California Rising: The Daiquiri Doctrine

Cocktails With Dina by Dina Novarr–

The second-largest alcohol distributor in America just pulled out of California entirely, leaving 2,000 people jobless and an entire industry scrambling. Republic National Distributing Company’s sudden exit from the Golden State sent shockwaves throughout the industry. It was like watching a massive ship decide an ocean isn’t worth the trouble.

But as my colleague Nick observed in his recent reflection on the collapse, there’s something beautifully absurd about corporate death throes masquerading as strategy.

“RNDC looked into their magic crystal ball, and, after some questionable business decisions, just decided to pull the plug on their business in the 4th biggest economy on the globe,” Nick writes with characteristic understatement. “Not just biggest in the U.S., but the whole planet.”

Imagine being so spectacularly incompetent that you voluntarily abandon a $2.8 billion market because running a distribution company got too complicated. It’s almost admirable in its complete surrender to mediocrity. Their exit wasn’t just corporate failure; it was natural selection with spreadsheets. Darwin would have loved watching a multi-billion-dollar company voluntarily remove itself from the gene pool.

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A Classic Daiquiri (Shared by Nick)

2 oz of any rum, but my preference is Ron Del Barrilito 3 star from Puerto Rico
1 oz of fresh squeezed lime juice
.75 oz rich demerara simple

No garnish, and shaken and strained up. I love elaborate garnishes, but for this cocktail, I hate floating debris hitting me in the face when I take a sip.

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Yet, here’s the delicious irony: Nick and I have watched this industry convulse over the past three years—supply chain disasters, corporate exodus after corporate exodus, businesses failing in ways that would make a Shakespearean tragedy seem optimistic—and somehow, inexplicably, those remaining ended up better positioned than ever imagined possible.

There’s a dark humor in thriving while others burn. Not schadenfreude exactly, but something more useful: the recognition that chaos doesn’t just destroy; it also clears the table for those smart enough to stay seated. When RNDC abandoned California, they didn’t just leave behind empty warehouses and canceled contracts. They left a buffet for their competitors. Sometimes the best business strategy is simply not being catastrophically stupid.

“Business aside, I feel for those whose lives have been thrown into a volatile state due to bad decisions by executives whose bonuses won’t be affected by their failures,” Nick reflects with the weary wisdom of someone who’s watched too many C-suite sociopaths fail upward. “I don’t cheers to them. But I cheers to those I have crossed swords with in the market over the years, but would still sit down with for a cocktail at the end of the day as peers in a competitive industry.”

Nick captures our collective existential exhaustion in his perfect cocktail meditation: “My suggested drink of choice, one of my top three cocktails of all time: A Classic Daiquiri.”

There’s brutal honesty in his last line of the recipe. He’s a man who’s tired of pretty distractions interfering with the business of getting properly drunk. Three ingredients, no b.s., served without the Instagram-worthy nonsense that clutters most modern cocktails.

We all dream of that place where Nick’s daiquiri lives: somewhere quiet where sand meets water and the horizon stretches endlessly ahead. A place where the most complex decision is whether to use Ron Del Barrilito 3 star or something else entirely, and corporate collapse is someone else’s problem happening very far away.

Until that simpler time comes—until we can escape to that beach where the daiquiri waits and corporate America can destroy itself without our participation—we’re tasked with something more immediately useful: finding the San Francisco phoenix within ourselves. Just as the city rose from the ashes in 1906, so too will an industry thrown into turmoil.

That means learning to see chaos not as a crisis, but as an opportunity wearing a disguise. Understanding that when your competitors self-destruct, you don’t need to feel guilty about picking through the wreckage for anything valuable they left behind. We’ll keep doing what California does best: turning chaos into profit, disruption into advantage, and failure into the foundation for whatever comes next.

Nick and I both know that California’s greatest strength has never been our ability to avoid disasters, but instead it’s our talent to turn disasters into a competitive advantage by studying them. We don’t just survive market disruption; we feast on it. California doesn’t just weather chaos—we’ve learned to harvest it like a crop. That’s our gift to the world: demonstrating that destruction and creation aren’t opposites; they’re a business model.

The phoenix is rising. In California, it’s been rising for 175 years. We’re getting pretty good at it by now.

As Nick wisely concluded: “My wish for everyone feeling the stress of the current economic environment is to spend a little time in nature in the sunshine and reflect on the positives before embarking on what needs to come next.”

The next chapter is beginning. It’s time to profit from it.

San Francisco-based Dina Novarr enjoys sharing her passion for fine wines, spirits, non-alcoholic craft beverages, and more with others.

Cocktails with Dina
Published on August 28, 2025