It's the Summer of Sidecap
Saratoga's very own spiked cold brew brand is here, but it might not be for long.
This article was made possible by our friends at Sidecap Hard Cold Brew.
Have you ever been hanging out with your friends—floating in the pool or maybe sitting around a bonfire—when you get such a good idea for a business that you spend the whole rest of the night talking about it? You plan out everything, from who’ll do what to different spin-offs and ancillary products you’ll add down the line. Oh, and merch. There’ll definitely be merch.
Going down that “what if” rabbit hole is a fun way to kill a few hours, but that’s usually as far as it goes. The next day, you go back to your regular life where you don’t own a startup tech company or a cat cafe.
Unless, of course, you’re Adam Feldman, Dave Dolinsky, or Case Fell.
“We were drinking in the pool on the 4th of July, and we were throwing out stupid ideas,” says Adam of himself and his two friends. “Case is like, ‘Can this town support a minor league baseball team?’” That idea was quickly shut down, but another one got them thinking: What if they started a brand of canned boozy iced coffee made with Saratoga’s own Kru Coffee? “I texted them the next morning, and was like, ‘Do you guys actually want to start a business?’” Adam continues. “And they said yes.”
And with that, a doctor, an investment manager, and a self-proclaimed “perpetual hobbyist” started Sidecap Hard Cold Brew. The brand, which celebrated its official ribbon cutting this past April, is currently available for purchase at Purdy’s Discount Wine & Liquor and By the Bottle in Saratoga. It’s made with just four ingredients: Kru half-caf cold brew, vodka, and touches of sugar and vanilla.
Of course, launching a liquor brand hasn’t been quite as simple as Adam (a Saratogian who in actuality runs a small business consulting firm), Dave (a local radiologist), and Case (a chief investment officer who moved from Saratoga to Austin, TX during the pandemic) imagined at that 4th of July pool party. “I understood that we’d need to navigate the complexities of the booze regulations but I was hopeful that a small local business could find a pathway to make the business viable,” Adam says. “The State did an amazing job for local beer businesses and they’re killing it; we have so many great local IPAs. Unfortunately, the rules are different for liquor and making it work as a small business is extremely difficult.”
The biggest dilemma: The cold brew itself drives one mile from Kru to Ninth Planet Beverage Solutions on Geyser Road to get canned, and then the cans drive three hours to a distributor in New Jersey…and three hours back to Purdy’s and By the Bottle. The New Jersey company takes 40 percent of the revenue. In essence, Sidecap’s not a viable company unless it can land a local distributor. “Otherwise, the business doesn’t work, no matter how many cases we sell at Purdy’s,” Adam says. “We’re willing to invest more in the company, but only if we can find a local distributor.”
The Sidecap team has already been told by Saratoga Eagle that the brand is too small for them to carry it. (That of course begs the question: How is the company supposed to grow without a local distributor?) To self-distribute, they’d need to pay a $25,000 licensing fee as well as a two-year commercial lease, which is a minimum of $2,000 a month.
The partners are giving themselves this summer to drum up enough business and buzz to make Sidecap appealing to a local distributor. If it doesn’t work out, their brief and wondrous jaunt into the world of booze sales will be but a funny story they tell their kids.
Of course, if it does work out and the trifecta of local coffee, local canner, and local distributor is completed, the story they’ll tell their kids will could wind up being quite different. “My dream is that when my kid goes to college, he could tell his friends at college, ‘My dad created this,’” Adam says. “If you ask my partners, though, the ultimate dream is that we’d sponsor a Formula 1 car. That’s the running joke. We know that’s not real, but it’s kind of fun.”
Sidecap started as a joke. Who’s to say the joke won’t carry these guys all the way to the Monaco Grand Prix?
—Natalie