EPISODE 3

On Connection In The Absence of Intimacy

LENGTH: 33:50 | AIR DATE: 12/23/2020

Can an email satisfy an inspiration chaser’s desire for the sights, sounds and smells of eating and drinking IRL? In Episode 3 of #Millenniheirs, a baby boomer and Gen X-er from the food and beverage industry discuss their post-pandemic distribution models. Host Jessie McGuire interviews Tulin Tuzel, a baby boomer and food industry veteran who continues to innovate within health and wellness, as well as Colin Spoelman, a Gen Xer and co-founder of NYC-based craft distillery Kings County Distillery. To hear more, listen below and subscribe to ThoughtMatter on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or SoundCloud.

BIOS

SYNOPSIS

In this episode, we talk about food and beverage – two things that we know are the ultimate social connector across generations. How do you drive storytelling and connection in the absence of intimacy? What does solidarity mean to business owners in an industry that’s all about bringing people together? A conversation between Tulin Tuzel and Colin Spoelman helped us gain insight into how they’ve adapted their past experience and knowledge of food and spirits to their current ventures.

The mechanism of getting it to people changed the narrative and storytelling around the product itself. So what had been a very deep experience when you come take a tour of the distillery, now is an email. And the story is the same, but the email has fewer characters to try to get to people.

Colin Spoelman

(1:40) When Colin talks about his Kings County Distillery and bringing in whiskey cultures from Kentucky to Brooklyn Navy Yard, he mentions the importance of celebration, bringing people together and enjoyment of life. Pivoting to the production of hand sanitizers during the pandemic provided a new purpose – to serve the local community and a broader network of medical facilities, nursing homes and city employees. During the Black Lives Matter protest the distillery even distributed supplies to the grassroots participants. Colin has had to adapt to new protocols of security and the constraints of closing the distillery to the public by creating virtual experiences. How do we maintain connection with people online even as the pandemic eases legal restrictions around shipping whiskey directly to customers?

(5:00) An R&D veteran in the corporate food sector (Burger King, Sabra), Tulin describes food as personal and as a social connector. We share the world through our food. She also mentions trends around cooking and baking, and how passionate people have become about experimenting with food since the pandemic. Flour was in short supply just as much as toilet paper. Tulin also remembers participating in family dinner conversations over Zoom while ordering food from her favorite local restaurant that she wants to support – something she never imagined doing before. She believes that hospitality industry might not stay the same in the long run.

(8:40) Colin shares the pessimistic view that the return of the restaurant scene will look different because so many of them will not make it. Virtual experiences may work in the short term but are no substitute for the real thing.

(10:50) During this period, the media has created a false image of excessive consumption with “pandemic alcoholism.” Due to the loss of social drinking at bars and restaurants, the cocktail world has seen lower sales and spirit consumption compared to liquor stores. Whiskey is more likely to be consumed on its own and as a result has suffered a little less.

(13:17) How do we adapt the storytelling of a true crafted experience to the limited format of an email? A good story could make all the difference but it’s harder to convince people online.

(14:44) Tulin reinforced the notion of intimacy, of coming together as a community and the importance of supporting the social fabric of small businesses. Small businesses share more proximity with their consumers. Unlike big corporations, they can be proactive and read the mood of their audience much more easily.

(16:25) Uncertain times have left people edgy, encouraging businesses to get “intimate” with their edginess. It’s hard to know where you fit into all this change as a business, a person and a community member.

(18:50) Tulin spoke about how corporate culture will have to adapt to new ways of working in the long term. Team-building is difficult over Zoom calls that often feel like transactional exchanges. She is concerned about the future of human resources, and how to manage and discover talent if people haven’t known or met each other in real-life situations. Creativity is also harder to deploy over Zoom. Innovation in this context becomes a forced interaction and loses the crucial element of human connection.

(19:50) Colin and Tulin both agree on the inconsistency of leadership and the lack of available information in order to achieve better results as a business during the pandemic. There is a sense of incomprehension and unfairness when planes have to be full but restaurants are restricted to 25% capacity.

(22:50) Currently, Tulin is involved in a small e-commerce venture called LifeMode with her son around health and wellness natural supplements. Self-care has become top of mind, along with the need to make reliable information accessible to everyone.

(24:17) For Colin, the intrinsic nature of whiskey and the traditional process of its time-consuming maturation gives him a sense of integrity – a Zen attitude that isolates and insulates him from the current moment.

REFERENCES

• The Latest Craft Product From Brooklyn Distilleries: Artisanal Hand Sanitizer, Eater NY