A Toast to Resilience: Debbie Medina-Gach’s Tequila Journey

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women In Motion and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women In Motion, we have Debbie Medina-Gach with Senor Rio Tequila. Welcome.

Debbie Medina-Gach: Hi. Thank you for having me. This is exciting.

Lee Kantor: Well, it’s exciting for me. I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Senor Rio.

Debbie Medina-Gach: Well, Senor Rio Tequila is actually celebrating 15 years on the market. And it’s a small batch boutique artisanal tequila that I started with my late husband, Jonathan. And we dedicate it to my father, Senor Rio.

Debbie Medina-Gach: And there’s not many brands out there that are locally owned and operated in Arizona, and we’re kind of the small guy among all these big, big, big brands that are owned by national corporations. But people like it. It’s great tequila. It’s all natural. And we basically have been growing the old fashioned way one bottle at a time, one person at a time on two factors, which are taste and presentation. And the brand is only available at one retail store called Total Wine & More, and that’s nationwide where spirits are sold.

Lee Kantor: So, what’s your backstory like? How does one get in the tequila business?

Debbie Medina-Gach: Oh, it’s quite a story. You know, you ever hear sometimes things happen because of fate? I’m from Chicago originally, and moved to Arizona for the sunshine, didn’t want to shovel snow anymore. And Jonathan, who was my husband, but we were dating at first – anyway, we met here in the desert, and I had told him that I received a phone call from my father, who was living in Mexico that I had not seen in 30 years. And he was kind of like, “Oh, my gosh. What are you going to do?” And I said, “Well, he wants to see me, but I don’t know. I’m kind of on the fence. I don’t know if I really want to go down and see him. He’s a little bit late.” And he says, “Well, you know my dad passed when I was young and maybe your dad’s sick and you should go,” and he was encouraging. And I said, “Well, why don’t you come with me?”

Debbie Medina-Gach: So, we traveled to Mexico to see my dad, and it was a bit of an emotional reunion, as you can imagine. And during that time, we were together to break the ice, he said, “[Foreign language] tequila?” Would you like tequila? Well, yeah, we’re in Mexico. So, we sat at the kitchen table and it was right then and there that he pulled out this bottle with no label, very simple bottle, and three glasses and started pouring it. And we sipped this tequila, and as we sipped, I don’t know if you know this, but tequila helps you talk a little bit more. And we opened up and shared our stories about our lives and got to know one another and finished the entire bottle.

Debbie Medina-Gach: The next day, we didn’t have a headache or hangover, and he said, “Well, it’s because how I make it. It’s all natural. It was a process that went back three generations in our family.” Well, I didn’t know this. And so, I had this crazy idea. When Jonathan and I came back to Arizona, we thought maybe we could do this. Maybe we could bring this tequila recipe process to the market. And we really didn’t have any experience in the alcohol industry, but just believed that this was something we wanted to share.

Debbie Medina-Gach: So, we took a big leap of faith and brought it out in 2009. And it was 2006 when I reunited with my dad. So, that’s kind of the story in a nutshell. When people ask me, “Hey, Deb. How did you get in the tequila biz?” I have to go in and share that I went to Mexico to see my dad, and through that, decided to take this process and bring it out.

Lee Kantor: So, when you decided to do this and you’re back in Arizona, how do you even start making tequila? I mean, do you go on YouTube?

Debbie Medina-Gach: Very good question.

Lee Kantor: Was YouTube there at the time?

Debbie Medina-Gach: Yes, YouTube is there. However, my dad had a small distillery but never had the means or desire to bring this tequila to the market so he could not produce this in any type of mass production. What we then did was started researching distilleries in Mexico that we could go down and talk to and work with, perhaps, that they could produce the tequila for us. And most of the distilleries, they’re very happy to see us because they said, “Oh. Yeah, yeah. We can sell you this and we can add a little vanilla and we can do this.” But we said, “No. No. We want it done the way my dad was making it, the traditional way, and we don’t want to have any additives.”

Debbie Medina-Gach: And, you know, we went on to how we wanted it. And we came upon a distillery right in the town of Tequila, Mexico, which is in Jalisco near Guadalajara, that said we understand what you’re looking for and we can help you. So, all our agaves are single estate, matured 8 to 12 years, nothing artificial is in it, even the yeast comes from the honey of the plant. So, anyway, followed this process with the distillery to make this tequila how we were going to age it, what type of barrels, and started to get this ready. It was almost like the birth of a baby.

Lee Kantor: So then, the partner you needed, it was more than just ingredients. It’s the whole methodology, right? Like you were trying to stay true to the way that your dad was doing it.

Debbie Medina-Gach: Yes. Yes. And so, we have a partnership with the distillery that produces the tequila. We go down there every time we do a new batch, bottle it, bring it up by truck to our warehouse here in Phoenix, Arizona. And this has been how we do business for the last 15 years.

Debbie Medina-Gach: Now, we had to, you know, come up with a logo which was from an old photograph of my dad. It has a picture of a man with a hat, almost like a silhouette, and it’s kind of etched into the bottle. The name Senor Rio, which means Mr. River is my dad’s nickname. Instead of Senor Rivera, which is my maiden name, they called him Senor Rio for short. So, we wanted to pay tribute and dedicate this tequila to him, because had I not gone down there to reunite with him, there’s no way in this world I’d probably be in the tequila business.

Lee Kantor: Right. Like it wasn’t on the radar of your radar. Like, this was just fate, like you said.

Debbie Medina-Gach: Yeah, truly. And so, we had a lot of bumps along the way. And as you can imagine, being the small guy, we were self-distributing. So, once we had everything in line and our first delivery came up and we had a little warehouse in Gilbert, Arizona, we grabbed our suitcases and just hit the streets. And I’d walk into establishments, restaurants and bars and liquor stores and strip clubs and nightclubs and casinos and resorts and say, “Hey, how are you today? Who does your ordering of alcohol? Because I’ve got something I want to show you.” And, really, it was the door to door salesman that I became and Jonathan making these small sales until eventually we formed a partnership with Total Wine & More.

Lee Kantor: And I don’t know what it’s like in Arizona, but I know in some states it’s tricky, like the distributor, you can’t just create a liquor and go door to door in a lot of places. Like you have to have a distributor. Aren’t there a lot of rules in this industry?

Debbie Medina-Gach: Yes. Every state varies with their laws, and it’s a three tier process. Usually it’s producer, distributor, and then retailer, so those are your three channels that you go through. Now, we are the producer even though it’s produced in Mexico, but we’re able to have a distributor’s license when we started. And so, it was doing that distribution where we opened up accounts.

Debbie Medina-Gach: And then, eventually, we did get a smaller distributor to help us because it just became so much work to go out and make the sales and do the deliveries, and put the events together, and do the tastings. It was just nonstop. But, yes, you’re right, you have to go through different channels of the legalities to have that done.

Lee Kantor: Now, was this something as kind of a side hustle or was this something that you were like, “Okay. We’re all in. We’re putting all our chips on the table here and we’re going to go boldly forward.”

Debbie Medina-Gach: Well, you know, you heard of this guy called Evel Knievel that was just always like I’m going to take this and go with it. So, we kind of Evel Knievel it. We were all in immediately. This wasn’t something that we could do part-time or as a side hustle because building a brand takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money. And together, we became what they called love in a bottle because we were this couple out there promoting our tequila, and people embraced us because they liked that we were a little bit of an underdog.

Lee Kantor: Now, any advice for other people kind of going through the same thing? If you could do it over again, would you go that route?

Debbie Medina-Gach: That’s a very good question. I have to say that I’ve learned a lot in the industry being in it for 15 years. We did everything the hard way in a sense. Perhaps it would have been better to have a big distributor and just go that route in the beginning. But at the time, we weren’t doing that. We were doing the self-distribution. And we weren’t making it in mass production, so we started very small.

Debbie Medina-Gach: I don’t know, the alcohol industry is a very competitive industry, and you’re in an arena of a lot of big brands. And the fact that we’ve survived 15 years, I don’t know if a small brand coming out today would be able to do that.

Lee Kantor: Without having some sort of connections or some —

Debbie Medina-Gach: Yes. Yes. Because, you know, there’s a lot of celebrities getting involved now. Years ago, celebrities, they used to do fragrances. You’d see all these fragrances [inaudible]. But now they saw that the alcohol industry is really booming, and so a lot of celebrities have jumped on that bandwagon and have their brands.

Lee Kantor: And then, you have a celebrity in your brand now, right?

Debbie Medina-Gach: So, about a year ago and I’ll back it up a little bit more. In 2013, my dad passed, and he wasn’t that much involved in the company, but he was very proud of us for following this process. And then, in 2018, my husband, Jonathan, passed. And so, I was running the company single handedly. I love it, every aspect of it. And it was getting to be a bit much. I’m also a grandmother of seven and I believe in family first, but at the same time I thought, “Gosh. I really need someone to help me grow this business a little more.”

Debbie Medina-Gach: And as fate would have it, a mutual friend introduced me to Mr. Joe Mantegna, who is a well-known celebrity for his acting career and so many other things that he’s involved in, and we connected. When I explained to him what I was doing and what Senor Rio was about, he just thought, “Wow. You know what? I don’t get involved with many things, but I believe in you. I like your tequila. And you just got to meet my wife.” I said okay. And so, yes, Joe Mantegna is now co-owner/my business partner a little over a year now in business.

Lee Kantor: Now, were you seeking a celebrity out or that, again, was just kind of fate, you know, waving its magic wand?

Debbie Medina-Gach: I believe it was fate. Because when I sat with Joe and he’s from Chicago, I’m from Chicago – and also I didn’t go into how, during COVID when I wasn’t able to be out in the stores sampling customers and really creating awareness, I was home like most people, I started a nonprofit because two of my granddaughters, which are identical twins, have special needs and that’s where my heart is. And I felt, you know what? I really want to support the families that have children with special needs.

Debbie Medina-Gach: So, We Care Crusade was founded, and we are a small nonprofit that for every bottle of tequila that’s sold, a dollar goes into We Care Crusade. And we literally call up families in need that are nominated or that go onto our website and we help them financially. And when I told Joe, “Oh, yeah. Another thing is not only do we make the tequila and sell the tequila, but my heart is in We Care Crusade.” And I really want to build this foundation. I want to help as many families as we can. And we’re doing it one child, one family at a time. And he looked at me and he goes, “So then, we’re tequila with a cause.” I said, yeah.

Debbie Medina-Gach: And that was also another reason why I think he was so interested, because he thought, wow, she wants to continue to help families through this tequila. And he has a daughter that’s autistic, so he understands the world of having a child that does have special needs.

Lee Kantor: Now, having a brand that also is kind of building a community around it, that’s really a noble cause and it elevates the brand and it helps you differentiate. That sounds like, again, I don’t think you developed this in that manner. It just kind of came together organically of just the person you are. Is that how that happened?

Debbie Medina-Gach: Yes. I mean, again, I didn’t expect to start a tequila company and run it. I didn’t expect to really have this foundation, but everything just kind of fell into place and seemed like the right thing to do. And I truly do believe that, you know, there are blessings all around us, and we have to look at every opportunity that comes our way because we don’t know what that’s going to lead to.

Lee Kantor: And to be open to that, really, it’s a great inspirational story because a lot of people, opportunities all around them, they’re just not kind of going for it. They’re not seeing it as opportunity.

Debbie Medina-Gach: Yeah. I think a lot of us have fear, which I have to. There’s days I go, “Oh. I hope people still like my tequila.” But at the same time it’s believing in yourself and what really matters, and doing the work, you have to constantly be proactive to make things happen.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you share a little bit about why you decided to get involved with WBEC-West?

Debbie Medina-Gach: Well, being a small business owner and I wanted to get some certifications for the company and the brand. And being minority- owned, Mexican descent and women-owned, I thought other brands are doing that. And also to meet other people that are in business and see how we can learn from one another or how we can help each other. It’s always, What can I do for you? It’s just a sense of community.

Debbie Medina-Gach: I haven’t been real active in it because I’m so busy with growing the tequila brand, and the nonprofit, and the grandkids, but I hope to do more. And I just felt that it was something that I wanted to be a part of. So, yes, I’m honored to have WBEC as part of my business too.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you talk about your ideal customer? Are you mainly communicating with the end user, the person who goes into a Total Wine and then buys the tequila? Or is it still looking for partnerships with the bars and restaurants and those type of resellers?

Debbie Medina-Gach: Well, it is only available at Total Wine & More, so when we agree to become what’s called the Spirits Direct Partner, we relinquished all relationships with other businesses. And so, it is sold only at Total Wine & More stores. So, my connection is obviously with the stores, educating the team, getting to know the management, creating the awareness.

Debbie Medina-Gach: But mostly it’s at the store, kind of like the Snapple lady would be, like “Here you are. Here’s a little taste of my Snapple.” But I’m going “Here you are. Would you like a little taste of the tequila?” So, it’s sampling the tequila, and they don’t even know who I am. I just sometimes smile and say, “Oh, yeah. I’m just an older promo girl. Which one did you like best?” And then, eventually, I will share that I am the owner of the company and I’d be honored if they’d like to take a bottle home with them.

Debbie Medina-Gach: And then, I also point out inside the bottle – and they’re very unique bottles. They’re all glass. They look like crystal decanters – there’s a message, and the message says Sharing tequila is sharing life. So, when I look at that customer and I say, “Oh, by the way, if you want to take a peek inside, there’s a secret message for you.” And they read and they go Sharing tequila is sharing life. I said, yeah, and the message is there because it’s our hope that when you take this bottle home with you, that you open it and you share it with the people that mean the most to you, your family, your friends. It’s a tequila to bring people together, celebrate life, celebrate each other, create your memories, share your life stories. Tomorrow is not promised. So, I hope you enjoy.

Debbie Medina-Gach: And they’re just like, “Oh, I like that.” And then, they’ll ask me, “Is it a different message in all the other bottles?” And I said, “No, no. We’re not a fortune cookie. We keep the same message.” It’s just sharing tequila is sharing life, because it is a bottle that you don’t want to hurry through. It’s a sipping tequila. It’s very fine. You can use it in cocktails, or you can do the shots, or you can chill it, or you can enjoy it any way you want. But it’s such a refined tequila because of how we make it, that you can literally sip it and get all the beautiful essence and the layers of the flavor profiles that come forth.

Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more, is there a website?

Debbie Medina-Gach: Oh, yes. It is the name of the tequila, which is senorrio.com, and that’s S-E-N-O-R, Senor, Rio, R-I-O. That’s it, senorrio.com. And we have social media. You can follow us. I also like to look at the social media posts when customers do buy bottles sometimes and they do a little post about it, and then I randomly just reach out to them and say, “You know what? Thank you. I’d love to send you a gift of gratitude. Can you send your mailing address to this email?” And they do. So, we’re a small company that really does appreciate each customer that we get because there’s so many choices today, and when they pick Senor Rio, it means a lot to us.

Lee Kantor: Well, Debbie, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Debbie Medina-Gach: Oh, thank you for having me. This was fun.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.