Next Century Spirits on building the Tito’s of rum
The co-CEO of Next Century Spirits discusses returning Kenny Chesney’s Blue Chair Bay Rum to growth and building a portfolio of affordable, premium spirits.
North Carolina-based Next Century Spirits (NCS) has acquired a number of spirits brands in recent years, including six from Southwest Spirits & Wine (SSW) in April 2024, and country music star Kenny Chesney’s Blue Chair Bay Rum in March 2025.
The company produces custom spirits for private labels, as well creating its own brands.
The acquisition of Blue Chair Bay, which was founded by the singer-songwriter in 2013, marked the company’s entry into the rum category.
Blue Chair Bay was moving 250,000 cases annually in 2022, but had been in decline for a few years in a row when Next Century Spirits got the brand. The key metrics for the company post-acquisition were “stabilising the business, simplifying the production, and getting it back into growth,” co-CEO Anthony Moniello tells The Spirits Business.
“So far, mission accomplished and the brand is back in growth.”
As for Chesney, the singer is the second-largest shareholder at Next Century Spirits and an active investor in Blue Chair Bay, Moniello confirms. “It’s his baby that he built from scratch, which unlike your typical celebrity brand, was from his own money.”
Chesney created the brand with his childhood friend David Farmer. “They managed it and were up to 250,000 cases just by grinding and hustling, which is great”, Moniello says, “but they were looking for – as the market started to turn a little bit – some expertise to help navigate the waters and continue to grow.”
Moniello notes the brand “had a great story, was an ultra-premium rum that’s high quality and low-calorie, hits all the industry trends you’re looking for, and had not truly recruited outside of his [Chesney’s] core demographic.”
“Since the acquisition, we’ve focused on streamlining everything, and bringing production in-house here in North Carolina has been our number-one endeavour,” he says, highlighting that the brand “used to touch seven facilities before it hit a shelf”.
He notes: “From production, to bottling and labelling, we’ve optimised the production cycle by more than half, and continue to work towards further streamlining the logistics even further in the coming months.”
While Blue Chair is a national brand, Moniello is “super focused” on core southern markets, as well as beachfront markets and lakefront markets in the US. “We want to win wherever there’s sand and water, every lake in Missouri, Wisconsin, every beach in California, Connecticut. It doesn’t matter,” he says.
“We want that connectivity, so when someone does go to retail, and they’re planning a barbecue in their backyard, they pick up Blue Chair Bay as well.
“We lean into a lot of factors people care about that are really important in culture today, people connecting again versus being stuck behind a phone or computer.”
Rum’s version of Tito’s
Moniello feels that Blue Chair Bay can create a new space or be a leader in the premium segment that is “not commodity or not ultra-premium”, which hasn’t been captured.
He explains: “What we see in rum is that it’s been commoditised and we believe that there’s a premium upgrade in rum to be had just like there was in vodka when Tito’s really found its stride.
“There was a gap in the market there with ultra-premium vodka and then everyday commodity vodka. Tito’s really satisfied a quality niche in the middle and we think Blue Chair Bay, similarly in rum, could help create that space in between these dark aged super-premium rums and commodity rums, which are everyday, gallon grabs, if you will.”
From a branding perspective, Blue Chair Bay has a “music and beach theme”, which has a “connective power that never goes out of style and appeals to every age group”, Moniello believes.
“It’s all about just connecting around the community – music, beach and creating memories – but it’s also real Caribbean premium rum that is a little bit higher-proof than those commodity rums in the flavoured space, and its lower calories with a good heritage story.”
So far this year the brand has launched a ‘Pour Your Heart Out’ cocktail challenge campaign, and looking at the next six months, Moniello says: “We’re really focused on the branding. It’s an easy brand to fall in love with and we just need to tell that story to more and more people. So that’s where we are today. This is a brand that declined for a couple of years and we’ve been able to get it back into growth in 2026.”
Blue Chair Bay will also be “all over” Chesney’s shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas, where he has dates across 19 June to 11 July. Moniello adds: “He will remain very active with the brand, especially through 2027 out in the market place.”
Celebrity partners
While Next Century Spirits continues to look at mergers and acquisitions (M&A) “all the time”, Moniello says the goal is now to “become a long-standing, trusted multinational supplier” with a focus is on its four core brands: Nue Vodka, Blue Chair Bay, Pocho Fino Tequila and Bear Fight Whiskey.
“Those four brands at the top of our portfolio have so much runway to grow,” he says, adding that Blue Chair Bay and Nue “aren’t small brands”. “They’re over 100,000 cases each annually, and just shy of 200,000 for Nue Vodka.”
Nue Vodka was part of the SSW purchase and typifies what Next Century Spirits looks for in a brand, which is “high-quality spirits that don’t break the bank”.
Of Nue, a seven-times distilled vodka priced at US$19.99, Moniello calls it “the biggest vodka no one knows about.”
“Its grown organically and we haven’t done big marketing on it yet,” he says. “Its the engine for the company and our biggest brand today.”
Along with Chesney, Next Century Spirits also works with celebrity partners such as Suits star Gabriel Macht (who is a stakeholder in Bear Fight) and comedian Gabriel ‘Fluffy’ Iglesias (with Pocho Fino Tequila, the company’s newest brand having hit the market in March).
“Since we do have a lot of celebrities in our portfolio, a lot of people ask us if celebrity brands are oversaturated, and my answer is that I do believe celebrity drives all consumer product goods right now in the US, and a lot of culture,” Moniello says.
“What separates our partners from some of the other celebrity brands out there is that it’s guys who are truly authentic, who want to work and see this as legacy – not as an exit strategy.”
Democratising whiskey
Regarding Bear Fight, he marks it as one of the company’s first innovations when he came on as co-CEO in 2022, having previously been chief commercial officer for Next Century Spirits.
“It was something I was very excited to bring to market, as I thought the American single malt category was growing and our goal was to democratise whiskey a little bit, be less stuffy, but still have a high-quality spirit,” he says of developing the brand.
“We wanted to be very approachable with both the price point and flavour profiles.” Bear Fight launched with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane onboard as an investor, while Macht joined in late 2024.
The brand started a crowdfund recently, which Moniello says was about “welcoming people along the journey, transparently”.
“We wanted to show – this is our sales, this is how we’re growing and this is how we plan to grow. This is how much money guys like Seth MacFarlane and everyone else has put into the business,” he explains.
For whiskey in the States, Moniello acknowledges “it’s a tough moment in time”, but American single malt is in growth. “There’s not a ton of money being spent behind it compared to the marketplace, and it’s the perfect whiskey in the sense that it’s very easy on the tongue, has Sherry, a little hit of peat on the back, but still finishes smooth.
“So you get a little Scotch experience and a little Bourbon experience.”
He also takes into account how the team has priced Bear Fight, at US$39.99, “when the rest of the category was average US$55 and above, as our goal was to get people to have it on their bar every day at home, rather than be a special occasion drink”.
“The Bourbon market in the US is just so strong and there’s still some more time for people to realise that American single malts aren’t scary,” he adds. “It’s not like grabbing a glass of lava and having a campfire in your mouth, so we just need continued education.
“It’s not growing as fast as I think we all thought four or five years ago, but that’s okay too. It’s still a real category that will continue to grow in the US. We just need more adoption over a longer period of time.”
Moniello also talks about how the brand is connecting with consumers, through promotions with its bear mascot and even Macht himself. “We’re having fun with it and we’ve now brought our mascot (the bear) to life, so there’s a little bit of magic there.
“We’ve built the brand in the hope to last for a very long time, and so while we’re obviously very serious about the liquid in the bottle, we’re also hopefully a very approachable and fun brand for people to get into.”
He also details how the name Bear Fight came to be. “When we created the whiskey, we thought to just send it to all the award shows. We didn’t have a name, so our master blender at the time labelled it as Bear Fight because he thought we’d get mauled in all competitions – but we were named a top 20 whiskey in the world by one.”
Bringing fun and approachability to Tequila
On the company’s foray into Tequila with Pocho Fino, Moniello met with comedian and actor Gabriel Iglesias (also known as Fluffy) three years ago. He says the pair “coalesced around the fact that there was a lot of fancy, expensive Tequila out there, which were “a bit serious and stuffy”.
Iglesias, who was born in the US with family from Mexico, is a Tequila drinker, whom Moniello notes shared the idea of creating a high-quality Tequila that had a “really fun atmosphere around it”.
“He has over-delivered, and the Tequila has over-delivered since launch,” Moniello says of Pocho Fino’s opening months since debuting at Iglesias’s show at Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles in March, which was billed as one of the biggest comedy shows of all time.
Pocho Fino is currently in Nevada, Arizona, Texas and California. “We had planned more markets, but we completely sold out,” Moniello notes.
The brand’s first offerings are a blanco and two flavoured expressions: Mexican Candy and Grilled Pineapple.
“These are typical flavour profiles that you get at a Mexican barbecue, but also are very approachable and delicious to US consumers of any cultural background,” Moniello says. “So hopefully we fit the right court, where we’re a sub-US$30 Tequila line that’s vibrant and high-quality, and we have a partner who’s always working.
“Just like Kenny, these guys wake up and say ‘what can I do next to help make this brand grow?,” he says of Iglesias’s involvement, and of all the company’s celebrity partners.
“Its not a cash relationship, it’s them investing their time, money and energy into these brands, which can be really unique in the celebrity space.”
On the whole, Moniello adds: “We’ve got a lot of room for growth in our current portfolio, but given the current economic environment out there, in the current spirits environment, it’s a good time to be aggressive versus shy about our ambitions to be a long-term trusted supplier.”
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