Behind the Booze: Samara Rivers of Black Bourbon Society

courtesy Samara Rivers

Through a shared love of whiskey, Black Bourbon Society promotes inclusivity and positive brand messaging

Samara Rivers is the Founder of Black Bourbon Society, a group whose mission is to promote diversity and inclusivity in the distilled spirits industry. The group, which has more than 10,000 members across the country, has achieved this through tasting events, member education, excursions and trips, and more. The goal of BBS is twofold: 1) to educate African-American consumers about America’s native spirit and 2) to educate spirit makers about an often overlooked share of the marketplace. There's a Facebook group where members can interact with each other and with members of the industry that has reached more than 14,000 members and is growing by the day.

Before the Covid-19 lockdown took place, I caught up with Rivers to learn more about the founding and mission of Black Bourbon Society. Though in-person events haven’t been possible in the past couple of months since then, sheltering in place hasn’t stopped her mission from moving forward. She has since been holding a series of virtual happy hours to continue to spread awareness of African-American bourbon enthusiasts within the spirits community, and also provide something people stuck at home can look forward to through cocktail classes and other virtual seminars in partnership and/or featuring several brands including Wild Turkey, Maker’s Mark and Four Roses.

In the wake of the recent Black Lives Matter protests following the violent deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville during police arrest, many brands and publications, including this one, have published statements expressing their support of the movement for racial equality and an end to police brutality. You can read Black Bourbon Society’s open letter to the spirits industry here.

Meanwhile, here is the early March interview with Samara Rivers.

Maggie Kimberl: Tell me about your ‘aha’ moment when you realized this was a thing that needed to happen and you were the person who was going to make it happen.

Samara Rivers: I was subcontracting events with a brand out in California as an event planner. I came to this industry as an event planner and as someone who liked whiskey. I was teaming up with one of the women who worked with a distillery out in the area and she had me planning things like dinners and whiskey pairings and bar hops and things like that. In the middle of doing that I started to ask how can I make this better, who am I planning these events for. These events are really cool and I want to invite my friends to these events, so what are the criteria for us to be a part of these. She didn’t have time to talk to me in detail about that because she had just moved over to the east coast, so she just handed me her marketing deck. When I read that I saw there weren’t really any programs or targeted marketing geared toward people who look like me, and that’s when I had my ‘aha’ moment that there was something missing in this industry and we could be the ones who fill that.

MK: Have you researched marketing that has targeted African-Americans in the past and what have you found there?

SR: When we first started this our question was why isn’t this happening? Often African-Americans get thrown into a bucket with the urban demographic, which is much younger. The urban demographic itself is much more inclusive, but it gets kind of stereotyped as hip-hop culture with young, urban kids, but because it lumps everyone between the ages of 21 and 26 together it’s actually more inclusive. It’s seen as the fresh out of college, entry-gateway liquor demographic. They kind of just threw us in that and called it a day. There wasn’t really anything that targeted African-Americans outside of that demographic, the older, much more sophisticated demographic that really showed high discretionary income and conscious consumerism. Even looking across different industries, people understand the buying power of African-Americans as a whole, but there’s nothing that really breaks down into that group of African-Americans that the major buying power comes from. What we found is that group is much older. It comes after your thirties and you have that discretionary income. We’re the ones who are buying up everything across the board and overspending in every category, everything from fine goods to travel.

courtesy Samara Rivers

MK: What are some of the things that the Black Bourbon Society has done to bridge that gap? How are your events and offerings different?

SR: We started off creating events to get everyone in the room and really visually show the brands that we do exist and we do have an interest in learning more about premium spirits. We started doing that in the Bay area and then moved over to producing events in Atlanta, as well. Just by having brand reps in the room with our members was an eye opening experience for them. They didn’t know we existed. They didn’t know what a consumer like us looked like. They didn’t know what questions we would ask. They didn’t know what our expectations of the brand were. Right off the bat the brands saw the value in working with us because they hadn’t reached the consumer that they had never invested time in trying to reach. We continued to do great programming through our private Facebook group and by adding on the excursions to Louisville where we take our members to Louisville to have a one-on-one experience with the master distillers and the brand ambassadors, which gives them an even more enriching experience. The programming we provide, the advocating, the writing, and being able to speak at conferences has really given us the opportunity to be the bridge that connects the brands to our demographic.

MK: You’ve been a firsthand witness to some of the seismic shifts in some of the marketing that has been done in the bourbon industry. Can you tell me a little but about that?

SR: Seismic shift is an interesting choice of words. It’s an opportunity to get it right. The thing that I found most interesting about coming into this industry is that there was never any pushback from the brands in how to market to African-Americans the right way. It was always well we don’t know how, or sometimes well we don’t know how and we don’t want to mess it up so we just don’t. Quickly from building relationships with the brands it was an automatic level of trust that was given and really trusting what our advice was. In our groups, there are brand ambassadors and master distillers and brand owners. If they don’t believe us, they get to see it firsthand, what their consumers want. We have been able to provide some insight into how to provide quality marketing and targeted messaging towards our demographic. So I don’t know if it was so much a seismic shift as it was just connecting the dots and pulling all the puzzle pieces together.

MK: How can bar owners and brand owners support you in your mission?

SR: Be honest, reach out to us, and let us help you. A lot of stuff that doesn’t make the page is the fact that we do consult with brands behind closed doors. We are having those honest conversations. Just yesterday we had a cocktail conversation with Joe Louis Bourbon. They had reached out to me a couple of months ago with their bottle prototype and expressed what they were trying to do in the market and just from their bottle prototype alone I was able to say no, that’s not going to work. They took it to heart and they took their bottle design back and they came up with better imaging for their bottle design that made it more inclusive. It was just subtle details and being able to use us as an adviser and as a consultant that helps include diversity and inclusion into your mission and into your marketing that is the benefit of working with us.

photo by Maggie Kimberl

MK: Is there anything else that you want people to know about the Black Bourbon Society and the work that you are doing?

SR: What we are doing is twofold. We are building a consumer base. I started this group because I knew there were people out there who were like me, who loved bourbon but who didn’t feel included in the industry. So we are constantly cultivating our members and educating our members to have an appreciation for the spirit, all while also looking inward into the industry. We’re consulting and working alongside the industry on advocacy toward diversity and inclusion and making sure that the messaging to our audience is welcoming. Because we take that center stage we just want everyone to work in sync.

We are also starting a nonprofit called Diversity Distilled that will dive deeper into the industry itself. It will involve more educational opportunities around diversity and inclusion for their corporate structures. We just want to be the ones at the forefront for bringing more cohesiveness between the African-American community and the brands themselves.

Looking to learn more about the Black Bourbon Society? Like their page on Facebook and request to join their private Facebook group. At your next bourbon event outing, look for Rivers — she will probably be there.