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Skrewball to ‘ramp up’ global presence
The co-founder of Skrewball, Steven Yeng, spoke to us about his plans for a “massive global expansion” in 2025.
What started out as a “nutty idea” is preparing for “massive global expansion”, as co-founder Steven Yeng told The Spirits Business.
Yeng founded Skrewball as a self-funded business with his wife Brittany in 2018 in San Diego. By 2022, the peanut butter-flavoured whiskey brand had sold 500,000 nine-litre cases.
Following the sale of a majority share to Pernod Ricard last year for an undisclosed sum, with Yeng remaining fully involved, he says the brand is now “ramping up everything”.
He said: “When we first signed the deal, it was a difficult transition because we were switching to about 40 new distributors. Going global requires planning – our team is only about 14 people.
“With Pernod Ricard, the sky is no longer the limit for us, but we still have to make sure we’ve got everything in order and our products are ready for the globe. We’ve slowly been expanding, but for 2025, we’re looking for a massive global expansion.
“We have 14 people in our team and none of us have experience. Imagine that. Previously, it was like the blind leading the blind, but now, with Pernod leading us, we’re excited to be taken to a whole new level.”
Yeng said he chose Pernod because – as well as being the world’s second-biggest spirits company – he believes “they’re simply the best in the industry – their expertise, resources and global reach is unmatched.” Plus, “when my dad was a butcher back in Cambodia, he was known for making sausages, and he used Ricard [Pernod Ricard’s pastis] to flavour the meat.”
The intention was never to sell the business, but Yeng didn’t expect Skrewball to succeed in the way it has: ‘We always dreamed of having success like everyone else. But we were the laughing stock of the industry when we started. We created something that was considered the dumbest idea in the world and were told that succeeding was less [likely] than winning the lottery, or getting struck by lightning.
“We intended that if we took it as far as we could, and if there were a partner that would align with our beliefs and had a belief in the brand, that’s when we would consider a partnership.”
The Skrewball story
The Skrewball ethos aims to encourage the idea of being a ‘screwball’ – “a term of endearment”, Yeng explains, which he believes means standing up for what you believe in and following your heart – as well as embracing the idea of being a misfit, or a black sheep – which is the brand’s logo.
Yeng immigrated to the US with his family as a refugee from Cambodia. The family were given care packages of peanut butter and he quickly grew a taste for the product, eventually creating a whiskey shot with it at his bar in San Diageo.
Yeng says: “Long story short, I was born in Cambodia and caught polio, so my leg became paralysed when I was one. I lived essentially in a prison for about six years at a Thai refugee camp, then I came to the US and was given peanut butter all the time, and I fell in love with it.
“I went into hospitality because my folks were working at a dinner shop. I opened my first bar at 22 – I didn’t know what I was doing, but I put peanut butter in everything, including noodles, fried rice and whiskey.
“The whiskey I chose was Jameson – I have a huge love for Irish culture and Jameson. When I came to the US, I didn’t speak any English and there was a lot of hip-hop and rap, which was too fast for me. So I gravitated towards Irish music and that taught me English. I once owned an Irish pub called Gallagher’s – that’s how much I love Irish culture.”
On floating the idea of new products, Yeng is happy to focus on the flagship Skrewball: “I think we have a lot of runway with Skrewball currently, although Pernod has always supported entrepreneurial innovations. We have stuff in the pipeline, but we’re going to let Skrewball have a global presence first before we start diving into other things like RTDs [ready-to-drink products] – but it is on the horizon.”
Establishing a global presence
To kickstart the international expansion, Skrewball headed to Australia and New Zealand earlier this year, where the brand was “embraced”, Yeng says. However, there was a hiccup when the brand was momentarily taken off shelves in Australia due to not labelling sesame in its allergens.
It recovered quickly, though, as Yeng explains. “That’s one of the growing pains for us going international – there’s nothing wrong with the liquid. Every country has unique rules, regulations, and requirements. In this case, it was a simple oversight. We acted swiftly, issued a recall and relabelled immediately.”
In any event, he says New Zealanders and Australians were “automatically willing to try Skrewball and then fell in love with it”.
He adds: “They love an American product. They’re also the biggest RTD market – the RTD capital of the world – and you can find RTDs in pretty much every flavour. Their approach to new flavours and trying new things is unparalleled.”
The Dominican Republic is up next. Yeng says: “If you think of a culture of Skrewball, and how vibrant, how inviting, how accepting it is, there’s no other country that I could think of other than the Dominican Republic, and I think we’re going to do extremely well out there.”
Then the brand is launching in Costa Rica, Slovenia, Costa Rica, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Singapore. There’s a lot on the radar, but there’s also a return to Cambodia first, in late December or January, which holds a sentimental meaning for Yeng.
He says: “My parents escaped the Khmer Rouge genocide. Going back there and launching a peanut butter whiskey, in the place of the exact fights they did for me – crossing landmines for two weeks, risking their lives for me – now we’re able to take that experience and bring them back. I think it’s going to be one of those special moments I will never forget.”
Not just a shot brand
Yeng adds that the global expansion is something “we could never have dreamed of”. “We were struggling to keep our minds straight in the US, and the US is a massive market. But if you look globally at just the peanut market, or peanut butter market – for example, the US market consumes about 2.3 million metric tons of peanuts annually and China is – I believe – around 18 million metric tons of peanuts, while India is about 12 million – as well the rise of American whiskey being exported, there are massive markets out there.”
“We know it might not be for everybody,” he admits. “There’s a certain consumer who stays away from the sweetness of it, but there are also many who welcome its approachability. We know who we are and who our demographic is.
“My favourite way to drink it is with a salt rim – like a salted peanut – on the rocks, especially in this cold winter season right now.”
Yeng notes that Skrewball is also “super versatile” when it comes to cocktails, such as in an Espresso Martini or an Old Fashioned, with the bartending community supporting the brand. He says: “We started in the on-trade. A lot of bars use it in classic cocktails. Even some of the snobbiest whiskey drinkers are appreciating it in cocktails. Imagine bringing them a peanut butter whiskey.
“We’re showing them it’s not just a shot brand.”
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