Upon his return to Santiago later that year, Facundo found his store looted and business conditions poor in the wake of the disaster and amid a global slump in sugar, the mainstay of the economy.

Facundo, with the help of a French Cuban named José León Boutellier,[8] a tenant of a building in Santiago owned by Doña Amalia's godmother Clara Astie, began to experiment with methods of distillation.

[1] On February 4, 1862, the partners purchased a distillery on the outskirts of Santiago and constituted the firm "Bacardí, Boutellier, and Company",[9] using capital supplied by Facundo's younger brother José.

After owning a general retail business in Cuba for many years, Facundo Bacardí understood how to sell things, and realized that his innovative rum would benefit from good branding.

Facundo's younger brother José chose to sell his shares, and his sons contributed some of their own capital and bought out most of Boutellier's stake as he declined in health.

While Facundo was staunchly pro-Spanish, having been a member of a Volunteer Battalion in Santiago de Cuba in the 1850s,[10] his sons were in favour of Cuban independence, a cause they openly defended after their father's death.