St. Augustine Distillery Hits 5-Year Mark
In the five years the St. Augustine Distillery has been open, co-founders Philip McDaniel and Mike Diaz have seen a lot of things go in their favor, but much of it hasn’t come as an accident.
Diaz, who is also the chief financial officer for the Distillery, said the most important development was the passage of a bill in 2013 that allowed distilleries to sell directly to customers — just two bottles per year at that point but much better than zero.
It took a lot of persuasion by McDaniel, who is also CEO of the Distillery, to garner the support of then Florida Rep. Doc Renuart and Florida Sen. John Thrasher to get the law changed. Without it, the entire Distillery business model of catering to tourists would have been impossible.
“That didn’t happen by accident,” Diaz said. “That didn’t happen as a good luck incident. That happened because Phil McDaniel spent probably 600 hours in Tallahassee pushing that. “Some of that good luck came with hard work.” (Gainesville, Fla., Sun)