Vets Put Their Stamp on Startup Whiskeys

This story is published in partnership with The Food Section.

Visit any ABC store in Fayetteville, and you’re bound to see bottles sporting Army insignia or prominently pro-military designs, such as Boundary Oak 82nd Airborne and Old Hillside Purple Heart Tribute. Mainstream brands target the armed forces, too: Evan Williams and Pendleton have special offerings that celebrate the military and veterans. 

As the Army celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, distilleries such as Green River and Brother Justus have released limited-edition bottles to commemorate the occasion.

Marketing to the military is a smart move in a region that is home to Fort Bragg and 90,000 veterans. Many themed brands are produced by veterans, and a significant number of them are associated with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which has been headquartered at Bragg since 1952. 

While no organization tracks exactly how many of America’s more than 3,000 craft distilleries are owned by veterans, across all small businesses the number is 5.5 percent. There’s no reason spirits should be any different.

But if you visit Fort Bragg’s liquor purveyors, called Class Six stores, you’ll find very few veteran-owned spirits on the shelf. This dearth has nothing to do with the merits of the products. And it’s not because soldiers, veterans, and their families don’t want to buy them. Instead, like many things related to the Army, it boils down to rules, hierarchy, and bureaucracy.

To many producers, it seems like a real missed opportunity.

Easter Eggs in the Field

Most military-themed spirits are whiskeys of some kind—usually bourbon, sometimes rye or a blend. Whiskey is often given as a gift for promotions or retirements, enjoyed with comrades at unit balls and other special events, and shared during moments of remembrance and mourning. 

For veteran-owned brands in particular, the liquid inside the bottle is almost beside the point: Often the package itself matters most.

These bottles are eye-catching, meant to attract attention with shiny metal labels, waxed tops, and a host of symbols and insignia. To a civilian, such imagery might have little meaning, but for those who have been in the ranks, it signals insider status.

That’s an attractive communication technique because the military limits which designs can be used for commercial purposes.

“Any Department of Defense trademarked word, image, or mark is not allowed to be licensed to an alcohol product,” explained Drew Kellerman, a retired infantry officer and co-founder, with several other veterans, of Heritage Distilling. The Washington-based company makes a lineup of whiskeys called Special Operations Salute and donates a portion of sales to nonprofits that support servicemembers, veterans, their families, and even K-9 units.

“We tried every which way” to get permission to use certain marks, Kellerman added. “We were getting two- and three-star generals to write letters on our behalf.” Kellerman’s company eventually learned that the Army had trademarked only a few marks, giving his brand a way around the legal obstacle. (The Marines, meanwhile, hold over 650 trademarks and contacted Kellerman specifically to tell him not to try using any.) 

Thus, Special Operations Salute’s packaging is replete with imagery that wouldn’t look out of place on a uniform—though for the inaugural Army Special Operations Edition, it’s not an exact match. That’s by design. The label has an intentionally incorrect reproduction of a Special Operations shoulder patch, depicting the familiar red arrowhead with a dagger overlaid with a master parachutist badge with a combat jump star (called a “mustard stain”) in the middle.

“That’s not how this is worn,” said Kellerman, explaining that a parachutist badge would never be located near, let alone atop, the shoulder patch. But thousands of Special Operations vets will be familiar with that unusual combination because it replicates a sign that once hung over the entrance to a training area at Fort Bragg.

“Apparently that sign doesn’t exist anymore; it was moved somewhere else,” Kellerman said. “But the advice we got was that they’d know exactly what that means. We got all kinds of comments, especially from some of the older veterans, saying, ‘Oh my gosh, did you guys get this off that sign? This brings back memories.’”

Horse Soldier, a whiskey brand founded in 2015 by former Green Berets who were the first troops deployed to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, also features quite a few Easter eggs on its package. That includes an embossed arrow and hatchet for the Army Rangers and Special Forces; a challenge coin; and the legend “Forged in Fire”—a nod to the whiskey’s custom bottle mold.

“We buried pieces of the World Trade Center steel across Afghanistan after certain battles” in homage to those lost on 9/11, co-founder Scott Neil explained. “That type of steel was also the kind needed for the bottle molds. So we struck a bargain: If I was to get you some steel, could I get a discount?” 

Once the manufacturer realized that Neil was serious—and who he was—the molds were made. Now, Neil says, “every bottle touches World Trade Center steel.”

Check Your Class Six 

Horse Soldier is one of the few independent brands that has netted space at Fort Bragg’s Class Six stores, the designated outlets where spirits can be sold. Most of the bottles that surround it are familiar, big-name products like Crown Royal, Tito’s, and Hennessy. There are also the large, bottom-shelf handles of industrial gin, blended whiskey, and other spirits sold under the “Military Special” label, which seems to have been around for the better part of a century. 

That’s because the process for getting listed on base requires resources and visibility that most smaller, startup companies lack.

Sales of spirits, and pretty much all other consumer goods, on Army bases are handled through the Army & Air Force Exchange Service, also known as AAFES. The organization has existed in some capacity since the late 1800s, evolving into its modern form during and after World Wars I and II. AAFES operates sites of all shapes and sizes, from sprawling grocery stores to “mobile exchanges” that are little more than trucks loaded with goods for troops in the field—a total of more than 4,300 facilities across dozens of countries.

The AAFES merchandising team chooses which spirits are stocked, using criteria such as “sales trends … category growth, and industry trends,” according to AAFES senior public affairs manager Chris Ward. He added that “because of space and investment limitations, the Exchange may not always select new and/or unproven products.”

For Horse Soldier, that meant early efforts to get picked up went nowhere. “We overthrew an entire country in less time than it took to get past the fortress of AAFES,” Neil said. 

The process to get listed was opaque: “There’s no portal, and at the time there was no ‘best of’ or ‘how to approach.’ … Sometimes you’ve got to know a guy or gal.”

The Horse Soldier team eventually met the right person in the form of a strategic partner: E. & J. Gallo, one of the largest privately held wine and spirits companies in the U.S., which already had a supplier agreement in place. After investing in Horse Soldier, Gallo worked with AAFES on the company’s behalf, Neil said, which “allowed us to get into the full breadth of the AAFES system.” Horse Soldier is now sold in 276 AAFES locations worldwide, and the sector made up 5.6 percent of its total sales in the 12 months ending in June 2025.

The process is much easier for companies like Jack Daniel’s, which offers an exclusive whiskey called Heroes Selection, a single-barrel rye chosen by employees who are also veterans. Senior manager of global travel retail Mike Soskin said that Jack Daniel’s parent company Brown-Forman, which supplies numerous other brands to AAFES, doesn’t have to take any extra steps to get such products listed.

“We just sell directly to the military retailers and ship to their distribution centers,” he said. But small companies have no such infrastructure. Kellerman said his “dream from the get-go” has been to gain AAFES placement for Heritage. “That’s the only way we can get any of our bottles overseas,” and into the hands of “our warriors that these [labels] are honoring and celebrating,” he said. 

But the problem is that Heritage Distilling does most of its sales through e-commerce, rather than the traditional—and much more resource-intensive—three-tier system that puts physical products onto store shelves. This system, which takes different forms in each individual state, separates suppliers like distilleries from retail buyers by mandating that a distributor or wholesaler serve as middleman. In so-called control states, like North Carolina, the state operates as the distributor and/or retailer. AAFES maintains a separate system, though it uses local sales trends to inform what gets stocked in Class Six stores.

“[AAFES] doesn’t want to bring in anything that doesn’t have demand, and their metric for demand is based on store shelves,” Kellerman explained. “We’re very slowly getting some of our Salute Series into the three-tier distribution system, but the e-commerce platform, which is doing great, has no meaning to them at all. So, we just keep running up against the wall.”

Far-reaching Potential

Brad and Jessica Halling are both veterans with longstanding, and outstanding, ties to Fort Bragg; Brad is a retired sergeant major in Special Operations Command who lost a leg in the Battle of Mogadishu—the clash depicted in the 2001 movie Black Hawk Down—while Jessica is a retired colonel who served as staff judge advocate for Joint Special Operations Command. 

The couple opened their distillery, BHAWK, in Southern Pines to stay close to the heart of the Sandhills military community. But while active-duty soldiers, veterans, military families, and civilians have embraced the company, they’ve had less luck with AAFES.

“We tried to get details right so we would actually be and believed to be ambassadors of the Fort Bragg community, of Moore County, and of North Carolina,” Jessica said.

BHAWK, the acronym for Brad Halling American Whiskey Ko., is still in its early stages, launching its first products in February 2024. It has managed to secure placement at Fort Bragg’s Class Six stores, though its proprietor declined to discuss details about the brand’s AAFES agreement or sales figures. 

The company’s Sergeant’s Valor bourbon and rye and Madame Colonel gin, vodka, and pistachio bourbon cream liqueur are often featured in prominent displays at Bragg, sometimes flanked by banners that explain the founders’ backgrounds and the distillery story. Now they’re hoping to expand their availability to other military installations. Camp Lejeune began offering BHAWK products just this month.

“It’s an expensive business, and your resources need to be consolidated in one place,” Jessica said. “We’re still very much a startup. Stretching too thin could be very dangerous for us.”

Getting wider AAFES distribution could be game-changing for BHAWK and other veteran-owned spirits companies. Neil of Horse Soldier points to AAFES’ international reach as especially valuable.

“Be ready for success once you’re in and behind the AAFES wall,” he said. 

Considering the challenges many former servicemembers face in the civilian work world, Neil believes AAFES leadership should get behind their small businesses. He wants customers to pour Horse Soldier, or other veteran-owned spirits—when toasting safe homecomings and swapping old stories.

Susannah Skiver Barton serves as spirits columnist for The Food Section and as a freelance critic and journalist. She lives in Fayetteville with her family and the state’s best whiskey collection. More at susannahskiverbarton.com.