You must be 21 years of age or older to view this website. LET ME KNOW WHERE I CAN FIND MY BLUE CHAIR BAY.The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. The beach to bottle movement has spread across America Chances are your piece of the islands is waiting at a retailer or watering hole near you. Find out where with a zip and a click below. If you come up empty, let us know on the and we'll set a course to make it right.Let friends in your social network know what you are reading aboutTwitterGoogle+LinkedInPinterestPosted!A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Log InSubscribed, but don't have a login?Activate your digital access.If Martina McBride was a drink, she'd be a nice white wine. Willie Nelson undoubtedly would be a ice cold can of Lone Star Beer.And Kenny Chesney? Specifically Blue Chair Bay brand rum, distilled in the island nation of Barbados and bottled at LiDestri Food & Beverage's spirits operation on Rochester's northwest side.
The country music star known for such good-time escapist hits as "Beer in Mexico" and "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems," earlier this year launched his line of rums through a newly formed holding company, Fishbowl Spirits LLC.And it has turned out to be a gold record both for the Tennessean and for Fairport-based pasta sauce and dip maker/food packager LiDestri."Everybody was completely knocked out by what happened," said Fishbowl Spirits CEO Mark Montgomery. "Our original forecast for the first 12 months was 25,000 cases. We did that in seven weeks. Today it appears we are are one of the fastest-growing new spirits launches by a new company in the history of liquor. Most people have a demand problem, we have a struggle against the supply problem. We just now in November have gotten ahead of the demand and have enough supply to carry us through the holidays. It's been an amazing thing to watch.""Obviously, they were double or almost triple what they initially told us they would be," said LiDestri Spirits general manager Joe Ferrigno.
"For a brand new brand, that's spectacular. Especially for an independent like that."But Blue Chair Bay is a relatively small account for LiDestri's booming spirits business, which turns out hundreds of thousands of gallons of different spirits and liquors annually as it contract manufactures some of the best-known vodka, whiskey and rum brands on the market. When the spirits business was located in Dundee, Yates County, it employed 40 people and used a couple of thousand-gallon tanks for production. Today, the Lee Road operation employs close to 100 and has a forest of storage tanks with a total of 500,000 gallons capacity, Ferrigno said.Blue Chair Bay had a limited release in May and was available at bars and liquor stores in 35 states by July. Now it's available in 43 states — including at a number of bars, restaurants and retail outlets in the Rochester area — and it will be in all 50 states by early 2014, Montgomery said. Last month it also launched in most of the Caribbean and the British Virgin Islands "where Kenny spends a lot of his off time," Montgomery said.
Local liquor store shelves easily could be well-stocked with products containing, metaphorically, the sweat of celebrities. Moviemaker Francis Ford Coppola, Tool lead singer Maynard James Keenan and retired NFL quarterback Drew Bledsoe all own wineries. Former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar started his own tequila company, though he since has sold his interest in the business.A product's association with a celebrity can help it get its foot in the door and attention from retailers and consumers, said Tim Nolan, a visiting lecturer in the State University College at Geneseo's School of Business. But being too linked with that celeb can end up dragging that product down, Nolan said."The long-term is, your brand has to stand by itself," he said. "If it's just rum by a country western singer, is that enough to get people to want to try this?"The other thing you have to be concerned about is that the celebrity doesn't become larger than the brand. I've had experiences (in food and beverage marketing) where we've used celebrities and when we tested some advertising, the celebrity came out first and the brand came out second or third.
It's a delicate balance, how you use it."Montgomery said Chesney was directly involved with numerous aspects of the product launch, from taste to the company logo. "Our edict was not, 'Just get me something to slap my name on,' the edict was to get a great quality product," he said. "He also said, 'I'm not a cardboard cutout. If I ever see an idea where I'm a cardboard cutout in a retail outlet, that's the last question you'll ask me as an employee.' "And Chesney has not been a particularly overt pitchman for his own rum. His name is not a prominent part of the labeling. During his 2013 No Shoes Nation Tour, which wrapped up in August, Fishbowl Spirits focused marketing efforts on the parking lot preshow tailgate parties that sprang up at concert stops, and it also had interstitial promotional videos showing inside the coliseums and concert venues between acts, Montgomery said."We worked closely ... to find an appropriate balance of content that was rum-related without directly attaching Kenny to it," he said.
"You'll never see Kenny selling the rum directly. We're careful not to associate him too much. Blue Chair Bay has to stand on its own legs. Our goal is to build this beyond Kenny's core constituents."Blue Chair Bay's lineup currently is a white rum, a coconut rum and a coconut spiced rum. In 2014, the company plans to add one to two additional products to the line, Montgomery said.In an email, Chesney said that Blue Chair Bay started as an effort "to create the rum I truly wanted to drink.""If you know about my music and touring, I'm personally invested in every note that's played, every bit of video on the screens, all the details about sound and lights, staging and any part of the experience I can have my hands on, because I want the fans to have the best possible experience at our shows," Chesney said. "They know when they come out to party with us, they're going to have the best night of the summer."So given that, rather than taking a deal and having my name on something, I'd rather create a rum I'd like to drink, be proud of serving people and hopefully, be something that can be special.