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Key Takeaways
- Chelsea Handler partnered with women-owned ready-to-drink beverage firm Owl’s Brew to enter the aggressive alcohol market.
- The collaboration helped the model safe shelf house at Complete Meals.
When requested why she needed to begin a drink model, Chelsea Handler’s reply was easy: “I’ve all the time been motivated by Vodka.”
If you happen to caught her 2025 particular, you’ve heard the unbelievable story of how she ran a spiked lemonade stand in Martha’s Winery on the ripe age of 10 (don’t inform the MA liquor license board), saving up cash to pay for her personal first-class airplane ticket the subsequent summer season.
“I all the time needed to be a businesswoman,” Handler remembers to Entrepreneur. “My fundamental focus as a younger lady was ‘how am I going to get out of New Jersey and begin a lifetime of my very own.”
Years later, after making her nice escape and rising to stardom as a best-selling creator and comic, Handler returned to her roots, partnering with award-winning ready-to-drink model Owl’s Brew to create her personal signature cocktail.
You’ve vodka be kidding me
Handler had dreamt of her personal spiked lemonade since she noticed how profitable the enterprise may very well be as an entrepreneurial 10-year-old. However regardless of working with varied corporations over time, she by no means discovered the proper match.
“Truthfully, I used to be all the time working with males, and the flavors have been by no means fairly the proper vibe for me,” Handler shares. “I needed one thing easy and never too overwhelming, nevertheless it all the time had a bizarre aftertaste.”
Then she discovered the founders of Owl’s Brew, Jennie Ripps and Maria Littlefield.
“Once we first obtained into the alcoholic beverage house, we used to joke that it was the ‘yr of 1,000 males,’ as a result of it felt like we have been the one ladies,” Ripps says with amusing. The information backed up that feeling: simply 4% of girls in BevAlc maintain C-suite positions.
Picture Credit score: Owl’s Brew
As they constructed Owl’s Brew, Ripps and Littlefield additionally constructed group. They launched the Sensible Girls Collective, a breast most cancers consciousness and help initiative, and created a boozy e-book membership centered on ladies’s voices.
That’s how they related with Handler, who had simply launched her newest bestseller, I’ll Have What She’s Having, which incorporates the lemonade stand story.
“We obtained an electronic mail saying, ‘Chelsea Handler desires you to make her vodka lemonade,’ and we have been like, ‘Is that this actual?’” Ripps remembers with amusing. As soon as they confirmed it was, the alignment felt apparent.
“A lot of our model is about authenticity and actual tales,” Littlefield says. “To connect this unbelievable, true story to our product was a no brainer. We simply needed to deliver it to life.”
Quickly after, she and Ripps arrange a gathering with Handler in a New York Metropolis lodge room, squeezed in between stops on a whirlwind press tour—so, in different phrases, a reasonably normal day within the lifetime of Chelsea Handler.
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Are you there, Complete Meals? It’s me, Chelsea.
On the fateful day, the pair arrived round 9 a.m. with someplace between 30 and 60 samples — relying on who you ask — half glowing and half nonetheless, all handcrafted by Ripps, an authorized tea sommelier, for Handler to style. They hit it off instantly.
“It was so refreshing to have somebody get it proper the primary time, somewhat than preventing an uphill battle,” Handler says. “The product they made embodies every part I need to symbolize, which is having enjoyable in a accountable method.”
In the present day, you’ll find Chelsea Handler’s Vodka Lemonade in three flavors: basic, pink and mint. As for the place to seize one, begin wherever she is.
“They’re a giant hit with my mates,” Handler says. “Typically you are feeling bizarre making your mates attempt your drink,’ however fortunately for me, mine are all the time asking for it.”
She’s additionally woven the beverage into her ongoing Excessive and Mighty tour, promoting it at stops nationwide, the place it’s been a smash hit. Past the tour, Owl’s Brew has gained traction at Complete Meals, increasing to roughly 200 placements, in accordance with Littlefield. Ripps provides that the drinks are doing “extremely properly” aboard the Circle Line Ferry in New York.
Handler has come a good distance from the 10-year-old who paid for her personal first-class airplane ticket with earnings from her lemonade stand.
However in some methods, she hasn’t modified in any respect.
Key Takeaways
- Chelsea Handler partnered with women-owned ready-to-drink beverage firm Owl’s Brew to enter the aggressive alcohol market.
- The collaboration helped the model safe shelf house at Complete Meals.
When requested why she needed to begin a drink model, Chelsea Handler’s reply was easy: “I’ve all the time been motivated by Vodka.”
If you happen to caught her 2025 particular, you’ve heard the unbelievable story of how she ran a spiked lemonade stand in Martha’s Winery on the ripe age of 10 (don’t inform the MA liquor license board), saving up cash to pay for her personal first-class airplane ticket the subsequent summer season.
