GROW YOUR SPIRITS BRAND & OPEN DOORS IN LOS ANGELES
Leverage our local expertise to craft and execute a bespoke strategy to drive your premium spirit brand’s growth across Los Angeles’s sprawl, diversity, and hyper-local culture.
YOU CAN’T JUST PULL UP IN LOS ANGELES — you need to check in
If you haven’t cracked Los Angeles yet, I’ll tell you why. Your national strategy might not work here. You’re doing tastings in Mar Vista when your target buyer is in West Adams. You’re not sure which bar consultants are influencing menus city-wide, or even by neighborhood. You don’t have the right distributor. No one’s telling you the off-premise retailers that the insiders shop at. You’re not getting realtime feedback from your feet on the street, if you have any. Everyone tells you they’ll get you into an awards gifting suite - but does that even move the needle?
To work in Los Angeles, you need the guy who will get you a break. Who will get you a discount. Who will cut you a favor.
(Unless your brand is wack, then we can’t help you with that.)
Terry O’Neal, founder of Step Up Partners, is a fractional market director for premium brands looking to enter or expand in Los Angeles and has the connections to make it happen.
YOUR PARTNER FOR SUCCESS IN LOS ANGELES
We leverage lifelong relationships and localized expertise to position your brand where it belongs, connecting you with restaurants, bars, hotels, retailers, and distributors.
Our team provides detailed strategic analysis, feedback, and distribution planning tailored to the 572 neighborhoods in Los Angeles. From Venice to West Hollywood, over the hill and up the 134 to Highland Park, we map out the landscape so your brand is unforgettable at every stop.
As your brand grows, we optimize your distribution network, enhance brand visibility, and implement proven growth strategies to drive sustained sales growth and further your brand as a market leader. Let us help you own every corner of this sprawling, chaotic, beautiful city.
GETTING YOU FROM Market Entry to Market Winner
-
Market Intelligence
We’ll break down Los Angeles for you, neighborhood by neighborhood, and analyze your brand’s potential. The goal? Put your brand exactly where it belongs in Los Angeles’s dynamic premium spirits market. You get:
- On-the-ground Insights
- Competitor Benchmarking
-
Strategy Development
We craft a block-by-block strategy covering account targeting, pricing, and distribution, built from the ground up for Los Angeles’s culture and market. You get:
- Account Targeting Playbook
- Distribution Plan
- Cultural Integration Roadmap
-
Account Growth
Our relationships with Los Angeles’s top restaurants, bars, retailers, and distributors make the difference between being stocked and being celebrated.
- Fractional salesforce to secure on and off-premise accounts
- Biweekly acquisition updates
-
RHYTHM OF BUSINESS
Once you’re in the game, we keep you there—optimizing your distribution, boosting your visibility, and making sure your growth is sustainable.
- Distributor and Service Provider Liaison
- Quarterly Reviews
“TERRY and the step up team KNOWS LOS ANGELES BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE.”
“los angeles isn’t like any other market — you need someone like terry to be successful.”
Turn Your SPIRITS Brand Into LA's Next Success Story
As a Los Angeles native and former UCLA football player, Terry O’Neal, founder of Step Up Partners, brings a winning mindset and deep cultural understanding to brand scaling. His unique background spans investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, luxury fashion at Fear of God, and founding a premium alcohol brand called Ajornada, which gives him a comprehensive perspective on what it takes to succeed in Los Angeles's competitive market.
Terry's approach goes beyond traditional product-market fit to achieve something more valuable: product-culture fit. His deeply collaborative, team-oriented style combines with direct, honest feedback to help brands navigate every aspect of scaling – from profitability pathways and supply chain optimization to visual identity refinement.
What sets Terry apart is his cultural strategy expertise. He understands that in Los Angeles, success isn't just about shelf space – it's about becoming part of the city's cultural fabric. His guidance is always about aligning your product and brand with not only the motion of Los Angeles but Los Angeles' sophisticated and discerning consumer base. He knows that, in this town, the right connections and the right strategy are the only way forward.
Whether you’re launching or scaling, you’ve got the product. We’ve got the city. Let us take it from here.