March First’s Cincinnati Distilling Expands With A Columbus Location

Written By: The Gnarly Gnome
Photography By: The Gnarly Gnome

2/6/2025

Just to make sure we’re all caught up on all of this, Cincinnati Distilling is the distillery arm of March First Brands. This company is not afraid of expansion and is not afraid to think creatively about how to facilitate that expansion. They’ve made that pretty clear over the last few years, and this past winter, they announced a bottle shop in Kenwood Mall that gave us our first peek at what the next phase of that plan might look like.

If you haven’t been, the concept is incredibly simple: a standalone store that showcases the full breadth of the company’s brands. You can swing in while you’re out doing your shopping and stock up on whatever booze products you need. This is especially helpful for holiday shopping. It also gets the brands in front of an entirely new group of customers who might not have ever been to the distillery or one of the members of their brewery family.

With today’s press release, it’s become pretty obvious that they’re moving forward with this new expansion plan… and I’m going to be honest. It’s freaking brilliant.

Heading To Columbus

The real meat of the news is that the distillery is opening the second in a series of standalone bottle shops. This one will be located in Polaris Fashion Place in Columbus, Ohio.

We’ve gotten so used to traditional forms of expansion that we forget that there are many other ways for a brand to expand into a new city and start establishing roots.

Columbus is not unfamiliar with the March First brands, which have long been distributed around the city. However, this move is a whole new ball game for them. This physical location does more than just provide an easy spot for local folks to know they can go to get March first products; it opens the door for their fans to get products that aren’t always available at their state liquor agencies, too.

Even more importantly, it puts the brand right in front of people. Where they eat, where they drink, where they shop. More eyeballs equals more ability for the brand to grow.

Why This Method Is Brilliant

From the consumer perspective, a space like this is great. It becomes a home base if you have a product that you know and love but can’t always get your hands on before it sells out in your favorite liquor store. (Ohio’s liquor laws can sometimes make for a not-so-awesome shopping experience).

That’s not where my mind starts going with this, though, as great as it is.

From the perspective of the company itself, this expansion method opens up a (relatively) easy and inexpensive way for them to set up shop in a new location to start to test the waters… gain some new fans… sell some bottles and explore where their strongest markets are. They aren’t done by any stretch, folks.

In the press release, the distillery points out that it is still actively exploring opportunities to purchase other craft spirits brands that want to grow. It is also planning “other standalone sites yet to be announced.” This method is a strong one, and we haven’t seen the end of it. With that, we certainly haven’t seen the end of March First brands expanding around Cincinnati – and beyond.