This week's guest is Yelena Enter, who returns to join us for another interview. We talk about the importance of social media marketing and creating educational content that helps increase the level of engagement with your followers. Yelena talks about the importance of being consistent with your presentation, style, and responsiveness. And we finish off the conversation talking about Yelena's latest business venture, Cocktail Garnishes, which includes dehydrated and candied fruit garnishes, as well as many other items.
You can find more information on Yelena's website, Cocktail.division, and the online store at chefrubber.com. Make sure you check them both out. Yelena is a great guest. It's another interview you're going to enjoy.
Okay, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kip. This is Dan. What's going on with you buddy?
Oh yeah, same bullshit as all. He's just being awesome to play about first row problems that I have. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? You guys come with you?
Good? Yeah. Same shit. Just trying to run the businesses.
That should have run downtown Kitchener if you're in the area. That's the sneak easy, or you can visit Babylon Sisters Wine Bar up Town Water Loop. Yeah. So just getting by, running the businesses.
Nice. I'm curious. With that, now that we've gone to our normal, as we complain about our winter for about six months. Now we're in our tropical Savannah summer where it's about 35, 40 Celsius with the community.
Who's that impact the guest accounts at bars and stuff for you? It's weird. It's very still unpredictable. Like people are not coming out on week nights still.
It's very much considered on the weekends. And you just don't know when they're going to come out at what time. So really, yeah, it hasn't changed much at all. No, it's pretty much the same.
Okay. Yeah. We're almost back, but not where we need to be quite yet. So people get out of your house on the week nights.
You can do it. Yeah. Well, you know, people like me get black out drunk when they go for two beers. Next is two beers.
Turns in about 12 or so. And then. Exactly. Yes.
I should mention that Sarah was soon to open on Wednesday evenings as well. We're going to be doing a stand up comedy night hosted by someone Olivia who is a head one of the head writers on that show letter Kenny. Nice. Yeah.
Cool. Oh, Toronto comics. You're going to want to check that out. Yes.
For our non Canadian listeners who want to see a slice of rural Ontario, Canada were too far from a real life check out letter Kenny. It's something else and it's very accurate. Well, we have an amazing return guest for you today. Elena, answer our old friend is coming back to join us.
She's been super nice to do an extra long spot today because we have yet another person bam on us at the last second. That's becoming a little too common. I don't know. It's these industry flakes.
Yeah. You didn't tell me it was going to be extra long spot. You said it's going to be about three and a half hours. Okay.
It's going to be as long as the new. I was right. But so before we start we start that at the adventure, we should mention that we want to be a guest on the show. You should DM us at the industry podcast on Instagram or you can email us directly info at the industry podcast.
Club. Those are also the places to get in touch with us if you wish to sponsor the show. Saccana does the artwork for the Instagram ads that Canada dot CEO should check in for all of your graphic arts needs. And please subscribe, review the show.
It helps us out tremendously. Any else you want to get off your chest before we talk to you, Elena? Well, there's this time back. Okay, good.
Elena, how are you? Hey guys, welcome back. We're here to hear you. Yeah, thanks for coming on the show.
Yeah. So first, six first. Have you seen the new Elvis video yet? No.
I haven't. I got all the previews out of the way and we're actually having a big party on Wednesday. We're all going to address that like Elvis and drink some PB and J's and some fantastic cocktails. No, that's what I guess, EPV and J's.
We're going to do like a big office party. Oh, nice. So all dressing up like Elvis and then we're going to go and keep all out on the street. Cool.
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, there's plenty of Elvis and personators in your neck of the woods already. Don't die down by now. You know.
We actually have big Elvis festival in callinglets. Very close to where we live. They do whatever we summer a bunch of thousands of hours. When should I make a trip?
You should make a trip. Yeah, obviously because of the COVID and stuff, but you know what? My neighbor happens to be a backup singer for Elvis and personators as a career. I thought you were going to say for Elvis and I'm like, so cool.
Yes, hello. I'm going to say you're an Elvis impersonator. That's awesome. That's awesome.
That's awesome. That's awesome. That's really cool. Actually, that's fine.
And I've been wanting to visit you guys because you also have a cool show now at Sugar and right? Yeah. So you should be, yeah, you should definitely come down and check us out. No.
Yeah, but yeah, maybe I'm just like calling the festival. I don't know. It was an August, but I didn't see the analysis. Sure.
Oh, probably around August 16th around this time he died. Oh, exactly. Okay. All right.
Well, we'll also do the details. So one thing we should talk about right off the jump is you just had a big sort of, I don't know what you would call it, milestone with your social media followers on Instagram. Tell us about that. 50,000 followers actually at this point at this point is 54,000 and I think 500 or something crazy like that.
It's been exciting actually. Actually, thank you very much. So let's talk a little bit about that about how that affects your businesses, like, and how important you think the social media is today to what you do specifically or even to like what I do. Well, it's funny, right?
Like when we first started talking about social media and being an influencer, so I think 50,000 kind of puts me in the category of being an influencer by now, right? I think so, yeah. Right? If I need like somebody.
Right? My friends are putting their jobs and they want to become influencers. They make a ton of money doing that, but social media marketing is just probably the hottest marketing nowadays because the paper obviously is outdated TV. I don't know.
Personally, I don't watch a lot of TV. Social media is everything. Companies spend a lot of money on their social media marketing. I work with a few brands, a few companies and it's quite amazing how much the page is proposed for a story, per feature.
And when I first started my page about four years ago, four years ago, I never thought that I would get to the point of actually getting paid for my posts and my pictures, right? And it's pretty cool. So would you be able to do that and nothing else? I know you're a hustler, so you're not, you've got a 15,000 things on the go at all times.
But like, would you be able to make a living comfortably off just the social media aspect of it at this point? But not right now because I'm concentrating more on my product and, you know, I haven't pursued that as a full-time job as a full-time career, being an influencer. Sounds so weird. Like it sounds so weird to say that.
But if I made it a goal to make a career out of it, I think, you know, I think there's definitely an opportunity. I would have to start working closer with bigger companies or bigger distributorships, maybe, or have a handful of smaller companies that need help in social media. But I think by now, I don't want to say I'm an expert, but I can't have it figured out what people like, what people don't like, what creates an engagement. Okay, good.
Tell me because I have no fucking clue. Well, let's talk about cats. No kidding. Yeah, so one thing I find is kind of like a Catch-22 for my business is my wife's business has been around for a while, like, almost before the pandemic even hit.
So we're pretty well established. So we're doing well. But like you said, the only way to advertise right now is on social media. So for my other business, it's newer.
The Catch-22 is the battle on Sis Too Far. Okay. Yeah. The Catch-22 is that like the only way to reach people is over social media, but because we're new, we don't have any followers yet.
So it's like, how do you get the followers so that you can advertise the business? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I've been noticing you're actually doing a pretty good job.
I was going to say on posting more frequently. So that's probably one of the, well, one of the important things I think creating that schedule almost to the point that people expect in your posts. They want to see what you have to, what's going on, like, lately your posts been really engaging and makes me want to fly out and check out your face. There you go.
Perfect. There you go. I'm chilling with you. All the way from Vegas.
So I think just creating more engaging content is very important and more frequent content. So you've been doing good posting, but do it even more. More opposing. Yeah.
It's, it is a second job though. Like it's so much time. It's like, it's my first job. Seriously.
Yeah. It's like, yeah. It's like, yeah. I wake up at six.
I wake up at six and it's like my first thing. I have to catch up and you have to create content for the future posts. And sometimes I don't know if you notice that or you might see something and you're like, okay, I shouldn't post it. Sometimes I get to a two months later.
Oh, yeah. But to the same content. Yes. And how do you keep up with photography?
Because that like you got to take the photo, edit the photo. So it looks proper and then get it up. Like that takes the shit on a time. Mm-hmm.
So I, you know, I have a very good photo hygiene, but I still have 40,000 photos on my phone. I take my photos with just my iPhone. Right. All my tricks.
Sometimes I take a hundred photos of cocktail or garnish or something and then I have to narrow down. Like you said, edit it. And with my content is also a recipe. It's also a little story.
So it's not super boring. It's a joke or whatever is relevant to the time or the coffee that I'm posting. Sometimes it's a story of the company that I'm reviewing. So it does take a lot of work and you just have to put time in.
I don't watch TV. I just do my Instagram at night. I don't leave that. Yeah.
You know, you just have to spend a lot of time interacting with comments and stuff as well on posts or use kind of limited. Very important. Like a lot of them are just like half or. I so I think we all want to be we all want to feel special.
Right. So when people write to me, they want to feel special by me responded to them. Obviously, watch my channel. They follow me.
They admire me. They admire what I do. And like I see people the second day post they all over the post. They, you know, DM me or do like a comment.
I respond to everyone unless it's something obnoxious. Those are just kind of same and like I get some funny ones. But yes, I do respond to every single one. I acknowledge their attention by my attention and by my time.
And you know, you can post them both for me so long. Then people lose interest and they just they leave them on to another channel. So creating almost like friendships, I guess. I feel like it's important to keeping your followers as well.
Retaining followers. That's going to be a lot of work. Yeah. How many of these political friendships are you responding to on a daily basis?
Well, I respond, like I said, to every comment and if some of some of some of posts get like hundred comments and like 500 like 500 DMS people asking for it. Another thing is also people asking for tricks and tips. That's very important. So if you can add to your content, for example, I've been trying to figure out exactly how to help you as well.
So if you can not just post what you're doing as far as what the program is and your establishment, but also like post the bartending trick or tip or a cocktail of the week. Right. Just make it more not just make it educational, not just entertaining, make it educational because people love to learn and if you can make it approachable for them, they'll come back and retain information out of your channel. They will come back.
So that's why I try to post the tricks and tips and engage with people on that level. That's a good tip. See, this is why I'm just totally using you for information at this point. That's why we keep having you on this.
I think so I think first of all to well, figure out your niche. Obviously, you already you've done that you're not posting the pictures of your like everything and your neighbor. So you know what your niche is and the compelling name. So figuring out your style, the style of your page, whether your photos are colorful or monochromatic or black and white.
Everybody has their own style and just establishing that style is important. It's very appealing and comfortable to a human eye when you go on your page to not have a bunch of like mishmash photos, but you have a certain style. It's soothing to the eye that that is important. Obviously, a lot of consistency.
Consistency is important whether it's a style consistency with responding to people that is important. I respond within a day. Right. Unless you really, unless you really, really annoying.
I'm kidding. Well, you do probably not see. Yeah, I don't see that much. I don't see that much consistency with posts too.
So you want to like almost for it to be like a TV show that people are tuning in. They expect you to post by certain time. It doesn't have to be every day. It can be once a week and be twice a week once a month, but the consistency is very important.
They're going to wait for it because you are the entertainment. You want to start, right? So talking about like sort of making the pictures look pleasing to the eye of the one of your new ventures is the garnishing that you're doing with your cocktails now. And you've listened to a bunch of the shows.
I'm sure. So you've probably heard my views on garnishes in general, but I've been avoiding your shows lately. If you divide it, I think in the industry, right? You are not a huge fan of the garnishes.
Well, it's good for Instagram for sure. But like when you're trying for like, it's very important for that to make your cocktails look like that. But when you're running the business side of it, I just find like, it takes a lot of time. So it's a lot of labor you're paying for to make these perfect garnishes and often it slows them down while they're actually physically making the drinks for the guests as well.
And there's just a ton of waste. Right. So that's why you buy cocktail vision garnishes from my new collection. Talk to the British.
There were nobody's lights in lines. Nobody's dehydrating line and not tossing them all at the end of the shift. That's the beauty of dehydrated garnishes that we offer, for example, and we have not we added nine dehydrated garnishes and we still have four candid garnishes. So here's my opinion on the garnishes.
Let's start from the very beginning. I think the garnish should be obviously appropriate appropriate to the cocktail. Like it shouldn't be dehydrated fruit is great. Like it should elevate the flavor profile of the cocktail and tell you about the ingredients of the cocktail.
Maybe a story not too good like a Lego piece or a little bit like toy car on top of my cocktail. It's like at the same time, I want this like gross dried black line that then who knows how many drinks in my cocktail either. Right. So there's a fine line.
You don't want to get too elaborate with your varnishes. You want them to be sensible, but I also believe back back to making your cocktails Instagramable. It adds that art component almost like a theater component to the presentation and your guests will see something served at the other table and it's stunning and they want. They want to experience that as well and they will order it.
I want to have what they have another day. I've done it personally myself. It's like what's this over there? I want to try that right?
I want to know what it is. And they will take a photo to remember to share with friends and family to post on their social network. And that's your cheapest marketing is when people post about you post about your product, post about the experience. Hopefully it's a good experience and not bad experience, but you give them an opportunity to share the experience, the great experience that they had.
Right. You also want to intrigue them and give them an experience that they can't recreate at home because we can all make a back a tonic put a, you know, dried line and then like old line and then you know, have a great, great time at home. But when they come to your bar and they experience in a dragon fruit in the cocktail that they don't even know what the fruit looks like and it's seasonal and it's exotic and it's fun to take a photo of their cocktail. They will come back to that experience.
Right. So I believe in sensible garnishes, of course, you don't want your bartender to take 20 minutes to create one cocktail unless you in a fancy tiki bar, right? And I told about garnishing. So you just want to find out, you know, that perfect middle ground with what works for your establishment, but I definitely believe in garnishes.
So tell us a little bit about your, this new project that you're doing that. How do you, what are the different garnishes that you actually have? What are the different kinds and what are and what, how do you execute it? Like do you like who's dehydrating on this for you?
So my whole line cocktail vision line is all about garnishes, right? Like whether it's the cocktail fluffers where you spray gold dust or blue, blue, or blue, or blue glitter on your cocktail or if it's history rocks, pop your rocks out. So garnishes is not just dehydrated fruit that you put on your cocktail. It's a beer rim that creates a different experience for your, you know, for your consumer where with every sip, it creates this, you know, like crackly pop rocks.
You know, it's like a different texture. So we have candy fruit and we have dehydrated fruit. So candy fruit is almost like a garnish in a snack. It's very, first of all, it's delicious.
I'm not sure if I sent you guys send you, but we have a peach lollipop. It's peach fas lollipop. It's a candy peach coated in gold, rose gold glitter. And it comes on a, like a little stick that you can put on the side of the cocktail and they play with it.
So interactive garnishes, I believe, know it as well because they want to, your client wants to be part of the experience, right? They want to kind of do their own thing and you give them one cocktail and they make it into something else, right? They add that garnish into the cocktail that turns the cocktail shimmery or sparkly and it's fun for them. They play with it and it's delicious.
So we have ginger, we have peach and we have pineapple. And so those are candy garnishes and we just added a brand new line of fruit fetish. And it's all, what's so funny about that? Okay, what's your fruit fetish?
It sounds like a video I watched on Red Tube. That's right. It goes right off the garnish foreplay. Yeah.
So we added four garnishes, they all dehydrated. It's lavender, lime, lemon, grapefruit, blood orange. I'm not going to go over all of them because I don't remember all of them. But they are premium quality dehydrated fruit.
Best you've ever seen on the market. You will not be able to recreate it yourself. No matter how fancy of a dehydrator you bought yourself on Amazon. And you're not going to be able to hire enough people to actually do that.
So people who try to do themselves in the bars, I kind of feel sorry for them because they have too much time on the hands to actually dehydrate their own fruits, which will never be perfect. I'm very proud of this collection because it is absolutely stunning. It's perfection. I'm a perfectionist.
So for me to bring something in and put my name on it, it has to be just absolute perfection. It has, well, obviously zero waste we talked about it. Nobody's slicing anything. Nobody's dehydrated anything.
So all the garnishes are shell stable and they last a long time. So you just use what you use and it transfers to the next day, week, month, have a long time. I was just looking at them on your feet. What I like about them is how thin they are.
You never be able to slice it that thin either. And how perfect. This is actually a micro garnish. I'm showing it to you now because it's kind of like curly, but it's still pretty.
It's kind of cool. It's kind of cool. It's authentic, super thin. So they are stunning.
When you put something on top of your cocktail, first of all, how long did it take you to just put it on your, I don't know, Pinacolard, I'm not sure. I need to see your menu. I need to know what you guys serve. So it doesn't take you a lot of time to just garnish, but the cocktail looks completely different and I believe that it adds value to the drink even charge more for it because all of a sudden they're getting something fancy.
They're getting something that they've seen on Instagram or on a TV show that some celebrity would drink just by adding a beautiful piece of garnish on top. I don't know if this is something you don't want to tell us if so, then we can edit it out. But how do you actually execute it? Who is slicing up all the fruit and dehydrating it for you?
I have a manufacturer. Yeah. So all the product is produced in Texas. Personally, I'm not making my, you know, paper thin pineapples in my kitchen.
So no, I'm not doing that. I have a manufacturer that produces that. Yeah. Okay.
So you have sourced that part of the business. But you obviously have creative control over what you're getting, what products you're getting. Absolutely. So some products are seasonal.
We started with nine different categories and then we'll see what it goes. Yeah. I mean, it seems like you can tell me something new constantly. It's amazing.
You have to. That's another thing, right? To keep them engaged because they can, you know, and we have big accounts like when and Cosmo, see resorts world in Las Vegas, just a few really big accounts that love the product and they will keep ordering because they just go so fast through it. But you still have to keep them engaged after the summer menu is done.
They are onto the full menu. So you need to have new products for them to want to use in their full cup. So that's a great example. Right.
Yeah. When that's like these are huge accounts for you. That's amazing. Yeah.
Very excited. Super excited about it. Nice. So if you go to Vegas and you're visiting this big name, because he knows you can have cocktail vision carnaging.
That's right. They're not going to tell you cocktail vision. No, of course. That's why we're telling them.
All right. So let's say we're at a bar or restaurant or just for your home. Like where do we go to find cocktail vision products? So first of all, cocktail vision, right?
Instagram, cocktail.vision and all the input right all the input is there. But if they want to purchase it directly, but like for bigger accounts, they deal directly with my distributor, which is chef rubber, which you will plug it in. So I'm sure chefrobert.com, right? Exactly.
I'll wait for that. The show notes is always okay. Awesome. Well, and the last thing we should talk about before we let you go.
Thanks again for doing this is that in what? Like a month's time. Yes, we're going to be doing some live industry podcast interviews in New Orleans for the 50th anniversary of tales of the cocktail. You get to 20.
20 is 50. I think it's 20. I'll get it right by the time we get there. I'll have to 20.
You told Don Hill. Yeah. Don't say that. Elaine and I will be taking some time to walk around and interview with people at the show for the podcast.
So if you are, no, if you're listening, you're going to be there, you should DM me at the industry podcast or email info at the industrypodcast.club. So we're going to arrange a time to meet up with you. Otherwise, we'll just be, we'll just be doing spot up interviews wherever. We'll just kind of attack you and strap you down and interview you.
Yeah, just like they did in the old days. That's right. All right, Elaine. Thanks so much again for doing this.
You're always great coming on. Great repeat guests. We'll be talking to you again next month and I will be seeing you in New Orleans. All right.
I'll be there. All right. Thanks. Bye, guys.
Bye.