Two truckloads of Sammy Hagar and celebrity chef partner Guy Fieri's Santo Tequila have been hijacked in Laredo, Texas.
Fieri tells People, "We've worked so hard. This is our best year we've ever had in Santo. We just had all this momentum, and now whatever's on the shelf is all people are going to get."
To try and make up the shortfall going into the holidays, the company's distiller in Mexico is "on a 24/7 schedule right now."
And Santo president Dan Butkus adds, "Our distiller is an independent distiller who's dependent on our sales for his livelihood and that of his team. My sales team, my marketing team, the entire Santo Spirits team is dependent upon these sales...
"This is the strangest thing I've ever seen in the spirits industry in over 25 years. I've never seen anything like this. Two of our trucks, four days apart, to be stolen, it's so out of the ordinary, out of the norm, that we're wondering why our trucks may have been targeted."
One truck was headed to California and the other to Pennsylvania.
Butkus adds, "It's unlikely that they'll find these truckers. They probably rent the truck, get the bid, get the cargo, sell it and then disappear. There are some phone lines we have from them that are already disconnected."
The trucks were transporting 4040 cases of tequila -- 24,240 bottles -- with a value of around $1 million. They had Blanco, Reposado and a specially-made extra Añejo, which took 39 months to create. Fieri says they're planning to offer a $10,000 reward leading to information regarding the Añejo "because it's like the crown jewel of the company, something that we've been working on. You can't reproduce something that takes four years to make."
Fieri compares the heist to the mafia robbing $5.875 million in money and jewels from the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York on December 11th, 1978. "It's like a movie -- I never in a million years thought this was coming down the pike like this, but it's real."
We reached out to Sammy who tells us, "For a growing company like Santo, it's really a shame for something like this to happen in the middle of our strongest year to date and right before the holidays! Anyone that knows business knows that this is a gigantic setback for any independently-owned company in a hugely competitive market. But Guy and I are not the type to sit back and whine over spilled tequila. Our distillery is working day and night right now to replace as much stock as we can. Most of all, we're glad that nobody was hurt. We count our blessings and wish everyone out there a happy holiday season with family and friends. P.S. It looks like somebody knows good tequila."