WW 01: Finding the perfect mix

Dee Charlemagne on blending drinks, communities and personal priorities

Welcome to the very first newsletter for Wellwatching – a series of conversations in which I speak to people touching the wellness industry in different ways, to gain a comprehensive understanding of what ‘living well’ might look like in the future.

I’m thrilled to launch this project with a chat to my friend Dee Charlemagne. Dee is the co-founder of New York-based AVEC, a premium, better-for-you mixer brand that she started during the pandemic after stints in advertising via WPP, VICE and JOAN Creative. 

Tell me a bit about yourself: What do you do, and why do you do it?

I’m the co-founder of AVEC, a premium, all-natural, low-sugar drinks mixer company. After working in advertising for nearly a decade, I got tired of advising brands who were trying to fit audiences into a single, neat persona. It didn’t reflect my reality or the reality of people around me. 

I was inspired to start a brand that celebrated all aspects of a person and brought different types of people together. Drinking has always held a central place in my family, who are from the Caribbean. Whenever there’s a special event, we always drink together – so naturally, I was drawn to the drinks category as a way of doing this.

How did the idea for AVEC come about?

I first met my co-founder Alex [Doman] at Columbia Business School in 2019. He’s British and has a F&B consulting background. Over the years, he had observed two problems. One, that American mixers hadn’t changed in years: they’re boring, don’t taste great, and are high in sugar. UK players like Fevertree are a lot more exciting, but not terribly healthy. And two, that healthier options on the market still don’t deliver: even if stevia and monkfruit sweeteners are natural, they still don’t make a drink taste great. 

Alex was inspired to create a mixer for the American market that combined both health and taste, leaning on interesting ingredients and global drink trends to elevate the drinking experience. We started by making recipes at home, but after getting a grant from Columbia, we got started on a more professional formulation. 

How do you think people’s understanding of wellness has changed over the past few years? How does this manifest in the way that we’re drinking? 

I think it’s very individual but broadly speaking, I think wellness is now seen as less binary and less about deprivation. There doesn’t have to be this huge trade-off between strict ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ways of living. People have a better understanding of the choices they're making when they put stuff into their body or do an activity, and so the conversation is more about balancing a series of personal choices and integrating wellness in a way that works for you. I think we’re moving away from restrictive behaviours that don’t work in the long term.

The same applies to drinking too. It became uncool to get wasted, but equally, it’s not about saying that alcohol is ‘evil’. In the same way that we’re embracing flexitarian eating, flexi-drinking is very much becoming the norm. You can be a non- or light drinker for half the week, and be a heavier drinker on the weekend. At AVEC, our mission is for people to drink better in the way that they want.

What are the most interesting trends that you’re seeing in the US at the moment?

I’m really interested in how much attention the low- and no-alcohol space is getting. In New York, entire retail concepts like Spirited Away and Boisson  are cropping up to cater to the market. Similarly, lower alcohol cocktails like shandies are having a bit of a renaissance. Alex reminds me that spritzes have always been big in Europe and Americans tend to be a bit behind drinks trends, but their popularity here is growing. 

Global flavours will add a lot to this space too. Not just flavours from a country – say, yuzu from Japan – but from specific parts of a country or region, with a specific story. There will be more emphasis on storytelling around the flavour and how it enhances your experience. 

I think America’s drinking palette is only going to get more sophisticated. We’ve got a new generation of drinkers who are growing up on White Claw, for example – they’re not drinking awful vodka sodas or watery beers that make them feel horrible the next day. They’ll likely have much higher expectations of drinking and drinking culture.

What do you think is wrong with wellness culture at the moment? 

I think there’s been more conversation about how wellness can and should be more accessible to everyone. Rather than being something that’s reserved for the privileged, engaging in wellness should just be a way of living that anyone should be able to adopt. 

But we haven’t gotten there yet. Wellness culture is really one-dimensional and exclusive; it still presents as very homogenous, white, and sanitized. But in real life, wellness is messy, layered, and rich. It’s sometimes a bit gross! No one ever talks about the realities of a colonic cleanse, right? 

What do you think we should be doing to change that?

Wellness needs to be less prescriptive and less homogenous. That starts with getting people from all walks of life to start wellness brands, because ‘wellness’ means something different in every community. The beauty lies in being able to make wellness work for you in the context of what you need and where you’re from.

How do we get more diverse voices to create a more inclusive world of wellness?

It’s a million-dollar question, but a lot of it comes down to money. I almost didn’t become an entrepreneur because I had a scarcity mindset towards money. My family are immigrants; they can’t simply hand over $50K and bootstrap my dream. Part of it is about undoing generations of hardwired attitudes towards money and risk.

It’s also about diversity: not just who you are, but how you curate the people and experiences around you. I have a white male co-founder, which wasn’t the easiest choice I could have made, but I felt like that would be more diverse than just starting a company with another black woman who has a similar background to me.

Where do you think growth in the drinks category will come from next?

Mixers are the sleepiest category on Earth: they’re always on the table and in your drink but no one thinks about them – so we’re trying to get people to take notice. It’s the bit of the category that broader health & wellness trends haven’t even begun to touch yet, so there’s huge opportunity to make them better and better for you. Enter AVEC!

What does it mean to you to live well?

No compromise. A life in which I can access what I want, need and love at the right time for me.

What’s the next challenge that you’d like to take on?

I want to use the work I do and the brand I’m building to bring different kinds of people together and have more open and honest conversations, in a way that feels comfortable and fun. Alex and I love how drinking culture can achieve this. Exposure is so important: how can we mix more people and more ideas, more often? It’s why I got into advertising in the first place, and what I hope AVEC can help with in the future.

You can find out more about Dee, Alex and AVEC at @avecdrinks or avecdrinks.com.

PS: I’d love to hear what you thought about this newsletter. Feel free to send me an email at wellwatching.ag@gmail.com.