If you’ve stumbled into a Chicago bar late at night, it’s likely you’ve been offered a shot of Jeppson’s Malört. Like Fernet to San Francisco, the Swedish-style liquor has become a bartender’s handshake in the city and an unlikely regional icon. Now, hitting its 90th anniversary, the owners are building on its organic social media buzz, merchandise collection, and even its polarizing taste to push it into bars across the country.
The uniquely bitter and botanical flavored liquor was created by Carl Jeppson, a Swedish immigrant, who sold it door to door and called it a medicinal product to avoid Prohibition regulations. After the repeal of prohibition, Jeppson tweaked the recipe and expanded production.
Malört had long been a cult favorite in Chicago with low but steady sales—1,000 cases in a big year—up until about 10 years ago when it began to gain momentum thanks to a local bar bouncer, Sam Mechling, who was dared by a coworker to take a shot of the liquor. The taste was so off-putting to Mechling he began bringing it around as a running gag, wanting to see people’s “Malört Face”, after trying the drink for the first time. But that one-man semi-ironic campaign coincided with a bigger movement: craft cocktails.
“People in the bartending community were just looking for interesting spirits, and there was Malört which had always been around at dive bars,” said Tremaine Atkinson, CEO of CH Distillery, which purchased the brand in 2018. “I think it was just a combination of it being this authentically cool bada** Chicago thing, a unique story, and a weird flavor.”
After being an unofficial brand ambassador, Mechling was hired by the brand, rallying the bar and restaurant industry to propel it into its iconic status today. The story isn’t unlike San Francisco’s Fernet-Branca obsession, one that made the amaro at one point into one the world’s top five fastest growing brands— all thanks to a devoted sales rep and the bartenders she converted into fans.
CH Distillery has put its five-person Illinois salesforce behind the brand, tripling volume in the five years since its former owner retired and sold it to the craft distiller. In 2007, Malort sold 400,000 shots, last year it sold 7.9 million. Celebrities like Drake and Kelly Clarkson have also made the “Malört Face.” As growth has leveled off in Illinois, Atkinson and his team have expanded distribution from four states to more than 30.
The fastest growing states for the liquor are Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington, Colorado, Texas, and the Washington D.C. area. It’s nearly a 100% on-premise drink except for in Illinois, and Atkinson says a similar crowd is spearheading the brand’s growth in other cities: industry people with connections or affection for Chicago, or champions of independent brands. Those are also the same people who do most of the company’s marketing for them.
“The wonderful thing about our social media program is that it’s really not ours,” he said. “People are posting memes or stories, there’s just so much content that people are creating about Malört because it’s so fun — and fun to make fun of it.”
There are memes aplenty: tweets that read “It’s only Malört if it comes from the Malört region of Chicago, otherwise it’s sparkling gasoline,” or TikToks of reviewers and stand-ups braving the “worst alcohol ever” for the first time.
Because of its fandom, Atkinson hasn’t done much marketing at all.
“Our big thing when we bought the brand was not to mess it up, we really let it rest but pushed it more on the sales side,” he said.
Now, the company is embracing the liquid’s polarizing taste for its first digital advertising campaign, focusing on a simple digital spot celebrating the Malört face. Letting the brand’s reputation lie has allowed Atkinson to accept what resonates most with consumers: that the drink is often the butt of the joke. That status has been part of the draw for distributors— which except for his longtime Illinois distribution partner, have all approached him to carry the product.
“I don’t like the word novelty but Malört definitely has a novelty aspect to it,” he said. “There are not a lot of liqueurs that have that and so it just makes it appealing for distributors to give their sales staff something different to sell.”
Even without distributors, that reputation has created a footprint in places like California. There, the brand is self-distributed with help from BevAlc service provider MHW, but has sold a couple hundred cases per year solely through word or mouth or social media. He compares that to the distillery’s other products, a craft vodka for instance, that could never sell 300 cases outside of Illinois even while he pushed it in-person.
“That’s not a big number and it doesn’t move the needle much on the revenue side,” he said. “But you start doing the math and 300 cases is more than 50,000 shots being consumed in California with zero marketing or feet on the ground,” he said.
It could be the t-shirt orders from California that help it sell, however. The brand has put money behind advertising for its merchandise, which is a better revenue generator than direct-to-consumer liquor sales. The data from merchandise sales also helps the company get a read on where they have a potential audience outside of Illinois. Merchandise has grown from a few hundred shirt sales to an entire separate e-commerce site with anything from pool floaties to golf balls, and a complete Malört summer or winter wardrobe.
“It’s marketing that pays for itself, it gives us some additional stuff to post on social media and people are hungry for it,” Atkinson said. “It keeps the conversation about it going.”
With other brands selling consumers on a “better you,” Atkinson is banking on the lifestyle promise of “a less serious you,” and aiming to continue extending the brand through its community. It’s how many cult brands have built success from a sense of connection and loyalty— although likely not many of them have also inspired faces of disgust.