Sammy Hagar is celebrating the debut of his latest business venture.
The 75-year-old rock n’ roll icon, who founded the Cabo Wabo Cantina restaurant chain, recently opened his first Cabo Wabo Beach Club at the Waterfront Resort in Huntington Beach, California.
A pioneer in the spirit industry, Hagar launched the Cabo Wabo Tequila line in 1996, which he sold for $100 million in 2008. The former Van Halen singer now owns a collection of spirit brands including Santo Spirits, Sammy’s Beach Bar Rum and Sammy’s Beach Bar Cocktail Co.
Hagar reflected on what drives his entrepreneurial ambitions in an interview with Fox Business.
“People say, ‘How much money do you need?’ I don’t need money. It’s not what I do this for. I love the excitement of starting a new place like this Cabo Wabo Beach Club,” he said.
“I took my Cabo Wabo Cantinas, turned it into a beach club, take it to the next level — a whole different kind of vibe. It’s a destination,” Hagar explained.
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“So I think of things that I can do for my fans, to say, ‘You come here, you can stay at this hotel, you can go to the beach every day, you can eat great food and drink and listen to good music. And I might be hanging around, you know, or Cabo or Vegas.’ So the idea of that is to give my fans places to do it, and then I give the money away.”
The “Heavy Metal” hitmaker has pledged to donate his personal net proceeds from the restaurant to the Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC).
Donations to CHOC will be facilitated through The Hagar Family Foundation, a dedicated fund that Hagar and his wife of 27 years, Kari Hagar, founded in 2008. CHOC will continue to receive the donations regularly as long as the restaurant remains open.
“And I’m creating jobs,” Hagar added. “But the excitement of doing it, you’re not going to stop me from doing this. It’s like people say, ‘What are you doing?’ I say, ‘I’m driven. I like doing it.’ I really get excited about creating these places for my fans to party with each other, make friends.”
He continued, “They just have a good time. They get to meet each other and we do good things. I don’t think there’s a better business model in the world than that. That is the business model, the Hagar business model.”
Hagar recalled that he “fell in love” with 100% agave tequila during a trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in 1979. While on vacation, the musician met his future business partner Jorge Viaña in a chance encounter at the resort where he was staying.
During a second trip to Cabo, Hagar conceived of opening a bar to “turn people on” to 100% agave tequila. Hagar and Viaña founded the first Cabo Wabo Cantina in 1990.
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Hagar said that the idea for Cabo Wabo Tequila was born when he decided that he wanted a signature 100% blue agave tequila for the cantina. He found a family-owned distillery in Jalisco, Mexico, to produce the spirit, which he served to patrons of the restaurant.
After launching Cabo Wabo Tequila in 1996, Hagar began to distribute the spirit in the United States, where it became the #2 ultra-premium tequila brand.
“I just fell into it,” he told Fox Business. “I learned really with passion and just step by step without any expectations. And it exploded, and I got really, really lucky. I learned a lot about the business, and when I sold it, I wanted to do it again.”
After the rocker sold Cabo Wabo Tequila to the Italian beverage company Campari Group, he teamed up with pop rock legend Rick Springfield to launch Beach Bar Rum in 2012. When his non-compete with Campari Group ended, Hagar founded the tequila line Santo Spirits with restaurateur Guy Fieri in 2017.
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The Santo Spirits line consists of Santo Tequila Blanco, Santo Tequila Reposado and Santo Tequila Blanco 110 and the world’s first tequila/mezcal blend Mezquila.
In 2021, Hagar made his first foray into the ready-to-drink market when he debuted his line of Sammy’s Beach Bar Cocktail Co. sparkling rum cocktails.
“It’s a funny thing,” Hagar told Fox Business. “My business sense is not, ‘Oh, I’m going to go do this, going to make me a bunch of money. Oh, I got this great idea. Guess what, man? We’re going to make so much money.'”
“I have never said that in my life,” he continued. “Not even with music, not with my tequila, not with nothing. I just say, ‘This is really cool. I dig this. Let’s try this. What if we do this?'”
“It’s just like writing a song. It’s so creative, and that’s where my business drive comes from. I never think about how big or how much money it’s going to make. I never even consider that. You just have a good idea. You say, ‘I really want to do that. I like this idea.’”
With the success of Cabo Wabo Tequila, Hagar became the trailblazer of the celebrity-owned spirit market followed by a long list of other stars.
George Clooney, Thomas Rhett, Eva Longoria, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jason Aldean, Emma Watson, Steph Curry, Drew Barrymore, LeBron James, Snoop Dogg, Bethenny Frankel and Kendall Jenner are among the many actors, musicians, athletes and TV personalities who have established their own alcohol brands.
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Hagar noted that while many celebrities are drawn to the adult beverage space for its lucrative potential, he is more interested in the process of developing the product.
“The spirit industry, the reason all the celebrities and everybody are getting into that business now is because it is a lot of fun,” Hagar explained. “The way I did it was I went down, I found the bottles. I had to bring the bottles to the distillery. They put the tequila in the bottles and I had to load them in a truck and drive them over to the guy that was going to ship them out.”
He continued, “I went it right to the hands-on where a lot of people now have never even been down there, and they just put their name on the brands. That is not as much fun, but it is a really cool thing and a lot of people are doing it for the money.”
“But when I started my rum, it was because I loved the creative side of it. So when I couldn’t make tequila, I could make rum,” he added with a laugh.
“I made Sammy’s Beach, my rum, and I wanted to make it in Hawaii where the purest cane in the world is. And then that was too expensive, so I had to move it to Puerto Rico. You know, I get involved and I do it. It’s really a fun process.”
Hagar compared the excitement of seeing his spirits on shelves with the thrill of hearing his music for the first time on the radio when he fronted the rock band Montrose.
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“You know what it’s like when you walk into a bar, and you see your booze on the back bar, or when you walk into a grocery store or a liquor store, and you see your booze piled up the floor? It’s just like, for me, when I was in Montrose, getting in the car, turning on the radio and hearing your song on the frickin’ radio for the first time,” he said. “I was like, ‘Wow!’ It’s really, really a cool ego rush.”
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Hagar explained that he is more focused on quality over quantity when it comes to his spirits.
“I want to make the best,” he said. “I want to be the best I can. In other words — my tequila — I don’t want to be the biggest tequila in the world. I’m not even interested in doing 2 million cases. I don’t think we could do it because it’s quality and there’s not enough agave. So the big fat agaves we use, there’s not enough of them to make a million cases. So we just make 30 or 40,000 cases.”
“I think it’s important to me that I say no, I make the best tequila in the world,” Hagar added. “In my heart, I feel that. In my palate, I feel that.”
The Grammy Award winner recalled the challenges of developing his RTD line of rum cocktails and competing with the spirit industry giants.
“I was the first guy to make a sparkling rum cocktail, and now there’s about 30 sparkling cocktails,” he said. “Everyone was using malt liquor before, like beer base and wine base, but I was the first one to make a spirit base.”
“And by the time they come out…I’m just one man, one guy with three or four people working with me. You get these big boys, you know, these multi-billion dollar companies, they just go boom, and it’s out and it’s everywhere,” Hagar said.
“But I really was the first one to do that. Everyone said, ‘You’re crazy. It’s too expensive.’ I said, ‘No, but it’s the best. It’s tastes better than anything on the market so that’s important to me.’ I wouldn’t make something if I couldn’t make something better than everyone else.”
“Like I feel my music when I sing,” he continued. “I think I’m a better singer than a lot of people in my genre of rock. And so that’s why I continue to do it. If I’m going, ‘Man, everybody’s making me look bad,’ I wouldn’t be singing, you know what I mean?”
“I know a lot of people who should probably quit,” Hagar added with a laugh.
After the launch of Cabo Wabo Beach Club, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer told Fox News Digital that he already has set his sights on his next goal.
“My dream is to have a Cabo Wabo Resort,” he said. “And in that resort would be everything I’m made of. There would have to be a Sammy’s Beach Bar & Grill by the poolside or oceanside, because it also has to be on the ocean, I think. It doesn’t have to be, but it should be.”
He continued, “And then I would have a Cabo Wabo Cantina in there, which would have really good Mexican food and traditional, authentic, like we have in Cabo. This is a hybrid. This is a combination of all that in one place.”
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Hagar also said he’d have hotel rooms that are “themed really to all my friends. I would have a Kenny Chesney suite and have a Toby Keith suite. I would have a frickin’ Mick Jagger suite!”
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“Then I would have a high-end steakhouse,” he added. “A Cabo steakhouse with Sonora beef with all these great Mexican rubs and stuff and barbecues and putting lamb and pigs in the ground and cooking them overnight. It would just be a high-end tequila venue where you could go on the roof and smoke cigars and drink all these fine tequilas.”
“That would be the Cabo Wabo Resort. And that’s my dream.”