The Good Life With Eveline “Evvy” Gnabasik Bethune
Written by Doug Goodnough
On the home page of the Coastal Bend Distilling Company website, one is greeted with “Everything you need to live the good life, is right here.”
“Right here” for Eveline “Evvy” Gnabasik Bethune, ’09, and her family is in the sleepy southern Texas town of Beeville, Texas, a town of approximately 14,000 people nestled between Corpus Christi and San Antonio.
The distillery that Bethune and her husband, Kenneth, opened in 2016 on the back side of downtown Beeville looks like a typical pole barn. But what’s on the inside is so much more. The building was engineered to ensure safety during the distilling process. Custom-made equipment must be constantly maintained to safeguard quality. And hiring the right people to properly make the product, market, and distribute it is essential. That doesn’t include the myriad state regulations that need to be followed. In other words, owning, operating, and growing a business like Coastal Bend is a daunting task.
Fortunately for Evvy and Kenneth, they are up to it.
“This is my husband’s brainchild. He developed the idea in college,” said Evvy, who met Kenneth at the Oklahoma City University School of Law through an online Catholic dating site. “We’ve kind of built it from absolutely nothing to what it is now.”
They both may be trained and educated in law, but they are every bit the entrepreneurs.
Coastal Bend opened just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which Evvy said almost derailed their plans.
“We finally got the ball rolling and COVID happened,” she said. “(Texas Governor Greg) Abbott classified distilleries as bars, so we were completely shut down. We couldn’t have anybody in the building. Fortunately, we were able to manufacture hand sanitizer, but that only lasted five or six weeks before the actual hand sanitizer industry caught up. It was brutal.”
However, they persisted, with some help. Evvy’s close college friend and Pi Beta Phi sister, Lindsay Horton, ’09, lived in the area and came on board, managing Coastal Bend’s marketing and distribution. The Bethunes enlisted a local brewer who they call a “mad scientist.” He helps distill the company’s spirits, including their signature Liveoak Vodka, Lucky Star Gin, and Colonel Fannin’s Whiskey.
With the pandemic now behind them, the business is beginning to grow.
“Our vodka is our biggest brand by far,” said Evvy of their Liveoak brand. “We have to invest in ourselves and do most of the legwork. It’s a long process. If you are bringing a new product to market, it takes a lot of convincing people that, ‘Hey, this is worth picking up, this is worth investing your money in.’”
It takes every bit of the couple’s legal expertise to navigate all the regulations involved in running a distillery. From working with distributors to expanding into other states (Coastal Bend has recently moved into Sarasota, Florida), it takes persistence, tenacity, and the ability to take risks.
“We’ve made really good progress,” Evvy said.
Kenneth, who is a passionate sports fan—especially soccer—has tied the business to sports marketing. They are part owners of a Tier 4 soccer club in England called the Sutton United Football Club.
“It’s pretty awesome,” Evvy said. “It’s relatively easy and less expensive to get into soccer. And we’ve met people there.”
They also helped start the Sarasota Paradise, a pre-professional soccer team that kicked off its inaugural season in June. Coastal Bend also sponsors several other sports teams, including the San Antonio Missions professional baseball team and the NBA G League’s Rio Grande Valley Vipers.
The couple has an ultimate goal for Coastal Bend.
“Our goal is to get bought by somebody much larger,” Evvy said. “That’s our purpose. If we get bought, we get paid, and we go back to the drawing board.”
While helping to make her husband’s dream a reality, Evvy is pursuing a couple of her own. Besides being a mother to their eight-year-old son and five-year-old daughter, she is also building an “empire” in real estate, according to her husband. She owns several commercial and residential properties.
She thought her speech degree from Hillsdale put her on a path to becoming a lawyer. Although she stayed on that path to complete her law degree, she “hated every second of it.”
“I thought I could make a good living, and I was good at it,” said Evvy, who received a full scholarship to attend law school, which is a rare occurrence. “But what I really wanted to do when I graduated from Hillsdale was to go get a Ph.D. in rhetoric and be a college professor.”
Completing her doctorate from Claremont Graduate University in 2021, she first taught political science classes at the local community college and is now at Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas. Evvy said she has hopes of one day making that full time.
After studying Mandarin in law school, she became fascinated with Chinese law and culture. Evvy spent a year in Great Britain, completing a master’s degree in Chinese Studies at the University of Glasgow. She considered moving to China to teach English, but her engagement to Kenneth meant coming home to raise a family. They decided to move to be near Kenneth’s family in Texas, where he could take care of his ailing father and his family’s business interests.
Evvy said she eventually embraced the “Strength Rejoices in the Challenge” motto during her time at Hillsdale College. When she arrived on the Hillsdale campus “sight unseen” as a Grewcock Scholar from Omaha, Nebraska, she almost didn’t stay.
“A month in, I wanted to leave,” said Evvy, who struggled to establish herself socially within the Hillsdale community.
However, when she joined the Pi Beta Phi sorority, things quickly changed.
“Joining Pi Phi fixed everything,” said Evvy, who eventually was elected sorority president. “I just truly felt like I had a real college experience. We had so much fun. I had such good friends.”
Evvy said she relished the Introduction to the Constitution class with Dr. Mickey Craig, who is “everything a college professor should be. He’s not there to show you how smart he is. He knows he’s smart.”
She said she also now appreciates all the spirited conversations she had with Hillsdale President Dr. Larry Arnn during her time as a student.
“I love Dr. Arnn,” she said. “I was very loud about my opinions (of the College). I look back now, and that’s what college should be.…It was just a wonderful place. It’s one of the few places where the inmates don’t run the asylum.”
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Published in July 2023