Coast Beverages Inc.

Pat Lawrence never had much of a taste for beer. Despite the barrage of advertising enticing a 20-something male to crack open a cold lager, Lawrence preferred to sip a vodka cooler on a hot day. And he wasn’t even that keen on those.

“I’m not much of a drinker, but when I have a drink, it’s a cooler,” says Lawrence. Even so, the available coolers were always too sickly sweet and left a lingering aftertaste.

So what should an inspired young entrepreneur do? Improve it and sell the world the better version.

“I thought, ‘How hard could it be to make one of these things?’”
He and his wife Bonnie began mixing up home-made cooler recipes in the kitchen, blending combinations of liquor and flavourings until they hit a winning combination.

“It’s not really rocket science,” laughs Lawrence. “What sets different coolers apart is the flavouring and the quality of the products. These are things we learned through trial and error.”

There were a few errors along the way. Jugs of good intentions gone bad were sloshed down the drain. Finally, after 18 months of experimenting, trial tasting and focus group testing, they arrived at eight distinct flavours.

Only Blue Raspberry (“our flagship flavour”) remains of that original line-up as Lawrence introduces new flavours each year. This year’s offering also includes Lemon Mojito, Clementine and Arctic Berry.

All the tinkering has paid off. Lawrence has turned his cooler curiosity into Fuzzy Duck Beverages Intl Inc., a Nova Scotia-based company making a variety of vodka coolers in Antigonish.

The Fuzzy Duck coolers compete for precious shelf space at liquor stores throughout the Maritimes, alongside RTD (ready to drink) giants Bacardi, Smirnoff and Seagrams. But the plucky little company with the simple Fuzzy Duck label is slowly and steadily creating a name for itself with its refreshing vodka –based drinks.

“Our guiding light from the beginning was to develop a product that was different from the others.”

One significant difference, says Lawrence, is the sugar. Fuzzy Duck uses one-third less than typical coolers, meaning fewer calories and no sickly-sweet aftertaste.

Lawrence was born and raised in Halifax, with a curiosity for all things mechanical. His father is well-known radio personality Jer “Bear” Lawrence, who also owned an Ultramar service station on the Bedford highway. Pat opened his own Ultramar station not long out of high school.

“My business education came first hand. I didn’t read a book that said you have to watch your line of credit — I learned that the hard way.”

In the late ‘90s, he sold the station and began looking for a new business venture. He signed on with an automotive company based in Moncton, and relocated there with his wife Bonnie and young daughter.

“But working for someone else became very mundane for me,” he says. “When someone else sets your parameters, it’s hard to be creative.”

Lawrence is a great believer in fate -- that everything happens for a reason.

So when an opportunity arose to purchase a hair salon in Fredericton, he and Bonnie jumped at the opportunity. They turned around a slumping business and settled into life in Fredericton.

“And that’s where we came up with the concept of Fuzzy Duck,” he says.

Fuzzy Duck started as a family business, explains Lawrence. “My brother Peter, a graphic artist and owner of Pointe Design Group in Halifax, created the look and feel for the brand. His wife Sabrina helped develop the Nova Scotia market in 2006 as Bonnie and I were living in New Brunswick.”

As the product progressed from kitchen concept to a limited production run beverage, Lawrence knuckled down to learn all he could about the RTD market.

In May 2006, the product was introduced to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick markets, steadily winning over cooler drinkers. The next year, the company was named Micro Business of the Year by the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce.

“When we started with Fuzzy Duck, (the cooler industry) was still experiencing 10 to 15 per cent increases annually in Canada. That’s unheard of for the alcohol business.”

Though that galloping growth in cooler sales has since flattened out, Lawrence sees a healthy growth potential for his local product.
The key to growing Fuzzy Duck was finding a co-packager. Ideally, Lawrence wanted a bottling company that could mix his formula, bottle and package the drink, and deliver the finished product to the provincial liquor commissions. No heavy start-ups costs, no bricks and mortar capital, and no warehousing.

After a less-than-ideal co-package situation out of province, Lawrence finally found all he was searching for with Spring Water Inc. in Antigonish.

In September, 2008, Lawrence signed a deal with the company to create Coast Beverages, which would manufacture and package his Fuzzy Duck coolers here in Nova Scotia. The company also produces bottled spring water for Loblaws in the Maritimes.

“The best opportunity for us (to move ahead) is right here in Nova Scotia,” he says. “The business community in Antigonish has welcomed us with open arms, and the province has been supportive. Home is home.”

All the water used to produce Fuzzy Duck comes from the aquifer under Brown’s Mountain, runs through the plant’s filters and straight into the production line. It’s the only cooler in Canada that uses spring water from a local source.

With start-up help from CBDC and ACOA, Coast Beverages is becoming a solid business model in northeastern Nova Scotia.
Lawrence has nurtured his business relationships with management in liquor outlets in each province and his suppliers. He’s down to earth and loves the way people in Nova Scotia do business.

“Business is all about making relationships,” says Lawrence. “I like simple strategies and that’s what works.”