We help beverage brands win, at whatever depth the moment demands. Advise when a brand needs a sharper mind. Invest when it needs a partner. Step in and lead the comeback when it needs to be rebuilt. One house, as deep as the brand needs.
Consumer habits are shifting faster than incumbents can respond. Distribution is consolidating. Capital has gotten more selective. The result is a rare window: exceptional brands that are underbuilt, and tired ones ready to be turned around. Both need operators who have done it before.
Health, moderation, and premiumization have rewritten what people drink. Roughly one in four adults now takes part in Dry January, most choosing moderation over abstinence, and most brands were built for the old rules.
Shelf, distribution, and data increasingly decide who scales. Owning the customer relationship directly, rather than renting it through the shelf, has become the durable advantage.
The easy money has receded. What compounds now is a clear thesis, an experienced operator bench, and disciplined execution, the fundamentals, done well.
Prohibition is run by operators who have built, scaled, and sold beverage companies. We come in wherever a brand is, and we go as deep as the moment calls for. Not three separate services, one relationship that escalates with the need.
Hands-on operating help with product, brand, distribution, and go-to-market, drawn from decades running beverage businesses rather than reading about them.
When a brand needs capital and conviction, not just counsel, we invest behind exceptional teams and stay in the room for what comes next.
When a brand needs to be remade, we can step in and lead it, with the operators, the distribution, and the resolve to turn it around.
Most engagements start at the first step. The rare ones go all the way to the third. The point is that we can meet a brand at any depth and stay for the whole climb.
We are not generalists renting a logo. We run a repeatable method built from having done this in the category, not adjacent to it.
Before anything, an unsentimental read of the product, the economics, and the real reason the brand is winning or stuck. No flattery, no wishful math.
A first-party, direct-to-consumer and data engine, built from the Thirstie playbook, so the brand owns its demand and its margin instead of renting shelf.
Distribution, retail, and category relationships that took decades to earn, put to work to move real product, not just make introductions.
Every decision is made with the endgame in view, so the brand is stronger, cleaner, and more valuable to the acquirer or the next round.
Credibility in beverage is earned, not asserted. Ours comes from having built, scaled, and sold inside the category, and from working alongside people who have done the same. We would rather show the work than talk about it.
Devaraj founded Thirstie, named by Bloomberg the "Shopify for Alcohol," the first compliant e-commerce infrastructure for spirits. It powered leading global brands before its exit, and its playbook is the engine behind how we build today.
Our operators have built and exited brands acquired by the largest names in global spirits, and have run brand, distribution, and international at the companies that define the category.
A first-party data and DTC engine that turns a single brand win into a repeatable method, the difference between one good outcome and a platform.
We back and build companies led by exceptional teams offering genuinely new products. Our center of gravity is beverage, with room to move where the category is heading.
New categories, from spirit-free and low-alcohol to the next wave of premium consumer drinks.
Strong products with tired operations, where an operator-led turnaround unlocks real value.
The commerce, data, and distribution infrastructure that decides who actually scales.
Beverage is the anchor. Where a brand extends naturally into the wider consumer world, we follow it.
Founder and operator across beverage and technology. Founded Thirstie, the compliant e-commerce and data platform for alcohol brands that Bloomberg called the "Shopify for Alcohol," and has spent more than two decades building, scaling, and advising consumer and technology companies across regulated commerce.
Tom Cole — Former Chairman of the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America and a senior distribution executive, with relationships across the three-tier system that took a career to build. Distribution access is the capability brands cannot fake, and it is one Tom brings firsthand.
Beyond Tom sits a wider bench of category veterans, operators who have built and sold brands into the majors, run global distribution, and led brand and international at the companies that define beverage. Named on request, engaged as each situation demands.
The advisory work is the front door. Behind it stands the capital and the operating muscle to take on a brand end to end when the situation calls for it. If you are a founder or a prospective partner, the door to that conversation is open now.
Tell us what you are working on. We read everything, and we answer.
Request an introProhibition has made nothing but trouble.