Club Kokomo Spirits Partners with Stone

SAN DIEGO – Club Kokomo Spirits is riding a wave of success.

The bottled rum and canned cocktail company co-founded by Mike Love – 83-year-old co-founding member of The Beach Boys – is now partnering with San Diego-based craft beverage distributor Stone Distributing Company to be its exclusive partner for Southern California.

Mike Love’s son, Brian Love, co-founder and head of brand development for Club Kokomo Spirits, said the company has seen 100% growth from the beginning of 2024 until now, with more forward progress expected through Stone Distributing.

Brian Love said that among Club Kokomo’s top growth metrics, it has increased its local accounts from 60 to 150 in San Diego County. Love said that with Stone’s help, the company expects to increase that amount rapidly, as well as gain a foothold in Los Angeles, where 200 to 300 accounts are eyed.

Club Kokomo’s distribution had previously been with local company Brown Bag Beverage, which Love said was “absolutely amazing,” but he added that the move to Stone was a necessary change.

“The reality is if you want to move up onto Los Angeles, Palm Springs and grow the brand, you need someone with a little more reach, it’s just the nature of the alcohol distribution business,” Love said. “(Stone) is what we needed for this brand to grow legs and move into different territories. We essentially have gone from four individuals to about 200, the vast majority of whom are sales representatives spread from Santa Barbara to Palm Springs to San Diego which brings a massive growth opportunity.”

Stone has refrigerated warehousing and delivers beverages but also offers sales and support staff and has a brand management team.

Love also said Stone has plans to be “a 50-50 non-beer distributor by end of 2026.”

“Traditionally, they’ve been in craft beer market and that’s where they have excelled – to the point where one-third of all the tap handles in Southern California are managed by Stone,” Love said. “So their reach is just tremendous. When they were looking to launch the spirits endeavors, they called us their best fit, and we call them ours. We’re both local brands with good stories. And we’re their first rum. They’ve taken on a couple other clients in spirits to build out their spirits portfolio besides us.”

The Beginnings of Club Kokomo

Mike Love, along with his wife and company CEO Jacquelyne Love, and Brian Love started talking about making their own rum during the pandemic, although Mike Love said he had been mulling over the idea for decades.

Brian Love said once they met with local distiller Geoff Longenecker, Club Kokomo was off and running. Longenecker is a founding partner with Club Kokomo but has been creating his own award-winning rums as the founder of Seven Caves Spirits, which he launched in 2016.

“It’s been a family endeavor,” Brian Love said, “(My dad) is busy with 120 (The Beach Boys) shows a year. COVID freed up some time. We’ve been working on this since 2020, but it wasn’t till we found Geoff that we said we moved forward with this. We were searching for the right partners. With Geoff’s expertise in rum, that allowed us to do what we always set out to do, create the best domestic rum ever.”

Mike Love said he wanted Club Kokomo’s roots to be in San Diego, and shared that the cover for The Beach Boys’ album “Pet Sounds” was photographed at the San Diego Zoo.

The family also lived in Fairbanks Ranch for a number of years. Brian Love acknowledged San Diego as a beverage hub with “so many great breweries and so many great spirits brands” coming of the county.

Longenecker said working with the Loves “is a culmination of what I love in rum,” and he said that the partnership has allowed him some freedom to craft more than his own lines of small-batch, curated rums geared toward a more niche market and expand to a wider market with the Club Kokomo brand.

Moving into New Areas

Club Kokomo brands are in select bars and are sold at places like Barons, Valley Farms Market and Total Wine & More as well as DTC distribution efforts with San Diego’s Speakeasy Co., which allows for delivery of its spirits to consumers in 37 states.

But the company is looking to expand into more physical places, soon.

“We’re extremely excited about the opportunities (working with Stone) opens up for us in Southern California,” Love said. “One of the beautiful things about this situation, continuation of a 60-year legacy of family music. And what we’re pursuing now is really our family brand. It used to be harmony in notes of music and now it’s also harmony in notes of flavor. And I think that holds true to everything that we’re trying to accomplish with the brand.”

When comparing and contrasting life as a musician to the world of rum-making, Mike Love said, “Well, I’d actually say it’s pretty similar!”

“As a musician, through trial and error, you create, and you create authentically and you hope it’s well received and people will enjoy it,” Love said. “With Club Kokomo Spirits, it’s pretty similar. As a family, we created a product that was important to us, created it authentically through trial and error and we hope people enjoy it!”

Looking back at the Beach Boys’ success in the 1960s and ’70s and even into the 1980s, Mike Love called it “a family of musicians who enjoyed perfecting harmonies.”

He said that when it comes to the spirits industry, it’s no different: “Everyone on our team at Club Kokomo plays a part in creating our harmony of flavor. Harmony of sound, harmony of flavor, blended together perfectly.”

Awards Come Quickly

Love said that less than a month after launching its first bottled rum earlier this year, the company in March grabbed two major awards at the 2024 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

Going up against big names like Bacardi, Club Kokomo Spirits clinched Double Gold medals for its Artisanal White Rum (97 points) and Barrel Finished Rum (95 points). The company also won a silver medal for its gin-based ready-to-drink canned cocktail called Excitation.

“We can take a rum made in the United States and compete against rum anywhere,” Longenecker said of Club Kokomo’s success.

Club Kokomo Spirits are distilled, blended and bottled at the Seven Caves facility on Production Avenue in San Diego. Though the site is not open to the public, Longenecker said, “Look for announcements this fall.”

Love said that Longenecker does some private Seven Caves spirits tasting with small groups and that Club Kokomo Spirits might do something similar down the line.

“We have a longer-term plan to open up a place with 40 to 50 seats in the Miramar area with small bites,” Love said.

Club Kokomo Spirits Inc.
FOUNDED: 2022
FOUNDER: Mike Love
CEO: Jacquelyne Love
HEADQUARTERS: Miramar, San Diego
BUSINESS: Food and Beverage/Distillery/Spirits
GROWTH: 100% growth since January 2024; from 60 accounts to 150 in San Diego
EMPLOYEES: 12
WEBSITE: clubkokomospirits.com
CONTACT: clubkokomospirits.com/pages/contact or info@ckspirits.com
SOCIAL IMPACT: Company’s sugar cane and other raw products are harvested from sustainable sources
NOTABLE: Company’s co-founders include Beach Boys co-founder Mike Love