Why Fitzcarraldo?

Operator Advantage

David Schroeder started his career in the breweries of Europe, then on an Austin, TX craft brewery floor. He evolved from packaging to cellaring to Head Brewer, scaling production at Independence Brewing Company from 2,500 to 11,000 barrels. He then moved to R&D at Third Coast Coffee Roasting, where he developed one of the earliest commercially available nitro cold brew products — before the category had a name, before the equipment was standardized, before anyone knew if consumers would buy it. (They did.)

From there, a decade at Diageo with the Guinness portfolio — and a decade of solving problems no one else had put a name to. He invented the Mountain Spout, a pour mechanism designed for high-altitude venues where the physics of carbonation work against you. He built Guinness Genius, a web-based app that distilled his entire knowledge of draft systems into a video-guided decision tree for field reps & bartenders — every clip filmed himself, every failure scenario mapped. He launched Guinness is Good for Food, an advertising campaign reviving classic vintage Guinness ads that positioned Guinness for entirely new channels of business. And he designed one of the most ambitious distributor engagement initiatives in the entire alcohol industry — piloted with Reyes before being scaled nationwide.

Today, David brings that same instinct to emerging categories through Fitzcarraldo, his agile FMCG consultancy — most recently navigating the extraction technology, dosage calibration, regulatory complexity, and multi-state channel requirements that make THC-infused beverages one of the hardest product development challenges in the industry.

Every company he's worked with had a complicated problem that no one could solve. He solved it.

Why “Fitzcarraldo”?

That's where the namesake and our logo comes from — an impossible dream captured in a 1982 film depicting a steamboat being pulled up a mountain, and then down the rapids of the Amazon. The impossible dream of not only the fictional character, but the filmmaker himself. Werner Herzog actually did pull a real steamboat up a mountain for the movie — the impossible dream within a dream. If you're building something new, you want someone who has done it before on your side. David has scaled startup and corporate mountains — formulation, branding, and sales — so you don't have to. Let's talk about your impossible dream, your boat up the mountain. We just need to know: “What’s your Fitzcarraldo?”