Renegade's 10th Anniversary Party & Cigar

Brandon Hayes:
I got to tell you, man, I sat down with Scotty and I realized that his hair was going to be perfect, so I decided to go fix my hair. And I used the odor and instead of hairspray, so my hair smells perfect but if it looks a little greasy it's because I used deodorant-

Scott:
It was all planned-

Brandon Hayes:
[inaudible 00:00:16] it happens, man.

Scott:
Hey, if it works.

Brandon Hayes:
Anyway, now that we got that out of the way-

Scott:
You smell good.

Brandon Hayes:
Let's talk a little bit about the anniversary, man.

Scott:
What is it, 10 years now?

Brandon Hayes:
10 years, brother.

Scott:
I've been here too long, man. I think I showed up around what, the six year anniversary? And then we've had a few more on after that. Now we got 2020 disasters and we're all cooped up. I'm really looking forward to getting together with everybody that we really haven't been able to see as much, and even the guys that we've been fortunate enough to see on a daily basis, but get everybody together, man. I'm very excited. 10 years, that's a big milestone for everyone, us, the customers, our friends. I'm excited.

Brandon Hayes:
I met Scotty a few times prior to our six year anniversary, or was it five-year anniversary?

Scott:
It was just before the sixth.

Brandon Hayes:
Yeah. I had met Scotty a couple of times, but didn't really know Scotty. But then Scotty came out to the six year anniversary and I think that's probably when I hired Scotty. He came out just as a customer and Scotty and I got along well. He had a good time at the party, we got along well, and I said, "Look, you know, I need to bring you on." He had come in several times before that he'd been helping organize the humidor and do stuff, and I was like, "I'm going to have to hire you if you keep working." I kind of said it jokingly, but I think it was right after the anniversary party.

Scott:
Yeah, and it just fit. It worked. I was happy to jump on board.

Speaker 1:
So, about the anniversary party, man.

Scott:
Yeah. Previously we've had a lot of planning, a lot going on. This year there's been a little chaos as far as, I'd say organized chaos. We've been releasing a lot of cigars, great blends, trying to stay active with everybody, keep press stuff coming out, but I haven't heard a whole lot and I'm your right-hand guy. I haven't heard a whole lot about what we're doing for the 10. We blast it out a little bit of detail to you guys the other day about some bullet points, but we really haven't dug into the details too much. So, what do we got planned?

Brandon Hayes:
I've had my head down and I've been working, man. The anniversary party is always important to me, and we had all been scratched at this year. We talked about how to do it here. Can we rent tents? Can we do it out in the parking lot? And then we were going to have people inside. How were we going to manage that? And we just kept coming to roadblocks. Our anniversary party is important. It's important to me. I know that it's important to you. But more importantly, I think it's important to a lot of our customers.

Scott:
Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
And I just thought two tents in the parking lot doesn't reek of an anniversary party. We can do that. I think there's a time and a place-

Scott:
We're not going to shortchange anybody. We're going to do it right.

Brandon Hayes:
I a venue. It's three minutes from here and it has indoor outdoor space. One thing that I thought about this year is that I want to bring back a lot of the customers we hadn't seen in a while. I want to give them a safe environment. I want to make sure we're in compliance. It's been really tough to be a cigar shop owner the last eight, nine months now, but I wanted to make sure that we did it in a way where we didn't get shut down. I wanted to do it in a way that it provided a good experience for our customers. But ultimately, it's got to be a big thank you party. That's really what it's about. And every year that we've had success, every year that we've faced adversity and we overcome adversity, it's important to me to say thank you to the customers. And this is really the party to do that. It's not a party where we're cramming sells down their throat, buy this, buy that. This is really an opportunity for us to get together, toast a champagne glass-

Scott:
A celebration.

Brandon Hayes:
Have some good food, really get to know each other better. And I thought it would be kind of cool this year since we have an indoor outdoor environment to be able to invite some of the wives. So, if you want to come stag, that's perfectly fine. I understand cigars are some people's escape from the home. But it's going to be Friday, October 30th, and we have an environment where we can have some indoor activities. We can still have some fresh air, but then we can also have a lot of outdoor fun. And so, the weather should be perfect. We've got a covered area just in case it rains. You never know in Texas.

Scott:
We've got conditions for everybody, guys, girls, indoor, outdoor.

Brandon Hayes:
And what I want to do is I want to make it a comfortable environment where girls aren't coming in ... Like if you remember last year's anniversary party, we probably had 200 people in and out of here.

Scott:
We had a lot of people in, yeah.

Brandon Hayes:
Throughout the course of the night, not all at one time, if the fire Marshall's listening. But we had a couple hundred people here over the course of the night. And I would say that some of our women cigar smokers, some of the wives that we have relationships with felt comfortable coming, but it was smoky. It's an indoor environment. So, this year what we're going to do is all the cigars are going to be outside. Food, drinks, entertainment is going to be inside. But then I'm also working on some stuff that I haven't really announced yet. But what we're going to do is we're going to do a champagne tasting. I'm going to bring out a sommelier, something like that, do something for the women inside so that they can take a little 30, 45 minute break and then they can also come out and socialize with us outside. I'm excited about that. We've got an excellent cigar that we're releasing on the 23rd, so one week prior. But we're going to do all the same stuff. That's what's really cool about it. We're going to have the music. We're going to have either a photo booth or a photographer there. We're going to have great snacks to eat. We're going to have great drinks. We're going to have socializing. And we're really just going to do this thing right. I'm excited about that. And then really just to bring everybody together and say thank you.

Speaker 1:
I talk to people all day, and what's crazy it's like one guy comes in and says that this whole COVID thing has been devastating to him, and the next guy is in a business that benefited from it. But regardless of your position on this, or whether you've been on the receiving side of this or you've been burned by it, there's just a lot of tension out there right now-

Scott:
Yeah. People are on edge. It's an uneasy time.

Speaker 1:
Cigars is a fantastic way to relax in general. But I think we all need a good party just to come back together and just have fun. And so, that's really my goal. I'm not going to ... I hadn't even looked at the budget. The budget is whatever everything costs-

Scott:
And the fact that it's offsite, whether it was on purpose, accident, this is better. We get to have more people, more fun around, more people can bring their spouse. I think it'll be a great time, especially adding the tastings, special one-on-one time. It'll be a blast. I'm looking forward to it, big time-

Speaker 1:
Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate everything you've done over the last year. I appreciate everything our customers have done to make us successful over the last year. It hasn't been without challenges, but we're here today. We're going to celebrate on the 30th and we can't be more excited about that. I wanted to end this by doing something that, not to say we've never done before, but I was going to ask you to identify the anniversary 10 cigar. In all fairness, I wanted to do this without you ever trying it, but you snuck one in the other day so you've tried it-

Scott:
Well, I snuck one in when it first landed, so it's still not even fresh in my mind. Shoot, we'll see what happens.

Speaker 1:
Here's what I want you to do. I want you to put on that blindfold. Scott carries a blindfold everywhere, by the way.

Scott:
You know, with hair like this, you got to be ready.

Speaker 1:
All right, so here's what we're going to do. I've got two cigars. I've got one cigar that Scott smokes on a regular basis. I'd say on a regular basis. I think it's in this rotation for sure.

Scott:
So, that means if I mess this up, I'm fired?

Speaker 1:
Well, I don't know if you're fired, but it's going to be a little bit weird for sure. And then we have the 10th anniversary cigar. And what I want to do is I want to have you ... I'm going to just give you in any order two cigars. You tell me if this is the familiar smoke and you tell me if it's the anniversary cigar. And then I want you to tell me what you think about the anniversary cigar, if you get it right. If not, tell me what you think about the other cigar. All right, so I picked two cigars at the exact same ring gauge. Okay, blindfold's on. All right, so there's this one. I'm going to light this thing for you. Try not to catch your hair on fire or mine if deodorant's flammable ... All right, now I'm going to give you the other one. You can go back and forth a little bit, but ...

Scott:
Okay.

Speaker 1:
[inaudible 00:09:22] that hand. Slide this down a little bit ... Let's see how good you are Scotty.

Scott:
The problem with the first thing he said about me and my regular cigar is I probably have about half a dozen everyday cigars, since I smoke about six a day, all within a similar profile. So, this actually is going to be harder than you might realize ... All right, I think I'm ready.

Brandon Hayes:
All right. Let's see what you got, man.

Scott:
Am I guessing the first?

Brandon Hayes:
Your left hand. What's in your left hand, familiar smoke or the anniversary?

Scott:
The left hand is very familiar. One of the familiarities I get is from the taste in general, which I think is going to be aganorsa.

Brandon Hayes:
Definitely, aganorsa.

Scott:
I don't smoke a lot of Nicaraguan cigars. Aganorsa's just got a beautiful creamy, nutty, peanut buttery little bite to the end of it that's just amazing. It's a medium plus cigar and I love that flavor. That's what I'm grabbing out of this one.

Brandon Hayes:
I guess that out of process of elimination, the other one is the 10-

Scott:
This must be the 10.

Brandon Hayes:
Well, tell us a little bit about what you think about it, man.

Scott:
I'd say over the last year and a half or so, I've been smoking more in that Dominican range, jumping outside of Nicaraguan. And this one is coming off a little bit stronger than my typical medium, and even not much stronger, medium plus, but strength in the flavor and richness and complexity. The wrapper kind of throws me off.

Brandon Hayes:
You can take the bandaid off now at this point, or that blindfold off if you want.

Scott:
There we go. Bright lights. So yeah, the wrapper's-

Brandon Hayes:
We used the [San Andres 00:11:19] wrapper on there, which-

Scott:
I was going to say, maybe Mexican San Andres.

Brandon Hayes:
There's nothing all too unique about San Andres, other than-

Scott:
But it gives it so much more to that [blend 00:11:28] that you don't need a dark maduro wrapper. There's so much more coming out of this than I would say a dark cigar.

Brandon Hayes:
That cigar ultimately didn't start out as a San Andres cigar, but we shifted and went to San Andres. We did that in partnership with Henderson Ventura, which has been our outlet for all the anniversary cigars, and Henderson has got a great relationship with the biggest and best grower in the San Andres Valley. It started out as a Habano, but the San Andres just gave it a little bit of earthiness, kind of rounded out that cigar. And I tell you that that San Andres was perfectly for a minute. And I think it's about as good of a Mexican San Andres wrapper as you're going to get. And then as a nod to you and a lot of our Nicaraguan smokers, we've got a little bit of [conega 00:12:20] in there, and then we use a lot of Dominican tobaccos. But what I did is what I always do when I go to Henderson. What I want us his very best tobacco. A lot of people ask why don't we only do 100 boxes? Well, one, because I've got an ego and I like selling that shit out quick, but more importantly, the real answer is I utilize his best, most perfectly fermented, most aged tobacco. And so, we use some tobaccos that he used in his other blends, but we took the best of the best and we put them together. So, we've got-

Scott:
And when I smoke this, that's what I'm getting is, oh hey, maybe it's this cigar or this cigar. Because like I said, I smoke about six a day that are different but are kind of in the same family. And this really in a way hits all those notes, grabbing from those cigars. Shoot, we need more than 100 boxes, man.

Brandon Hayes:
We used a [condega 00:13:14] that he uses in the King's Gold. We used some of the tobacco he uses and the ADVentura Blue, which is one of my favorites. And then some that I believe he probably had set aside, I'm not sure, but maybe for the Conqueror [Lancero 00:13:29]. But really, what we do when we're going to make 1,000 cigars is we go and we just say, "What is the best of the best?" And then how do we cook with those ingredients? And so, I hope that we nailed it, man. What do you think?

Scott:
You nailed it. Like I said, we need more than 100 boxes. I smoke six a day, man.

Brandon Hayes:
Awesome. All right, man. Well, thank you for doing a video with me, brother. Thanks for talking about the anniversary party. I look forward to seeing everybody on the 30th. It's going to be a good time and I really want you to be there. I want you to bring your significant other, if that seems appropriate. And I really just want to shake everybody's hand-

Scott:
or fist bump, shake or fist bump.

Brandon Hayes:
Whatever's appropriate. But I really just want to say thank you to everybody for being supportive over the last six years of my career, over the last four years of Scotty's career, and the 10 years that Renegade has been in existence. Let's toast to the future.

Scott:
Cheers-

Brandon Hayes:
Thanks [Scott 00:14:23]-

Scott:
Thank you.