Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday. Sign up for our free newsletter.

When Felix Chen and Rudy Pham’s episode of Dragons’ Den aired a few weeks ago, it may have seemed like a spur-of-the-moment thing, put on by a couple of dudes with a dream, complete with dancers and music and confetti. 

But the episode, which was actually shot in May, was years in the making and was the result of a ton of research and preparation. 

It all started when Chen and Pham met each other through a mutual friend. 

“We hit it off, and at the time I was looking for someone to go travel with, so I kind of just threw it out there,” says Chen. “Over the next week, we started talking, made a plan, and booked flights.”

The pair went to Mexico and then to the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador and then started hanging out together regularly. In August of 2022, Chen was in charge of the alcohol at a party and was making a cocktail he grew up drinking that featured green tea and cognac. 

“I remember the whole night I wasn’t really drinking, but Felix was like, ‘You have to try this,’” recalls Pham. “I took a sip and was just like, ‘What is this? This is phenomenal.’” 

A month later, while hiking and talking about business ideas, Pham hadn’t forgotten about the cocktail. “I just said, ‘Dude, what about that drink you gave me a month ago? Can we put that in a can and put it everywhere?’”

After some research, the pair didn’t see anything similar on the market. They took six months to learn about how to start an alcoholic beverage company and then dove into the process. A year and a half later, they had a product: a cocktail with cognac, green tea, and honey, called Triple X.O.G. 

Today, they have their cocktails in over 100 private liquor stores in both B.C. and Alberta. And their recent appearance on Dragons’ Den pulled in offers from two different Dragons before they accepted one close to their $1 million valuation from beverage industry maven Manjit Minhas. 

“It was a really cool experience, everything from the first audition to flying out in May to film and all the prep work, everything you have to do,” says Chen. “We watched a whole bunch of episodes of the show, used ChatGPT to quiz ourselves, made sure we had every number dialed. You don’t want to be the person on stage that doesn’t know the answer.”

The episode exploded online on both the company’s and the show’s social media platforms. The duo notes that in the four days after the episode airing, they did about 20 percent of their overall online sales.

“We’re getting so many people from outside B.C.—Quebec, Ontario, the Netherlands, Australia, and Asia—asking where they can buy it and when it’s going to be available,” says Pham. It proves there’s demand or at least interest out there. And so it’s about making sure we take over Canada first and then expand.”