When developing a new brand, beverage-makers have a number of things to consider. One crucial item is finding the right niche for your new beverage. When speaking with Bryan Crowley, president of Veev Spirits LLC, for Beverage Industry’s Up Close With article this month (see page 28), I learned that the target consumer of Veev is millennials, skewing slightly more toward men than women. These consumers are “perpetual go-getters” who are active and open to trying new things, Crowley says. This is particularly important to Veev because it is a superfruit-flavored neutral grain spirit that falls just outside of the vodka category and, therefore, just outside of consumers’ familiarity zone.

However, despite 55-60 percent of the brand’s consumers being male, according to Veev research, Crowley notes that the brand still aims to appeal to women.

“We’re not exclusionary to women at all,” Crowley says. “This is not about just trying to create a men-only brand like you see sometimes in our category. Veev at its core is a very inclusionary brand.”

This might prove to be a smart strategy, considering a recent infographic compiled by Carmichael Lynch. The infographic stated that 24 percent of men prefer liquor instead of wine or beer, whereas 26 percent of women prefer liquor over wine or beer.

 The infographic also stated that millennials will make up 40 percent of the legal drinking population by 2021. With these statistics in mind, the most surefire path to growth might be in targeting both male and female millennials — at least in the liquor category.