Intro & Royal Banks of Missouri Sponsor Read

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We want to build places that our families will be proud of, and I think we are on path for that.

SPEAKER_03 0:04

The STL Bucket List show is brought to you by our presenting sponsor and the official banking partner of STL Bucket List, Royal Banks of Missouri. Royal Banks is a full service, independent community bank locally owned, locally run, and proudly investing in St. Louis since 1964. That's more than 60 years of taking care of the people and businesses who make this city special. From checking and savings to mortgages, business banking, and wealth management, you get real personalized service from neighbors who actually know your name. With 16 locations across St. Louis, St. Charles, Illinois, and Northeast Missouri, there's a branch right around the corner. Royal Banks of Missouri, proudly investing in our communities.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

If you wanna hear about St. Louis, tune in to the bucket list of weekly. It drops every Wednesday. Got a dope new guest every single week. Buckle up for the ride. Who's it gonna be? Who's on the show today? They rap St. Louis. What to do in the loo on a late night? I'm maybe what to do on a date night. Yeah. Pocket list as you covered, they know what's going on. What's going on? They'll give you eight. 18 different things to do on 19 if you need one more to choose. Yeah. City, city, city is a place we call home. A place we call home. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Appreciate

Meet Mohit Patel & What's on the Table

SPEAKER_03 1:22

you for coming in today, man. And excited to make this happen officially. It's uh, I think the first liquor store, Julia, that we've ever had uh on the podcast. Uh thank you. Uh St. Louis's very own Moheet, owner of Barrel Blends, Wine and Spirits, their flagship location over in Valley Park. You also have your Afton location, your Bridgeton location, Southside over in South City. Um, so you brought some gifts for me. I want to first talk about what we have in the studio here today. It is 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. So just so our guests know. So what tell me about what you brought in today?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

So the I kind of divided up into different categories. I brought some wine, some whiskey, some beer, and some liqueur. Uh kind of four big categories that covers a little bit of everything. So I brought a red wine and a white wine. Uh, this white wine I kind of like a lot. Uh, it's a Neal, Rutherford Dust, uh, Vermontino. A lot of white wine that we sell. Um, uh, people come in looking for a palette. They want a little bit of acidity, a little bit um uh citrus kind of. So this is I love um lemon icebox pie. So this kind of reminds me of that. It's got that lemon zest on the palette, so it's kind of easy going, somewhere drinking wine. Uh this is pronounced as West by Division.

SPEAKER_03 2:35

And that's Napa, that's a Napa Valley one here.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Uh this one is, yes. The white wine is this one is uh Oregon, uh Washington area. So the uh winemaker is from St. Louis. Uh he loves their mixed wine. Uh both of them are organic, uh, small production wines. That's what our huge collection of our wines at every store kind of represents. As we look for small producers, people who care what they put into the bottle, how they make it, minimum intervention wines.

Wine Talk & the Story Behind Bourbon Deluxe

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Is that what they call natural wines now? Or is that different? A little bit different.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

So it's kind of a loosely defined term. Uh so these are both organically grown wines. Uh uh, natural wines basically they don't do much to the its minimum intervention. Um uh so a lot of stuff that we carry are considered natural wines in the store, but we also have a section that's natural wine. Um, but then that's other wines we got. The bourbons, I got three actually. Uh, one is a sample of something coming up, but three cool stories. Uh, the first one is bourbon deluxe, uh, which is a six-year-old uh single barrel store pick we did. It's uh single barrels or something where we go to distilleries and be like, hey, we want to buy a whole barrel of a ski. We're gonna put in front of our guests something that you produce, but that's kind of elevated. And uh we buy the whole barrel and they put our name on it. So it should say barrel blend somewhere on there. Yeah, 2026. So this is one of your recent 124 proof. Yep, six years. And uh yeah, it's a cool story. Uh one of the founders of the brand is Turner Waythan. Uh, this was his great-great-grandfather's brand. Uh found out found uh by before Prohibition they uh started the brand, uh, were producing whiskey. During the prohibition, they can continue production and eventually got bought out by Jim Beam uh that has old granddad and uh makers mark. And then recently he bought the brand from them and is producing whiskey now.

SPEAKER_03 4:28

So he got brought it back in the family.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

It says here they dated back to 1788. Yep, so really old brand, really cool story. I love the label.

SPEAKER_03 4:35

Yeah, the label's clean with the knight and shining armor on it. Yeah, so that's Kentucky Street Bourbon.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Next one is Redwood Empire Haystack Needle. Uh, that one is a really cool, it's uh whiskey from California, not from Kentucky. It's a bourbon, straight bourbon whiskey. And uh the cool thing about that is it's a haystack tree that's modeled after the bottle. The bottle is modeled after the tree or trunk of the tree. If you look it upside down, uh you can see the rings in the there as well. So they use the whole thing. They produce the whiskey. Uh, one of the models is they plant trees for every bottle you buy. So they're planting a lot of trees as well, but they make phenomenal whiskey too. Um we did it in California. Yeah, whiskey bourbon. They do this one, it's really good whiskey. Uh, we were lucky enough. This is one of those rare bottles that you won't find everywhere sitting on the shelf. Um, and we were lucky enough to do a barrel pick of this recently. So we're gonna bring on a whole barrel of this bourbon. Uh and you went all the way out to Cali. No, this one uh they came down here. Uh it's one of those rare ones where I couldn't say no. Yeah. Uh yeah, so it's a cool bottle.

SPEAKER_03 5:38

So, what are you? Are you when you're is your is bourbon your thing?

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Or is I mean you I don't drink a lot house telling the guys earlier. Uh it's very rare occasion. Try to sample a lot of things that we bring in. Yeah, uh, but it's once in a while when I do, it might be uh beer here or in there, or um or a cocktail. Um I like uh bourbon because it's it's a cool story, it's America's native spirit. Uh every brand has a really good story behind it that originates in America. So I love the stories, I love history. Uh it kind of ties into my curiosity as my background, and that's cool stuff. Yeah. So I like bourbon in that sense.

Craft Beer & the Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond Barrel Pick

SPEAKER_03 6:18

Um perennial cans, really cool. So city in here, they got that new location right down the street, right on uh Shrewsbury, I think. Trail. Yeah, print on the trail. And then Blue Jay, I met him when he first opened over in Midtown. He's got an incredible brewery.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Yeah, yeah. So I brought two of the beers that I thought were pretty cool that we could share. Uh and that Heaven Hill Bottom Bond is another uh cool. We got these samples uh in and they released this. You'll be able to find a seven-year-old uh bourbon on the shelf all year long. Uh, but we were able to uh get this as a single barrel. So when you buy a small batch bourbon on the shelf from a big distillery, it's usually a blend of somewhere between 100 to 500 barrels. Uh and they aim for a palette that's consistent because that's what they want to provide to the guests. Um but sometimes out of those, if they if they find a barrel that's incredible, they'll be let someone like us buy it. And this is a sample for one of those. So this will come out in 2027 next year. And you'll have a full barrel of these, yeah, which is around 180 bottles, 200 bottles, or if it's at cast strength, so whatever if they're dumped directly from the barrel to the bottle, uh, it's about 180, 200, 220 bottles. But this one will be it's a bottle and bond, so it's bottle and bond act by United States government is always 100-proof, minimum of four years and few other uh stipulations. But this one is a seven-year-old uh single barrel of Heaven Hill bottle and bond, so it'll be hundred-proof. Uh, so you can easily mix it or sip it, um, and provides incredible value. Yeah, so yeah, so we don't have that on shelf at all uh right now, but it will be in here in 2027. So I thought it'd be something cool. Yeah, I don't know, maybe, maybe not, but uh we are excited for it. Uh and we don't do very many of these, even though I said three of them, those right in front of you. But compared to a lot of uh other businesses around, uh, we do only one barrel pick a month. And a month we don't think we found anything good. We won't do any barrel picks. For example, this month I don't have anything to share with our guests. Yeah, there's no new barrel pick this month, so we'll continue doing that.

SPEAKER_03 8:25

But your guests value that because they know that when you do put out a barrel pick, it's something that's vetted by your team. Yep, they don't last you taste everything that comes out the door. It's not just doing a barrel pick just to drop something new.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

No, never. We go down to the discovery almost 60, 70, 80 percent of the time if it's possible. Uh, we take somebody from our team, we take our guest, and one of the guys from ownership will go down as well. So it's a kind of different point of view for everybody. Guest looks at what they like to drink every day. Our team like to look at hey, what we like to drink, but what we like to sell as well, what would be easy for us to put into somebody's hand, and they get that experience of talking about that distillery. And from our point of view, it's like this is a good investment for us. Yeah. So we get multiple different points of view, and uh the bottom line is the first thing that it has to threshold it has to pass is is it gonna be a good whiskey that we can put in somebody's hand and be proud of? Uh, are we proud of putting our name on it? If the answer is yes, then we move on to the next uh questions. But yeah, uh, we take that seriously. We enjoy doing it. I think that's the best part of it. Yeah. Uh those trips are always a lot of fun. Uh I've done plenty enough where now I'm trying to kind of scale back a little bit to do that personally, but uh our team loves doing it. We try to support as much as we can.

How Barrel Blends Picks Barrels & the Missouri Whiskey Scene

SPEAKER_03 9:39

And it's cool that you can bring the guests. I know that my friends over at Lit Cigar Lounge, Brian and Dana, they they took me on one, uh Demetrius over in uh Missouri, in the middle of Missouri. So we got to make our own barrel there and then we got to release it at at Lit Cigar Lounge. And and that was just a cool experience because he took 10, we took a sprinter van out there and it was 10 of us, and then we all tried and labeled which which blends we liked, and it was it was guest-driven. And that's probably similar to what you guys do. And we got to like taste it like straight out of that metal siphon thing that we pull out of the whiskey thief. Yeah, and just be able to see all the barrels and like even the history of the barrels themselves that were like in caves and in water, and wherever they found you you would just find barrels on properties that got lost, and then you're like, it's rich history.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

He has so much of history. He's uh he's got great whiskey right here in Missouri, and Missouri's another one of those where our weather is very comparable to that of Kentucky. So Missouri produces some great, great whiskey. Yeah, and people like Demetrius are doing a phenomenal job on it. Yeah, still 630 downtown.

SPEAKER_03 10:38

He's got a really great location downtown. I know Forehand's dabbled in it a little bit. Kevin, they had Withered Oak. They're kind of tapered back a little bit more. And then um, who's Rieger out in Kansas City? Rieger does a good job.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Uh one of the big ones is Ben Holiday, yeah. Uh out in Western Missouri. Yeah. Uh they have to do phenomenal uh bourbon as well. Yeah. Uh that one I like. The cool thing about that is uh if you have never done a tour of that distillery, you should. It's too it goes toe-to-toe with any Kentucky distillery. It has those hills, it has that well, water, uh, all the history behind those guys. So I'd love doing the tour of that distillery. But also uh I'll have friends and uh guests come out uh from outside of Missouri and be like, hey, do you have Ben Holiday here? It's allocated to us. Uh it's like we can get it there. I was like, Yeah, I have it as much as you want. It's for once I can say that to our guest, yeah, and I'll be like, uh, sorry, that's we don't have enough of that. Yeah, that's so fun. So it's kind of nice to have something that we can probably be like, yes, this is made in Missouri, and I can sell it to you. Yeah, so what do you want to try first? Should we try bourbon? Uh I would say let's start something with lower proof, lighter, and then make our way to bourbon. Yeah, yeah. So like we can start with wine or liqueur. Um, I'd say wine. So this is uh Neil family vineyards. They have a line called Rutherford Dust. Rutherford is an uh area in uh California, and uh that's basically produces wines. Uh there's a lot of red wine, but this is one of those wines that's not they're not well known for this, but I love that they produce this white wine. Cheers. Um, and it's beautiful uh Vermontino wine from uh Rutherford Dust, California.

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Oh, yeah,

Tasting the Vermentino & Talking Indian Food

SPEAKER_03 12:25

it's clean. It's not very sweet. It's it's a little sweet, but it's not it's kind of dry too.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

It's very kind of light. Uh the acidity or the lemon or the citrus is not overpowering. Uh you can easily drink this. It's great with seafood. Uh I had it, I didn't think I would like it, but I had it with some Indian food, which is what we eat a lot at home, which is because I'm Indian. Uh it goes great with that as well.

SPEAKER_03 12:51

Um let me ask you about your favorite Indian restaurants in St. Louis because there's a lot that we've visited through STL bucket list. Yeah, my friends over at Spice Mantra um love going to those guys. My friends over at Amrup Fusion met that team over there. What Amrap Fusion, I wouldn't even say is Indian. It's so many different things. I have cheeseburgers and all these different things. Um, I was over at um, we've been to so many oh over the years, but do you have any that stick out to you that your family loves to visit, or do you guys cook a lot at home too?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Uh, we do a lot at home. Uh so I grew up in India uh until I was uh I came to US when I was 18. Okay. Uh and uh so I grew up there. For me, home cooked Indian food is not there's nothing like that. Yeah. Uh I think it's goes with everybody. It's like something that your mom makes, it's that's what the memory is for me, is for Indian food.

SPEAKER_03 13:36

The way the kitchen smells, the way yeah, everything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah. And it's like whenever you talk about products as well, like wine or whiskeys, and I think it's that small batch production, that small production of the small plates that your mom makes for you, that holds incredible value or that holds that memories and emotional value. So I love that home cooked food. But if I'm going out, I like going to India Palace. Uh some of our business partners and I like to do late night at Umbrate Fusion. Uh they get biryani at late at night.

SPEAKER_03 14:03

And they're open till like 1:30.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Yeah, exactly. So we'll go after the store closed. If we have a big event at the uh venue, yeah, uh that gets wrapped up after 10, 10:30. Uh some of our team members and us will go just go down to Umbrut Fusion, get biryani after that. Yeah, because uh Kirkworth to Chesterfield, we can make that drive pretty easy and it's great food. So we like going there. Uh India is close to home, it's consistent taste. Uh, so I try to pick something up from there uh to go home. Um, but yeah, we do shop a lot of stuff locally and uh cook at home too.

SPEAKER_03 14:37

Yeah,

SSM Health Sponsor Read

SPEAKER_03 14:38

yeah. That when I went to visit Spice Mantra over in St. Peter's, and he has a grocery store next door too, um, that I thought was pretty cool. For over 150 years, SSM Health has been providing hope, healing, and opportunities to the St. Louis community. With over 40,000 employees across four states, they're not only delivering exceptional care, they're one of the region's largest employers, shaping the future of healthcare. We're proud to present SSM Health as the official healthcare partner of the STL bucket list show. If you've dreamed of a career where you're truly making a difference every day, SSM Health can help you take that to the next step. Learn more at their website in the link in the show notes. So when when you moved to St. Louis, let's let's talk about that kind of that founding story. So what um was it for school? Was it for your parents? Or tell me about how you ended up. Did you actually end up in St. Louis first? Or where did you end up?

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Yeah.

From India to UMSL: Mohit's Move to St. Louis

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Uh that's funny. Uh my background has nothing to do with this industry at all that I'm working in. Uh, but I came to US in 2006 uh for college. Uh uh to go to uh I started as a pre-pharmacy uh uh major, uh, then switched. I started while I was there, I started to do uh dabble into research a little bit. So I've always been curious about things, I always like problem solving. So I started doing research a little bit and I just loved it. That was just something that I was like, oh my god, this is so much fun. It's like solving a puzzle. You can't get enough of it, right? And uh so we started started doing research, and I was like, Oh, how about I do a biochemistry or biotechnology background before I finish this up? And that's what I ended up doing my undergrad in is uh biochemistry and biotechnology at the University of Missouri St. Louis. So uh yeah, came to here by myself uh the the first day in the US uh after so I flew into Chicago. I have family down in Chicago, they dropped me off uh in St. Louis and uh they left after that, of course, because I was in dorms. Uh-huh. And uh the first day going to college, I didn't know there was a shuttle that took me from dorms to to the other campus. I started walking in snow. It was in January and slipped at least three times walking up. Yeah. Uh learned that the hard way. It's like, oh no, not to do this again. Uh but uh learned a lot of new things. Uh, because when you're home, uh that's common to be in India. It's you know, you stay with your family, every a lot of joint families, nuclear families where your parents and family stays together for a long time. And I love that part of it too. Uh but uh because of that, you don't end up doing a lot of things at home, uh, like cooking or doing your own laundry and things like that. You don't, you're not expected. And when you go from there directly to be in the US in college and have no idea about how to get my own food, how to do my laundry, or how to do anything at all, or nobody there to tell you, hey, go do your homework. Uh so you had to keep yourself accountable. Yeah, and there were no self, there were cell phones, but to call some call parents or to get to them, uh, you had to buy these little cards to uh charge up your flip phones and then call my parents who had to go to a certain type of phone back in India to talk to me. Yeah, this is long distance calling, no FaceTime. So uh learned a lot of good things, picked up a lot of good habits. Uh I asked my uh neighbor in dorms, like, hey, can you help me do laundry? And she laughed for half an hour, told a lot of other people, I was like, Hey, this guy doesn't know how to do his own laundry. Like, well, I'll learn. So, which I did, and it was a great experience, I

From Pre-Med to Entrepreneur: Early Biotech Startups

SPEAKER_01 18:10

think.

SPEAKER_03 18:10

Yeah, so you were at University of Missouri St. Louis, and uh my wife's also alum there as well. Great school. And um, so you were in St. Louis, so then were you all when when did it shift from pre-med to then entrepreneurship? Was that soon after, or did you go into the the career with it?

SPEAKER_01 18:26

So that bug was always in there. Uh my family back in India, uh, they're all entrepreneurs. Uh my grandfather uh was a farmer. Uh from there he went became a teacher. Uh, from there he came to City, started trading metals, uh uh, had a job, but uh from there he turned into at his own shop where he traded uh like ferrous and non-ferrous metals, uh like iron and all kinds of steel, all kinds of stuff for industrial use. And from there he became a real estate developer. Uh my father joined him, uh, and that's what our family does. They are real estate developers in India. Uh and I've seen that all my life. Uh went with my dad, a trading shop back there at in March, which is the end of the year in India, fiscal year, and stayed there till 2 a.m. to kind of do stocking and counting the inventory and make sure all the papers make sense. So I've seen that happen all my life, but personally I was interested more in STEM uh field, uh more engineering and science. So that's what I did in college. And then in about I think in masters or uh program, um so I finished my PhD at UMSO uh in uh 2016 or 17, I can't remember what it was. Uh but during the uh graduate school, uh I had a startup company, two startup companies. The first one was called Genetics Fusion, uh, which we were uh developed a technology where we could transfer genetic material like DNA and RNA into cells. Uh and we uh my thought was hey, we're really making this process more efficient and simpler for researchers, we should really be able to uh turn this into a company and bring it to more people. So we started raising funds, turned there, filed patents for it, and started my entrepreneurial journey over there in 2016. So only about 10 years ago is when you were. So this was no, this was before prior PhD. Yeah, this was prior PhD while I was in grad school. I think this was 2013 or maybe even before then. And that was in Missouri and Missouri is with other partners and stuff like that. Exactly.

PhD Research & Discovering a New Antimicrobial

SPEAKER_03 20:32

Um this was while I was like startup culture was a little bit different, like there wasn't as much access to information like we do now with podcasts and and uh incubators. That was about that time when all that stuff was happening.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

This was the second year of Arch Grants, I think. Oh really?

SPEAKER_03 20:47

And then uh YO out in out in Silicon Valley and all those organizations were you know were doing grants and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

So uh Arch Grants had just started, we applied for it, not hope not knowing what it would turn out to be at all. I was learning a lot of new stuff here, uh, but we won one of those grants and a lot of other things uh uh leading up to that. But uh the technology at that time, uh what we thought would be as efficient was not as efficient as we thought. Yeah. So we kind of folded that companies like, hey, we thought we could get it from onefold to hundredfold more efficient, and then we weren't really able to. Uh so we kind of returned some grant funding to the companies and organizations, yeah, uh closed out the company, but uh we did good research, uh good stuff there. Uh once that was done, I continued my PhD work uh with at the University of Missouri. I worked under uh a professor named George Gokel, uh, who's very well known in the industry uh as well. And uh we developed uh a new antimicrobial, which is life's work. I came in and be like, I always like to figure out hey, how what else can we do this with this? It's kind of fun, it's exciting, right? Uh you take something. Like, hey, what can we do this? How can we make it better? How can we uh apply this to something else? And that's what I did in the lab. And we developed a new antimicrobial uh that worked against resistant bacteria, so which is a huge problem in the uh world right now is antibiotic resistant bacteria or like people call it superbugs. And we had developed a antibiotic uh that works against those uh bacteria, but it's uh work that goes from ground up, so uh it has to go through FD approvals, uh pre-FDA work as well. So it's a very long path, and that's work still going on. Uh but it's taken a secondary seat to barrel blends now. Uh but that was it's kind of exciting, I think.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

Oh, that's

Why Mohit Pivoted to Retail & Started Barrel Blends

SPEAKER_03 22:46

stuff that you're still working on.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yeah, yeah. But it's very small part of my time. Uh, because a lot of that is uh it requires a lot more funding, a lot more effort. Uh it's gotten to a phase where my expertise is in the pre-uh testing stuff in test tubes, and now it's gotten into where it needs to be tested on animals and stuff like that. So there needs to be a go-to market strategy exactly and regulatory affairs and human testing and uh approvals from FDA, uh, which um at that point of uh life I was thinking like, hey, this is a very long path to success. Uh I need something that I can take care of my family. We're starting a family with my wife, now wife as well, and uh I needed to something that could pay the bills and do something uh short term rather than long term. So that's where I started exploring other options, and that's where barrel blends came in. I had a few friends who were already in the industry for a long time. I talked to them and it was like, yeah, let's try something fun and something new. Completely different.

SPEAKER_03 23:48

And like you go into a retail business. But what's so funny about that story is you talked about your grandfather and your father and the retail business that they had.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 23:55

So, what learnings did you have when it came to retail? Like, what's the secret sauce that you've been able to find from what you've learned? Because it's a tough business. There are small margins, they're you have hundreds of products, you have a lot of cash out on the line at all times because you pre-buy everything.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 24:12

And then operating a store, managing employees, these are hourly employees that it's just a job to them sometimes. And it's like, how do you build that culture? So, like, tell me about what you've done with barrel blends because it it's become one of the premier stores in St. Louis when it comes to that. So now it wasn't always like that though, when you bought your first one. Yeah, exactly.

Building a Hospitality-First Liquor Store

SPEAKER_01 24:30

You know, so uh it's always been evolving for us. Um uh it did not start where we are today. Uh it started with one store out in Bridget. It's just we wanted to uh do something a little bit different. Uh uh it comes from the idea that we wanted to create a little bit of more hospitality in retail. Uh there in Missouri, you can sell liquor or wine or beer at every gas station, every grocery store. There's always competition. Uh and from uh my experiences, it has always been like you walk in, you grab a bottle, you put it at a register, and you check out. And I mean I looked at it coming from research, and I've always been curious about everything. I always try to solve problems. Um, and I looked at it and thought, like, why is this so mundane? It's so where you just grab a bottle and walk out. And I wanted to do do justice to this product. Like this product is uh produced where they are using organic means, they are doing minimum intervention, they care about the product. How can we tell those stories without uh just guests keeping it?

SPEAKER_03 25:36

It's not just like a on the shelf, it's not just a deal or $9.99 or just sitting in a bucket, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Yeah, I wanted to tell that story uh uh side of that and solve that problem uh and provide that value to our guests, be like, hey, this is great products, we have great people in our store who who can walk you through it and all of that while doing fun. And the other thing I saw looking into the history and learning about uh wine and beer, this has been part of human culture as long as we have existed. Uh it's part of every important social occasion, it's a social drink, it's not something that just is a luxury, it is a uh luxury, but it's also important part of every occasion in your life. And um uh that's what I thought of hey, if it's part of important part of your every social thing you do and important part of life, how can you present it in a way to our guest? It feels special. Yeah, it feels special. It feels like hey, I'm here to buy something uh uh for a graduation party, and this is how much I want to spend, this is what the person is, this is who I am. How can we make it better for them to uh how can we make their occasion better is what we ask ourselves. Um and that's what kind of started it. And tying that to my family's experience or our experience in India, and I think this goes to applies to every Indian. Uh if you go to India or if you go to an Indian's house, the hospitality is next to none. Like it is, they welcome you with like open arms uh from the moment you walk in till you leave. And that's just part of the culture, that's how it's always been.

Designing the Barrel Blends Guest Experience

SPEAKER_03 27:11

It doesn't feel like it uh hospitality just feels like what you should do. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Like in our household, uh, whenever when I still go to India to my parents see my parents, people walk in and my mom would have dinner for them. And it's like, how did you do that in a few minutes that have been here? But they're always thinking about people, they're always thinking about hospitality, and they're always welcome. There's no wrong time to go to somebody's house. You don't have to call me to show up. You can knock on like, hey Mo, I need this help. Can I go do this? Or hey, Mo, I need uh lunch today. I forgot my lunch at home. Sure, let's figure it out. Uh if I'm busy, I'll be like, Hey, can you give me five minutes and let me finish this up and take care of it? So uh to give you a reference, it's like uh the Indian weddings are thousands of people, like receptions are at least thousands of people, weddings are five hundred people, and that's a month-long thing. Uh, so it's and that happens, and during that time, that whole month, it's not that you're just coming home and sleeping every night. There are 50 people staying at our house. Party party every night. Yeah, or just connecting, exactly. You're feeding them every day, you're doing things with them every day, it's a fun thing. Yeah, uh, and that's kind of ingrained into us. And my thought was if we can do that with our friends and our people, why can't we bring that into this business?

SPEAKER_03 28:23

Yeah, on a micro scale. It's like at the end of the day, it's like somebody's coming in, it's 4th of July, they want to have a good experience at the lake, and it's like, how can I make that experience smoother for them instead of going to a gas station?

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Absolutely. Yeah, and that's where our whole idea for barrel vents comes in. The first door uh we did, we did those big glass in the front. Uh, usually people would try to cover that up because of security. I was like, no, that brings in the light, that makes people safe, that uh tells people what we have in here. Leave more space between the aisles. Yeah, uh, leave more space between the aisles where people feel comfortable. Uh, I don't want our team to standing behind the registers just checking people out. I want them to be on the floor. So our registers are designed that way. Um from the products we curate, how we design our stores, everything before a guest walks into our store, we design something uh with their experience in mind. Uh and then when they walk in, our hospitality is kind of takes over as hey, everybody's there to greet you, make you feel special. Yeah, imagine this you're shopping somewhere, looking down a white wine aisle, and you're looking at something, and because we have a bar, we have bottles open all the time. I'll just pour a little glass of wine for you and hand it to you. It's like, hey, this is what we have, this is why I think this wine is special. If you like it, let me know. If what you don't like it, let me know. I can find something.

Building Out Valley Park: the Bar, Cigars & Golf Simulator

SPEAKER_03 29:40

And you still do that to this day. You'll walk around the store and walk the flats. Is that one of your favorite parts of it?

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Talking to people is always our favorite part, even for our team, everybody. I think that's the best part of this business. That's the culture. It's people, yeah. Uh, we did a little survey with our guests, like, hey, why do you come to Barrel Blends? We did with our top customers who come back a couple of times a week. Uh, a lot of times not to just drink, just to say hi or do something. And it's like, what do you like about us? Like, what can we do better? And they said, the number one thing we like about you is your team, the people in the store, the community you have built. I feel like as we are part of their community as much as they are part of our community. Yeah. So, and we take that very, very seriously. It's uh things we do for uh our guests.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

And I like that you call them guests instead of customer. Or you mentioned customer, but you say that guests, guests, guests, because at the end of the day, they're a guest, they're spending time as your business. And and now you've created at uh, and I wanted to kind of shift to the Valley Park location, is you've created uh a spot where people can linger and they can be there in for a long period of time. You have the golf simulator, you have this bar that looks like something out of a sick cop. I mean, you went all out with this bar, the lighting. If it's dark, like the walls are black, but the light comes in and everything looks good. And it's like you're inviting people instead of getting more customers through the door, more customers out, it's like, hey, stay a while, play golf, sit at the bar, you host classes. Like these are things that I you don't typically see at other stores. So when we think of your flagship store, you think of Valley Park, and it's like now it's like, okay, how can I, with my next location, improve on what we've already built there? So walk me through that build-out and that that process because adding a golf simulator. I don't know if you saw that in other cities or if you're just like, hey, like, are you a golfer? Nope.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

I don't get much time to do. We have young kids, three and six at home. Yeah, I told my son I would give him a shout-out today. So Kean, I'm saying hi. Keanu, what's up, my guy? He loves listening to podcasts. His six-year-old loves science, loves podcasts, and we listen to stuff together. So that's sweet. And he heard I was doing the podcast, like, oh, that's amazing. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 31:39

Because you watch it out, he can watch it on YouTube too. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Yeah, so that's what we do sometimes. Yeah, but yeah, I don't get much time to do things outside of work and family. Uh, I do a little bit things that I enjoy, but uh how we build this out is essentially uh we listen to our guests. It's simple as that. Uh every idea that we have implemented comes from our guests and from our team. Uh, I am constantly on the floor talking to people. Uh so from our first store, we left space open in the front to do events and tastings. Uh, that's being utilized to this day. Uh, but a lot of people told us we looked at other states and other uh areas too, and they had bar, and we weren't sure that we were equipped or educated enough or knowledgeable enough to run our own bar. So what we did in our second store is put a small bar next to the register. And at that point, uh right around COVID, um, whiskeys were really famous. A lot of whiskey was uh training really high. So we took a lot of those whiskeys that we hard for us to get and put it on the bar, put it fair value, and put right people around it, uh, right team. Uh and uh we put those whiskeys there and we thought, hey, if it works, great. If it doesn't, it's right next to register. We can break it up, make another register, or just continue what we we've done well so far. But that place took off. We did events there. Uh we invited master distillers. Uh uh we had great craft beer people, we had great wine uh team members, we had great whiskey members, and we put all that behind the bar. And uh people love it to this day. We have regulars who just come hang out, grab a beer, or grab a beer, walk around, buy a shop, uh, or just come to see our our team. Um but one of the things that we did not think and did not know about, and they told us about it, was this bar is too bright. You need it to be darker. And our thought was always that uh retail needs to be brighter, it needs to feel safe. So now we had this thing in our head, and we need to make a bar inside the store. And I a lot of people told me you can build a wall between there, you can do this, you can do that. I was like, I'm not gonna do that at all. Uh the whole experience of coming to a place that has one unified story to tell, experience for our guests that's like here, you can grab a bottle at the bar, walk to retail, and grab something, put it on your tab, and check out all in one go. That holds an incredible value.

70% Return Guests & Building Real Community

SPEAKER_03 34:04

The cocktail and the bottle could be on that same tab. Yeah, tab everywhere. Yeah, uh, you can't make it easy, seamless. Like, oh, don't bring the drink into the floor, like turn around, like when you go to other places, like, oh, don't go outside with the drink, yeah, you know, or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

It's just one unified experience. Our whole goal is to put give you the right product for the right occasion, and either it could be the bar or it could be retail, and that allows us to do that. So I would not build a wall in there. So we had to find different ways of uh making it darker. And because the whiskeys were doing so whiskey was doing so great for us, a lot of our guests told us, you know, what goes great with whiskey is golf and cigars. So I was like, okay, let's I think I can make that happen. Uh so when you go to Valley Park, you'll see it said of our other stores were lighter colored and it was intentional. Now, Valley Park store, you come to it into it, it's all black inside. Yeah. Uh, and the bar is kind of inside a little space that goes a little farther back than the rest of the stores to give it that ambience that it's darker. It feels like a regular bar, even though there's no separation between the old space. And then we made a walk-in cigar humidor and we made edit a golf simulator because the guys who come around they like to golf and like to have fun.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

Yeah. And you've seen since doing that, you made those additional investments that most business people would look at those as like, well, no, that's all look at all that retail space that you're taking up, or look at all that additional cost that you're incurring. But it's probably paid dividends. I mean, you you obviously know the business better than anyone, but creating a space that people want to be at naturally tickets get a little bit higher each time and people come back a little bit more often, and and that creates, I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Uh, we did an application recently for uh uh to be one of the bet top retailers in the country. But one of the questions they asked is uh how consistently your guests return to your store. And uh we did not know before they asked us.

SPEAKER_03 35:56

We just like to see friendly faces and you knew like mentally, like oh like 50%, but like you didn't have the exact answer. We had no idea what was going on.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

And we once they asked us, I started digging up the answer to that. It's more than 70% of our revenue is from returning customers. It just blew my mind. It's like I need to stop thinking about new guests, I need to just worry about who's coming in and taking care of those people because they are coming back so often that majority of our revenue comes from those uh guests that who come back to us. And uh now we have seen that guests will come at least once a week. We they'll know us by name, first name basis. Uh they'll come in just for the bar or just for retail. Uh, they'll bring kids, families. That was another thing. When we opened our afternoon location, we saw family bring in kids and hang out with the kids there. I was like, I've never seen kids hanging out at a liquor store. And that kind of goes as a compliment to us that hey, uh, they feel comfortable enough to bring their family in there. Uh, whenever their kids would visit from different cities, they'll come bring them in to show our store or hang out there uh for holidays. That's their location, that's their spot.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Uh so yeah, it has allowed us to kind of do build that connection with our guests. It's like, hey, we are part of your family. Yes, we are here to sell a bottle at the end of the day, but to us it goes a lot more deeper than that. It's uh building every thing.

Swade Dispensary Sponsor Read

SPEAKER_03 37:19

And you're building a real family business and you're you're building a real connection. And it's similar to what we build, is like we could build an agency that works with people across the country, but there's something special about being able to like go see our people every week. It's like we don't want to do Zoom calls, we don't want to do exactly AI reports and all this. It's like, hey, let's just sit down, let's talk, let's figure out what we're doing. And it's like building locally, especially with where you came from. Like you were trying to build this huge startup company and you know, change the world, but like, how can you change your community's world? Exactly. Yeah. And now your kids get to see you instead of sitting behind a computer at home building something, it's like they get to see you work in retail, talking to customers, like they get to see you building something. Exactly. And you can actually see it. It's like, oh, look what my dad did. It's like this physical space. You know, and that's like for kids, it's like they need, and you saw that when you were younger too. Exactly. The STL bucket list show is proudly sponsored by Suede Dispensary with 11 Missouri area locations. Suede does so much for the St. Louis community. We've been working with this team for a couple years back since Medical was here, and we're excited to support their new product launches, events, and community initiatives. We couldn't be happier to work with this premier cannabis brand, and we're excited for them to sponsor the show. Enjoy the rest of the podcast. So, what do you want to try next? We'll do we'll do one more, one more little stuff.

Redwood Empire Barrel Pick & the St. Louis Bourbon Festival

SPEAKER_01 38:28

You want to do wine or do you want to do whiskey now? I gotta, I mean, I gotta do bourbon.

SPEAKER_03 38:31

I told you I was gonna drink bourbon with you. There we go.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

You just pick, you pick the bottle. Let's go from low to high. Uh, if you're gonna at this pace we are going, I think we can start with somewhere in the middle. Um, let's do the haystack needle, Redwood Empire. Uh so the single barrel for this is gonna come out and uh at St. Louis Bourbon Festival. Right. Uh so coming up the first week of October.

SPEAKER_03 38:56

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

So we are uh official retailers for the festival and uh we will are we'll have a booth there. Uh we picked a barrel with those guys, uh phenomenal group of people who love bourbon and love to promote it. And uh we picked a barrel together to exclusively release there. Cheers. Yeah, it smells phenomenal.

SPEAKER_03 39:21

Yeah, that's clean.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Yeah, it's uh gonna be a great whiskey out in California. That's clean.

SPEAKER_03 39:28

Yeah, that's clean. We gotta go carney some of this. That is clean, not not too big of a bite to it either for being uh 114 proof either.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Yeah, so the one we picked, it's kind of elevates this whiskey as well.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

Is that supposed to be like tree bark?

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Yep, yeah. So they took a literal tree bark and modeled it after this. So you can see on the bottom uh there are the rings up from the trunk trunk of the tree. So I think that's that's really neat.

SPEAKER_03 39:58

I love like the bird, like the industry of the bottle design, and it's like everybody like they go so hard with even like beer companies and like what they do with like how much artwork goes into what they're doing, and there's so much passion that goes into these products, and it's it's really a tough industry for them to be in too, you know, because it I mean, I'm talking to these guys, the the IPA world is obviously declining. I mean, bourbons and wines and spirits are good, but like if you go down a wine aisle, like how do you set yourself apart when there's a thousand different options? It's so crazy, it's hard for us to even pick. You just naturally go to ones you've familiar with.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

I think shopping, um I'm a guy like that. I like to shop by labels as well. Yeah, yeah, it's a label like stories. Yeah, uh it's I love stories. I uh I'm kind of I'm a curious guy. I like to ask questions, I love like to solve problems, which is result in barrel blends. But uh telling good stories uh sets you apart. Um and it kind of once you learn about it, uh it sticks with you. You don't forget about it easily. Yeah, it's the first bottle is the hard, but the second is more difficult. But if you have a good story, it becomes that much easier.

Mezcal, Tequila & Agave Spirits Deep Dive

SPEAKER_03 41:00

What do you think about Ms Cal? I love Mezcal. I I used to work in the roofing industry and construction industry, and we had a lot of people that were from Jalisco that were do work in construction and stuff, and they introduced me to Ms. Cal. This was probably about eight years ago, and it's so smoky. It's not something I typically drink straight, but it is great in a cocktail, a smoky mezcal paloma, even just making a paloma with mezcal instead of the tequila.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

It's crazy because I almost brought one and I'm gonna get chewed out for not bringing one. Uh uh, right? Yeah, one of our team members, Steven, uh, he I was packing this box up to bring it over. And it just goes, he he literally tells me that chief, where's tequila and where's agave in here? Yeah, agave. Yeah, and I was like, Well, I don't know if we have enough space. There's so much already to try. And of course, you asked me to talk about it.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

Yeah, but no, I started drinking Mizcal, and and there's a couple bars locally that I Tim Wiggins, who's working with us at Cocktail Week, he owns Yellow Belly, Lazy Tiger, um, and he had a whole agave menu and it was smoky, you know, tahheen on the rim, just like a smoky agave refreshing drink.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

We have about 50 different agave spirits, tequila, mascal, bakanora, a lot of things on our bar as well. Yeah, uh, we do great with tequila. We just had Marie Carmenurtez, who is a national educator in tequila, do an event with us as well. Uh, there are some great mascales out there, not all of them are as smoky. There are some lightly, light smoky. Uh, but the great thing about mascal is it's not defined by one type of agave species. That's the difference between mascal and tequila. Tequila has to be a blue web or agave, whereas mascal could be a different agave as well.

SPEAKER_03 42:33

Uh and then they they do they age them in barrels sometimes to get the smoke flavor?

SPEAKER_01 42:38

Uh no, it's uh it's the way it's uh agave is cooked. They use like earthy pot earthen pots, dig a hole in the ground, put and they smoke the uh pinya off the agave. Uh to that smoky flavor. So um, but based on how they ferment it and how they uh what kind of water they use and where they what agave species you use, it could range from something having like peppery spice and agave sweetness to something something like tasting like uh fermented cheese or something like that. Like it's very yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:09

One of them I read the I was in Florida this weekend and there was like a peppercorn. It was like roasted with peppercorn and then like uh some different types, but like I like to drink it straight. It is just it is it bites those. They do bite sometimes, but the the Vita, the green bottle, the OG Vita bottle is what I keep on my bar at home just because that's a good mixture.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

It's a good mixture, and I think I see it at bars all around town and it's an inch, it's a $35, $40 bottle where some of these miscellales are like $70, $80 because my favorite one is uh I've already forgot the name, uh, but it's got like this orange uh pink top, uh $120 a bottle, but I only got three bottles on the shelf forever, and that's gone once the next batch comes in. It's not gonna be the same at all. Yeah. And it's it was beautiful. It's like it caught me so much off guard. This light smoke, it tasted like cheese, fruit, and all that stuff. I was like, how could Mescal be so crazy good?

SPEAKER_03 43:57

It tastes like so many different flavors, and it's it's so. It's so interesting. So I think a lot of people that like Mescal, a lot of bourbon drinkers have not discovered Mescal because but it's a similar audience. It's like people that love the enjoy of these notes and these flavors. But these younger, I think the younger generation is drinking more agave. It's drinking more.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

I think it's exploring uh what they like and uh they want to hear the story of the product. They want to know what they're putting in their bodies instead of not drinking at all. They would rather spend $50 on a bottle that they could get into like, hey, what makes this special? What is this? How is this made? And what does it taste like? Yeah. And once you cross the bridge, I think they're there to explore a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_03 44:38

Yep.

Rapid Fire: Favorite Drink, Next Location & Best Event

SPEAKER_03 44:39

So I got some rapid fires just to wrap up here. So you mentioned some of your favorite bottles, but I want to start with wine, whiskey, tequila, beer. What's your one if you had to drink one for the rest of your life? You could only pick one. Uh I know it's tough.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

Yeah. A lot of guests ask me if uh what's my favorite. I go, it changes every month. Uh, but for summer, I would say beer.

SPEAKER_03 45:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:02

Just because it's a it's just something you can see. Something you can have with friends, family. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

And you can have a couple of those. Uh beers easy to drink.

SPEAKER_03 45:09

And IPAs typically are just like some fruity. It seems like what you brought today.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

So none of those are IPA. One is a lager, one is a blonde ale. Uh, so those are pretty cool stuff. Uh uh, it's got a little hop to it on the time wizard from Blue Jay. Uh, but both of them are great stuff. Uh lighter style uh beers you can enjoy with friends. Uh, I'll drink almost everything.

SPEAKER_03 45:31

And then, you know, Bridgeton, Afton, Valley Park, Southside, I'm not gonna make you pick your favorite store. I'm not gonna do that. That's like that's like asking about your kids right now. Yeah. Um, you know, and I think I might know, but I'm not gonna ask about it. But if you had a bucket list location, somewhere you would love to be at, is there anywhere in the St. Louis community from you know the county everywhere? Is there a spot that that you would love to put your next store at?

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Uh for our next location, uh, I like St. Louis County. Uh the two locations that I really enjoy. I think Kirkwood is doing really great right now. Uh somewhere on Lake St. Louis is beautiful as well. Uh Wendsville, Lake St. Louis area, those are uh really cool neighborhoods. I feel like we could be uh we could add value to. We could uh develop a community there. That's how we look at it is like not just uh adding another bottle shop, but what can we bring to the community? So I think we could add good value to community over there.

SPEAKER_03 46:24

And then you do a lot of events. Is there any specific pairing or any specific uh distiller, somebody that you had in town that was like an aha moment for you or a bucket list moment when you had somebody? Uh but there's been a lot. Whether like this is a really cool event, or this is, or if there's even just a favorite event that you've done before.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

Uh I tell my team, it was uh one of the difficult events we do, uh, and we had done it before we realized what we had on our hands, is at the Afton store. Uh, we did a Father's Day event. I miss because I grew up after 18 when I was an adult, I grew up in America, and my family has always been in India. Uh, everybody in my family, and I miss them a lot uh sometimes. But when Father's Day comes around, I like to do this uh cool event for all the fathers. Uh it's associated with bourbon. We do bourbon and food pairing. The first one we did, uh uh where I handpicked four different bourbons, and we had a local chef, uh Ryan Maher, who's not in St. Louis right now. Uh uh, but one of our friends, uh other friends uh connected us. Um and uh uh we basically Ryan came in, he butchered his own meat, he uh he uh foraged his own mushrooms and cooked every meal in front of our guests, and we designed a menu pairing item where he cooked the food and I talked about the whiskey. And when the fathers left for the day, we basically uh gave them a gift uh of cigar and a lighter. And uh uh the card, it was a ticketed event, but the event came with a card as a father's day gift card. So I designed the whole we designed the card from ground up as a gift uh to the fathers. If somebody's buying it as a gift for the dad, you just have to do is give them the gift card. And they show up on the Father's Day and we do the whole dinner uh with whiskey pairing. And uh those guests who came to that event are still our regular customers and they appreciated that a lot. And to me, uh emotionally that meant a lot more. And still to this day, we try to do something big on Father's Day, uh kind of fun event uh around food and whiskey or whatever else we'll pick. But uh when we did that, the food, the story of the food and paired with the spirit kind of went longer way than if I would have done just spirit or just food. Uh and there was the kind of thing moment that's like, oh there's this lot more to spirits than just putting it for right occasion. It's paired with foods, it's paired with moments, it paired with emotions.

SPEAKER_03 48:49

You had

Family Visits & Building Something to Be Proud Of

SPEAKER_03 48:50

sons and and bringing their daughters, bringing their dads, or exactly generations of kids maybe there and exactly so and that's really cool to see because has your has your family been to see the shop shops before or have they been um over? Yeah, uh my parents what was that moment when you opened the doors up to show them? Were they like were they mind blown on what you built?

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Uh so I think I I don't know if my parents have been to our Valley Park store yet, uh since we opened it completely.

SPEAKER_03 49:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:15

Uh my dad being in construction and realistic development, he helped me design some parts of it. Him and I will start talking about an idea, and next thing we'll know, he'll start like drawing with his hand, like an architect, and they'll just send it to me. It's like, hey, this is how you think about it. So he helped me design it and build it out. Uh, but I don't think he has seen it since it's been completely operational. Yeah. I think they'll love the people aspect of it is when they'll see other people coming in saying hi. I'd have a lot of family members who are passing through the state and city will come by and I'll show them, take them to one of the stores. And uh one thing that stands out to me still today is one of our guests will come out and say hi to our my family and say how much they love the place, how much they love our team. And I don't think they'll ever forget that. Yeah, so yeah, that really means a lot to us.

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SPEAKER_03 50:00

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Family Legacy & What It Means to Guests

SPEAKER_01 50:35

Like one of the uh things we did for our guest uh to get our some of our presentations for our stores is uh we told them that we want to build places that our families would be proud of, and I think we are on path for that.

SPEAKER_03 50:48

Yeah. Yeah, that's all it is. Is you know, see, me and my dad, we built this uh whole studio together, we built the all the floor, we laid all the floors together, and he's in construction and he never understood my job. He's like, it didn't make sense to him because everybody in our family was construction workers, yeah, and he didn't understand. He's like, So when are you gonna get a real job? Yeah, and and then I'm like, then when we got this building and we started working together, he's like, Oh, this it's it's it's physical instead of digital, you know, and that digital doesn't a lot of people that are 65 and older don't understand the digital world that there could be careers in that world.

Closing Thoughts, Sign-Off & Network Outro

SPEAKER_01 51:20

Yeah, similar with me when I was in science. It's hard for my dad to understand. It's like, so what's the job? What's what does a researcher do? How much do they make?

SPEAKER_03 51:27

Yeah, I was like, And they're concerned because they're like, we're sending you here, we're investing in you to get here, and and they want that investment to then you be successful and take care of your family and and stuff like that. But no, Mohit, I appreciate you for coming on. Love trying some of the product and and we love working with you guys and and excited for you guys to continue to build on what you've already built, but also expand because I think there's a lot of room to grow, especially in St. Louis.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

In St. Louis, it's important for you now. You've been here for since 2006. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:56

Wow. That's awesome. Well, no, I see I appreciate you guys in St. Louis. Um, Barrel Blends, uh, we'll drop the website link. Um, go support. They do a lot of events and um choose local when you're shopping at um these stores. There's a lot of places that you don't realize are local businesses and people can support. So we'll see you guys next Wednesday. St. Louis, thanks for listening. Everything we do here is about telling the story of this city, and that doesn't stop with this show. On the Bucketlist Podcast Network, we're diving even deeper into the people, places, and moments that make this city what it is. Meet Me in Music with Neil Salsick captures the sound of the city, past and present, ending each episode with a live performance. For my Foodie Lovers, the sauce with Lauren Healy brings you inside the restaurants that define our culture every Tuesday. Gateway to Growth with Jamal Cornelius highlights the stories behind the people that make St. Louis work. And every Thursday, Bryce breaks down your weekend with This Week in St. Louis. More stories, more voices. Explore the full bucketless podcast network wherever you listen.