Getting 'Sips to Lips'
business philosophies with Sunday Funday founder Tatiana de Abreu!
The Come Up highlights successful business owners’ & operators ‘come-up’ stories in an easy-to-read, written interview format.
All content is transcribed from live interviews.
Know someone who would make a great interview? Nominate them here!
For this issue - Tatiana de Abreu, founder of the canned mimosa brand Sunday Funday!
Sunday Funday Quick Stats:
🥫 Cans sold: 10k+
🏬 Number of Stores: 150
📅 Days on shelves: 37
💰 Capital Invested: $120k
⏳ Time in Business: 4 years
🎯 Goal: Build a Mimosa Empire
📈 Number of businesses started before this: 0
😬 Times she almost quit: A shit ton (too many to count)
What you did before Sunday Funday…
It's been quite a journey…
My background is in tech, where I’ve worked on Marketing teams (where I am today), managed partnerships and have also dabbled in the Sales World. With that background knowledge, I think it’s really prepared me for seeing a gap in the market, and as opposed to sitting there and thinking, wow, this would have been cool, — me actually doing something about it.
I still have my full time job, so it's been fun (and a challenge) balancing everything, but those roles are what led me to where I am today.
Identifying the opportunity…
First off — I am not a serial entrepreneur. I've never built anything, let alone something for consumption. So when I realized there was this gap in the market in 2020, I was so excited by it. I was like, how could we put a man on the moon, but not have canned mimosas? *laughs*
I'm a little stubborn and just saw that gap, and I was like, there's no way!
But as a kid growing up, I never dreamed of being a CEO…this kind of fell in my lap.
It was just, oh, shit..
Is this the thing that we're gonna do?
Is this real?
Is this happening?
That was it.
Everything started in August 2020 - I went to the LCBO to pick up canned mimosas for a friend's birthday, but it turns out, there just weren’t any available.
When I asked the associates where the Mimosas were, they looked at me like I had two heads. I ended up buying some other drinks and lugged that to the party, but the whole time I was just sitting there, thinking, how is this not a thing?
It's not rocket science…it's not a crazy difficult drink to make…it can't be that hard. *laughs*
Fast forward — turns out it actually is QUITE hard. *laughs*
But it was an “Aha” moment, and that same night, I went home and sketched out designs for the can, thought about the name and what the persona of the brand could be.
Then I started cold calling, because at the time, I had no idea what I was doing.
I thought, we can't just launch something without speaking to people who actually know what they're doing. So, in between my day job’s meetings, I would cold call orange juice importers, breweries, canneries — anybody who would be involved in the process of launching a product like this.
Luckily, people actually will tell you quite a bit if you come in confidently. I didn't tell anyone my idea, but I’d just say, “I’m building my business, and I look up to you.” And before I ended every call, I always made a point to ask “Is there anyone else I should be speaking to?”
That was huge in terms of growing my network, because most of the people I know are in tech, which wasn’t particularly helpful in this case.
So this happened over about two years. I was learning on and off, because imposter syndrome would kick in...
I started telling friends and family I was working on this idea, and people would be like, “Oh, that's cool. But you know, there are other hobbies - why are you looking into types of Orange Juice?”
Unintentionally dismissive, I think would be the best way to put it, but if I’m being honest I did allow it to side track me at certain points. But long story short, eventually, I had learned enough about the industry, and I thought, okay, let’s do a small batch.
So in 2023 we launched in Alberta and British Columbia - we did a little bit of advertising. Nothing big, but it moved so fast, and people were absolutely loving it.
I still get messages on the Sunday Funday Instagram with people from out West saying, “Hey, I bought this for my bachelorette party last summer. Where are you?”
That, to me, was validation that I was doing something right.
From 0 to 1…
We all make mimosas in our kitchen, but there's a lot more to that when it's a canned good. In all my conversations during that network building phase, I started asking “how do we actually do this?”
And what I learned is that there are a lot of businesses across Canada who work with you to turn your idea into a recipe. So I started learning who the players were, and tried to find one to work with.
That whole first year was just fake it till you make it…
It was just me and my cat in my condo trying to seem like it was a bigger team than it was. And finally, I found a flavour team that took a chance on me.
One of the first things they asked me was, “Well, what are your guidelines?”
I just thought of it from a consumer’s perspective, and since I’m basically my target audience, I answered with what I’d want - something sub 100 calories, low on the sugar, low on the carbs, generally “healthy”.
The biggest thing that I said, though, is that if I'm going to do this, it has to be something that I want to drink. I wanted to be able to proudly say to people, “I'm going to bring a bunch to your party, and it's going to be delicious.”
At the time, it was still the pandemic. I couldn't go to the lab to do tastings, so they would ship me these little unmarked white boxes to my condo every week, and they’d have these chubby bottles. The front desk was a little suspicious! *laughs*
Long story short, we landed on a recipe, and from there the recipe team worked with us and said, “This is where all the ingredients come from. If you're going to make this many cans, this is how much of ingredient ABC that you need…and you need a co-packer.”
So again, in between my day job meetings, I was cold calling every brewery co-packer under the sun.
Eventually, I did find a smaller producer that took a chance on us…
And keep in mind, every year I was applying to the LCBO, too.
If you get in after applying, you're on shelves the following year, but at that point, I knew I wasn’t going to get in, so I was wrestling with the notion of, how do I get ‘sips to lips’ before the LCBO says yes to me?
I didn’t even know if the market wanted it yet, so the idea of producing thousands was risky - so that’s where launching out West came in. I paused everything for Ontario and copied and pasted what I did in BC and Alberta - all the cold calling, the networking, everything.
From there, I found a small co-packer out in British Columbia. A fabulous small team. They said, “Sounds like a great idea. Let's make 5000 cans.”
Biggest achievements to date…
Getting into the LCBO was the biggest thing because the LCBO is actually the largest purchaser and distributor of alcohol in the world. I was told that 1100 brands applied and of the 1100, they narrowed it down to 12 brands, and Sunday Funday was one of those 12.
Even saying it out loud is absurd - it was huge.
Originally, the LCBO started us off in 80 stores, but as of April, we are in about 150 stores, which is pretty cool.
In terms of all the financials — we've only been on shelves in the LCBO for a month now, so we are still waiting on more sales data to really understand what that looks like, but so far we're moving in the right direction.
One more thing: I now have a PR team!
I was very hesitant because I don't know too much about PR, but they've been doing an incredible job. They've been pitching me to every magazine publication, so that's been another incredible milestone.
On navigating an unknown industry…
I credit my skills to being a corporate event planner, because by doing that, you have to not only understand how to delegate to everybody, but you have to be prepared for every situation and also be about ten steps ahead of everyone.
Every partner, every vendor, every guest - you have to think ahead.
With branding, the biggest thing was sitting down and creating a very clear vision.
In today’s age, great marketing is about clearly communicating what you stand for — not just values, but your brand and personality, too. That’s something I was very specific about early on.
But things like building a website — that was me with a glass of wine on a Friday night trying to figure out how to build on GoDaddy…
I had never built a website…I barely knew what GoDaddy was!
I did the best I could.
I don't have the money like Labatt or Coors to invest in a whole web or branding team, so it really came back to looking at my network, and I have a bunch of incredible friends that stepped in. One of my best friends actually rebuilt the website and I refer to her as “our web team” or “Web Queen.”
A friend's husband is doing all the Instagram ads, the Facebook ads, and really developing that whole strategy with me. I like to call him my “Chief Ads Guy”. Yes, everyone gets a title here! *laughs*
So that's what I've learned to do — step back and go, okay, I could do all of this — but beyond a certain point, it wouldn’t make sense and I need to stick to what I'm good at.
And in terms of appeasing the gatekeeper, the third time we applied to the LCBO, I realized that the brand needed to be bigger than it actually was.
Again, apart from my own personal accounts, I didn't know how to run a brand’s social media, so I hired a phenomenal agency — women owned — who taught me the ropes on that.
Long story short, when I applied for the third time, I came to the party with a much stronger brand. We brought sales numbers, a built out social presence and media coverage to the table.
Really, it was all a matter of getting my act together — understanding my weaknesses and pulling other people in to help, even if it's just friends helping on weekends or whatever it may be, just to give the brand that much more strength.
How many times you almost quit…
In the beginning, it was a fun little hobby, and then as it started to snowball every other day, I would stop myself.
Remember, I had a full time job, so I was trying to balance this hobby which was growing so quickly. There were so many moments where I just stopped and said, Tatiana, what are you doing? Have you lost your mind?
As I started paying for ingredients, setting up that co-packer out west, as it started getting real, I’d think,
I'm in my early 30s - all my friends are getting married, buying houses…and here i am, spending all the money I’ve saved for a down payment on kilos of mimosa ingredients.
But from the time I had the idea to when I actually got ‘sips to lips’ it took two years. A lot of people might think two years of networking and learning isn’t actually that long, but the problem is that I had actually drawn it out quite a bit.
I’d go full steam ahead for two weeks, and then I would stop and think, this is ridiculous. Stop wasting your time. Go live your life like everybody else.
Even some friends and family would say, “Oh, you're still doing that?” And that would kind of shake me a little bit. (It no longer does…)
But I would say for a good two years, there was just a battle between the two versions of myself.
The “Hey, so far, it's going well. Why not?” Versus the, “Are you out of your mind?”
Thoughts on bootstrapping vs. raising capital…
With all that said about the back and forth and doubts - if I say I'm doing something, it's 110%. So after those two years of back and forth, in 2022, I thought, okay, Tatiana, we're going to produce this product and give it one year.
I gave myself that financial allotment, said, “You'll buy a house eventually. It doesn’t matter if it’s not going to be this year or next.” So I took that down payment and made it my “Mimosa Fund” - and we’re still on that, so we’re fully bootstrapped to date.
I am talking to investors now though. We got investment from the BDC, which was super helpful and a milestone. That gave me runway to start paying people, producing more and thinking bigger.
In terms of where we are today, even though we've been on shelves for less than a month, seeing how quickly it's moving, we're setting up that cadence with our co-packer for how much we need to be producing every single month. So staying on top of it is going to be huge.
Especially because we're not even in summer yet.
My goal is to build a mimosa empire.
In order to get that, we have to fulfill production.
We have to fulfill demand.
We're talking to golf courses, restaurants, bars…
We want to be everywhere, and I want to make a huge splash.
And in order to do that - in terms of raising money we're looking for half a million to a million. I'd feel more comfortable with a million dollars obviously! *laughs*
Initially, what I was looking at was ANYONE who had money. If you had 50k pay to play, you could participate… But now, I think the better route is sticking with one or two investors — ideally people that come from this world or have connections within this world.
And my thinking here is really that it was never, “Empty your wallet, and we'll connect with you next quarter,” but more so, finding people who can act as an extension of the team and help us beyond the money.
It was informed a lot by just listening to podcasts and learning about raising funds and venture capital and all that stuff. It’s a whole other world that I had never known about.
I always watched Dragon’s Den, but I had no idea how that business relationship worked. So again, I surrounded myself with people who have raised money and sold companies successfully. Bringing them onto the advisory team and using them as sounding boards has been huge, because you can only learn so much from podcasts and reading.
Thoughts on operations & demand planning…
One of my best friends from University comes from the Alcohol world. He was my sounding board for a lot of this at first. And so after a certain point, I approached him and said, “How about you join the team?” So he's my business partner now and it’s just been great having someone to turn to who I can 110% trust and we can go on this journey together.
Speaking of people, funny enough, I just made my first hire, this week! He's been leading operations for some of the biggest brands across Canada and the US, and now is part of the Sunday Funday team. What a difference he’s made.
Now that there’s so much going on, it’s so easy to drop the ball, and I realized things could end very poorly if I’m running operations and logistics without supervision. I also recognized that it’s basically a full-time job on its own now, so it was time to pay for talent.
So those were two of the biggest things — bringing in my-now business partner and having this operations lead.
Thoughts on networking…
Even before this, I like to think I was quite good at networking.
Some people shy away from it, but I think the vast majority of people out there like to help others out, and just asking can take you a really long way.
As I was building my network, whenever I’d be getting off the phone with someone, I’d say, “Okay, who else would you recommend I reach out to?” And that's been an incredible little trick.
The other thing is approaching it with the right perspective. You shouldn’t be out to steal other people’s secrets, but genuinely trying to build a connection with them. If you come with pointed questions and a genuine desire to connect, you’ll get a lot of help.
Thoughts on growth channels…
Right now, we're predominantly on Instagram, and that's been helpful.
It’s fun seeing the stats from posts about the product — how many times they’re being shared, etc — and now we're getting the kind of momentum where people are tagging their friends.
Within the next week, we're launching on TikTok. As much as I shied away from it in the past, we're going to face the beast. Which is funny to say considering I worked there at one point.
What I love to see and what friends actually send me a lot of are founder videos. So that's where the TikTok strategy is coming in — me putting myself out there and sharing the behind the scenes.
I'm very excited to see how that goes and how it's received.
Imposter syndrome definitely comes into play - that's me with TikTok.
I'm nervous…What if nobody cares!?
But my girlfriends are like, are you nuts?
You have to Launch it!
Thoughts on the future…
As of today, it's to own a Mimosa empire — to really build this out.
Eventually, I’d like to get to the US, because that's a massive market, but it’s a whole other ballgame, and there are still a lot of thirsty Canadians to take care of.
I don't mind the idea of being bought out, but I think seeing if I can really build a community around the brand is more appealing.
It's really cool to have your own product, and to be an entrepreneur, girl boss, or whatever. But I’ve met so many people who have said to me, “Hey, I have an idea, too, and watching you do this has been so inspiring.”
And to me, that's another reason to take this to the next level - because I want to be that voice for people, especially women who shy away from entrepreneurship.
Thoughts on challenges & goals…
I think the biggest thing right now is growth - can we keep up with demand and scale the business?
Growth is a great problem to have, but now it’s a matter of having a system to accommodate that growth. Compared to last year, we’re really dialed in, but now that we're playing in the big leagues, we have to meet the industry standard. Nailing that down is what I think about every minute of the day.
I'm also still proving myself to this industry because it’s like 99% middle aged men…
In the early days, I’d have conversations with certain people, and they’d be like,
“Okay, honey. Come back to me when you're a real business.”
Getting that a lot was interesting.
I’d have to be extra prepared for meetings with someone who'd been in the industry for years because I need to be able to hold my own. I didn't want to allow any space for doubt, where people would think that I was just some bored little lady with daddy's money to burn — which, I am not.
But in terms of having an idea and just going for it, reaching out to industry leaders, I always had this nagging doubt of “Why would they want to talk to me? Which is that imposter syndrome coming out.
Sadly, I see this in a lot with women - So many of us take ourselves out of the running before we even have a chance. It’s the same for applying for jobs - that stat where women will only apply for a job if they have 100% of the qualifications, but men apply even if they only have like 60-70% of the qualifications?
I see it a lot - a lot of my girlfriends who have great ideas, but they will not do it or take themselves seriously. So that's been huge — getting around that kind of prejudice and changing my mindset.
That's also why I like to share my story. Some people think it's easy and it's fucking not, but I also don't want to discourage people. We need more transparency on what it’s truly like starting any business.
I also don’t want people to think I’m just some machine who’s just, work, work, work, all the time and ‘lucked out’.
I have had bad days and those hit hard.
I have cried a lot on this journey…
But it's when you keep showing up that things happen - it's just like going to the gym. You have days where you don't want to work out, but you still do it anyway.
So that is my goal with this, too - inspiring people who are like, “I don't know how to do this…” Shit…well, neither do I.
That’s it for issue this issue!
If you want to learn more, follow Tatiana on LinkedIn, or Instagram!
Read past issues here:
We just launched our referral program - refer a friend to The Come up and get cool prizes!
Interview by: Alex Tribe
Edited by: Angus Merry