AI operations for beverage brands. Built by someone who's actually run one.
Your follow-ups, your CRM, your content, your meeting prep. Handled by a system that knows your brand, your distributors, and your voice.
Pay & Book Your AI Ops Audit — $500See how it worksYou're not behind on selling. You're behind on everything around it.
The distributor you haven't touched in six weeks. The calls you never logged. The content calendar that's three weeks stale. The meeting you walked into cold. None of it is hard. All of it eats the hours that were supposed to go to growth.
Not slideware. A system that's actually in production.
I don't just advise on AI. I build and run operations systems for beverage brands: distributor follow-ups, CRM logging, content, meeting prep, the daily briefing. The reference system behind Barrel & Beacon is production-grade and in daily use, wired to a full stack of business tools.
Three weeks from first call to "morning brief."
We map your week
One call. We find the 10 things you repeat and the 10 things you drop.
I build your ops brain
Your brand's knowledge, voice, distributor landscape, and CRM, wired into an AI system you talk to like a person.
You run it in week three
Training included. You say "morning brief" and your day is organized. No terminal, no code, no prompts to learn.
| You say | The system does |
|---|---|
| "Morning brief" | Calendar + inbox + stale follow-ups + priorities, one summary |
| "Prep me for Sarah" | Full relationship history and talking points in 30 seconds |
| "Who's gone quiet?" | Flags stale relationships, drafts the check-ins in your voice |
| "Draft this week's posts" | On-brand content, checked against your calendar |
| "Log my call with Mike" | CRM updated, follow-up task created, recap drafted |
Any AI consultant can wire tools together. They can't tell you what a distributor check-in should say.
20+ years in spirits sales and distribution: distributor management, chain authorizations, market launches, brand programming. That knowledge is built into every system I deliver. Your ops brain doesn't just move data around. It knows the business.
"It's not a chatbot. It's a system that knows the business."
Transparent. Productized. No discovery-call ambush.
AI Ops Audit
One call + a written roadmap: your top 10 automatable workflows, ranked by payoff. Credited toward any build within 30 days.
Brand Ops Brain
The core system in 3 weeks. Claude wired to your Notion, email, and calendar. Five workflows on your real data. Training + 30 days support.
Full AI Operations Build
Everything in Brand Ops Brain plus the power layer: custom skills, automated reporting, depletion tracking, 60 days support.
AI Ops Partner
A deliverable every month: your Depletion Intelligence memo (numbers in, 3-5 actions out by the 10th) for brands with depletion data. Plus tune-ups, new workflows, priority support, and quarterly review. Cancel anytime.
See a sample memo + dashboard →20+ years in beverage. Now I build the systems I wish I'd had.
I've spent two decades leading sales and marketing in spirits: distributor management across dozens of states, chain authorizations, market launches, brand programming from craft startups to national portfolios.
I know exactly where a brand team's hours disappear, because I've spent 20 years in it. So I built a full AI operations system to take that layer off the plate. It worked better than I expected, and brands started asking for their own. Barrel & Beacon is where I build them.
Darren Kohlenberger · Fishers, Indiana · hello@barrelandbeacon.com
See what your brand's system would look like.
The audit is one call and a written roadmap of exactly what to automate. $500, credited toward a build within 30 days.
Pay & Book — $500