of those things that when I come in, she knows what I want to drink. She's like, Do you want coffee or Coke Zero today? Right. And so, yeah, but yeah, it's one of those great things.

SPEAKER_05

So all right. So, talking a little bit about, you know, you talked a little bit about how you guys met and thought about starting the lounge here. So before all that, you mentioned your second kind of life in cigars was at Michael's. But what was both of your first experiences with cigars? How did they become a part of your life? Um, I think our viewers would love to know that. The true origin story.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah, I think the first cigar I ever had was a Monte Cristo. I don't remember which one, but my friend gave it to me. Um, it was during summer vacation during college, and uh my parents were out of town. We smoked them by the pool in their backyard, which was a no-no for my parents. But uh, yeah, that was that was the first one I ever had. And that uh, you know, I didn't fall in love with it right away, yeah. Um, but I started smoking a little bit more often. Um and it was usually just by myself or maybe a buddy, you know, hanging out on my patio. But then I started going to shops, and then I started really diving in and nerding out, and like we said, getting involved in community and stuff, and that's that's when I really started falling falling in love with the cigar world.

SPEAKER_07

It took about a year, okay. Yeah, so on my 18th birthday, you know, there are two things I could do register for the draft, which is not exciting, and I could buy tobacco, and I didn't want to buy cigarettes. I grew up with a dad who smokes like two packs a day, still to this day, and I'm very annoyed by cigarette smoking. And uh, so I decided I'm gonna buy a cigar and try cigar, and I went out and bought switcher sweets, and uh I smoked them, and you know, it would be a social thing if the buddies and I were going to the lake for the weekend, I'd pick up a few, and then sophomore year of college, I transferred, I started somewhere else, but I transferred into Hard and Simmons and Abilene, and that was the first time I was really aware that there were like these lounges where people hung out, like because the only other cigar store I bought from didn't really have a hangout space in Fort Worth, and it's long gone by now. Um, so Abilene being there's three colleges there, yeah, and the leaf being downtown became like the natural gathering place for all of us, and it became such a big part of my life, and I learned so much about cigars there that that is what really kind of got me into it. And then it was right after graduation when Kim, our you know, co-owner, bar manager, co-GM, um, her and I both went to Hard and Simmons, and we both do theater. Okay, her aunt owns Duncanville Community Theater, and she called me, they needed someone for a Shakespeare play. And I went over and we met this girl who was in the play with us who was dating a guy who worked at the local cigar shop, who is Jason Fields, who now works for McAllif, and was our original GM here. And uh Jason was really kind of the start of my second chapter, and it was a couple years after that. Uh, he started working at Michael's in New Less, and I started hanging out there, and that's where between Jason being there and the good community of guys who you know were fans. It's the first time I've hung out with people who cared about like the construction and and kind of nerded out more about it, and then also if you know Tracy Spence, yeah, and and most people in the industry do know Tracy, he was the GM at Michaels for a long time. And Tracy will make you a nerd about cigars, yes, he will, and so that's kind of the progression for me.

SPEAKER_06

No, that's great. When you mentioned Michaels earlier, I almost asked if it was one of those two guys, uh, just because I know both of them well. Jason's become a good friend. Uh Tracy's one of those guys that we've been around off and on. Um, worked with him on a few different things. But uh Jason is somebody that I text with consistently. Matter of fact, I didn't text with him earlier today.

SPEAKER_07

So you couldn't ask for two better friends, and you couldn't ask for two guys who know more about cigars. And like I I got to a point, Michael's, I just Tracy'd walk in the humidor with me and he'd be like, What are you feeling like today? Um, and I would just kind of tell him how I was feeling that day, yeah, and he'd pick me a cigar and it was always perfect, you know.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, the knowledge both those guys carry is substantial.

SPEAKER_07

Substantial. I mean, Jason's like an encyclopedia. Yes, he is.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, love that. So, to ask you a question, I'm gonna jump ahead one question and all you can come back. But y'all are talking about this second chapter, and then back in 2016, you started talking about Burleson might be ready for a cigar shop. What was that aha moment when you two were like, All right, we're doing this?

SPEAKER_07

What was it for you? I don't know if we'd remember actually talked about because I had I had started working on it first because Nathan lived in Cincinnati and he'd taken a job up there, and I had already started working on it when I moved back, and it was mostly because, like I said, I'm from here, and while it's a lot bigger now, it wasn't big when I was growing up, and so I know a lot of people that work in the city hall, and I know a lot of people on council and own businesses around town, and as I was back here working with my family's business, I kept running into them around town, and they all they all knew I was into cigars, and uh some of them knew that I'd almost opened a shop right before the recession hit, and then we didn't, um, and they started asking about it, and so I was like, Do you think there's interest down here? And everyone was like, Absolutely, 100%. And so I started doing kind of informal market research and just kind of asking all the people I knew and asking a lot of the people in the industry I knew, reps and and you know, sales managers, and I'd gotten to a point I was good friends with a lot of those guys too, and everyone was like, It's a black hole, there's no shop close to it. Um, the closest shops are good karma and um underground, both great shops, but they're 20 minutes into town, yeah. And uh the more people I talked to here, the more they said, Yeah, we would love something like that. And so we had a my aha moment. Uh my dad and I set a meeting with people at City Hall just to make sure we were gonna be clear with any laws or anything like that. And once they looked at me and said, Yeah, you're good to go wherever you want to do. We don't have any laws against this yet. And uh yet, no, literally, so because Burlson's funny, okay, small aside, and always tell me shut up, I have ADHD. Burleson, Fort Worth are uh border each other. Burleson's halfway in Terrant County, halfway in Johnson County. So basically, if Fort Worth passes a law, Burleson usually passes the same law, so it just makes it everything easier because our borders are wind you know windy and windy. But when Fort Worth passed their law that banned smoking at most bars and restaurants and all that stuff, like probably 15 years ago now, Burlson just kind of forgot to pass it. And because a lot of the restaurants here voluntarily went non smoking. Yeah, trust me, I'm aware since my dad's a smoker. Yeah, and all of a sudden he's like, I can't smoke with Sammy's anymore. Um, Sammy's, yeah, Sammy's Italian. Some of my good friends, yeah. No, our son is very good friends with one of their kids, and yeah, yeah, yeah, man. I've been going there since I was a teenager. Um, so they've just never gotten around to actually passing the non-smoking law, and so we got in under the wire. We can even serve food here, and we do. Yeah, I've ordered it, so yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05

That's great. So I'd love to know what surprised you guys the most in the beginning. So, not necessarily the like romantic idea of opening a lounge, but like the real thing. What was the most surprising?

SPEAKER_09

I mean, there is there's definitely a lot more to it than I I thought. Um, I mean, it's it's uh yeah, just keeping up with everything. I mean, inventory, and I mean, because my background was in the church world, so this is a whole new ball game for me. Um, but yeah, just trying to keep up with everything. I mean, inventory and staff, and you know, it's a lot of people think you're oh, you're just sitting around smoking cigars all day. You don't have much to do. I don't actually smoke much when I'm working, I'm running around doing a lot of stuff, just go, go, go all the time.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, Nathan's exactly right. Um, inventory management, first of all, because as you know, there's in order to make a shipment work for you with shipping costs and all that, it needs to be a certain size to really make it make sense. And yet sometimes you you've got a brand where three lines are doing great, and the other seven or eight are not, yeah. But in order to refill those three, I really need to order a thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollars worth of stuff, and just trying to balance that. And then the other thing that happened for us is because I was coming from Michael's, which I now understand to be pretty unique in how many true aficionados hung out there and really sophisticated palettes, and that a lot of the people in Burleson, and nothing wrong with this, but they had always been a lot more casual about it because they didn't have a spot, and if they went somewhere, they usually went to Silverleaf and Fort Worth, um, which it has a more casual vibe as far as being hardcore into cigars, it's kind of more of a bar that has cigars, right? And so we didn't have a very educated populace down here. They were down for coming in and having cigars, but they didn't know a lot about them, and so we had really loaded the humidor with brands that are beloved by the connoisseur crowd, but kind of felt flat with our people. Lots of boutique stuff, yeah. We had a lot of boutique stuff, and then we had people coming in asking for all the big brands, and we didn't have a lot of that. Some of those accounts are hard to get, you know, and so we're trying to figure out like between not upsetting the brands but ordering some stuff from wholesale, and then you know, so that first year, the reshuffling of the humidor was yeah, one, it took a lot more money than we thought would because we had to get as soon as one slow-moving brand would move out, we'd have to bring in something else to try to see if will you guys like this? And so the inventory cost was much higher than anticipated. There was a lot of reshuffling, a lot of moving around, a lot of brands out, brands in. Yeah, that humidor. Before we kind of figured out our our area's palette.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah, the humidor is completely different from what uh it was when we started, completely different.

SPEAKER_06

No, and I love that because kind of my follow-up question, one that I think I have in the notes a little bit later, will kind of tie into this, but because we're talking about it, you know, as you've reshuffled the humidor, what works, what moves, what keeps the lights on today?

SPEAKER_09

Well, what moves honestly the most is a lot of the infused stuff.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, which well, and then brand wise, Drew State.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah, Drew State is by far a number.

SPEAKER_07

They're 3X over number two, which is Perdomo. I mean, brands like Oliva are up there, McAuliffe's up there, Rojas is up there, Placencia's up there, Oscar Baladeris does very well here. Uh, and then now we have a sponsorship deal with Luciano cigars, and so we're selling a lot more Lucianos now, which makes me very happy. Yes, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_06

And I think it's one of those things that you have to kind of manage what keeps the lights on versus what in your brain deserves a spot on the shelf. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_09

I mean, if I had my way, that humor would look a lot different.

SPEAKER_07

Well, and it's more a case of yeah, it's you know, it's the old 80-20 rule, right? Like 20% of your stuff is 80% of sales. Um, and yeah, Nathan mentioned infused and flavored, and that's the thing a lot of shops don't talk about because it moves well everywhere. Yeah, um, and I don't fo-poo it because it can be a really great entry point for people, and that's perfectly fine. Um I agree with Nathan. Uh, if it were up to me, there'd be a few different brands up in there, but um I also understand that you know everything that's in there, I feel confident standing behind. And we and we have this is a good product, even when it's you know, flavored, infused, things like we have made sure to bring in the ones that we believe in that we think are well made, are good quality. And so even if it's a brand I don't smoke much, I I know it's well done, I know it's well made, and it's just not for my palate, but I'm happy to carry it right.

SPEAKER_05

So do you find that you know when you open a lounge in a community that has not had a lounge or is unfamiliar with it? Like you said, they were not as knowledgeable in lounges because they didn't have one here. Now that you guys have been here for some time, do you see that as you've educated them, built the cigar community here, has their palettes remained pretty similar, or have they kind of evolved to where they just there's definitely been evolution, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_09

You know, and we've built more trust with people, so like we can tell them, okay, I know you smoke this all the time. Yeah, but I think you'd really like this too. And so they've started to branch out a lot more, and great. That's exactly a lot of the fun as a tobacconist.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, when we first opened, that relationship was not yet there, yeah. And so if it was not a brand that they recognized, and again, a lot more casual smokers, right? And so they're walking in asking for Fuente and Padron and Monte Cristo and Romeo and Julieta, and and we didn't have a lot of that stuff at the beginning, and but we would turn around and we would pull out uh a Tatawahe or a Crux or a you know whatever else and say, but this is really good, and this is gonna be right in that range of what you're asking for. This is a very good smoke. They didn't know us from Adam, they'd never heard of that. The automatic assumption is that must be some off-brand, yeah, something you're just trying to get rid of. And now that it's been almost five years, they trust us, exactly like Nathan said, they trust us. So when we bring something in, they say, Okay, I gotta try this.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

So when customers walk in and see a humidor, they see what's on the shelf. When you guys are seeing a thousand little decisions, right? I mean, there's a whole lot going on to get people in the door, and there's a whole lot of decisions to what sits on that shelf because every square inch of that humidor is valuable real estate. Absolutely. Right.

SPEAKER_09

I always say all the time, if it's not moving, it's costing us more money. You know, like we gotta we gotta change things up.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, so we have a certain amount of rent, every square foot in there costs a certain amount of money, yeah. And so if it's not turning, it's got to get off the shelf, even if it's a you know, kill your darlings moment of you know, yeah, when Tatawahe, you know, when we finally got that account, I was thrilled and I couldn't give it away. Yep, yeah. I think you're about the only one smoking it. I smoked most of them.

SPEAKER_06

Well, the reality is, and this is again not really a sort of notes, Mel, but you know, y'all you can see what part of the lounge behind us here in the podcast, every one of those chairs, every square foot there, every bit of chilled or warmed air, cleaned air is expense. And what's paying for that is your walking humidor in your bar.

SPEAKER_08

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_07

You know, so exactly it's not like we're renting a chair for a couple of hours. Yeah, no, it's uh in fact, I'm sure you know this of the people who come in and try to spend as minimally as possible and then take a chair all day. Coffee shops have this too of like, I mean, I need to be turning a certain amount here.

SPEAKER_06

Yep, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I've come in several times on a Saturday morning and worked to get some things done, and I'll come in and I'll buy three or four cigars, and then I'll intentionally like, hey, I need a sparkling water, a coffee, a Coke Zero. Like, I I won't get anywhere near drinking all of it. Yeah, but you bought cigars, yeah.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, but I'm I'm also taking up space, and so I'm trying, you know, you're yeah, and the way you're the way we tell people because we don't have the policy of cut charges and no outside cigars, we don't do that. The only thing we ask is one way or another, contribute. Yeah, so if you bring your own cigars, it's fine. Buy buy a couple drinks, yeah, and it's fine.

SPEAKER_06

Absolutely. Mel loves y'all's espresso martini. I think that's it too. It's great, yeah.

SPEAKER_07

And our bar staff are brilliant, they develop cocktails all the time, and every time they bring me one to try, and I think this is finally gonna be the one that I'm just like, eh. Every time I'm like, oh my god, yeah, oh man, I want 10 of them. Yeah, and I don't drink much.

SPEAKER_05

Do you guys do you ever disagree on what should be taking shelf space in your humidor?

SPEAKER_07

I don't think it's I joke a lot that Nathan and I are like mind-melded at this point. We've been friends, we've been friends for so long. We're we're as close as we are because we're a lot alike, and so like I said, I I have a day job, so I'll come take lunch breaks here a couple three days a week, and then I'll be here some evenings and on the weekends. But I'll be thinking about something while I'm working, and I'll show up here and I'll be like, Nathan, I was thinking about this. He's like, Oh, I just did it. Yeah, I was like, right here with mine value.

SPEAKER_06

That's awesome. So, um, what's the difference in y'all's mind between a cigar that sells and a cigar that belongs?

SPEAKER_07

Or is there a difference? Cigar that sells and a cigar that belongs. Yeah, like you know, is there I get what you're saying, yeah. Yeah, is is there a brand or something that you feel like hey, it doesn't move quickly, but it belongs I feel our responsibility as owning a shop with a walk-in humidor, is there's an element of I need to provide what the customer wants, but there's also an element of I need to curate a good humidor, regardless. And so back to that 80-20 rule. As long as my top seven or eight brands, which is what about 80% of our sales are, are maintaining their clip. That other 20, the other 20-30 brands we have, as far as I'm concerned, we get to take risks with that, absolutely, and and say this needs to be in the human, or I don't care if you don't smoke it.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah, I mean, there's some things over the years that we have liked ourselves a lot, and we want to invest in it and try to get our people on to it. Yeah, and you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but yeah, we give it a shot, yeah.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, but then some yeah, some things we keep in there because of the relationships we have, yeah, or because uh we just really like the brand. And as long as they make it easy for us to do it in a way that works for our shop, that's fine. The brands that have not stayed that I think should probably be in here usually had some sort of rule about how much you have to buy or how many facings you have to have. And it's like I've got four of your lines that I can do great. Four facings will do great, but if you're gonna make me have 20 in here, I just can't do it.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, absolutely. If you were in downtown Houston, downtown Fort Worth, right?

SPEAKER_07

Different story, different story, absolutely. Yeah, they they in fact that that was probably the biggest surprise for me. Uh, going back a couple questions, besides the inventory, was every shop I'd ever been a part of was popular and packed and had dedicated communities. Because one of the other shops I'm very closely tied to through friendship and and time spent is Industrial Cigars in Frisco. Yeah, absolutely fantastic shop. The Frakes family are amazing people, and their people are down for anything, they're there all the time, it's packed out, they'll have Halloween costume parties, and everyone's there in elaborate costumes. We'll have a Halloween costume party and we get like five or six people. It's just after it's been trying to get people to buy in to like make this your home, whereas the thing we still deal with sometimes is Burleson, it's a fast-growing suburb of the of the fastest growing big city in the country, Fort Worth. And uh so there's a lot of new businesses popping up all the time. And in the five years we've been open now, there have probably been six or seven other bars open, and the people of Burleson like to bounce around. I and I get it, but they like to bounce around, and so trying to figure out ways to get them to plant more roots here has been one of the big challenges.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_07

I can see that.

SPEAKER_05

Has there been a brand at all that has surprised you either positively or negatively or anything?

SPEAKER_07

I would lean towards like look what's a positive story. Roha. Roha. Roha. I well, I hadn't heard of you before. Okay, it doesn't surprise me much since they're kind of Metroplex based and they're more well known in the Metroplex, but but they've done great here. Um as far as a positive surprise, going back to when we opened, and not that I didn't think they had great cigars, I love their cigars. Uh, and because we had good relationships with them, and especially the rep at the time, Oscar Valadaris is consistently a top five brand for us. Um, and and I think they're probably about to grow even more with us because their new national sales manager, uh Tom Chavers, who came over from being the Placentia rep for this area, this is his home shop.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_07

Um Plasencia is another one where from day one I've I've mentioned a couple times Burleson's growing a lot, and a lot of that growth is at the upper end of middle class. A lot of the new houses being built are half a million and up, right? And yet a lot of the more premium brands we tried to bring in along the way fizzled very quickly. Placentia, top five brands since day one. They've always moved always now. Part of that I think is because Tom Chabor's really dedicated a lot of time and effort here because it's his own shop, and but also like we couldn't make anything else premium work, but Placentia does great, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

And stories in Luftkin, the shop that Mel and I are owners of, we've seen Placentia do really, really well along that process. And I think it's because they're in that almost luxury price category and that 17 to 28, depending on what you're selling, and you know, kind of their LEs that they come out with, but it's consistent, absolutely, of course, and you're not getting into some of the luxury that is 32 that every fifth or sixth one you're struggling with, right? Which you see with some of the other luxury ones out there.

SPEAKER_09

Do not see that with Placentia, yeah.

SPEAKER_07

No, they're very consistent, extremely consistent, and they've always had the reserve align line that is a really good entry into that brand. Because this is why I tell brands when they're they keep coming out with these 20 to 30 cigars. I say, if you don't have a mid-range entry-level cigar, my customers will probably never end up working their way up to the$25. Whereas Placencia, we could get them on a reserva, which is very accessible, and next thing you know, they are buying almas different.

SPEAKER_08

So yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_07

I mean a slightly cynical marketing level, Plasencia's marketing in branding, it's great, it pops, it just jumps off the shelf at you, and I keep stressing that. Uh-huh. I know it's not the fun side of it, but the brands that kind of jump off to the more not novice smokers, but just more casual smokers, they're gonna get their eyes are gonna be drawn more to it, you know. A Texas brand that we have tried and tried to get going, uh, we just can't. And I've always admired that they have very minimal branding. I won't mention I'm sure everyone knows who I'm talking about. Uh, because I love them and I think they're great, but it's very minimal branding, and the customers who don't know don't know.

SPEAKER_06

So I'm gonna say two quick things. One is I know exactly what you're talking about, we struggle with the same thing. Uh, secondly, um, I'm gonna make a comment. I have a question for you guys. I'd love to hear from Nathan and Chris, you both, and then we're gonna go to break. But with Placentia, we were developing the elevated humidor um several years ago. We're in South Carolina at the Social Cigar Lounge. They've been open for five weeks when we're there. Um, and we're setting their time to the owner of the general manager, and he recommended um El De Campo uh Placentia. I enjoyed that cigar thoroughly while I'm working. Um, go home the next day. I find myself I was teaching at a conference and found that I have a 45-minute window, and then my next meeting cancels. I'm like, okay, I got actually about two and a half hours. I'm gonna run back, I'm gonna go back to the social. I told Mel, hey, drive over there, I'm gonna Uber and meet you. We're gonna have a cigar. So I get there, I cannot remember for the life of me the name of the cigar, but I described it this grayish, green, ugly band. He's like, Oh, you smoked the Il Campo because it was a different tobacconist than when we were there the day before. And so when we developed Elevated Cumidor, our initial brand launch was a color series. Um, because of that experience, um not a single shop picked us up because we were too simple. Um, so we completely rebranded, and we're actually about to rebrand um again because we're now five years in, um, and we've been getting better. We have new boxes, and now we're gonna make the bands match the quality of our box. Um, but we switched away from that color series. Um, and now you have McAuliffe with the color series, so I mentioned that. Yeah, you have West Tampa with the color series. Yeah, um, we were just ahead of our time in a nobody. You know, they made those changes and they were somebody.

SPEAKER_07

Well, and so when Crux rebranded, which was I think handled by Brandon Frakes, uh, they did to where each line was kind of defined by its own color. And like McAuliffe was doing well with us already, obviously. Al is local to Fort Worth, and yeah, he was a member here, and so and Dan and Bob hang out here all the time, basically almost every Saturday. But when they started that color line, it just went to another level. It makes it so easy for people to discern the differences without having to think too hard about it.

SPEAKER_06

So our new rebrand is a nicer, more elevated brand. Um, even ours, like the Sumatra we're smoking tonight, will be the same shape and design, but with these elements built in. But every cigar will go back to that initial color series, but an elevated brand was still having a name.

SPEAKER_08

Very smart.

SPEAKER_06

Um, and it matches the new boxes we have, which are very colorful with um inserts that tell you what the blend is, what the inserts and that's built into each of our.

SPEAKER_07

They don't really have the background, and we're very lucky. Lucky to have guys like Jason, Dakota, and Dave, and and so we're very happy. But uh man, the more brands can help us out like that, the better it is. Well, it got to the point that I was making shelf talkers.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah, we were making having like Nathan's got the graphic design background. Yeah, so like because I'm like, well, you got what we got over 550 different facings a month. Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09

Where's that one made? 550.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, like 554 facings. Yeah. And uh, so man, if they would all just make that flip on the code.

SPEAKER_06

So ours is an insert and a cigar set on top of it. So you can see right there. Exactly. And it's got it matches the band. So every insert. So this was all truly a queue up, a setup, if you want to call that, uh, to this question that I was trying to talk Mel into asking, but she said I should. So uh when someone walks into the humidor and says, I want something good, what does that mean to you and how do you guide them?

SPEAKER_09

I mean, usually it's okay, like, you know, what have you smoked before? Are you full-bodied, medium-bodied, light-bodied, you know? And then usually that's a gauge right there. Um, and I've got a couple of go-to's if they're if they don't smoke too often. Um, but yeah, it's just talking with them for a little while. And it that goes back to like with Tracy, like, you know, what kind of day did you have? Like, you just start talking to them and figuring out what they like, and I ask them about like what they like to drink with a cigar, you know, all that helps find.

SPEAKER_07

I have three questions I can ask them that can narrow me down to five or six options. Perfect. And within there, because I usually ask you, do you want something that's a little bit more earthy and natural, or something that maybe has a little natural sweetness to it? And then within there, it's like, well, do you want something a little bit more lighter body, medium body, full body? That narrows us down further, and then from there, depending on what's left, there's a couple other like okay, so we're getting a little more full body. Do you want it to be earthy or peppery? You know, and I I have because I'm not great at holding all that information in my head, and I don't have the world's greatest palette, and so I had to develop kind of my little script to help because it is important, because if you recommend one and they don't like it, it can be the end. Yeah, and so it's actually there's pressure there to try and get it right. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, so that is awesome feedback. We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we've got more to come.

SPEAKER_10

We fell in love with cigars not because of the flavors or smoking experience or perceived steps, but because it allows barriers to fall between other humans and build deeper connections. For that reason, we've been super intentional to curate a space where people can find community and enjoyment with others, and cigars just happen to be the way we're doing it. For that reason, we are thrilled to be the one and only cigar retail store and lounge in downtown Lovkin. A good story is one of the most powerful tools used to connect with another human. Sharing stories fades out differences and highlights similarities found in the details, or with the storyteller. Over the years, we have seen some of the best stories told over cigars and thus, new friendships are made, passions shared, encouragement given, and so much more. The impact storytelling has on the human connection is why we've decided to name our store and lounge stories. Because behind every good cigar and conversation is an even better story.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, as always, thank you to our sponsors. Um, let's go ahead and take a look at upcoming shows.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, just real quick, um, next week, March 30th, is consumer discussion, um, where we have one of you rebels on with us, and we're gonna be smoking the pumpkin by the elevated humidor.

SPEAKER_04

Yes, we did this one about a month ago. It was awesome, so we're excited to do that one again.

SPEAKER_05

April 6th, we're gonna be doing develop your palette number two, and we will be smoking the Rocky Patel 30th anniversary.

SPEAKER_06

Um, right after that is gonna be the one year of Cigar Rebel, our one-year anniversary, and so we're gonna be smoking the Cigar Rebel Winter Blend. Um, we have that cigar coming back out soon, and so we're gonna be smoking that. And this is really gonna be talking about a hobby, a passion, and a craft. We're excited to celebrate one year with all you rebels.

SPEAKER_05

Yes, and April 20th, we are doing a show on the PCA trade show. So, with that, we'll be smoking the Bighorn by Big Sky. Yep, lots of great episodes coming your way. Before we jump back into uh our topic today, now everybody's gotten into probably at least halfway of the cigar. How's everybody feeling about it? Any notes you're picking up?

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, uh it's uh it was very punchy at the beginning, and it's really kind of mellowed as I've gone, and it's just so smooth. It's smoking so smooth. The construction's excellent on this. I mean the draw is perfect. I love it. Stayed woodsy, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, so this is one of the three cigars that we blend um in our kind of regular line out of Tabacalera Sanchez outside um Innestali. So um Marlon Sanchez worked with Romacrat for a long time. Yes, and so him and I do some blending together and work on imports, and so this is one of those cigars we get from there. So yeah, I'm picking up a savoriness. Um, I hate when people get into really detailed notes sometimes because I feel like but there's a savoriness to me that kind of reminds me a little bit of like a seared bell pepperish. I wouldn't say it's tastes bell pepperish, it's just that savoriness that you get from almost like the leftovers after you've dumped them, you know, kind of deal. And so, but definitely picking up that, and I still pick up a little bit of that what I would call rye, kind of like you get off a rye whiskey. It's just punchy, yeah. See, it's like like I was just saying, I I don't have the greatest palate, but nor do I.

SPEAKER_07

As soon as other people point something down, I'm like, oh yeah, I do taste that. It's a power suggestion sometimes, but I mean a little bit, and this is where I mean, a little bit of the review culture and the I'm tasting you know burnt shoe leather leather from 1937. I sometimes take issue because it can create a barrier, I think sometimes for people they get intimidated when they don't taste that immediately, and so that's one of the other things I do when new custom newer or casuals come in, is I say, Look, in America, everything we eat and drink is full of sugar and salt, your palate is atrophied. Uh, as you get into it, you will start to taste more. But if you like the initial taste, just overall in a holistic way, stick with it. And eventually you're gonna light one up one day and you're gonna be like, honey nut Cheerios?

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, it's almost memory connection, right? Yeah, like um, and I know there's some out there we're good friends with some of these guys that'll talk about it's the bubblegum scraped off the back of a wrapper that I left in my car for a year, then tasted. And I'm like, one, why are you tasting the bubblegum wrapper a year later? Uh, but two, what good memory does that connect to?

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, yeah, it's uh some of the review culture is gets a little hoity, you know.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, so we really like to review around your five, you know, kind of big things you can taste: salt, sweet, um, savory, bitter, sour, those kind of things. How are we? I think woodiness is natural, I think spice or pepper is natural.

SPEAKER_07

Pepper, yeah. Um, yeah, it can get interesting. Even the leathery notes, like and this is I always tell people because I do love a good earthy cigar, and when you're first kind of talking to them about something tasting earthy or woody, and you're like, I don't know how to explain this, but some dirt tastes good, yeah. So, like, for instance, if you're a fan of Isla sconches, well, the big flavor component there is peat, which is a type of like decomposing like organic matter, yeah. So it's essentially like dirt, yeah, but it tastes good.

SPEAKER_06

Either you love it or you don't, and I'm not gonna grab a handful of it and eat it, yeah.

SPEAKER_07

But like if I'm smoking a cigar and it tastes, I mean, if you've been to Nicaragua, for instance, it's all volcanic, and the soil is dark black, and it's it's just there's something to it that it tastes good. I don't know, there's a lot of mineral content, it's just like there isn't water, like and the minerals have tastes.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I mean that's that's great, honest feedback that we love getting, and we talk about it a lot on our podcast, so it's awesome when we are having conversations with other people who have lounges who have that experience saying the same thing. Um, so going back a little bit to our topic and the topic of lounges, what would you guys say has been the hardest part of owning a cigar lounge and managing those day-to-day operations?

SPEAKER_09

Um I would just say like inconsistency in like you know, have a great couple of weeks and it's just really slow, and you're always kind of riding that wave and it's up and down, and trying to figure out okay, you know, how do we balance this out a little bit more? That's been the biggest thing for me.

SPEAKER_07

I completely agree. And going back to what we talked about earlier with the crowd in Burleson being a little bit more eclectic, and they they hit a lot of different spots, and you know, the the amount of effort it takes on our part to try and figure out things that are going to connect, um, you know, and then of course, um everyone is a critic and everyone knows how you if you would just do this, yeah. And I eventually just got to a point where I'm like, dude, if you can name it, we've tried it. Um, because it's about establishing that foundation of regulars, right? Yeah, and while we do have a good foundation of regulars, it's a pretty still fairly small foundation, and our casuals and and grab and goes and all that is still enough to make things go, but like you know, this is a big building, yeah. Uh it's bigger than we had originally planned on taking. We were originally going to build our own over on the east side of Burleson, um, and then we were having issues with that site, and this came available, and it was technically two lease spots, but we knew the pitfalls of having a neighbor. Um, because again, we come from Michael's Eulis, who once again just went through a period where for three days they couldn't smoke in there because someone at the Pearl Vision, three doors down, complained. You know, so we didn't want to have neighbors, we wanted a freestanding building, but yeah, this is a 4,900 square foot building, so we're in the members' lounge right now. Um, and you know, it's Sunday, so there's not a lot of people. There were people hanging out. I think they all left because they didn't want to be in the background, yeah. But even a lot of our members sit up front a lot because it is a huge space, and so it requires a lot of turning of the traffic, and then of course, you know, the march on scars is um not a huge, yeah, and we have struggled with the bar traffic. Um, we thought, you know, as you know, the single biggest investment in building this place out was the HVAC infiltration system. We have 10 smoke eaters spread out throughout the whole place, we have them specifically designed to rotate so that they're most efficient. We have way overkill on how much AC we can push through in the perfect setup. We are recycling the air every five minutes in here, and we thought that would be good, and yet some people they'll say, We love your drinks, but I just don't want to be around that. So that's been a struggle, and more surprising because I will go to other shops, and people don't seem to care or complain, and they don't filter nearly as well as we do.

SPEAKER_06

There's a place in Kingwood-ish, umble area, and I'm just saying that generalized area. There's a couple of shops there because I want to point out a negative, but um, like it's almost like can I get a coal miner's hat to see my way from the front door to the humidor? And you know, but they're packed every time I go in, every time, and no one cares, yeah. You know, and it's like I own a cigar shop, we own a brand in a factory, and I'm like, oh, could it be a little cleaner in here?

SPEAKER_07

I mean, so you know, one of the things we get a lot is the joke, I'm sure you've heard it, of yeah, when I go home, I have to strip down in the garage before I can go inside. I'm like, I live in a cigar shop, and my laundry hamper is in my closet in my bedroom, and all my smoky clothes are in that. My I do laundry once a week, and my room does not smell like smoke.

SPEAKER_06

Yep, same here.

SPEAKER_07

That that smell does not carry. It is on your clothes, yeah. Sure, it's on your clothes a little, but once you put them in the hamper, you're good. Yeah, it's not gonna carry. I agree. I sleep in that room every night, it's fine.

SPEAKER_05

So, uh, what has been in one of the best parts of all that and just that community aspect.

SPEAKER_09

I mean, I we've made a lot of good friends. Um, like he said, we've got a small, very loyal base, and like we become really close with all of them. We just did somebody's 50th birthday party up here last weekend that's in that group. Um, just making those connections um and having those relationships with people.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, and leaving Michaels for me was really scary because I had a community of people I love there and who are very good friends. That first person, that CEO who talked to me about the first day, like when he passed, you know, I lost super Dave Osborne. Um, he was the greatest, and I was afraid, you know, like are we going to find that in Burleson? Because the last thing I wanted was to not like my customers, yeah. And I feel like we've been very lucky because, like Nathan said, we have developed uh this loyal base. You know, we'd like more, of course, but that they we celebrate holidays together, we go out together, we you know, socialize together, life together, yeah. Yeah, we we hang out outside of here, like they're becoming family, just like any other place.

SPEAKER_06

What I love about that, and I was about to say they're your customers, but there's a group of them that are your family. Absolutely. So uh we had you mentioned Underground earlier, they just did their big annual event this weekend. Mel and I were very honored to be the cigar of the night on Friday. Oh, that's great. And so we had several of um our lounge members come up, and I mentioned earlier we just bought a house here recently um as kind of a second base, and they stayed at our house. You know, that's something you don't normally do with customers, right?

SPEAKER_07

Exactly, for sure. But but yeah, you're right. Eventually they become something more than customers. Like one of my things is our customers will just start cleaning. Yeah, like at the end of the night, and we're cleaning, they'll just start cleaning. Yeah, and I'll be like, Brian, don't do that. Well, while I'm here, it's fine.

SPEAKER_05

We have a Brian that does the same thing.

SPEAKER_06

Wrapping up our anniversary party or our cigar fest, when they do that, it's never expected, but when it goes eight times faster because they do, you're so thankful. And it's never out of them feeling guilt, it's out of them honoring. Yeah, no, you're honoring you. And that's fun.

SPEAKER_07

When we did it, we would always help there. But like that's like I mentioned one of our customers, Brian, and uh he hasn't said this to me, but what they what he's told them is he's like, he's like, This place is so important to me, you know.

SPEAKER_06

So we have just two more questions before we wrap up tonight. Um I know Mel has one more she wants to ask, but I want to ask you guys is there anything that you want to say about the industry or about owning a lounge, or maybe what you hope to see change as we get further into 2026? Maybe I'm tossing a bad ball up to you, Chris. I see the smile.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, I I could upset some people. I've had plenty of criticism of the industry lately. So, Nathan, do you have anything you want to say?

SPEAKER_09

I mean, uh, one of the things that I'm kind of trying to work on or starting to work on in this area is we've talked a lot about community, building more community with other local shops, especially there's a lot of um younger owners now for a lot of the shops around here, and like let's get together, let's partner on things, see how we can help each other out and help the cigar community as a whole. Right, and like I'm wanting to start to do like some industry nights and like do like owners' round tables and some things.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, we both start visiting more shops because early on, the one of the great things is a lot of shop owners from the other shops in town would come visit us to kind of like and one of the things I have loved is it's not competitive, it is a community, we're friends with everyone, you know, we're friends with the guys at Good Karma, we're friends with Don at Underground, you know. Yeah, and you know, he sends people our way, we send people his way. Um, so that's been really great. Um, I agree with that part.

SPEAKER_06

So something I've wanted to see happen, and I'll take this as a plug, I didn't think we're going there, but um, I really would like to form or find a group of people that's interested at least in meeting around a Texas Cigar Association. Yes, yeah. How how do we look at um promoting each other? How do we look at as laws come up, we can have insights.

SPEAKER_07

I know there's been attempts, and I know there's a couple things out there, but yes, having something that's a little bit more active and alive, uh, that the shop owners take ownership of because I mean, going to if we can switch to a little bit of my answer on that, what I'd like to see is uh there's too many premium stuff, too many premium sticks coming out. Uh, I think some of the brands maybe it's from watching influencers or whatever. There's there's been some public fights on social media lately, but remembering that this is primarily a middle class thing, yeah. And we do have a very nice shop here, but Gurliston's still a middle class town, and they want a cigar between$10 and$12. And we don't have enough of them right now. Yep, yeah, and that's a problem. Like I said earlier with the Placentia, they always had reserva. Um, we were one of the first Casa 1910 accounts in the country, and they have finally come out with an entry-level, more middle-of-the-range price cigar that is helping them build finally, because the first cigars were$16 for a Robusto. And when I have mostly customers who are not hardcore, who are not like living and dying by it, they are making budget decisions in addition to flavored decisions. And since we opened in 2021, the average price of the sticks gone up about three dollars.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, so for the elevated humidor, our price point is nine to twelve fifty. Um, only a couple of ours are in that higher range, they're most hitting around that 1040 to 1110. Um, and the primary reason for that is we want to be in that realm where we're probably never gonna be somebody's favorite cigar. Um, or maybe let me rephrase that. I'm okay if we're not somebody's favorite cigar, right? But I want to be in their regular rotation because the value is there, meaning the price compared to the flavor, the profile they're enjoying. Um, because I think all the pressures of economic pressures in their personal and all their other financial decisions, the tariff pressure on the cigar industry, yeah, that we have to find a way to reach an audience that's buying a luxury item, not a needed item.

SPEAKER_07

Exactly. They don't have to spend this money. So in times, especially like now, where the economy has been a little tighter for people and the tariffs, and then we still got annual price increases again. Um, eventually you're gonna price them out. And I I I keep telling the people who come here from the industry the the story between 2023 and 2024, we made three thousand dollars more in sales in 2024 than 2023. Our overall sales of cigars went up by about 3,000 for the year. Our total number of cigars sold went down by more than a thousand. And where that was and where that was reflected. Was in our bar. Our bar went down 10,000 a month between 2023 and 2024. Just because that group of people you priced out right there with the annual 10% price increase now, they stopped coming in and buying drinks. So yeah, I made more money on cigars technically, but I sold less cigars and my bar got hurt, which does have a good profit margin and really should be supporting us.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. So I'll say one last thing, and we'll get to Mel's last question. But we have a limited release coming out. It was our biggest limited release last year. And the only reason we started doing those was because people were asking, hey, could y'all do some limited stuff? Can you do this? We came out, it's called Duality. Um, last year it sold out in nine minutes. Um and so it did really well. So we're bringing it in two sizes this year, but it's gonna land retail at 925 or 975, which in the LE world you're not seeing. You're seeing LEs landing at 15 to 20. They're all coming in higher now. Ours is, and again, this isn't a plug uh for wild, but it's for as the shops we partner with are about 20 around the country. That we want to make sure they have something they can push as an LE to that value buyer. Maybe normally buying somebody might be buying a bundle cigar to get a four-dollar cigar every month. They may buy a nine dollar le, but they're never gonna buy a 15.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, exactly. So, what you were saying is you're you're okay not being someone's favorite cigar. Like, that's the thing. If you want people to become regular cigar smokers, you need what we used to call way back in the day the two buck chucks. Yep, you need entry-level bundle stuff that's decent and a decent price, and then you need some good stuff in the mid-range, and then it's fine to have an LE, there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, and people love having LEs around for special occasions and things like that, but like you still need there's kind of a three-tier selling system if you want to not just sell all your cigars, because I think sometimes the companies they're selling all of those, and so they think they must be doing well, yeah, but they're selling them to a smaller and smaller group of people that are have more and more money, whereas a bunch of our middle class people are kind of getting left behind and having to give it up simply because they're getting priced out.

SPEAKER_06

So and that's our future, those and that's yeah, those wealthier people are going to die off if they don't build, and I know that sounds a horrible thing, but it's true, true.

SPEAKER_07

And this is being talked about uh across way more than cigars right now, is that we are living in a time of more wealth inequality than we've had in a very long time, and a lot of that wealth is concentrated in older people, yeah. And so, what's going to happen when the people who are propping up you know, businesses like this, because that is the old joke, right? Most cigar shops are a bunch of old dudes hanging out, but they're the guys who have the money to come have this kind of leisurely activity. Absolutely. So, like we're developing a cigar too right now with Luciano, and the price point's gonna be right there around$12, I think. Which for Luciano would be a very good price point because they definitely get up there, but then they also have things like the underrated, which is perfect for you know good entry level. Absolutely, smoke a lot of that. He knows how to do it, he's got it perfectly spaced across the spectrum so that you can get people in with the Tiagos and with the underrated, and then you can build them up to the Maria Lucia's and the Fiat Lux, and you know going like uh we were talking earlier about brands that surprised us.

SPEAKER_09

Well, that's part of the reason why Rojas surprised me. It's because of all that unbanded stuff that they have. That is a great, great price point. It's fantastic. I brought it in. I'm like, okay, I'm looking for something like this, I'm gonna give it a chance. I can't keep it on the shelf, doesn't matter how much I work for people. It's a lot just like that, and they're really good cigars, and the price is great.

SPEAKER_07

Because our the everyday smoke, they want it to be something inexpensive.

SPEAKER_06

That's how you give them selling every day. Our biggest selling cigar on our line is the house blend Maduro Corona. Yeah, it's an unbanded 6x47 that sells retail at$6.99. Yeah, and we sell thousands of them a month across the country.

SPEAKER_07

Our number one stick that is not flavor infused is the Berdomo Fresco. Yeah, still, yep, because at that price point, that is a fantastic thing for the buck. It is a very good cigar, and even as much as it's gone up like everything else, it's still only like six, five, six bucks.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, well, why don't you ask our last question? I know you guys are busy and we're a little over on time, and want to honor you guys as well as all you rebels out there watching.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, so the final question is what has been your favorite memory? You can choose one, um, just from opening the lounge and the whole journey.

SPEAKER_09

Oh my gosh. Well, I wasn't here the first six months that we were open. I was still up in Ohio. Actually, our opening night, I was sick with COVID. Yes, I wanted to be here. So you he was supposed to come down and be here, but then he got COVID. I was literally pulling up the cameras and watching on my phone, like, oh my gosh. But like, so about yeah, about six months in is when I moved back. And I I remember I was up here on a Saturday night, and I had parked right on the side of the building, I was getting ready to leave, and I just was looking in through the window sitting there in my truck, and it's packed, and just people having fun, you know, like just lots of activity. Um, and it just like I was like, wow, I get to be a part of this. This is awesome, and that's just kind of stuck in my head.

SPEAKER_07

Well, I was here opening night, and it's hard to beat that. Um, it's still probably the biggest day we've ever had, and we thought we were just about to be kings after the evening because it was a massive day. There we had hundreds of people come through during the day. It was standing room only, it was great. Um, but I always like to pick the smaller moments, and uh there was a moment probably a couple months ago where I was up here on a Saturday night, and it was a very if we were in this room, a very organic night where me and several of the customers and a couple of my off-duty guys all just end up watching Godzilla movies all night and just talking back and forth about life. That's where I I talked to the kid who's a customer of ours, and he's like, I'm from Abilene, yeah, and I you know, so we talked about Abilene and it's those nights like that, and there's there's a thousand of them at this point, but yeah, where it's just like, man, it is like Nathan said, it's so cool that we get to do this, yeah. And all we ask is that we make enough money so we can keep doing it, you know.

SPEAKER_05

Awesome. So before we go, final thoughts on the cigar. It should mine's almost done.

SPEAKER_09

So we always like to thoroughly enjoy this thing.

SPEAKER_06

Genuine, yep, yep. So going back to it, and this is episodes all about wild, right? Uh, we try and mix in some of the stuff for our life because that's what the people who follow us want to hear about. Um, love the feedback. Um, we don't normally talk price one on a cigar, but because that's been a lot of this last conversation, uh, MSRP on this sticks 1120. Um really trying to hit that area. Um, some shops sell it just under 11, so they take a little bit of a hair off of that to compete with some of the other stuff. And so um, but really try to look at how do we connect with the consumer. But back to wild. Uh, this has been a great conversation. Y'all have been very transparent and open. Um, honestly, I could sit here for another three or four hours having conversation just because uh hearing y'all talk, I think Mel and I would agree, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but we're hearing the same things we talk about. Yeah, uh, the first night we left stories, um, because our lounge has a 24-hour access to the lounge. The first night we left and we didn't have to lock up, you know, because we'd had preview nights, but the first night we had to leave, we're like, Can we actually leave? Like, there's still people in there, you know. Uh but that funny thing was just there's been so many nights standing there in awe. And if I can get any compliment, um, social in South Carolina, in Greenville, in Wild, where Shopside smoked at recently when we started designing what we wanted stories to look like. Um, and I actually came here and took pictures. Nathan may not even remember. I said, Hey, can I take some pictures? Um, because I want to show the other guys we're doing this with a feel, and y'all hammered the feel home and maintained it over five years, which you see shops decline quickly because of the clientele. Y'all have just done an exceptional job. Um, I'm proud to get to smoke here often. Yeah, thank you. We appreciate that.

SPEAKER_07

And it's very much ducks on the pond. You know, we we try and make it look easy and natural and beneath the surface, it's a lot of hard work. But I feel like we were very lucky in growing up in great shops, yeah, like Michael's and Mike Industrial, and Mike Belief that when it was time to do our own, we had a really good idea of how we wanted it to be.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, it's the best way to do it.

SPEAKER_06

Absolutely. And that's how we want the industry to be, right?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, 100%. So well, thank you guys all for joining us. Thank you guys both for joining us today. If you liked this episode, uh please leave us a review, share with your cigar friends, and hit us up for any topics that you guys might want us to cover on future episodes.

unknown

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05

And if you're watching the replay, go ahead and drop us a comment, replay play them. And yeah, that's our show for today.

SPEAKER_06

Absolutely. See you guys. Bye.