Tito’s Handmade Vodka Gives Back…

Under its “Love, Tito’s” umbrella, an iconic vodka distillery gives back and empowers employees…

Tito’s Founder, Bert “Tito” Beveridge, has been supporting important causes almost as long as he’s been distilling his award-winning vodka. He has also cultivated an atmosphere that empowers employees to support the charitable programs identified by Tito’s executive team and local causes they’re passionate about.

Taylor Berry, VP of Marketing at Tito’s, discusses the company’s social impact work, the “Love, Tito’s” program. He also outlines how Tito’s has long supported rescue dogs and strays, with its bottles featuring labels highlighting the “Vodka for Dog People” program.

The company launched a number of charitable initiatives under its “Love, Tito’s” umbrella:

• Growing community gardens and farms across the country through its “Block to Block” program
• Providing relief and recovery services for communities in need as the result of more than 25 natural disasters (including Maui, Hawaii wildfires, Vermont floods, and Hurricanes Ian and Fiona)
• Funding promising research in health care, sustainability, advanced technologies, and other fields through its CHEERS initiative (Creating Hope + Elevating Emerging Research + Science)
• Empowering Black futures by supporting three nonprofits (Goodie Nation, NBAF, and Feed the Soul Foundation) centered on entrepreneurship, the food and beverage industry, and music
• Supporting One Good Turn, a nonprofit that advocates for providing better health care to under-represented communities around the world

According to Tito’s website, the goal of “Love, Tito’s” is simple but elegant: “To turn spirits into love and goodness. Make the world a better place — in whatever way moves you; find your passion, and get involved.”

The program gets its name from the salutation that Team Tito’s would sign off with, as a way of saying, “Thank you for inviting us to help the cause.”

To learn more about this far-reaching program, ANA magazine spoke with Taylor Berry, VP of marketing at Tito’s.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

Q. You’ve been at Tito’s Handmade Vodka for six years now. Was Tito’s social impact work — the “Love, Tito’s” program — one of the reasons you went to work for the company?

It’s an interesting question, because it feeds into a common theme of people saying, “I had no idea you did so much philanthropy work.” That was the case when I was interviewing. While doing research I came across the Love, Tito’s section of the website and couldn’t believe all that Tito’s did. And I had only scratched the surface before I started here.

Q. Tito’s has long been a big supporter of rescue dogs and strays, with your bottles featuring labels highlighting the “Vodka for Dog People” program. Was that the company’s first charitable endeavor? When and why did that begin?

While not our first charitable endeavor, dogs are an important part of our story. In the early days, when our founder Tito Beveridge was mostly a one-man show, he would spend his days out at the distillery in the sweltering Texas heat with his pup, DogJo. Every night he’d put her food out and stray dogs would come by looking for any leftovers. As this became more frequent, Tito would take them in and feed them too. They were the first versions of what we now call “distillery dogs.” Today, we’re up to 150 canines who have been found at or near the distillery, vaccinated, and adopted — many of them by members from our team. This love for dogs spawned our Vodka for Dog People program in which we support hundreds of animal-focused nonprofits around the country.

Q. The website indicates that Beveridge donated products to local nonprofits from the beginning, when the business was still finding its footing. Can you share examples of those early efforts, and how, “over time, those small, localized gestures not only continued, but evolved into a nationwide movement to make the world a better place?”

Once the company got off the ground, and Tito had obtained his distilling and selling license, he still wasn’t anywhere close to liquid cash flow. A friend was a volunteer for a local nonprofit, Project Transitions, and approached him to sponsor one of its events. Tito offered to donate and pour his vodka for the event. The response he got was incredible, not only about his new product, but also because of his support for the cause. Tito saw the good he could bring by such a small gesture and continued to offer up products to causes. It’s only grown from there. As the company grew, so did our giving. As we inched toward becoming cash-flow positive with a few more employees, we were able to give our time to service projects and contribute monetary donations to more causes.

Q. The company’s charitable efforts under the Love, Tito’s program have obviously expanded greatly, including Block to Block, CHEERS, and Passion Projects. Can you give us more detail on these initiatives?

Each of the programs have purpose and were born out of a desire to make change. Block to Block was started in 2019 with the simple idea of encouraging communities to become more connected. Inspired by the farm we built for our distillery employees to provide fresh produce via a weekly farmers’ market and daily meals, we decided to take that model around the country to help improve community gardens and farms in underserved communities.

CHEERS is the brainchild of Tito. His background is in geology and geophysics, so he has an innate interest in the sciences. The program, also launched in 2019, is meant to make moonshot bets on research that could have significant global impact. It’s a fascinating program to be a part of. Over the years we’ve given grants to organizations around the globe that are working to map the solar system to accurately track asteroids that could impact earth, pull potable drinking water out of air moisture, collect and reduce ocean and river plastics, or find anti-venoms in Sub-Saharan Africa. Those are only a fraction of the efforts we’ve supported. There are no limits to the fields we decide to work in.

Passion Projects is a new program intended to amplify our culture of giving. It’s reserved for larger donations to nonprofits that are chosen by our employees around the country. Our teams are always encouraged to support the causes they care for through Tito’s giving, but this program allows our team to nominate nonprofits and turn the giving up to 11. It’s the perfect representation of our philanthropy as it allows us to spread the love across a myriad of different causes across the country.

Every additional charitable program also has a story behind it, but ultimately, they’re all born out of a desire to make our communities better. There is no strategy or ulterior motives behind something like disaster relief. It comes from a place of altruism and knowing we can help the communities that we’re lucky enough to do business in.

Q. Can you provide some way to quantify Tito’s contributions to these programs?

The best way to quantify this is by the amount of personnel we dedicate to these initiatives. Sure, you can look on our website and see the donation amounts we give for the CHEERS program, but it’s so much more than that. We sponsor thousands of nonprofit events each year and every one of them requires at least a few employees to pull off. We take it seriously and it is an ingrained part of our culture. I’ve seen our people go to great lengths to make sure a nonprofit has what it needs for an event.

Q. Have those charitable efforts always been a critical part of the brand? Are these efforts an extension of what Tito’s is, and what Tito’s represents?

It’s in the DNA of our organization. In fact, a key part of our employee orientation is explaining the “20 or more rule.” It’s an internal guideline that states that if 20 or more employees gather for any business purpose, there must be a group give-back event. It’s a special thing to share, especially with newer employees.

Q. Tito has said: “What people really long for is meaning and purpose in their life. And so if you can find meaning, and if you can do nice things for people that you don’t even know, it’s amazing what starts coming back to you in life.” Can you tell us how that spirit is embodied within the company? Has it become part of Tito’s mission statement?

It’s undoubtedly part of our mission statement. The first time Tito explained it to me, it was so clear. Yes, a job for anyone is about earning a living, but at Tito’s we’ve been granted a pathway for making our individual communities better. Our team has autonomy to give to those who ask for support and, conversely, those whom we want to support. It makes working at Tito’s much more than a job; it’s a vehicle for personal meaning and purpose.

Q. In a similar vein, I love this quote from the website: “As Tito’s Handmade Vodka continued to gain momentum across the country, involvement in philanthropy grew in tandem. The more people who joined the Tito’s family, the more hearts and hands were out in the world spreading love and goodness, with Tito’s behind them all the way.” How does the company empower its employees to pursue these causes?

We’re lucky to have employees across the country. Every state has a budget for giving and it’s almost entirely up to them on where that goes. Of course, people gravitate toward the tentpoles we’ve established as a company, like animal welfare, food security, disaster relief, veterans, and the like. But if there is a cause or vertical that is dear to someone’s heart, they can make support through Tito’s happen.

Q. Can you qualify the importance of the Love, Tito’s initiatives to the overall brand image? We’ll assume the company’s chief goal is producing a world-class vodka. But it’s also clear that these charitable efforts are also very important. How can we measure that?

I believe our hyper-focus on making a singular product has allowed for the latitude to put as much focus, if not more, on ways to make the world a better place. That being said, we try not to use it as a tool for promotion of our brand, and feel like if we can turn the focus on the nonprofits we support, the love will come right back around to our brand. It’s always a delight to see people uncover that we’re much more than a vodka brand.

Q. What are the other ways that you promote/market the Love, Tito’s initiatives — face-to-face tasting events, advertising, the website, social media, influencers, etc.?

We try to infuse philanthropy into anything we can. For example, the net proceeds from the merchandise sold through our web store goes to one of five rotating nonprofits that consumers choose at checkout. Our in-store promotions lead with philanthropic tie-ins, and we work donation programs into almost all our sponsorships. When it comes to advertising, influencers, and social media, we always try to put the nonprofit at the forefront, giving them the spotlight so others can learn their mission. It’s organic. It’s real. We don’t treat it like a performative marketing tactic. We hope that people can discover our giving through experience, word of mouth, or even just buying a dog toy on our website, not an ad campaign touting how great we are.

Q. Have you and Tito been surprised by the growth of the Love, Tito’s program? Or was it predictable? Can you correlate its success with how it resonates with people?

I think this whole company is a bit of a surprise. The truth is, as we grow as a vodka company, we grow as a philanthropic engine. More people know about Tito’s than “Love, Tito’s,” but it’s only a matter of time that “I had no idea …” turns into “I heard you support ….”

Q. What does the future hold for the Love, Tito’s program? Not only what’s on the horizon, but also Tito’s long-term goals on the charitable front?

I’m most excited to see where programs like Block to Block and Passion Projects go. They’re both in their relative infancy, and as we develop them to go beyond the mission they were initially intended for, we’ll see the creativity of this amazing team blossom into new community initiatives that no one would have ever expected a vodka company to be a part of.

ABOUT THE WRITER:

Brion O’Connor is a Boston-based freelance writer and a longtime contributor to the ANA, specializing in social impact initiatives. His 40-year journalism career includes stints as a newspaper reporter, newspaper editor, magazine writer, and content provider for custom publications. His stories have run in Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Men’s Journal, Men’s Fitness, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Ski, Bicycling, and numerous alumni and in-flight magazines.