In fact, some long drinks are served in boxes – like boxed wine in the United States – but right now, the company doesn’t have plans to expand out of cans, as liquor packaging laws in the United States are quite different from those of Finland. In Finland, Partanen explains, the long drink is its own category, and liquor stores devote whole aisles to it, right along side of beer, wine and spirits. It doesn’t really matter what the weather is – you can always go into a sauna and crack open a Long Drink.” “The first reaction we have with new customers is that this is the perfect summer drink, but to us, it’s not only a summer drink, it’s also the official drink of winter,” Partanen says. “We just thought we had this amazing product.” “It’s definitely true, we’ve got the wind at our backs, and we didn’t even realize these trends about Finland were happening,” Partanen says. The partners decided to bring the Long Drink to the states simply because it’s a great drink, it’s been around Finland since 1952 (when it was served at the Olympics), and they thought that others might like it. Now, they have almost 2,000 accounts, and they are now distributed with some large distributors in Nevada, Connecticut, Georgia, and New Jersey, and, of course, New York. When the four partners decided to export the national drink of Finland to the United States, they started with maybe 100 accounts, and they were self-distributed only in New York.
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