Mike McKinney Regional Sales Manager JC Newman/Arturo Fuente Cigars Orgin Series Episode 11
Episode Summary
Regional sales manager Mike McKinney joins Mike and Mike for Origin Series Episode 11, tracing a 21-year cigar career that began behind the counter at Barclay's in Columbus, Ohio in 1997 and led to 18 years (and counting) representing Arturo Fuente and JC Newman. McKinney explains how a Lakeland, Florida kid gravitated to the Arturo Fuente Flor Fina 858 simply because "858" was the phone prefix of his childhood neighborhood, then worked retail in Orlando — Cigars on the Avenue in Winter Park for Don Patel's group, Cigarz at CityWalk, and the Church Street Station store — before a chance sales call with Wally Beigel and Alan Goldfarb led him to apply for the open Tampa Bay territory. He describes interviewing on Valentine's Day 2001 in a room that included Stanford Newman, Bobby and Eric Newman, Wayne Suarez and Fred Zanaboni, and starting March 5, 2001.
The conversation digs into how the Fuente and Newman operations actually work. McKinney explains why Opus X and Añejo releases are limited — the tobacco for Opus X comes from a single farm, which naturally yields more small-ring leaf than double corona leaf — and how allocations are divvied up in Tampa, including the old ARP (automatic reorder program) container system and the broker era of Fuente legends like Colonel Henry Frampton and Fred Zanaboni. On the JC Newman side he covers the building of the PENSA factory in Nicaragua out of necessity (Quorum previously made at NATSA/Oliva's and Oc.ta), roughly 85,000 cigars a day companywide, and the 65,000-plus machine-made cigars produced daily in Tampa on century-old cigar machines. He also discusses the newly announced Fuente project in Nicaragua, where the company has already grown four crops with the Oliva tobacco family overseeing the farm, and where Felix Mesa of El Galan will help run operations.
The back half is classic road-rep storytelling: the brutal week of the trade show in Las Vegas, Casa de Fuente, setting the booth before the AC comes on, favorite show cities (Houston and San Antonio), and the emotional whiplash of shop-to-shop selling — including walking into an account to pitch Toast Across America with Carlos Sr.'s granddaughter Cristina Suarez only to learn the retailer's mother had died the night before. McKinney answers the show's signature questions: he'd share a cigar with Stanford Newman and Carlos Fuente Sr. (sharing warm memories of both, including being chauffeured to lunch by an 89-year-old Mr. Newman and a daily noon reminder to stay humble inspired by Carlos Sr.); his favorite cigars are any size Don Carlos — especially the Carlos Sr. Edición de Aniversario blend — plus the Casa Fuente Julius Caeser in corona; and, for the new fictional-character question, Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard. He closes with a nod to Trader Jack's, the Newman brand his host's wife has adopted.
In This Episode
- 01From Barclay's in Columbus to the 858McKinney's 1997 entry into tobacco retail and why the Arturo Fuente Flor Fina 858 became his first cigar.
- 02Orlando retail yearsManaging Cigars on the Avenue in Winter Park, Cigarz at CityWalk and the Church Street Station store, and nearly buying a shop of his own.
- 03Getting hired by Fuente and NewmanA window display contest trip to the Dominican Republic, a chance sales call with Wally Beigel and Alan Goldfarb, and a Valentine's Day 2001 interview with Stanford Newman and company.
- 04Old-school Fuente distributionThe broker system, Colonel Henry Frampton, Fred Zanaboni, and the ARP container program that preceded today's allocations.
- 05Why Opus X and Añejo are so limitedSingle-farm tobacco, size yields, and how allocation decisions get made in Tampa.
- 06JC Newman and Fuente factory expansionThe PENSA factory in Nicaragua, Tampa's 65,000 machine-made cigars a day, and Fuente's new Nicaraguan project with the Oliva growing family and Felix Mesa of El Galan.
- 07Life as a traveling repTrade show weeks in Las Vegas, favorite host cities, and the rollercoaster of walking into good and bad accounts.
- 08The four questionsStanford Newman and Carlos Fuente Sr., Vince Lombardi-inspired advice on punctuality, Don Carlos and Julius Caeser as desert-island cigars, and Boss Hogg as the fictional smoking partner.
Brands & Cigars Discussed
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Transcript
Every day I'm hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling. Every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling. Welcome to a Cigar Hustlers Podcast, where we take a closer look at the people of the cigar industry, with your host, Mike and Mike. Hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', every day 'em, every day 'em, every day 'em, whole love.
Hi, I'm Mike. And I'm Mike Du. And this is a Cigar Hustlers Podcast. In stereo this time.
Yes, I paid attention. We have our good friend, Mr. Mike McKinney here from Archero Fuente and JC Newman. How you doing, Mike?
Good, doing great. So, I know that you handle us as far as a rep, but I don't think that that's your sole role in Archero Fuente, right? Mike, what else do you do for...? No, it actually really is.
I'm just a rep, but because of proximity. I live in Lakeland, just outside of Tampa. I get to be a part of some other little odds and ends. Because you're like an everywhere man.
You're fucking everywhere. Utility player. I get to be a part of some of the newer stuff that the Newmans are doing, whether it's accessories or cigars. I've smoked.
Not to over-exaggerate what I do, but I've got to smoke some stuff ahead of time. Yeah, but we've had a few conversations, and you know more about what's going on as far as like in the DR or what's going on in Nicaragua than your average rep. I wouldn't put you in that same pool, I guess, you know? I pay attention.
I've been at this now three weeks, so I almost spit my coffee. I'll open the microphone. Well, I guess that'll bring me to the first question is, you know, how long have you been in the industry? This is my 21st year.
I started in 1997. 21 years. That's pretty impressive. Is that?
Yeah, I started on the retail side. Well, let me back up. My wife and I got married, and we moved to Columbus, Ohio to finish school. And my first job in that area was at a sports store, but after just a few months, I was lucky enough to get into the retail side of things at a place called Barclays.
Okay. They have two stores up there. Still there? Yeah, yeah.
This is not a plug, but one on Sawmill Road and one down in, on, off of. You can plug all you want, and plug away. Listen, a lady named Pam, she gave me the job, and her husband owned it and passed away. She took it over, had a partner, and she, I knew nothing about, I smoked cigars at the time, but very, very little, and only one, one brand and one size, really.
Well, I mean, this is 21 years ago, so what was it? Yeah, there wasn't a lot of offerings to pick from back then. The 858, actually, and that's a funny story, Florafina 858 from Arturo Fuente, natural. And that's a funny story.
Again, I'm from Lakeland. I'm back in Lakeland now. And the prefixes for all the phone numbers on the north side of town where I grew up are either 858 or 859. All right.
So I walk into this cigar shop underneath a pool hall that me and my buddies started going to, and I see this box that says 858 on it. And I'm like, I gotta get that. That's my cigar. Yeah.
That's a little piece of home. It's a little expensive. 25. This is like probably 90, well, if I say 91, it's against the law, so 92.
No one would ever sell a 17-year-old cigar, so yeah. You grew up in Lakeland? I grew up in North Lakeland. What school did you go?
I went to Lime Street Elementary for a couple of years. Did you really? Yeah. No, so you're in the kind of the central part of town, right, or south?
Yeah, remember where that Kmart used to be on the other side of the railroad tracks? No. I'm trying to think of what road it's on. Anyway, my dad ran that Kmart for two years, so we went to Lime Street Elementary, and there used to be a bank there next to the Kmart where every day a helicopter came and picked up the cash off the roof.
And we would go outside to watch the helicopter. That's pretty cool. Well, when you're 10, that was amazing. I went to Kathleen Elementary, and again, that's way out in the woods in Kathleen Junior High, And went to junior high with a guy named Ray Lewis that some of the- Oh, yes?
Yeah. I've heard about him. Yeah. He played a little football.
I've seen him once or twice. I actually saw him at Corona a few years back with my wife. Well, let's not say that name. What?
Ray Lewis? Corona. He's a, you know, the thing that a lot of people may not know, and I know he has his own brand. With Rocky.
With Rocky, yeah. But he was a hell of a wrestler. He was a three-time state champ. No shit.
At Kathleen High School. Now I went to Lake Gibson High School, that's even further north now. Wow. Alright, so, how did you find yourself in Ohio?
My family, my mom's side of the family was originally from Ohio. Okay. My wife was born in Columbus and her family lived up there, not in Columbus, they lived out in the, they're kind of hillbillies. Right.
In the Hocking Hills, which is a beautiful old man's cave, stuff like that. It's a real pretty, they have a real beautiful farm out there, but far enough away where it was like, let's do something different, let's get out of Lakeland, so it was really just me and her in Columbus and Upper Arlington, to be specific, if any of the listeners know that, and just do something different, just go out on our own, without friends, so it was good, that's good advice. So you just kind of went. Well, got accepted to Ohio State first.
Oh, that's kind of a big deal. So you've been with your wife a long time. Yeah, 1997. Yeah.
No parole. No. Good for you. No.
She's great. It's an important thing to have a good partner. Of course. Yeah.
I agree. A lot of the people we've been on have started in the Midwest. Have you noticed that? A lot of cigar industry people seem like they started.
I don't know. I don't pay attention. What are we doing? Columbus, Ohio specifically, not in the cigar world, but had the most pipe shops per capita of anywhere in the country.
So that makes sense. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
And this all came, I mean, you know, way back there was a cigar shop, I'm doing air quotes on the radio, but cigar shops on every corner, you know, in certain big cities. But really, you know, take in the Tampa area, for example, and Fuente in particular, Edwards was a pipe shop where they, you know, happened to do the Fuentes a favor and take in a few boxes on consignment, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. So that was the pipe shop businesses where a lot of this, what people think of as the, you know, the regular brick and mortar type retailer was in the, in the nineties, especially in the late eighties. So kind of derived from.
Yeah. So it was called Barclays, right? Barclays. Yeah.
All right. So you're there. Part time. Right.
I almost quit. Still in college at the same time, too? Not started yet. Right.
But almost quit. There was a guy that smoked straight Latakia pipe tobacco. Okay. Which is an awful smell.
And I had no allegiance to, you know, it was, I thought it'd be cool, but it was bad. It was rough. But anyways, he kind of stuck to the mornings and I, you know, I did the afternoons. But he almost made you quit.
It was that bad. I thought about it. Straight Latakia is horrible. So how long were you there?
A year. Okay. A year before we, you know, that first winter was pretty rough for a Florida guy. Florida, yeah, right.
Yeah, so we came back, let me take a sip, there you go. I feel like Marco Rubio when I take the side sip of McDonald's Ice Coffin. Right. So, before we left, I was in the sporting goods business, and worked for a guy that actually, his brother had some shops in Orlando.
Okay. And he was a, he was a rep, um, and I, through him, I knew that his brother was working on opening a cigar shop in Church Street Station, um, and they, the three, the, the guy I worked for in the sporting goods, the rep, and then the brother of the rep who was opening the shop, all three played baseball at Florida Southern. Okay. So, I call this guy.
Mark Angelo is the guy's name. I call Mark over the phone. " And, by the way, my wife went to Florida Southern, and I'm looking for a job. Right.
You laid it thick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My grandma worked in the post office at Florida Southern. And even my mom in the theater department was a secretary in Florida Southern.
Washington's a great, great school, but yeah, you know, I was looking for something to get back to Florida, we wanted to come back to Orlando, or to Orlando, and he's like, yeah man, you know, come on down, and within a week, I was, he had made me, he was looking for a manager type, but I certainly didn't go down there with that in mind, so then spent three years with him, he had three stores, eventually had three stores. At Universal Studios at CityWalk. And now it's gone. It is gone.
It sucks. Yeah, yeah, that was, you know, in the beginning they only wanted franchise, you know, like Starbucks. Right. You know, those types.
Main brand things. Yeah. And the funny part, not to throw anybody under the bus, but we were kind of the only ones that were actually paying full rent. Right.
Making our rent every month and all that, and eventually it just, I don't know, that was after I left. Right. I don't know the politics of it, but that was, yeah man, that was a nice thing to have for the industry, you know, as hundreds of thousands, I mean millions, I don't know how many people go to Universal and Islands of Adventure every day. Well, for me, CityWalk and Universal is really close, it's like 20 minutes away, so if I have time on the weekend to go kill a little bit with my family and just kind of enjoy ourselves, we'll go to CityWalk because for one, I know that it's an open area for smoking.
So I can grab a cigar, and then we can kind of walk around the city, walk if we decide to go into the parks or anything like that. So, I mean, I never got to check out that shop, unfortunately, but I really wish it was still there, because I'd be there all the time. It was a cool place. It had a full bar.
The inside was all old barn wood that was brought down from Virginia and the Carolinas. You know, it was cool, man. I mean, you know, I had tobacco hanging up in there. Not a lot, but just enough to get the idea.
What was the name of it? Cigars at CityWalk. It was Cigars with a Z. Ah.
Cigars… Was the other ones Cigars in Churchill or Churchy? Yeah. I think that may have just been called Cigars. Right.
And then Cigars on the Avenue in Winter Park is where I mainly was before the one at Universal opened up. Don Patel's place? Absolutely. And Don...
No shit? Yeah. So Don's... I'm probably jumping all around.
No, no. It's fine. I think it's easy to follow if you just throw out the name Don Patel. Everybody...
No. Everybody knows who Don Patel is. So we moved to Winter Park in '98. And that's the store I started at with Mark.
And fast forward a couple years, that I was in the process of trying to buy that shop. Okay. So, now I am going to hop around, let's go back to like, let's go back to '99. Okay.
No, 2000. Alright. In 2000, we won the Fuente Window Display Contest, and I was able to go down to the Dominican Republic, My wife was pregnant with my daughter at the time, and that was a heck of an experience, and came back and really, I think this is really what I want to do, I think I want to stick with this, I don't want to go back to school, I don't want to be a teacher anymore, that's what I wanted to be a teacher, and coach, you know, I love sports, and so that was working on that process, you know, there was a price, and we were working on it, and we were working on it, and I'm not going to be a teacher, and coach, you know, I love sports, and so that was working on that process. Right.
You know, there was a price, and we were working on it, and some self-financing and stuff like that. Right. And, you know, that's what I really thought I wanted to do. And then, fast forward to probably late January of 2001, the rep in the area and the national sales manager at the time, and then became vice president of sales, Wally Beagle, and the salesman was Alan Goldfarb.
Uh-huh. We came in, and we're talking. We were talking about going down to the Dominican Republic. You know, we had three stores, so we were kind of, you know, buying, I guess, probably a lot of cigars, I don't, you know, based on what, you know, other people, I don't know what a lot is.
Right. I mean, in that location, down in Winter Park, I'm sure that, you know, you did very well. Yeah, we did well. It was a lot of box sales.
" and he's like, "No, we're taking resumes," and all that, and still, it doesn't dawn on me to even, like, ask about the job or even think that I want it until they're walking across the street, like, I was like leaving, like walking across the street, I'm like, wait, maybe I should try that. You were just making small talk. Yeah, we were just like bullshitting, you know, and smoking cigars at the 858 Sun Grown, because that was part of when you did the display contest, and, you know, you were able to buy those, and we were smoking one of those, and just, you know, just a normal sales call, and they're leaving, and I'm like, a light bulb goes off. I'm that guy.
Yeah, hold on. Come back. No, I never thought that. I'm like, maybe I should try.
Right. Who knows? It'd be an interesting experience. Not a lot of people know this, but probably six months before that, maybe a year, there was the general cigar rep was a lady named Carrie Blaney.
She was getting promoted and recommended me for the job. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, and I had interviewed. Wow, that would be a totally different story if you went that direction.
Absolutely would. And they picked the right guy. At the time, I was like, you know, I'm competitive, but not a lot of people probably know I'm competitive internally, but they absolutely picked the right guy, and the guy they picked was a guy named Rick Rodriguez. Okay, I've heard of him.
Yeah, and he's a great guy, and he's with CAO now, I think he runs the whole thing for CAO, but he and Dave Bullock was with General Cigar at the time, And he's the one that interviewed me and Rick and whoever else they had and but he you know he knew Rick ahead of time and but absolutely picked the right guy for that company and for that position at the time and I was very very young I mean you know so I really fast forward now back to interviewing for this I was very young and the Newmans and the Fuentes took a big chance on me and I appreciate that but yeah so I called they're walking across the street the light bulb goes off. So I wait till the next day thinking Wally was only with Alan for the day I don't know if he was with him or not and I call Alan I'm like hey man what do you think about and he's like oh man you should do it you'll be great for it I'm like well don't you'll get it he said you'll get it I said don't say that because don't get my hope right I don't get it yeah so he told me who how to you know who to send my resume to and all that and so fast forward to February 14th I remember it was It was on Valentine's Day. I had my interview, which was interesting because of the people in the room, and... What do you mean?
Well, I mean, you know, when you have guys like Stanford Newman, and Bob, Bobby, and Eric, Wayne Suarez, a guy named Fred Zinaboni. It was, you know, I'm in my early 20s. Right. So it was, that was weird.
Right. It was nerve wracking. But, you know, I guess I did good. Right.
So March 5th was my first day, they hired me, and then March 5th I started, and I'm coming up on, well, what's today, the 4th? Is today the 4th? Yeah, tomorrow is my anniversary with the company. So I start my 18th year tomorrow.
Wow. All with the same company? Can you get a watch or anything at 18? I won a watch last year in Nicaragua, but I don't think there's a gold watch or anything for 17 years.
Damn it. Alright, so like, so your territory, you know, is kind of broad, right? I have a weird, it's weirdly shaped. Right.
Because of adding, sorry if I'm making noise, I'm going for my lighter. Yeah, so originally, I'm out of gas, sorry, this is a stall move. Well, you're out in, I mean, when you come and see us in Deltona, Deltona's kind of like no man's land. We're between two big cities, so it's, you know, it's not the easiest place to come in, and it's not like it's a plethora of, you know, cigar retailers, so the fact that you come out and see us, and that you do see us on a recurring basis, is obviously greatly appreciated.
Yeah, but my original territory, when I first started, was from Punta Gorda up to Panama City, and then basically stopped at Highway 27, Haines City, I didn't have Orlando. So I had that strip. Right. Ocala, Gainesville, Tallahassee, all that.
And about, man, I don't know how long I've been calling on you guys for six years, seven years? Yeah, so before you, I wasn't really in the ordering aspect of this business. I was doing odds and ends of it, and I wasn't really meeting as many people. So we had a guy, my brother dealt with him all the time, and I'm sure you know his name.
Super old school... Henry Frampton. That's the guy. Colonel Henry Frampton.
Correct. Guy that could kill you with a spoon. Absolutely. You know.
And he actually took a chance with us out the gate, which was fantastic, because when we got started, we didn't know what the hell we were doing. And my brother, in his ignorance, I mean, we're probably six months into the game, he's like, you know, we would really like to have Opus X. " Which I heard is not the standard, average way to go about things, right? No.
Henry had a unique situation when, so to go back to the mid-80s and before, the Fuentes had a broker system. They had brokers that Fred Zanaboni set up for him. Excuse me. Is he still around?
Fred, no. He passed away. Well, Henry. Oh, no, Henry recently passed away, probably maybe two or three years ago.
Oh, that sucks. Yeah. He was a great American, for sure. I wish I would have got more stories, but I think a lot of it's still classified stuff.
And I'm not, it's funny, but it's not funny. I think it really is that kind of stuff. He was a great guy. But, so Henry was a Fuente broker, and he was old back then, not being funny.
So Henry had basically Daytona up to Amelia Island, he lived in Ponte Vedra, and so he just had, you know, he had like 15, 20 accounts, and you know, it was more of, it was more of a broker, they shipped stuff to his house, which he stored, it was, it was a different time, and that hung around for a little while, and so Henry did more of the divvying up than at the time when I got hired. And before, we had a system called the ARP on the Fuente side, automatic reorder program, so it was like Christmas, every time we got a container, just your, you got whatever we got and split up, and then we were out again until the next container came, it was a weird, weird time, so. Yeah, the systems, and even the systems now are kind of unique, because there are a couple things that Fuente does that I think is fantastic by design, especially as a company, you have X amount of your Opus, right, which is obviously the big deal from Fuente. You have your Anejos that come out in Christmas, and specific sizes come out, here they are, and there they go.
They come in and they're gone, right? Yeah, we try to ship it. Which is a good problem to have. Well, yeah, but, you know, it's still a problem.
There's a couple of things that are, you know, good or bad, whatever you want to say. That tobacco for that cigar is grown on one farm only. You're gonna get a whole lot more Coronas and Robustos and smaller leaves to make cigars than double Coronas. A lot of, like when I first started, you know, in the '90s, a lot of, I think, and I have no stats or data to back this up, I think a lot of those cigars were bought and given as gifts, corporate type stuff, you know, where a guy, you know, like a rep like me would take an Opus X to a guy that maybe wasn't even a real cigar cigar.
He wasn't a cigar smoker, but he knew. Like, that was a pretty impressive thing. Right. It was a well-known cigar.
Absolutely. Well, it changed, you know, it changed the industry, I think, in a lot of ways. So, yeah, I mean, you know, people want bigger ones, but honestly, the best ones to me are the smaller sizes. But, yeah, so we try to ship it a couple times a year, and we get what we get, and they divvy it up in Tampa.
We can see it up in Tampa in a few different ways, and try to be as fair as possible, and it's one farm, and they're only gonna use tobacco from that farm for that cigar. Right. So, now if you don't mind talking about this, they're just moving into Nicaragua now, right? Yeah.
So they're gonna open up a big factory there, correct? Well, they've been, they've had a farm in Nicaragua now, I think they've grown four crops, like not a secret, but not, you know, there was no press release. They've got a piece on the Cigar Hustler podcast or anything, but they've been growing, and the Oliva family, the Oliva tobacco growing family, and the NECA processing and all that, they oversee all that, the project down there, and so they've been doing that, but yeah, just, I guess, last month was the festival, and that was announced, and that was, we were in the Dominican with Carlito the week before all that, and, um, it was an You know, that never came up. I was going to ask you that.
It didn't. You didn't say anything. I've been hearing some rumors and stuff like that. Again, proximity.
Right. It's a standard in the cigar industry. And a dash of nosiness. I asked him in front of everybody about, you know, we were down there last year, and this, that, and the other, and he, you could tell by his face and a smile and all that, and the excitement.
But he didn't, he saved that for the festival. Oh shit. He saved that for the festival. And a great partner down there that he's chosen to work closely with, Felix Mesa, will be running things, El Galan, they'll be running things down there, and I guess kind of the head of the, I don't know all the particulars yet, or the square footage of the factory, or how many cigars we'll make.
Yeah, it should be a big deal, and it's one of the most exciting things that, I mean, in my time with both companies, it's very exciting. It was very exciting when the Newmans built their own factory there called Pensa, out of necessity. Right. We used to have, flip-flop back from Newman and Fuente, this is like my day job.
Right. We had Quorum made in Natsa, and long story short, I mean, it's always better to try and control your own destiny. Between Natsa, we had the Olivas family, with an S, and Okta, which is up near Honduras, if you have a map at home. And then it was better to, again, it's always better to control your own destiny, and they built Pensa.
We're not a publicly held company, but we're pretty proud to make probably 85,000 or more cigars a day. That's a big number. Yeah, and probably should be maybe a hundred, you know, if I can. Right.
Or more, you know, you never know, but we all suffer with back orders. Of course. Which is, again, like you said earlier, Mike, a good problem to have. Right.
But it's still a problem. Yeah. You know. But to go back to the Fuente hat, that is extremely exciting because the Fuentes can only make and they're going to only make a certain amount of cigars in the Dominican Republic.
Right. And they've probably met that cap, obviously. Yeah. Well, yes.
" I don't really have those kind of conversations. Honestly, when I'm with those guys, I don't talk a lot about cigars, I talk about other stuff, because they, you know, it's cigars nonstop for them when they're down there, so we talk about Tampa, and especially with Carlito, you know, and people in the area and his friends, he doesn't get to see enough and things like that, so. Right, that's cool. So, let me ask you, when you go to Vegas, do you go to the Casa de Fuente shop out there?
Yeah, yeah, it's not, you know man, that's my hardest week of work. Yeah, no shit. That's where I feel like I'm, you know, back to... It's almost like you got to get there earlier if you want to go to that store or you got to do it afterwards.
You know? The salesman that handles that always has it kind of set up for us, you know, with a table or two. Yeah. It's very crowded, you know, God bless them, that's probably a great week for them.
Right. It's a really cool store. It is, it is. And obviously, anybody that's been there knows that it could probably be ten times that big And they'd still fill it out.
I'll be honest with you, man, when I'm at the show, I work hard and my feet hurt, and getting down there in the middle of summer, whether you walk or cab it, it's just, I'd probably rather stay late at the show, smoke a cigar and go eat dinner and go to bed, to be honest, not that I'm a… Well, those are long days, so… They're very long days, and I'm kind of a get-there-early kind of guy. I don't get up at like four o'clock in the morning. You mean it's not a long night of hookers, and coke, and fucking partying? 18 years.
He's been there. He's lived through all of it. That's for the old guys. It's funny, when the show was in Vegas early on, I would sometime, maybe one or two people would tag along, but I'd go to the Calloway Center and hit golf balls and do that sometimes just to clear my head, and when I have more energy.
Right? That's cool. So, whenever we see you at the show, you're always busy. It's like we have a, if we could always, before we were doing wholesale and we were just doing retail, I always remember whenever we'd go to your booth, you would always have like two or three people that you were trying to slot and, you know, we'd try and figure out when we could kind of sneak in and get our order, so.
Yeah, when you guys came, I don't, what was the first year that you all had access to come in, in the morning, before time, because that's when we started really. Yeah, that was when stuff started. That was nice. How long ago was that for you?
Two years ago. Probably two, three years ago. That's it? Yeah.
Maybe a little bit longer than that. I mean, I've been with the Roma guys. I mean, they're like my family. So, even if we weren't doing wholesale stuff with them, I would always help them.
So, if I could come in and help them set up prior to, then I would. That would make sense as far as going in and seeing you, too. So, probably four or five years ago. Plus, on top of that, we set our own booth.
We have a company that puts up the walls basically so that you know the day or two before the show we are where the salesmen and and people like that are actually we're actually setting the booth and you know they don't turn the air conditioner on until the last minute and brutal yeah so it you know you're kind of wiped out then the show starts okay cool yeah I'll go sell yeah but it's good I mean it's the the shows always been good for me it was my first show was it on the on And this side of the aisle was in Tampa, ironically enough. No shit. Yeah, so I was thrown into the deep end, and then I was thrown further into the deep end, you know, for the first show. So when the shows are close, you get more people, and more is not always helpful, but it's good for business.
I wish they would do Tampa again. Oh, no, I don't. I'll veto that. No, I mean, if I'm going to be gone and all that, and Tampa's a great city, I love Tampa, but there has to be, I've realized, there has to be more to the town to attract the retailers, yeah, like my, I'll tell you, my favorite location for a show, you guys will probably, you couldn't guess, but it was San Antonio.
Well, Texas, I'm down with Texas, too. I like Houston, too. Okay, so why do you think San Antonio would be good? Well, I don't think it would be good.
I just like San Antonio. He wants to go to San Antonio. And Houston was a really good show, and then, so the, you know, the hotel was right there. Right, it's centralized, you know.
Oh, yeah, but there's, you know, and I, we all, not all of us, but a few of us walked down to the ballpark, I think, they still call it Minute Maid, I think. We walked down to the ballpark and saw the Astros play, that was great. They have great restaurants, great steakhouse, great Tex-Mex. Right.
The hotel was right there connected to the convention center, so everybody was kind of hanging out together for the most part. So, yeah, both, yeah, Houston and San Antonio, I liked a lot. San Antonio was before I got into this side of things. That was my last show as a retailer, so maybe I may have a fondness there for it too.
Right. San Antonio is a great town. I haven't been back since, but I love San Antonio. That's it.
Yeah. What are we smoking on, by the way? Do you want to tell everybody what we're smoking? What did you...
I grabbed this one. All right. You got a Don Carlos Bellicoso. I just brought my, you know, normal bag.
I don't know. Right. No, that's cool. This isn't a planned...
No, this is kind of impromptu, you know? This is your shameless plug that you get to do. Yeah, and Mike, you have... A Fuente Gran Reserva.
Well, they all say that, but that's a Rosado Magnamar, and that's the 54 size. It's very good. And then I have a Don Carlos No. 4 that I'm about to finish.
I started that up on the way here, and this all worked out really great to be in the general area. Yeah, we kind of snuck in. I mean, you're out doing family stuff for a Sunday? Yeah.
Well, the whole weekend. My daughter had a game in Mount Dora on Friday night, and my cousin and her family live in Eustace. So we stayed the night with them, and my aunt and uncle got to come and watch her play. She had probably the best game defensively I've ever seen her play, and then she hit a ball that it just landed I think about 20 minutes ago, just a bomb, probably about 260 feet, which 200 feet will cover the fence, and that extra 50 or 60 feet is, it was no doubt, she knew it was gone, and she didn't flip her bat or pull any Barry Bonds moves, but she knew it was gone, those were fun.
And then yesterday morning we came over to DeLand, just north of here, or kind of, north. Yeah, yeah. And at Stetson, the school my daughter will go to next year, their team is down playing in a tournament. Okay.
So we caught two yesterday, and then... It's very pretty up there by that college. DeLand is beautiful. Yeah, up by Stetson.
It's very nice. The downtown is cool. A lot of oak trees. A lot of baseball history, too.
Yeah, well, the boys' baseball team is very good. And my wife's, one of her bosses in the business she's in, his nephew, Brooks is his name, plays baseball at Stetson and probably will get drafted. Oh, no shit. Yeah, they've had a few draft picks over there.
So, yeah, and that's a beautiful ballpark, too. All the facilities are top notch. And to tie it in also, my cousin who we stayed with, her daughter is in eighth grade, and it looks like she's going to be going to Stetson to play softball. So no official offers yet.
It's still just a little early, but she's had her unofficial visit already, and so it's kind of cool to have her and my daughter there too. That's neat. Yeah, and this just is perfect. It worked out great.
So you're obviously a listener. Yeah, I've heard them all, which is awesome. I think it's the first time we've actually had a guest that is a listener. Admitted listener.
Right. It could be. It could be admitted listener. Well, yeah, Jack, Jack's obviously, hopefully Jack's a listener now and, you know, but we're getting there.
Hey, this is like our 9th, 10th, 11th episode. Mike will be, wait, 8, 9, 10. He'll be in the 11th. Episode 11.
Episode 11. Eight have been released, right? Eight have been released. Oh, then you're 8, 9, 10.
You'll be 12, maybe. I don't even know. We've got two more already done. I just finished.
But we're approaching double digits, nevertheless. We're just under 900 downloads. Very nice, very nice. So you obviously know what's coming next.
Oh, is it that time already? That time. We have a list of three questions that we'd like to ask. Four, now it's four.
Right, with the surprise questions to Mr. McKinney. So I got a feeling that you probably know your answers to these, or at least you've thought about them. I've thought about it.
Do you want to mix them up and hit the new one first? No, no, no, we'll drop that one at the end. Alright, first question. What one person, living or dead, would you like to share a cigar with?
Well, I work for two families, so I did think about this. So I get two people. Is that alright? Okay, that's fine.
You can have seven if you want. Stanford Newman and Carlos Fuente Sr. I'd love to have... Those are good answers?
Yeah, no, they treated me great. So, great guys. Did you ever get to hang out with them at all? Did you hang out at all?
Or hang out? Meet? I mean, I don't know. Shake hands?
No, more than that. Bowen, Curtsey? I don't know what the proper... They were, yeah, a lot.
I got to spend a lot of time with both of them. Mr. Newman has been gone for a few years now, but before, he would drive me to lunch at Palmasia, which was unique to have an 89-year-old man driving me around. Was it scary?
Did you buckle up? One time it was scary because his foot slipped off the pedal getting onto the crosstown. Oh, crap, this is it. Well, and I'm just a cigar salesman, but we had the CFO and the Comptroller in the back, Scott and Shira, and I'm thinking, man, if we crash and die, I mean, they can replace a salesman, but these other three in the car.
They can't replace them. They can't replace them. No. The end of the Newmans.
Mr. Newman is unreplaceable. His sons are great guys, but there is only one Stanford Newman. So yeah, I did get to spend a lot of time with him, and he really valued everybody's opinion, I mean, like the lady that cleans up in the factory, or someone in packaging, or a cigar maker, because in Tampa there, they still make, at the time when he passed away, they weren't making this many cigars, but now it's 65,000 plus cigars a day there by machine.
No kidding. No, no, and probably need more than that, but it's tough to be profitable even on machine-made cigars, and that's one at a time, that's not making like Philly Blunts on a rod, and these are cigar machines from the late teens and early twenties, and so it's one at a time, but yeah, yeah, $65,000 plus. , you'd hang out with him too? And again, hang out.
I know, I know. But yeah, I mean, you know, been to his house in West Tampa numerous times and, you know, got to ask him some great questions and just talk to him. He's a quiet guy, but, and just, you know, one of the sharpest people I've ever met in my life. Right.
And very, very nice. Very nice. You told me back in the day that he had a house, that it was like, he never really left that house, right? No, he was comfortable there in West Tampa, and that's, you know, it's a nice house, but you wouldn't drive by and say, now that looks like a guy that makes 32 million cigars a year.
That's where he would live. And just the most humble guy. I have a reminder that goes off every day at noon in my phone that, you know, just thinking about him, just a Bible verse to stay humble, you know, about staying humble. Right.
That was inspired by him. That's awesome. Very nice. Yep.
His son's in the Florida Cigar Club, Carlos Jr.? Yeah, okay. And he does comment every once in a while, and it's a big deal. Everybody gets all impressed with him.
Carlito is involved in social media stuff, and you know, man, he's got a lot of energy and people love him. I love him, too. He's a great guy. He's a great guy.
Different than his dad, but both, you know, very hard working and humble people, probably not the people that you, you know, if you go to like a big smoke or you see them, it's probably not, they aren't probably who you think they are, not in a phony way or anything, but they're just, they're just really down to earth and just normal, great people, they just happen to make a lot of cigars. Right. The right way. Okay, question number two.
Yeah. What's the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you? I, I did think about this one. I've gotten a lot of good advice over the years.
The guy I used to work for in the sporting goods business, for a Steeler fan, he was a big Vince Lombardi fan, which is kind of funny, but Vince Lombardi had a lot of quotes and things about early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable. If you're not 15 minutes early, you're late, things like that. And so Dan really, you know, drove that into my head, and that's good advice. It's a little weird now being, I still use it in my personal life, when you're on the road, especially in a territory where I'm on I-4 a lot, trying to be somewhere 15 minutes early would probably get you killed a lot of the time.
So I, you know, I try to plan it out and communicate and make sure I give a ballpark, so that was good advice. But the real, probably the funny one now, after I told you how long I've been doing this, right when I interviewed and got the job, my grandmother told me that we've got going on here, what's in the... I don't know, we're here at music. It's probably the church.
Church service. Probably the church downstairs. That's all right. Do you think it'll pick it up?
That's all right. No, that's okay. I don't think so. But she told me, you know, you got this job, you don't have to stay there, it's not like my generation, you don't have to stay there for 40 years and this, that and the other.
Right. So, that's great advice, and I've always thought about it, but I'm in a good situation, a good place, and… Yeah, no, I mean, you don't feel stuck where you're at, right? Stuck is not the word at all. Exactly.
Blessed is the word. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. You know, back in the day, it was all about go to work, get your pension, and then retire.
Pensions don't exist anymore, you know? No, but the Newmans do generously match my 401k. Which is fantastic. So, why the hell would you go anywhere else, you know?
No, no. I love the industry. I don't really follow it to the, you know, all that's going out there, what's going on, because there's so much out there now. Which is actually really awesome when we have conversations, because you have a totally outside perspective that really hasn't been saturated with bullshit as far as what's kind of current.
Tainted. Tainted would be a good word. I like saturated bullshit. There are a few people that I would actually have the conversations that I have with like you guys, because I know they're going to stay here.
Of course. And not make it onto a podcast? Right. I actually did have it on, all that stuff in the beginning.
I don't smoke a lot of other people's stuff, so you know that. Just like we talked about, I don't know if it was on air or not, you don't listen to other podcasts, you do your podcasts. Yeah, no, it wasn't, but yeah, I don't really. I don't care what Joe Smith is making in wherever because it doesn't affect how I sell or what I sell.
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, on a retailer level or on a consumer level or even on a wholesale level, I mean, I could sit and fucking pay attention to everything that everybody else is doing and then I'd totally miss the boat on my own creations and my own production. That was the hardest part about this job in the beginning that I have now, was going from shop to shop, because I never went to other people's cigar stores when I was a retailer. Right. And it was weird, and it's a rollercoaster of great account, good account, horrible account, mediocre account, great account, so you're on a rollercoaster already, and in the beginning it was just not what I was, I wasn't a guy that just went from shop to shop, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah, and you don't know what you're going to expect either, though, because, you know, you can walk into a shop where a guy praises you, loves your product, you have a good relationship with, and then you can walk into another shop where a guy is just totally arrogant, full of himself, doesn't fucking take care of his product, doesn't take care of the humidor or his employees or anything like that, and really doesn't give a fuck about you and that you're kind of an inconvenience to him when you walk in the door. So, I get that, for sure. I'll tell you a different real quick story. 's granddaughter, Christina Suarez worked with me after graduating from UCF and then before going to culinary school, she worked a summer with me and we're in a shop, I won't mention where, and a nice enough guy and we had these, you know, I write down or I'll say out loud what I want to get accomplished or do before walking in there.
You know, I typically don't just walk in places willy-nilly, but one of the main things I wanted this retailer to do was participate in our Toast Across America, the two-pack cigar. I'm sure listeners are familiar with that. Right. So I had that and a couple other things, you know, whatever we were working on at the time.
So it was like, all right, Christina, let's go get them. You know, this is Cynthia's daughter, Cynthia. Okay. So we walk in there, and we see the retailer, and like, hey, man, what's going on?
" Oh! Oh! Yeah. " So we just said, you know, we sat there, talked to him, and, you know, obviously that's not a selling opportunity.
Right, yeah. Uh, so, by the time we left, Christina, you know, she's a great girl, and, um, she was tearing up and, you know, all that stuff. " Right. Yeah, you never know what you're walking into, you walk into that.
And that kind of goes back to as far as you're saying with your being on time and how it is almost impossible when you're checking in on retail stores, you just don't know how the conversation is going to go when you walk into certain locations. No, you better be ready to, you gotta be, it's a game of adjustments, just like baseball and you have to continually make adjustments and all that stuff. All right, what's the third question? Third question, third question.
What is your favorite cigar? Again, I work for two families. Which is kind of funny, yeah. So I'm gonna say, I'm smoking a Don Carlos, I mean a Don, any size Don Carlos.
Yeah. Probably the smaller ones, well if I could smoke with Carlos Seniors blend in the Robusto, which is just a little sweeter, a little stronger. In the market, it would have the 80th, it would say, Carlos, the 80th, it's in the black box and all that stuff, so that would be it, and then probably the Julius Caesar man, and now in the Corona size, those two, desert island type cigars. He said the Fuente first, just for the record.
Those are both made by Tabacalera A. Fuente. So, now, what about something that you don't represent? Well, the last, so when was I over here?
In January? Yeah. The last cigar that I smoked that wasn't one of ours was the cigar you gave me, and I can't remember what it was, but it was that. And I, so again, I don't have a favorite non-us cigar.
I don't remember what it was. Not to sound like, you know, but I've smoked a few of Felix Mesa's things, the El Galan with the Red Band. Those are good. You know, Nicaraguan tobacco is not my favorite favorite, although we've talked about that with the Pueblo Nuevo.
So, you know, I like a little bit of Nicaraguan there for what it is, but I've heard a lot of, on the podcast, a lot of your people say Padrón. Yeah. And they make great cigars, it wouldn't be my favorite go to. No, no, no, no.
I just don't. I stay focused on it. " No, no, no. He's like, "Look, man, give it a few months, you'll forget about all that other stuff.
We have the greatest cigars in the world and you'll just smoke these. Right. And, you know, I'm like, well, he's, you know, 65 years old, what does he know? Crazy old man.
Of course he was. He was right, so. Right. Yeah.
All right, so is that all three questions? Are we on the fourth question? No, we're on the fourth question. This is the first time this has been asked?
No. Second time at all. But it has not been on air yet. Yeah.
So you have not, you're not ahead of the curve on this one. It's really nice to hear him keep referencing the show though. Yeah. He knows what's up.
Well, I've only listened to two podcasts in my whole life, this one and then the famous one about the kid in the high school around Baltimore that murdered somebody or they thought he did. Sounds more impressive than ours. That's pretty in-depth. One of the girls in marketing told me about it.
I had some plane rides, but I don't know why I don't download more of them. I'm in the car a lot. It's crazy, man. It's hard to find one that you like.
Yeah, but like, you know, but there's so many of them out there. It's like, it's, for me, I, you know, if I'm not, I used to waste my time driving to and from work listening just to the radio, but now it's, um, Mobile University, I always listen to either an audible, like audible for books, or there's a podcast that I listen to that's not cigar reference at all, which is really cool as far as like, you know, life coaching and stuff like that, and gives you different perspectives. You should probably find something to, you know, one of the things I'd like to do is be able to speak Spanish. Yeah, I was doing that too.
Pimsleur is really good for that. Did it help? It helped? Yeah, it did.
I can argue, I can not get stabbed in a situation. I'm like, no, no, no. I mean, I still, I got a long, I got a long way to go, just because I started focusing on other things and kind of developing, but Pimsleur is really fantastic. I use, I communicate, I'm kind of newer to social media, but I communicate with Felix Mesa through the Instagram, direct message, if that's what they call it, and it's always the Spanish to English on Google, and I always wonder if it's, you know, if I don't say it just right, and there's some kind of goofy word, maybe, I don't know if I'm asking him out on a date, or, you know, so, I always, I wish I knew, that's, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do that, try to find some kind of, Pimzler, Pimzler, yeah, I'm gonna.
That's pretty cool, because, like, you have conversations with yourself and then it reviews and stuff, it's pretty badass. Oh, yeah, yeah. All right, so go ahead, the new question. The new fourth question is: What fictional character would you like to share a cigar with?
And it could be book, comic, movie, TV show. It's got to be fictional. Yeah. I like this, I like this, I like the dead air, that's fantastic.
Sorry, yeah, sorry. We stumped the Schwab. It's fantastic. Fictional.
Man, see, I don't read, I mean, I don't read a lot. What, do you watch movies? It could be something from a movie. Oh, yeah.
Okay. Well, you threw me off there again. I really like, I mean, I like history type, history books. " Fictional.
Oh my gosh, I'm sorry, I apologize for that. It could be a cartoon character or anything. Yeah, anything you want. Well, I think Fred Flintstone would be a good choice.
You know, the guy from The Honeymooners, he didn't smoke, he smoked cigars a little bit. In real life he did. Yeah. Jackie Gleason?
Jackie Gleason. Yeah, man. But his character? Oh, no, no, I got it, I got it.
All right. My favorite show as a kid growing up. There you go. This, this one, like, this molded how I got in and out of my mom's car as a kid, this show, The Dukes of Hazzard.
No shit. I'd smoke a cigar with Boss Hog. Yeah? Yeah.
Very nice. That'd be funny. There you go. Yeah.
You guys killed me on that one. That's awesome because I feel like you really kind of get to know something, be a little more intimate to that person. I picture him sliding across a hood to get to the curb. Oh no, I'm a country boy.
And is mom yelling at him? Mike! Not for that. There's plenty of other stuff to yell at me about, but yeah, yeah, man, that's a hell of a question.
See? That's a good one, man. Thank you. That was Michael.
Yes, thanks. " Yeah, I wanted to mention it to him before, but then I just put it on the podcast. Can I ask you, or who's yours? Oh man, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, it could go so many – I honestly never thought about it, but it would be something obnoxious like, you know, Wolverine. Superhero stuff. Yeah. Your Islands of Adventure.
Yeah. You know? Yeah. My wife would be able to answer that easily.
She loves all that stuff. Right. But I'm never – yeah, I'm just more of a history, like actual people guy. Right.
But, yeah, Boss Hog would be – and it would be hilarious. Right. So I would not be a part of chasing down the Dukes. I would just smoke at the boar's nest.
Right. And then they'd go get 'em. Well, I'd have some drinks from Daisy. I'd at least drink one beer.
Right. But no, I would not hunt the Duke boys down. There you go. No.
No. There you go. That's it. That's all the time.
All right. So that pretty much concludes the podcast. If you like what we're doing, please give us your feedback. Also, subscribe or tell your friends about our podcast.
What else do I? Do you have any forms of social media that you want people to get a hold of you? I'm huge on Instagram. I have about a hundred followers.
Now that you're going to be famous because you've been on the podcast? My, what is it, name, or how do you say it? What's your Instagram handle? On my Instagram handle is MikeMcKinney858, I think, let me, I'm pulling it up here.
Yeah, MikeMcKinney858, M-I-K-E-M-C-K-I-N-N-E-Y 858. Perfect. Yeah. Well, thank you for taking the time away from your family this weekend, Mike, to come in.
And you're, you know, you're, you've, congratulations, you've made it to just about an hour. Oh, that's, that's VIP status. That's VIP, that's VIP status for sure. And, you know, you're a good friend of the store, man, and we truly appreciate you taking the time out to come out here on a Sunday, man.
I appreciate what you guys do. We, we, everything we send is with an invoice and, you know, we, we really appreciate what you guys do and the representation and the great Fuente rug out there. And on the Newman side too, you guys do a great job with that, with that stuff, so we really appreciate it. Oh, just a quick story.
My wife smokes Trader Jack's cigars. She's really recently gotten big into them. But at an event at a different shop, Mike brought Mr. Newman over to meet my wife.
Oh, no shit. Yeah. That was a big deal to her. She thought she was very impressed.
No, no. It's a big deal to us. It was Bobby Newman. Yeah, it was Bobby.
And he truly, to meet somebody that smokes the product and is like, you know, specific sizes, that's a really big deal. Yeah, it's a super humbling experience. To see a band, you know, I don't get to play much golf anymore, but to see one of our bands on the ground or on a finished cigar is like, man, somebody bought that and smoked it and hopefully enjoyed it. Right.
But any time I can introduce the Newmans or the Fuentes to someone that, I don't care if it's a Trader Jack or an Opus X or a Curly Head or a Hemingway or anything, it still blows my, I mean, I'm being funny. And I'm being funny, I sell a lot of cigars, and I don't know where they all go. You know, there's somebody smoking all these things, and that's really awesome. She was having friends over last night sent me up here to get some, and I bought the jar, I bought all of them I had left.
Stepped up to the 30, 30, yeah. Oh, you bought them all? " So now she has it sitting in the kitchen, so she can just pop it and take one out when she wants one. That's a reorder opportunity for me.
There you go. All right, that's pretty much it. We're signing out. All right, gang, that's it.
Show's over. Time to put out that cigar and get back to work. Ain't nobody gonna do it for you. Everybody get hustling.
They told him, don't you ever come around here Don't wanna see your face, you better disappear The fire's in their eyes, and their works are really clear, so feed it, just feed it. You better run, you better do what you care.
Show Notes
This week on a saturday Mike McKinney is in town and sits down with us and shares how he started with and continues to grow in one of the leading companies in the cigar business.
You can follow us at our fan page on FB at A Cigar Hustlers Podcast or IG @cigarhustlerspodcast. Leave us your thoughts and comments or suggest a guest you wouldd like for us to have on the show.
You can Follow Mike Szczepankiewicz on IG @cigarhustler and Mike Palmer @Floridacigarclub_mike.