Claudia Hoyser is a country music social media sensation whose career just keeps expanding.
Besides entertaining 354,000 followers on Facebook with weekly music videos along with 13,000 followers on YouTube, Hoyser has her own line of coffee being sold at Tops along with other retail outlets around the nation and now her name is on a new whiskey-coffee blend.
On June 25 she headlines a concert at The Ridge NY in Le Roy, which will also be a release party for her debut album (it's also her birthday).
The Rochester-based singer and songwriter said the endorsement deals for the coffee and whiskey are a one-thing-leads-to-another tale that involves fans loving her music and bringing her ideas.
"So the story of the coffee whiskey goes that we've been creating these videos every week and on Monday we put them out on Facebook, a classic country cover," she said. In the videos, we put a little vintage espresso pot in all of them. Coffee has always been one of my things. It's always been one of my manager's things. We never start the day without it at the studio. The videos went viral. We've had over 120 million views on the video series on my Facebook page."
At a show in Rochester, Hoyser could see her manager, Tony Gross, and the bar owner, Bucky Montrois, in the back of the room with their heads together like they were planning something. Hoyser said she was so curious about what they were scheming, it was hard to concentrate on the words of her songs. After the show, Montrois told her besides the bar, he owned a coffee business.
He asked if Hoyser would like her own brand of coffee.
"The next week he came out to the studio with beans from all over the world and we taste-tested different blends of different roasts," Hoyser said. "We came out with this for the country coffee, which I thought was going to be a short-lived product, you know, for the merch table. But it just went crazy and started shipping into 15 countries and selling Tops Markets took it in 120 Tops stores and a whole bunch of local retailers. Now it's on Amazon now and everything. So people just love the coffee."
That includes a couple of Hoyser's fans in Idaho who own a distillery. They suggested the whiskey-coffee blend.
Hoyser was at Mr. Wine and Liquor on Thursday to promote Hoyser Country Drunken Bean Classic Coffee Whiskey.
"It has just taken off (since its release) four weeks ago," Hoyser said. "It's already in 125 retail locations and we've been out doing some sampling. These things are going really well. It's been fun."
For more about Claudia Hoyser, click here. For tickets to the concert at The Ridge, click here.
Hoyser at Mr. Wine and Liquor with Batavia resident Sally Bleier.
The video for Hoyser's first single off her new album, "Wicked."
