Brian Pearson, president of BPNC Distillery, says his firm focuses on trying new approaches.

For President Brian Pearson, the success and growth of BPNC Distillery over the past decade has been based on its willingness to take risks and try new ideas. Based in Temperance, Mich., it produces its own ready-to-drink beverages and provides contract-packaging services.

A former Marine and presidential guard, Pearson got the idea for the company in 1998, when he was at home for his sister’s 21st birthday. When his mother asked him to go buy Jell-O shots for the celebration, Pearson found that no one made them for sale.

After his mother commented that someone should manufacture them, Pearson got the inspiration to produce Zippers, the first pre-packaged gelatin shot. When he finished his service with the Marines two years later, Pearson started the company out of his garage in Genoa, Ohio.

Although the product met with resistance and underwent an extensive approval process, it grew to be carried in 25 states, as well as in the U.K., Germany and Holland. Today, BPNC is located at a 40,000-square-foot distillery where it produces its own beverages and provides contract packaging.

In addition, the company is planning to take steps into a new venture with a line of organic liqueurs. After a customer approached the firm about manufacturing organic products, BPNC started developing its new line, and already has been certified organic by the USDA. The company is also preparing to move to a new 100,000-square-foot facility in Temperance that will feature solar panels.   
When reflecting on what he learned in the past year, “The No. 1 thing that I would stress to anybody is determination,” Pearson says. “There’s a lot of people that live in the world that don’t want to get out of their comfort zone. They don’t want to try new things.

“We are a company that is constantly trying new approaches,” he continues, admitting that the company may sometimes fail. “[But] it is through those failures that we find that end-result that is going to make us successful.”

The Apple of Their Eye
BPNC Distillery’s latest contract products include its Apple Pie Liqueur, which was brought to the company by Travis and Carly Hasse, owners of the Missouri Tavern, located north of Madison, Wis. The liqueur blends apples, neutral grain spirits, cinnamon and other spices.
   
Travis Hasse’s father, Gene, gave him the recipe for the liqueur, which the two drank “around camp fires and on fishing trips,” he recalls. “I feel good people deserve good things, so I decided to bring Apple Pie Liqueur out to the public.”
   
Although other distilleries passed on the product, the liqueur found a home at BPNC. “Bar owners, like the Hasses, make great partners since they know what sells at their establishment and have an appreciation for our decade of experience,” Brian Pearson says.

So far, Hasse and Pearson have marketed more than 3,200 cases in the first month of availability in Wisconsin and Indiana. At the end of the year, it is expected to achieve distribution in 20 states, as well as in Canada and Europe.

BPNC by the Numbers

• 26 – The number of states in which BPNC’s products are sold  
  
• 70 percent – The portion of BPNC’s business that is comprised of contract manufacturing services
• 100,000 square feet – The size of its new facility in Temperance
• 400,000 – The average number of cases it can produce annually
• 16 million+ – The number of Zipper Gelatin Shots BPNC has manufactured and sold since 2000