Sidney Frank, the man behind Grey Goose, has the stereotypical American dream backstory. He comes from nothing, not having been able to afford even more than a year of college at Brown, but he was ambitious. According to NPR, his goal in life was to be rich, and it just so happens he married into a wealthy family and got sort of thrust into the liquor-making business.
It was the '90s and Absolut vodka was selling like crazy. Matthew Latkiewicz, author of "You Suck At Drinking" explained to NPR, "[Frank] essentially out of thin air goes, I want to make a vodka. So Absolut's charging 15. I'll charge 30. He didn't even have a product at this point." To make a long story short, he marketed the brand as luxury because it came from France, put it in fancy bottles and it sold like crazy. In ten years, he sold Grey Goose to Bacardi for $2 billion, and the dream became a reality.
There was only one problem – people were starting to realize that the price of Grey Goose didn't actually reflect the product's quality. NPR analyzed Grey Goose in a lab compared to two much cheaper brands, and found that the "differences in all three samples weren't anything most people were going to taste."
That basically means you're paying for a pretty bottle to display on your home bar and impress your guests, or you're paying for the status of ordering a cosmopolitan that costs triple what it should.
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