Cousins Anna Axster and Wendelin von Schroder have long loved whiskey but had a problem: they didn’t feel represented in the industry.
Indeed, only 8% of distilleries are owned by women while 37% of whiskey drinkers are women, according to Women In Distilling.
Enter Lodestar Whiskey. The duo officially launched the Santa Monica-based spirits brand this year, leaving their careers in the entertainment industry behind.
“We didn’t feel super represented in that space as women and knew a lot of women who enjoyed drinking whiskey,” von Schroder said. “We came up with this idea that maybe we would venture out…when the pandemic hit, we decided to take a jump.”
Axster added that they spent three years getting the taste profile down and learning about making whiskey before officially launching. Since launching, the company has been adding bar, restaurant and liquor store accounts and is currently in roughly 50 locations.
Axster said the company was looking to “build a strong foundation” and increase its number of locations locally and in some other California markets as well.
To aid its growth, the company joined a pre-accelerator run through Distill Ventures, which helps companies in the spirits industry grow.
The accelerator offers capital and support. Lodestar has since cycled out of the accelerator, but von Schroder called being part of it “very exciting.” The company is looking to have a seed round of funding next year and is open to joining other accelerator programs, Axster said.
Other growth is on the horizon as well.
“We want to expand our California footprint and then we want to expand into other markets as well across the U.S.,” von Schroder said.
She added that the company was also interested in adding an additional SKU, or stockkeeping unit, and looking to work with a conventional distributor.
But the cousins are cautious about growing too quickly.
“We definitely are interested in growing the brand ourselves in a sustainable way,” Axster said. “There’s some examples of just people expanding too fast and we are very conscious of that and want to grow it sustainably and organically.”
