In an exclusive interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Chris Williamson, Co-Owner and Vice President of Business Development & Innovation at Civil Pours, shares the journey of building a Canadian cocktail brand that blends artisanal techniques with innovative, scalable production. From leveraging award-winning mixology expertise to adapting high-end rotovap technology for mass production, Chris discusses how Civil Pours delivers bar-quality, ready-to-serve cocktails while maintaining authenticity, flavour, and sustainability.
Interview By Kripa Anand
Chris Williamson, Civil Pours – Co-Owner and Vice President of Business Development & Innovation
Chris is the heart that powers the Civil Pours brand, leveraging his passion for mixology and a decade of award-winning marketing experience, including working for Labatt Breweries of Canada, to create products and experiences that speak directly to thirsty customers! A business leader and recognized manager with a proven track record of developing solutions that measurably and significantly increase revenue, profit, and brand awareness through sales, marketing, and product development. Effie & CMA winner. Former varsity athlete; current cocktail enthusiast.
Civil Pours launched in 2022 and has already served over a million cocktails—what did it take to build an independent cocktail distillery from the ground up, and how did you shape a product and brand that truly stand apart in such a crowded category?
At Civil Pours, we describe our approach to cocktail production as “mixology-at-scale,” as from the beginning we’ve believed to our cores that real bartending techniques and real ingredients are the only way to create real high-quality cocktails, whether they’re premade or handmade. We have the knowledge required to make excellent cocktails – one of our founders, Nick Kennedy, is an award-winning bar owner/operator and we have decades of beverage alcohol expertise across our team, both in hospitality and alcohol production – and we’ve developed technology that allows us to preserve real, fresh flavours. We also have focus. We’re a cocktail distillery focusing on cocktails and cocktails only, not a producer of other products that is trying to capitalize on a trend. Taken together, our knowledge, technology, and focus have enabled us to shape a brand known for real cocktails that can go toe-to-toe with their handmade equivalents at bars and restaurants.
You’ve developed proprietary vacuum‑distillation technology and a closed‑loop process that captures real flavour at low temperatures while upcycling ingredients like coffee grinds, citrus leftovers, and even avocado pits. How did this innovation come about, and why was it important to put sustainability at the heart of your business model?
Rotary evaporator vacuum stills, or “rotovaps” for short, found their way into the elite culinary and bartending scene from the world of biochemical research, and it was there that we were first exposed to the technology. These high-end bars and restaurants were using rotovaps to capture niche flavours in minute quantities of distillates. What we’ve managed to do is understand and adapt rotovaps in such a way that we can scale and stabilize these distillates, capturing the real flavours to produce cocktails that rival those made by bartenders.
It was important for us to find a way to do this sustainably because we believe that making money and being sustainable aren’t mutually exclusive – one of our core values is “work like you’re in the woods” to leave everything in better shape than you found it for those that come next. Case in point: as part of our closed loop process, we upcycle “ugly” produce and ingredient ‘waste’ (such as avocado pits, coffee grinds, lime/orange/lemon leftovers, and coca husks) that would otherwise go to the landfill. This also means we get raw ingredients for free, creating cost savings that we can also pass along to our customers. It’s a rare win-win-win wherein we, the environment, and our customers all benefit!
Consumer demand for Canadian‑made, bar‑quality cocktails has exploded in recent years. How are you seeing drinking habits change, and how does Civil Pours meet that demand across different formats and venues—from LCBO shelves to places like the Ritz‑Carlton Toronto and leading cocktail bars?
The biggest change we’re seeing in drinking habits is that consumers are raising their standards, which is a good thing! We’re in the midst of a cocktail renaissance that arguably began in the late 90s and early 2000s, and as a result the average quality of bar-made cocktails has risen and so too has consumers’ understanding of what a great cocktail is. Additionally, during COVID, many Canadians stuck at home also learned how to actually make cocktails themselves, further raising the bar; but the pandemic was also devastating to the hospitality industry, creating a labour shortage we’re still grappling with. As a result, the bar and demand for cocktails has never been higher, yet the supply of people to make them has decreased. We’re looking to empower, not replace, hospitality staff by providing an unparalleled combination of quality, consistency, and efficiency for high volume cocktails that can bottleneck service. After all, no hospitality employee goes home after a shift happy that they had to crank out 200 Espresso Martinis! Since our cocktails are literally good enough for professional bartenders, consumers at LCBO shelves can be confident in what they’re bringing home, too.
Your “Will it Rotovap?” series has turned everything from Fruit Loops and Cheetos to Biscoff cookies into distilled flavours, and you’ve collaborated with top bars on limited‑edition libations. What have these experiments and partnerships taught you about flavour, creativity, and engaging a passionate customer community?
Another one of our core values at Civil Pours is “be curious,” because great ideas can come from anywhere and anyone, and this philosophy extends to our community of at-home consumers and bar/restaurant clients. These ‘Will it Rotovap’ experiments allow us to cultivate a culture of learn-it-all as opposed to know-it-all, capturing some of that “yes, and” magic from improv to discover things we otherwise wouldn’t have. This has taught us a lot about flavour, not least of which is that there simply is no substitute for the real thing. Human palates have evolved over hundreds of millennia, so when we taste something like real lime in a cocktail, we’re not just picking up the isolated flavour of the juice, we’re also picking the oils from the lime’s skin and the nuanced compounds from the pith. Artificial flavours are inherently one note, quickly peaking and disappearing. Experimenting with rotovaps has taught us to capture real flavours that exhibit authentic length on the palate. We’ve also learned that experimenting with flavour is frankly really fun! I particularly enjoyed distilling Scotch bonnet peppers, removing the spice-causing capsaicin to be able to enjoy all of the pepper’s subtle notes without incinerating my mouth.
Independent distilleries often face challenges around tariffs, regulations, and route‑to‑market. What obstacles have you had to overcome as a small producer of ready‑to‑serve cocktails, and what advice would you share with other Canadian beverage entrepreneurs who want to innovate while building a sustainable, scalable business?
There’s a lot of temptation for businesses to adopt a flashy “move fast and break stuff” tech attitude of endless prototyping, but I’d recommend tempering those temptations when the business calls for it. Innovation is of course how you win as a small business, but sweating the little details is how you avoid losing. While big moments of creativity are often the most fun part of a job, you need attribution to understand what is really working. Often the data will guide you if you take the time to analyze it and separate the signal from the noise. If your strategy is just “do cool shit and sales will follow” that may sound good as a soundbite, but you’re effectively just gambling at that point and luck is not a strategy. In fact, in my opinion, strategy is often more about what you say “no” to than what you say “yes” to. Though it may not always be the most fun part of the process, we take a real crawl-walk-run approach at Civil Pours and I’m confident that that has allowed us to balance innovation with sustainable, scalable growth.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CanadianSME Small Business Magazine. Our platform is dedicated to fostering dialogue and sharing insights that inspire and empower small and medium-sized businesses across Canada.
