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42 min Mélanie Masarin grew up in Lyon, one of the world’s great food cities, cooking with her grandparents in the south of France. She went on to build the offline experience at Glossier and consult for Sweetgreen — but it was a trip to Italy that crystallized the idea behind Ghia.
“I’d been complaining for years that there was nothing grown-up to drink when I wasn’t drinking,” she says. Ghia, the non-alcoholic aperitif she launched in 2020, is her answer: dry, bitter, and herbal — “a sober equal to a Campari,” not a mocktail.
The launch nearly didn’t survive. Her restaurant-first strategy collapsed when the pandemic shut dining rooms overnight, forcing a hard pivot to selling direct online — glass bottles and all.
“The value of our beverage is not in its ethanol content.”
“I’d love to buy a fast car, but I really want Ghia to be a timeless brand.”
“9% of our bottles exploded in transit. That’s a soul-crushing number when your margins are as low as ours were.”
“You can really tell when a brand is fabricated.”
Founder & CEO of Ghia, a 0.0% ABV aperitif
Previously: Glossier (offline) and Dig Inn
Grew up in Lyon, France
In 150+ top restaurants within two years
Scaled from 1,200-bottle batches to 50,000+
Launched DTC during the pandemic pivot
The ex-Glossier exec making booze-free drinking grown-up
How Ghia became the “Campari of non-alcoholic”
Inside Ghia’s pandemic pivot from restaurants to DTC
Why Mélanie Masarin is building for timeless, not trendy
00:00 Growing up with food in Lyon
04:02 Glossier, Sweetgreen & the Italy spark
08:23 Inventing a non-alcoholic aperitivo
13:30 The pandemic pivot to DTC
18:12 First production-run challenges
28:13 Designing a timeless brand
33:45 The week 9% of bottles exploded
Subject: Mélanie Masarin — founder/CEO, Ghia (0.0% ABV aperitif)
Angles:
• Category creation — making a market that didn’t exist
• Pandemic pivot — restaurants to DTC overnight
• Brand as moat — “timeless, not trendy”
• Operations — hands-on production, exploding bottles
Import any YouTube video, X or TikTok clip, LinkedIn video, or podcast, and get an instant, accurate transcript to quote from. It’s not just the interviews you record — it’s every public source you need for a story, right at your fingertips. Your own Zoom, phone, and in-person interviews come in the same way.
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Castmagic produces speaker-labeled transcripts that keep names, numbers, and quotes verbatim — built for reporting where the exact words matter. Jump straight to the moment of any quote.
Yes — build a template for each kind of piece you write (feature, profile, Q&A, pitch) in your voice and house style, and Castmagic turns any interview into a publish-ready draft in that exact shape. You stay the writer; it handles the first pass and the transcribing.
Yes — every interview you record becomes a searchable archive, so you can find a quote or fact from months ago in seconds and build on your past reporting.
Yes — import any YouTube, X, TikTok, Instagram, or LinkedIn video, or a podcast, and Castmagic transcribes it so you can pull quotes and facts from any public source. Your own Zoom, phone, and in-person interviews work the same way.
Castmagic — it transcribes any interview (or any social media video) with speaker labels in minutes, pulls quotes with timestamps, and drafts your story in your format and voice, so you spend your time reporting, not transcribing.
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