Today we’d like to introduce you to Myriam.
Hi Myriam, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
LS Cream Liqueur is an award-winning cordial inspired by one of the most iconic beverages from Haiti, known as “cremas”. The recipe consists of a rich blend of fresh cream and neutral grain spirits mixed with coconut, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg, all of which are encapsulated in a bottle that exudes style and luxury while staying true to its exotic heritage. LS Cream liqueur is gluten-free, low in lactose and made with all natural ingredients.
Founded by my husband Stevens Charles and I, both of Haitian descent, LS proudly celebrates our culture while positioning itself as a premium alternative in the cream liqueur category. LS Cream is the first and only Black-owned cream liqueur with a national presence with the mission to position an authentic family recipe for the luxury-seeking, modern drinker and to highlight the various ways to enjoy cream liqueurs outside of the holiday season they’re typically associated with.
LS Cream Liqueur officially launched in 2015, but the story really started a decade ago during the holidays when Stevens and I saw a bottle of homemade cremas on our dinner table right next to the rest of the wine and liquor and thought to ourselves, “Why can’t we find cremas in liquor stores?” It was at that moment that we started to think about how we could introduce cremas to more drinkers and decided that instead of making bottled cremas, we could take the taste and put it into the form of a cream liqueur.
LS Cream Liqueur is inspired by Stevens’ late grandmother’s handwritten cremas recipe. Our family has made her cremas and cherished the recipe for generations, and we knew everyone else would love it too. We decided to name the liqueur LS because it’s a fusion of Stevens and his grandmother’s initials, so it’s an homage to her recipe and the tradition of family that LS represents.
Today, LS Cream Liqueur is presented to the modern drinker as a premium, shelf-stable liqueur, perfect for celebrating everyday moments.
We also take pride in giving back, especially to our people in Haiti. I always say it, but without our Haitian heritage, there would not be any LS Cream. LS Cream is a proud partner of Hope For Haiti, and we worked with them to fund water filtration systems which were distributed right before the holidays to communities in the south of Haiti.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
To date, we’ve been able to grow the LS Cream Liqueur brand through a ton of hard work, including me and Stevens traveling all over Canada and the US to get LS on shelves, as well as with the help of some amazing investors like Lifestyle Expert Kenny Burns who continue to champion the brand.
The road has not been easy. We both had great corporate jobs, a house, and two young children who were three and one-year-old when we started this journey. I knew we had something good on our hands, so in the beginning, although I was always involved with LS, we made the decision that I would keep my full-time job while Stevens concentrated 100% on the business. As the business started to grow, we took the decision that I embarked 100% as well. To help, we invested all of the money from sales back into the business and have even decided to downsize our home. We knew all our sacrifices would pay of. We are so passionate about LS Cream Liqueur and introducing an important piece of our Haitian culture to the world.
We’re available both online and in stores, and LS Cream Liqueur is currently available to ship to most states via our website (creamls.com and Reserve Bar reservebar.com). That said, our primary focus as of late has been to drive more attention and accessibility of LS Cream Liqueur in stores, bars and restaurants. Last November, we expanded our U.S. footprint so we’re now available on shelves in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, DC, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and of course, throughout the state of Florida.
One of the biggest challenges we faced early on was the lack of representation in the liquor industry. It was challenging to sit at tables where no one else looked like us. We’re happy to see that now more and more BIPOC brands are emerging and making their way into the wine and spirits industry.
We never gave up because we knew that the flavors of LS Cream Liqueur and what the liqueur stands for – heritage, excellence and moments of celebration and gathering – would appeal to everyone no matter their cultural background.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about LS Cream Liqueur?
LS Cream Liqueur is an award-winning cordial inspired by one of the most iconic beverages from Haiti, known as “cremas”. The recipe consists of a rich blend of fresh cream and neutral grain spirits mixed with coconut, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg, all of which are encapsulated in a bottle that exudes style and luxury while staying true to its exotic heritage. LS Cream liqueur is gluten-free, low in lactose and made with all natural ingredients. LS Cream Liqueur’s mission is to position an authentic family recipe for the luxury-seeking, modern drinker and to highlight the various ways to enjoy cream liqueurs outside of the holiday season they’re typically associated with.
Stevens and I are both Haitian and we grew up with cremas always being a part of every moment of celebration- whether it was for christenings, family gatherings, weddings….There was always a bottle of cremas on the table. Cremas takes time to make and require many ingredients. It is typically prepared with a lot of love by the matriarchs of the family. LS proudly celebrates our culture while positioning itself as a premium alternative in the cream liqueur category.
Although Stevens and I only met in college, we both grew up with this tradition. As adults, we always wondered why it was not possible to buy a bottle of cremas in stores (one that would be shelf-stable, that we could find in bars and restaurants like we find Irish creams, one that we could do cocktails with, etc.). Every year around the holidays, all our friends from different nationalities would beg us to make a batch of cremas for them. We knew this recipe had to be shared with the world.
We started the ideation process by bringing a bottle of homemade cremas, made using Stevens’ family recipe, to a friend’s birthday party and put it next to the other liquor and wine without telling anyone what it was. We were the only Haitians there and everyone started tasting it and raving about it, proving our theory that this is a spirit that does not just appeal to Haitians. We worked with chemists to come up with a recipe that would be shelf stable, more liquid (cremas is usually thick) and that we would be able to compete with the other popular cream liqueurs. The first thing we had to do was make sure our final recipe would be approved by our families. And it was.
Without even having a bottle on the shelves, we decided to send a bottle to the WSWA Competition, and to our biggest surprise, we won the Gold medal for the quality of the product and for the taste. Now we not only had the approval from our family but also from the industry. This medal made the news and we were invited to return to Haiti and were interviewed by the press. People were proud that cremas, which is a huge part of our culture, was being shared with the world, and so were we.
LS Cream is in full expansion and is currently available online via our website www.creamls.com and ReserveBar and on shelves in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, DC, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York and of course, beautiful Florida. We are in line to quintuple our revenues from last year.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I believe there is no such thing as luck. You have to be prepared in order to take any opportunity that presents itself whenever it decides to show up. I would say the pandemic had a silver lining for us. This is really when we decided to pivot our business turn our focus to our online store and towards the US. The brand’s strong heritage story and luxurious taste has garnered attention from some of the most influential names in spirits today, including Kenny Burns, the Lifestyle Specialist and serial entrepreneur who has helped grow some of the world’s most trusted luxury spirit brands like Cîroc Vodka, DeLeón Tequila and more recently, invested in Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey. We brought on Kenny and another investor during this time and I don’t believe it would have happened as early as it did if it was not for the pandemic.
The growing interest in the cream liqueur category overall lended an opportunity to diversify a category that has historically been dominated by the most established brands in the space.
During this time, we launched our new branding as well. Because we wanted to highlight our Haitian Heritage and make sure everybody knew where LS Cream came from. The updated bottle features elements of the Haitian flag, including the Haitian coat of arms and the triumphant palm, signifying the importance of tradition and heritage that LS Cream Liqueur was founded upon. These elements are married with a sleek black bottle, minimalist colors and modern typography that makes the liqueur feel accessible to today’s drinker.
When we look back at everything that happened in the last year, we know that if we had not been prepared and had not worked as hard as we did to share LS Cream with the world, we would not have been put in a position to take all these opportunities.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.creamls.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lscreamliqueur/
- Other: https://lscreamliqueur.ca/
Image Credits
Dany Nak Un @leduproduction
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