Whether you’re an at-home mixology expert or just looking for delicious sober alternatives, the BIPOC-owned Hella Cocktail Co. offers beverage solutions for everyone. Boasting a robust line of carefully crafted bitter beverages, premium bitters and cocktail mixers, Hella began as a hobby — and has since grown to become a favorite of Bon Appetit editors and IG foodies everywhere.
“We started by making cocktail bitters in a mason jar because it was about all we could fit in our small New York apartment,” says co-founder Jomaree Pinkard. “Now, we’re all about democratizing craft cocktails, breaking down the barriers that have kept so many from trying their hands at making great cocktails at home.”
Operating with a tight-knit team of less than ten dedicated folks, Hella Cocktail Co. is using their Shopify-powered website paired with snappy, in-house video to reach more people (and, you know, sell more stuff). The team first embraced video during the pandemic, running recurring cocktail-making soirees on Instagram Live, but didn’t know how to translate those low-lift videos into something with staying power — until Vimeo Create.
Jomaree and his co-founders Tobin Ludwig and Eddie Simeon have been pals and business partners for over a decade — which means they’ve spent lots of time carefully formulating their mixers, bitters, and sodas. In fact, the team went through 67 (!) different iterations before they arrived at their beloved Bitters & Soda formulation.
That devotion to formulation extends to their ingredients, too – the Hella Cocktail team is proud to report that their sippable seltzers are free of preservatives, artificial flavors, dyes, or high-fructose corn syrup. (To make room for all those fruit peels, natural extracts, spices, and bitter roots.) “The story of Hella is about sharing,” notes Jomaree. “Our products are just one things we share. The other things we share are diversity, giving, and being a part of the community.”
Mixing up the magic
Without a high-watt video production studio, the Hella team thought they didn’t have the tools or the bandwidth to turn their at-home cocktail sessions into eye-popping product videos for their Shopify site. But when they paired Vimeo Create with refreshing product imagery and some of their archived footage, the path to scalable, engaging, and embeddable video was clear. “Before using this tool, we were making about 6 videos a year,” says Jomaree. “Now we can make 6 videos a month.”
“Traditionally, creating and editing videos can take up to 4 hours, at the minimum,” he adds. “This tool allows us to create videos by allowing us to import photos and create videos in about an hour.”
Wow-worthy website videos
Looking to take their ecommerce site to the next level, the Hella Cocktail team added product videos to some of their most popular offerings, including their non-alcoholic Bitters & Soda sparkling aperitifs.
Since adding video to their website, Hella Cocktail Co. has seen return customer rate increase by nearly 20%. They also saw conversion rate on the product pages with video increased by a whopping 40%. With those kinds of numbers, the team at Hella will be coming back for a refill. “We will be using this tool again in the future to create product, promotional, social media and ad campaigns,” says Jomaree.
