New Orleans-based Big Easy Whiskey has hired Carlos Quinonez — formerly Beverage Director of the Turkey and the Wolf Group — as National Brand Ambassador and Market Manager, timing the appointment to a Q4 distribution push into Tennessee. The move signals a deliberate sequencing: get the right trade-facing operator on payroll before the product hits a new shelf.
The Expansion Play
The Tennessee entry comes through two distribution partnerships: DET Beverage covering Nashville, and Athens Distributing Company handling Knoxville and Chattanooga. For a small-batch spirits brand currently placed across hundreds of bars, restaurants, and retailers in Louisiana, this is a meaningful footprint stretch — and one that requires someone who can walk into a new market and earn credibility with beverage directors and buyers before marketing spend takes over.
Quinonez brings more than 15 years of on-the-ground New Orleans hospitality experience, including beverage program development at the Adolfo Garcia Restaurant Group, Coquette, the Columns Hotel, and Fives. He also helped develop Infhame, a New Orleans-inspired bar in Guadalajara, Mexico — a detail that matters for a brand trying to frame New Orleans culture as exportable, not just local.
What the Hire Signals for Operators
For beverage buyers and bar managers in new markets, the brand ambassador hire is worth watching. Regional craft spirits brands that scale without a trade-facing human layer typically stall at distributor attention spans — a structural problem in the three-tier system that no amount of programmatic advertising fully solves. Big Easy Whiskey is betting that a credentialed operator-to-operator introduction, backed by Quinonez's bar-culture reputation, will compress the time it takes a new distributor to prioritize the line.
Kieran Walsh, COO and Blender of Big Easy Whiskey, put it plainly: Quinonez's value is authenticity that "cannot be manufactured." That framing is intentional — in the flavored whiskey segment, where consumer skepticism about over-sweetened products is a real category headwind, having a beverage professional of Quinonez's caliber vouch for the liquid carries weight with the gatekeepers who build cocktail menus and whiskey selections.
Context for Buyers and Distributors
The flavored whiskey category has faced pressure from on-premise buyers who increasingly view sweetened expressions as menu noise rather than menu builders. Big Easy Whiskey's positioning — a 5-year-aged American whiskey built on a traditional bourbon mash, infused with herbs, spices, botanicals, and fruit — is specifically constructed to counter that skepticism. The argument is that the spirit-forward profile works neat, on ice, and in cocktails, giving bartenders more creative utility than a single-note flavored product.
For suppliers and brokers watching the regional craft spirits space, this hire-then-distribute sequencing is a replicable playbook: identify a market-ready distribution partner, place a credentialed local ambassador, and activate trade relationships before committing to consumer-facing media spend. It keeps cash burn disciplined while building the wholesale foundation that regional brands need before a broader brand-launch push makes commercial sense.
Operators evaluating new spirits for fall and winter beverage programs should expect Quinonez to be visible at on-premise accounts across Tennessee and Louisiana through Q4. Buyers looking for a spirits brand with a strong origin story and a verifiable trade advocate now have a contact point on the ground.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
