Coming out of COVID, the non-alcoholic beverage had incredible tailwinds, supported by plentiful venture capital and strong consumer demand. Boisson capitalized on these trends, quickly expanding to 11 retail stores across the country and placing themselves at the heart of the non-alc industry. Things came to a sudden stop as the retailer shut their doors and declared bankruptcy in early 2024. I sat down with Boisson founder Nick Bodkins for his first interview since this sudden closure. In the interview, Bodkins, opens up about his journey through bankruptcy, restructuring, and the hard-won lessons of entrepreneurship during trying times.
Dave Knox: I’d like to start with the story of the business. For those unfamiliar with your journey, can you tell me about founding the company and what you set out to build?
Nick Bodkins: Picture 2020: my wife and I are on the couch, in the thick of COVID. We were just about to begin our IVF journey to start a family when the pandemic hit, delaying everything. We finally started in October 2020. Neither of us was drinking—obviously, my wife couldn’t during IVF, and I chose to join her.
One night, she turns to me and says, “I could really use a Negroni.” That was our Thursday night tradition—a ritual, really. I had all the red vermouths, gins, and everything for mixing our Negronis. But during the IVF process, you feel like you have zero control. Every day, you’re waiting on a nurse’s call for instructions, dealing with constant monitoring and blood work. We wanted some sense of normalcy.
So, I thought, “Okay, I’m a problem-solver in ops and marketing; I’ll find her a non-alcoholic option.” Up to that point, I hadn’t really explored the world of non-alcoholic products. I started Googling, looking for options, and quickly discovered that most brands were marketing to me like I was shopping for a regular consumer product. For example, when you buy a mattress online, the brand can describe its softness, but you don’t really know until you try it. That’s why companies like Casper opened physical stores. Similarly, in the non-alc space, I found three different companies—one offering non-alc gin, another non-alc vermouth, and a third selling non-alc Campari. Each company was trying to get me to buy directly from them, but they only sold by the case. So, to make one Negroni, I had to go through three separate companies. It was frustrating and inefficient.
As someone in growth and retention marketing, I started looking deeper into this. After I solved the immediate problem and got my wife a non-alc Negroni, I became more curious. Many of the brands I found online had emerged between 2017 and 2019, creating non-alcoholic alternatives that were unique compared to what was already on the market. These founders had initially planned to launch in bars and restaurants, but with COVID, they pivoted to direct-to-consumer sales.
And that’s where I saw the real opportunity. The buying experience should feel more like going to a wine or liquor store. In our case, the concept was to create something akin to a “Sephora for non-alc.” At Sephora, you may not know the exact product you’re looking for, but you have a general idea—like an ingredient or a specific skin type. There are knowledgeable staff to guide you through all the brands and products. That’s the kind of experience we envisioned for non-alc.
That’s how it all started, and it just took off from there.
Knox: Fast-forwarding from the early days, you ran into some challenges with the business earlier this year. What happened?
Bodkins: Going back to the landscape of the consumer space, we saw a major challenge in this category, primarily around what’s known as “getting sips to lips”—essentially, getting people to try the product for the first time. A few barriers held us back, particularly the difficulty in getting non-alc products into typical retail outlets like grocery or wine and spirits stores.
Where we lived in New York City, for example, wine and spirits shops aren’t even allowed to sell non-alcoholic products. You’d have to visit separate stores just to get gin and tonic.
From the start, our thesis—backed by strong interest from the investment community—was to build a “three-legged stool” for growth. The first leg was specialty retail, a physical storefront that would create a “Sephora for non-alc” experience. Then, there was a robust e-commerce marketplace, which we initially fulfilled through our stores but quickly outgrew. Finally, with additional funding, we developed a wholesale component, aiming to integrate with traditional wine, spirits, and beer wholesalers. But we questioned whether alcohol distributors would be best positioned to drive sales of non-alc products. Our bet was they weren’t.
Fast-forwarding, we ultimately built an 11-store retail network in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami. These stores were challenging to run and required substantial resources. We also established a large warehousing infrastructure, initially planning to scale up to 25, 35, or even 40 stores. However, over time, mainstream retailers learned how to incorporate non-alc products into their own product lines much faster than anticipated.
This made the need for specialty retail less critical—at least in the formulaic approach we’d envisioned. By 2024, these products were widely available in conventional retailers, so a dedicated non-alc bottle shop became less essential.
Ultimately, we faced a tough investment environment. Investors were now looking for businesses with quick paths to profitability, while ours was based on scale. Although we were nearing profitability at our current scale, the overhead and fixed costs concerned investors, who now viewed companies like ours differently than they did in 2021 and 2022. We hit a funding wall for the last $5–$6 million needed to reach profitability, which led to a restructuring.
Navigating this was incredibly challenging, a disappointment for me and for our investors, including friends who believed in us. Getting through this was far from guaranteed—it’s taken intense work over the past six months.
Knox: I want to dive into that a bit more. In the startup world, unfortunately, more startups fail than succeed. Typically, that means shutting down, maybe an acquihire or a “soft landing,” as investors say. But you went through bankruptcy and came out the other side. What led you down that path, and how did you approach it differently than the typical startup journey?
Bodkins: The key difference here is that most startups fail because, while the product may have some fans, it lacks broad product-market fit and doesn’t seem likely to achieve it. But in our case, we were in a growing category—non-alcoholic drinks. It’s one of the only segments in beverages seeing growth, with a 30% CAGR. Five years ago, the category was worth less than $150 million; this year it’s projected to hit $750 million off-premise in the U.S. alone. This year, it could cross a billion dollars. So, we had a ton of tailwinds in terms of market demand. The real challenge was building a self-sustaining business that didn’t rely on outside capital. Choosing reorganization wasn’t a given. When we spoke with our bankruptcy counsel, I shared that I believed there was still a real business here and that I wanted to explore options to preserve value for the brands we work with and for our investors. The counsel told us, “I think it’s worth trying, but there’s about a half-percent chance. We see this outcome in maybe one out of 200 companies that come to us.”
There were nuances that made our process a bit more feasible, though it was still daunting. The process was linear in the sense that we had a start date for filing and two possible endpoints: liquidation or emerging as a reorganized business. Between those points, there were countless critical decisions, concessions, and agreements to coordinate between different entities, each with its own motivations. Each step had to fall into place perfectly to reach a positive outcome.
As a founder, after firing myself and the entire company team, I had a choice: move on to a corporate job or find a way to salvage the business. The motivation for me was clear: we still had supplier inventory, and we owed suppliers money. If we went into liquidation, our investors’ structure likely meant zero return for suppliers. I had personal relationships with almost everyone in this business. This wasn’t a situation created by malice or bad intent—it was a convergence of market conditions, rising interest rates, and venture and growth equity risk factors.
So, I knew that if I didn’t try to save the business, it would mean the worst possible outcome for the suppliers, the category, and everyone who believed in us. That realization became my starting point.
Knox: With all that in mind, you had a range of stakeholders—suppliers, brand partners, friends, investors, and landlords. How did you balance their needs, especially knowing that your ultimate goal was to revive the business and create a “version two”?
Bodkins: It came down to a hierarchy of needs. The first thing I did after announcing the bankruptcy was reach out to my team. I posted on LinkedIn, letting everyone at Boisson know I’d support them however I could—acting as a reference, helping them find jobs, anything to help the people who had helped us.
The next step was reaching out to our brand partners. I wanted to make sure they understood the process we were about to go through and my intentions for the business. In bankruptcy, the paperwork can be overwhelming, and it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters, so I focused on keeping those relationships solid and front of mind.
After that, it was about assessing the company’s outstanding exposure. Our investors held a secured debt position, meaning that, as secured creditors, they’d have first claim to any recovered funds, ahead of suppliers and other unsecured creditors. I realized the only way to ensure suppliers could receive anything was to convince the investors to convert their debt into equity in a reorganized entity. That was a significant hurdle, but it was the first one to address.
After that, I turned to LinkedIn to share my belief in our vision. I acknowledged that the business model would need changes but expressed that I still saw a viable path forward. Then I shut off my phone for a few days to spend time with family. When I turned it back on, I found 500 emails, 400 LinkedIn messages, and a quarter million views on my post. Amid the comments and tags, I got a message from someone at a family office who had been interested in the non-alc space. They felt they’d missed the chance to work with us but were open to exploring a path forward.
From the start, I was clear with them about the company’s situation—what they’d be stepping into—and they were still interested. Those first two steps, securing investor support and finding a committed partner, were essential; without them, we’d have had no path forward.
Knox: There’s a powerful lesson in your story about transparency. Founders often feel they have to be strong and not reveal vulnerabilities. Yet, if you hadn’t been so open on LinkedIn, that investor connection wouldn’t have happened. How do you reflect on that transparency, and what advice would you offer other founders based on your experience?
Bodkins: I think we’re in an era where founder PR can overshadow business PR—people build personas around the founder or CEO that sometimes come off as faux transparency. But in my situation, it wasn’t even about “being transparent” so much as just doing what felt like the next logical step. Like anyone who’s been through something tough, I had practical worries—how I’d pay rent, support my daughter, face my wife. I was in the same position as my employees who’d just lost their jobs.
They were out there saying, “My company just went under. I’m looking for a job,” and I felt I should be doing the same. In fact, I wanted to be the one taking accountability, to absorb any blame and prevent it from falling on them by default. If someone’s interviewing for a new role, the last thing they need is a shadow of doubt about their involvement in a bankruptcy. And in a small industry like this, hiding behind corporate language doesn’t do much good.
Once I was no longer an employee—just a board member of a company in bankruptcy—I didn’t need to check if it was okay to share my thoughts publicly. Building in public just seemed like the natural thing to do, and if I wanted to salvage or rebuild anything, it had to be done openly.
I hope other founders take a similar approach. LinkedIn is full of announcements that start with “I’m thrilled” or “excited to announce…” but the hard stuff doesn’t get shared as often. My experience showed me it’s a platform where people hold you accountable but also offer genuine support. That transparency helped me find an incredible amount of personal connection, and this new opportunity is a perfect example of that.
Knox: Now that you’re in this next phase post-reorganization, what does the business look like moving forward? What’s the vision for Boisson from here?
Bodkins: So we’re in a much different place strategically. To put it simply, specialty retail in this category—especially multi-unit specialty stores—isn’t a sustainable long-term model for us. It’s not that there isn’t interest; it’s just that the unit economics don’t really hold up. If you’re passionate and run a single store yourself, it could work. But scaling this model at a multi-unit level is challenging.
Take our original retail location in Brooklyn: it’s just 480 square feet, yet it was on track to bring in about $1 million this year. That’s impressive for such a small space. But even so, after accounting for all costs, that would have netted us about $90,000 in EBITDA. With dozens of employees, multiple landlords, insurance, HR needs across states, etc., you start to realize that even with 20 locations, you’re only looking at maybe $1–1.5 million in profit at best. And that’s a lot of operational lift.
On the other hand, we have a wholesale business with a customer base of over 250,000 from our e-commerce platform, plus resources from our new family office backing us, which includes expertise in import and distribution. The goal now is to leverage this platform for the “second wave” of non-alcoholic brands—particularly those aiming to grow more slowly and avoid massive rounds of funding. Through Boisson, they don’t need to establish an entire U.S. team just to test market entry.
Imagine us as a “hub-and-spoke” model: we help them warehouse their products, navigate FDA compliance, power their direct-to-consumer channels, get placed in top bars and restaurants, and access grocery networks. We can offer these brands a soft entry into the U.S. without requiring them to invest heavily before knowing where they’ll succeed.
I now spend my time at events like BCB in Berlin, ProWein in Düsseldorf, and Wine Paris, scouting emerging products. I want Boisson to be the partner that helps new brands establish and scale in the U.S. more efficiently with less risk. So, the future vision boils down to this: our e-commerce marketplace and wholesale hub-and-spoke system together can offer these brands a streamlined path to market, with lower capital requirements. That’s where we see our role now in advancing this category.
Knox: Looking ahead, you’ve mentioned the non-alcoholic space and the category itself several times. What excites you most about where things are headed in the NA industry?
Bodkins: What really excites me is seeing an acceleration—not a deceleration—in product innovation within the NA space. Athletic Brewing is a perfect example. Bill and John took what was once a dusty, overlooked option like O’Doul’s and created a non-alcoholic beer that’s genuinely high quality. People started to say, “I’ll try an NA beer because it’s actually good.” That shift is now happening across the entire category.
The quality, variety, and sophistication of products are ramping up fast. NA brands today aren’t just an alternative; they’re creating drinks that can stand proudly on their own and appeal to people beyond the usual “sober curious” demographic. It’s an evolution from filling a gap to genuinely innovating the space with products people are excited about.
Knox: With this next chapter, how has your role as a founder evolved?
Bodkins: My role has shifted significantly, particularly towards rebuilding and nurturing relationships. I’m spending a lot more time connecting with both the brands that supported us early on and those entering the U.S. market for the first time. The bankruptcy plan includes a structured payment to suppliers, landlords, and other creditors, but beyond that, I’m working to find ways we can genuinely make things right with our suppliers. Their decision to work with us again can carry a lot of emotional weight, especially with founder-led businesses that have their own journeys and challenges. But in the end, it’s a commercial decision: do they believe they’ll succeed more by partnering with us?
Additionally, as I’ve been reaching out to others in the industry, I’ve heard from many founders who’ve faced similar struggles. They’re looking for insight, asking, “How did you manage to keep the original funds and still maintain equity?” or “How can we navigate this like you did?” I try to be as transparent with them as I was through this process. I explain that if they genuinely believe their business is fundamentally sound and didn’t fail due to a core strategic error, then it’s worth fighting for. If not, it may be wise to move on—acknowledging that startup failure is part of the ecosystem.
As I reflect on what we’ve accomplished, I’m hopeful about our impact on the NA space. Building awareness for non-alcoholic options, especially when consumers are becoming more mindful but not necessarily giving up alcohol, is a massive behavior change. The upfront cost of getting customers to see NA drinks as viable, enjoyable options is steep. But much like how Uber trained users to open an app instead of hailing a cab, our efforts mean that newer brands will have an easier path because we’ve already shifted perceptions and built awareness. We helped introduce hundreds of thousands of people to quality non-alcoholic options, and I believe that groundwork will benefit every brand entering the market after us. That’s something meaningful to me.