Boxed Vodka Just Wants to Be Loved

When Eric Clappier, co-founder of Griffon Brands, tells people his premium vodka comes in a box, “half of them laugh in my face,” he says. He doesn’t think it’s so funny. The boxed version, in his view, is more practical: “It’s ideal for tailgating, the beach, or the pool. You don’t have to worry about glass shattering.” But the product hardly sells itself; Clappier spends most of his free time driving from town to town, hawking boxes in person. “We are so unique that you have to be on the ground, in grocery stores and liquor stores and bars, converting one person at a time,” he says.

There are a lot of drinkers to convert. The Distilled Spirits Council calls vodka the “backbone” of the U.S. liquor industry. In 2015 it accounted for almost a third of sales by volume and generated $5.8 billion in revenue. Griffon is the only boxed vodka available in the U.S. “With the growth of boxed wine”—its market share doubled from 2009 to 2015 and represented 17.5 percent of all wine sold by volume in 2014, according to consumer researcher Nielsen—“it was inevitable that boxed spirits would happen, and we should be first to market,” Clappier says.