In the world of premium Mediterranean spirits, KLEOS Mastiha stands as a refined expression of Greek heritage and modern craftsmanship. At the heart of the brand is Effie Panagopoulos, the visionary founder and owner who set out to reintroduce the ancient Greek spirit of mastiha to a global audience. Inspired by the unique resin of the mastiha tree from the island of Chios, Panagopoulos created a spirit that honors tradition while embracing contemporary taste. With KLEOS, she has transformed a historic ingredient once prized by ancient civilizations into a sophisticated, versatile drink. The brand reflects her passion for Greek culture, authenticity, and innovation, positioning mastiha as a modern luxury spirit appreciated by bartenders and connoisseurs worldwide.
What inspired you to start KLEOS Mastiha and how has the journey been so far?
It sounds crazy even to me, but I’ve been in the liquor business for over 25 years now! I grew up in Boston, first-generation Greek American, and I majored in romance languages in college. I studied French, Spanish, and Italian, and had lofty aspirations of being a UN Ambassador.
My first job out of college was as a high school Spanish teacher, and I actually moonlighted by working for liquor companies on the weekends, doing events and promotions, for extra money, because the teacher’s salary wasn’t cutting it. I worked on Chambord, Midori, Kahlua, Courvoisier, Maker’s Mark, Stolichnaya flavors when they first launched, SKYY Vodka, and Grey Goose vodka when they first launched, and even did Hispanic events for Hennessy cognac.
I realized quickly I enjoyed working in bars and hospitality far more than working traditional office hours (I even worked at Univision, the Spanish TV network, as a copywriter and in footwear at Puma’s corporate offices), and decided I was going to aggressively pursue a sales and marketing role in the spirits business. It wasn’t until I was on the West Coast in San Diego that I got a few job offers for different companies and got my first sales role for Bacardi in San Francisco at a time when the cocktail renaissance was burgeoning.
It was the time of the “Brand Ambassador”. Many friends in the business were representing different heritage brands, mostly gins, whiskies and tequilas and I applied for and interviewed for almost 6 months for a role as the First and only ever US Brand Ambassador for METAXA (owned by Remy Cointreau), the largest global Greek spirit brand. That was the job that brought me back to Greece after not having visited in 10 years. In 2008, I was at a global brand conference and decided to stay for vacation and spent a week in Mykonos. I was at the infamous beach bar Nammos, with a music producer friend of mine who gave me a shot of mastiha and said: “Forget about METAXA. You need to bring THIS to the United States”.
I tasted it and had a Proustian rush. I knew the flavor profile because we grew up with mastiha as a spoon dessert as kids. I immediately thought, “they make alcohol from this? This would be amazing in cocktails…and this could be the next St. Germain…” which is an elderflower liqueur that blew up in the cocktail world because it was a unique flavor profile, that opened up a whole new world of cocktail opportunities and became lovingly known as “bartender’s ketchup” because you could put it in any cocktail.
So, the inspiration was multi-faceted: my Greek heritage, proudly representing an iconic Greek brand in METAXA, seeing the explosion of St. Germain on the market and how innovation often comes from rediscovering and re-introducing indigenous products that simply have never been marketed outside of their places of origin. Once I did the deep dive on mastiha, its history, production, the PDO, I thought this was a marketer’s dream and you couldn’t make this up and have a better story. I felt it was my fate to be the one to bring this to the US and the world. So in a roundabout way, I’m an ambassador for Greece after all.
The journey has been a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. Our first press ever was in VOGUE (how do you top that), and after a first production nightmare, a great start launching the brand off Mom’s couch in Boston, to navigating running out of stock and almost shutting the business during COVID, to California’s wildfires, now I live in L.A., to Trump’s tariffs decimating the liquor industry, I guess I’m just proud to still be standing. I know over 10 women-owned brands that folded in the past two years.
Could you share some of the exciting new plans or products that KLEOS Mastiha is developing for the near future?
Well, I kind of have to keep things a bit under wraps, but I can say that as I work towards raising more capital, some additional bottle sizes and additional flavors based on mastiha are coming down the pipeline. I can also say I envision the company as an entire lifestyle brand around mastiha, so it doesn’t stop at just alcohol.
How do you approach marketing to highlight the unique qualities of mastiha to both local and international consumers?
Education, education, education and that’s where my teaching background comes in. The most basic and very non-sexy marketing tactic we employ is store tastings and event activations, where we can get liquid to lips. I have trained hundreds of part-time ambassadors in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida and California, where we blast the markets with store tastings every month.
We showcase the raw ingredient, mastiha resin, mastiha chewing gum (we allow people to chew the resin, and the modern-day chewing gum, so they can experience what the ancient Greeks and Romans chewed as gum), and mastiha essential oil (mostly for the aroma so they can understand the smell of the skinos tree), in addition to tasting KLEOS neat, with two additional cocktail serves: The Kleo-patra cocktail (Kleos, basil, lemon) and the Kleo-ccino (Kleos/Cold Brew coffee).
Everyone loves a better-for-you cocktail in today’s sober curious drinking environment, and we are basically giving them better-for-you mojitos and espresso martinis, things they are already familiar with, but with a Greek twist.
We extol mastiha’s health benefits: the fact that it kills H. pylori, the bacteria that causes peptic ulcers, gastric cancer and acid reflux, and is a natural remedy for Crohn’s Disease and IBS. America has a gut health problem and when we talk about mastiha as the ultimate digestif, consumers’ ears perk up, then they get excited, it’s low calorie, low sugar and low alcohol. Functional beverages are all the rage right now. Who knew there could be functional alcohol and the fame of the Mediterranean diet helps us, of course, a healthy booze comes from Greece!
How we win is the taste. Mastiha’s flavor is so clean and fresh, earthy, botanical, herbaceous and floral. KLEOS tastes phenomenal by itself and then is so versatile in cocktails it’s been called “bartender’s olive oil”, a nice upgrade from ketchup.
Besides traditional store tastings, we activate in cool ways: aligning with gyms, personal trainers, wellness, sound baths for mindful imbibing, female founder communities and of course, the low-hanging fruit Greek community. I have done multi-sensory events incorporating aroma and sound to enhance the flavor experience and highlight KLEOS Mastiha’s versatility and events with KLEOS cocktails with Greek dessert pairings to bring the brand alive.
I will say additionally, KLEOS has garnered tons of press, from VOGUE, to Fortune, to Food and Wine magazine, because people are eager to both write about and hear about something that is not another vodka, tequila, or whiskey AND happens to be woman owned and better for you, made from a raw ingredient with 3,000 years of history never mass marketed outside of Greece. That has been a way the message has gotten out there on a bigger scale.
We’ve worked with a handful of influencers, but this tactic is quite expensive for a start-up.
What are the main channels and distribution points KLEOS Mastiha currently uses and are there plans to expand these?
Currently, we are distributed in the US (our largest market by far), Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Canada, the UK and Australia. We want to stay focused on the US market, which has shown the fastest growth and adoption of the brand. Within the US, we operate mainly in 5 major states, and are looking to grow within those, as well as open Illinois and Texas this year. Internationally, we would like to be in Greece Duty Free as we’re confident KLEOS will become a top-selling brand in that channel. We are also already on a few cruise ships, Virgin Voyages (they cruise both out of Florida and through Greece), Royal Caribbean Cruise lines and proud to say we are THE featured Greek spirit brand at Disney’s Epcot center. We also JUST got approved for Whole Foods California, the largest gourmet natural grocery chain in the US, now owned by Amazon. We have to sell in-store by store (because, of course, it couldn’t be too easy), but this will be a game-changer for KLEOS in California!
How are you targeting bigger markets, both nationally and globally? What challenges and opportunities do you see?
The US is arguably the biggest and most important spirits market globally. The main tactic we use is feet on the street. We have salespeople in the main states we operate in and work hand in hand with our distributors, running sales incentives and working the field with them to sell into bars, restaurants and liquor stores. Again, this is the unsexy grunt work of organic brand building. IF I had more capital, I would STILL overinvest in salespeople and ambassadors. No fail, they always move the needle.
Where I would like to invest but can’t afford to at the moment, is more robust digital marketing, both ads and influencers. The reason I haven’t done so is that you essentially have to have a $10k a month ads budget that you’re willing to lose 100% of your money on for 6 months to a year to build a funnel and wait for it to actually convert as you beta test ads. I just don’t have that capital right now and mastiha is truly something you have to taste to get hooked. That said, we have tons of content built for the digital space that takes all those educational components and puts them in video form.
We will be beta testing a micro and nano influencer campaign in the spring/summer and fingers crossed it goes as well as we anticipate!
How important has digital marketing and social media been in your overall marketing strategy?
I guess I answered that question above. It will become more important as we have more capital to invest in it. My marketing approach is that there are tactics that you “need to have” and tactics that are “nice to have”, depending on how well capitalized your business is and your monthly run rates.
KLEOS has over 10k organic followers on Instagram. This may not be impressive, BUT we’ve never paid for a follower and all of them are real, built brick by brick, city by city. Expanding digital presence is a priority, but we’re going to take baby steps. First with Google ads and SEO, and at a later phase, we’ll do more robust influencer and IG ads campaigns.
Can you discuss any collaborations or partnerships that have been instrumental to KLEOS Mastiha’s growth?
Total Wine is our biggest liquor chain; we are in over 60 of them in 5 states and almost 1/3 of our volume comes from them. That is why we continue to overinvest in store tastings here, as they deliver ROI.
DISNEY, and specifically the EPCOT Center Food and Wine Festival, has also provided tremendous exposure for KLEOS. This festival is from June to November every year and in the past 2 years, KLEOS has been THE featured Greek spirit and in THE featured cocktail in the Greek kiosk. You have no idea how proud it makes me that my brand is representing Greece on this stage.
We have been on or are currently on tons of drink menus on what is considered to be “The World’s 50 Best Bars”. This is like the Michelin stars of the bar world. When I first launched, it was very important for me to introduce the brand to high-level mixologists, who are bartenders with the palates of chefs and I knew already from 4 years of focus groups and blind tastings that they would be primary adopters for KLEOS. They are also the bars that get written about and do some pretty solid volume. We had been in the Dante Martini in NY, formerly #1 on the 5o best list for almost 4 years. What a great vehicle to discover KLEOS Mastiha.
So, from high-end (50 best) to mass market (Disney), KLEOS is unique in that it has that crossover potential. We can appeal BOTH to a master sommelier, a Michelin-starred chef AND the layman at Disney coming through The Greek kiosk for a souvlaki and a delicious cocktail. KLEOS is magic like that and that’s why I keep pushing.
How has your family supported you in building KLEOS Mastiha and what role do they play in your business?
I have to be brutally honest here. I lost my father right after I soft-launched KLEOS in Mykonos in the summer of 2017 to alcoholism and nicotine addiction. In my immediate family, he was the most supportive mentally, and I was very conflicted with continuing with a spirit brand. After participating in a rehab program alongside my father, I know that addiction is a disease of the brain and always stems from mental health issues and a lack of ability to self-regulate and cope, and the substance of choice, whether it’s food, drugs, or alcohol, is secondary. I ultimately chose to move on not only because my Dad was the only one in my family who expressed pride in my creating KLEOS, but also because it represented my life’s work. It was the thing I birthed after 10 years of ideation, research and development, focus groups, 17 formula iterations, and countless packaging changes. He got to see the bottle design in the flesh before he passed. But I had zero financial support from anyone in my family. We grew up lower-middle-class. I went to public school and only got to college because of academic scholarships. I’ve had to fight tooth and nail for every dollar I’ve raised. Hundreds of pitch meetings and thousands of emails to some friends, but mostly strangers.
My mother was also quite disappointed with my choice to work in the alcohol beverage industry, as she didn’t deem it a “respectable” career, especially after I had been a straight-A student and overachiever who had received 5 academic scholarships to top US colleges. She very much talked to me like I was a failure when I showed up at her doorstep in January 2018 to sleep on her couch for a year and a half to get KLEOS off the ground. We finally had a heart-to-heart where I expressed how hurt I was by her lack of confidence in me and how condescending she always was. At the ripe age of 40, I had a real turning point in our relationship. She is now the biggest fan of KLEOS, buys it for her friends and co-workers as gifts, shops at liquor stores in Massachusetts, and takes pictures of the shelves for me. It’s a miracle. I share this because I know many Greeks and first-generation Americans, Australians, and Brits can empathize with the “tough love” of an immigrant parent. Frankly, that prepared me as much for entrepreneurship as anything else.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to break into niche markets like mastiha?
The market here is technically an alcohol beverage, which is not niche at all. In fact, it’s quite cluttered, so having a niche product is a positive. I’ve said this before in interviews, but never start a brand or company because you have a “hunch” or a gut feeling, or you and your friends think it’s a good idea.
You have to take a scientific approach. Who is your target customer? Is this target going to actually purchase and adopt your product? What channel will your product sell the best in? Is the packaging communicating what you want and resonating with that target consumer?
This is where focus groups come in. In my previous professional corporate career, I conducted multiple focus groups as Marketing Manager for Disaronno amaretto and Tia Maria, so I had this experience and was able to build and run them without hiring an agency.
Looking ahead five years, where do you see KLEOS Mastiha and what legacy do you hope to build?
In five years, I hope we’ve built enough volume that we are able to exit to a bigger player that can scale KLEOS globally, and that I can continue to shepherd the brand into global expansion to achieve the vision of creating the new METAXA, the new global Greek spirit brand.
I’d be remiss to say, I’m the first Greek woman in history to start a spirits brand, and I want to be able to pay it forward and invest in other woman-owned businesses and make it easier for them than it has been for our generation and generations prior. We’re still at a staggering low: 2% of VC funding goes to female-owned brands.
Other passions of mine are wellness and philanthropy. I currently volunteer with a nonprofit called Minds Matter, where I mentor first-generation high school students in preparation for college, preferably at Ivy League schools. Although I left teaching at a young age, I’m super passionate about public education because it’s the great equalizer and the state of public education is in peril. I hope to create my own nonprofit in the future that teaches cultural curricula to inner-city kids. As silly as it seems, studying French in 5th grade opened my horizons to a bigger world beyond my city block, and I want to be able to give that to students without the financial means to travel, or who, because of their zip code, are stuck in subpar public schools. On the wellness front, I’m also a certified personal trainer, and I see myself lifting and training clients into my hundreds. Eis Ygeian (Cheers)!
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