THE OTHERSIDE OF THE COCKTAIL
In recent years, premiumization has set like a cloud over the U.S., leading spirits companies to put more focus on their premium and super-premium offerings. One way to proliferate those sales is through cocktail innovation. As Peter Cressy (president and ceo of DISCUS) told listeners at the Nightclub and Bar Show last week, “thank Carry Bradshaw from Sex and the City.” It’s debatable where the cocktail rebirth stemmed from, but the truth is that it’s here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.
Go to any spirits brand website and you will see a whole host of cocktail recipes that include, of course, the spirits brand in question. Obviously, the alcohol is only one part of the cocktail – juices and other ingredients make up the rest. Natural ingredients, such as fruit and vegetable and other things you would find lying around your home are becoming a popular alternative to the cheap mixers of the past, and have led to a huge wave of diversity in cocktail mixing. As a result, bartenders and now consumers are more willing to try new things.
As we reported yesterday, Nielsen numbers show that the flavored spirits category grew 3% in the 52 weeks to Jan. 13, 2007, with flavored tequila growing the most by a long shot. The fastest growing flavors were lime and cherry.
WSD sat down with Al Williams earlier this week, one of the founders (along with Mark Mahoney) of Creative Juices Inc., producers of Maui Beverage and Mixerz All-Natural Cocktail Mixers. To create Mixerz, Mark and Al traveled to a small test kitchen in Napa Valley to create a product that would bring consumers the best possible cocktail mixer, “using the freshest ingredients to create superior cocktails.”
Their mixers include: Mixerz Bloody Mary, Mixerz Cosmopolitan, Mixerz Mango, Mixerz Margarita, Mixerz Mojito, Mixerz Pomegranate and Mixerz Sour Apple, and go for a suggested retail price of $8.99-$10.99 per 750ml bottle. Let’s see what Al had to say:
Megan Haverkorn: Now that spirits companies are seeing so much escalation in the premium and super-premium segments, one way they’re trying to multiply the growth is by encouraging consumers to trade-up in cocktails. Obviously the mixer plays a huge part in the cocktail, so I want to start off by giving you the floor to basically explain your product and the role it plays in premiumizing the cocktail.
Al Williams: As you can tell the image we’re trying to project is more of a sophisticated look with the glass bottle and simple imagery because it’s going into liquor stores, gourmet specialty stores and going to be especially great for home parties. It will make it easier for the home partier to mix drinks without having to worry about making everything from scratch.
There’s a bit of a wine aspect to the product because we make it in Napa Valley, and part of our idea was to make a mix as good as some of the fine wines here. These kinds of mixers always get downplayed and there really has never been anything of this quality, so mixers have never really gotten the attention they deserve. I’m hoping that our product will get into the spotlight.
MH: So you’re gearing your product to be mixed more with premiums and super-premiums spirits?
AW: Obviously it can be done with anything, but the way I look at it is why mix an upscale spirits with a cheap mix. If you go into a nightclub, or a bar, or a nice restaurant and order a martini, they’ll get a great bottle of vodka, such as Grey Goose, and put it up on the bar next to the shaker, but then they’ll grab a generic juice or fruit, something that you might drink at home with your kids, and then they’ll save fourteen dollars. So that kind of didn’t make sense to me. I thought we’d make something higher quality than some of the juices that are in the supermarkets by offering a product that was made to actually complement the alcohol it’s mixed with.
MH: So you describe the mixer as an all-natural product. What exactly does that mean?
AW: It means that we don’t use any artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. We use mostly fruit juice and fruit puree. For the sugar we use a cane sugar, a dry cane sugar, which is actually better to digest and actually serves as a sort of preservative for the product. A lot of people don’t realize that sugar helps keep the product intact. And it gives it a much cleaner taste so that everything tastes fresh.
MH: It seems like the perfect time to introduce an upscale product like this because of the trading-up phenomenon among consumers.
AW: It’s really interesting. We’ve been working on this for a few years. Our main product line is called Maui Beverages, mauibeverages.com, and it’s a sophisticated premium fruit puree base that is used to make fruit smoothies and frozen cocktails in the food service industry. A lot of the bartenders that we deal with or that we’ve dealt with over the years kept asking us for high end juices or something that was easier or better to use than some of the generic juices that are used now. So we saw the retro-cocktail age taking place at the present time and I think it’s going to be continuing. More people are experimenting with the different flavored vodkas and rums so it will actually enhance our products.
MH: When you say the retro-cocktail age, what do you mean?
AW: Well, what’s been coming back over the past few years is the martini, the gimlets, the shaker drinks in general. Ten years ago you hardly saw those shakers come out and now every bar is doing something with the cocktail. It’s even gotten into the casual dining chains around the country, which is nice to see. Definitely they’re looking for a new profit center but it’s the customer demand that brought about these products. The customer is looking for a healthy product. They’re looking for new and exotic flavors like the pomegranate. They’re really interested in flavors from all over the world so we’re going to start introducing more flavors as we grow. Right now we have seven in the line.
MH: I just got back from the nightclub and bar show last week where Peter Cressy (president and chief of DISCUS) was talking about how the spirits industry is encouraging bartenders to use natural ingredients in their cocktails. What is it about the natural mixer that makes the cocktail so much more appealing?
AW: I think it’s just what has evolved over the last 10-15 years. We came through the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s with so much junk food, eventually increasing everyone’s health concerns over obesity, glucose levels, and high-fructose corn syrup. They keep finding out about non-dairy powders and artificial sweeteners, I mean there is a report every week about the health problems associated with these products. People are just getting sick of experimenting with things that are made quickly or are mass-produced, and they know there are going to be repercussions in the long run. They’re interested in how they look on the outside, as well as inside. I think a lot of people are saying, ‘hey, let’s eat healthier so we don’t have to deal with those things.’
MH: You know, red wine has exploded in the past couple of months –
AW: Must be great to hear if you like wine.
MH: Absolutely. I think this is a great opportunity for the spirits and the mixer businesses to get in on the health craze.
AW: I agree. We’ve been working on this and putting together ideas for a few years on what would be the best product to make, and instead of languishing for hours over what we should do, we decided, ‘Let’s get back to the basics. Let’s get back to what a drink is really supposed to be.’ And that’s using fresh juices and everything that’s real so you can taste all the flavors as opposed to, I’d say, 95% of the mixers on the shelf today that are using artificial flavors and colors, and it’s probably because they wanted to make them cheaply. But if I want to pay an extra 15 cents to make a martini that’s natural I think it’s worth it.
MH: Right. What is your most popular flavor at the moment?
AW: Well, we just launched a new product at the Fancy Food Show in L.A. and the response has been tremendous. We had some great response at the Nightclub and Bar Show also. The top flavors are looking like Margarita, which has always been a staple, and if you look on our site you can see some of the ingredients we use in our products. Bloody Mary I think is going to be a popular one, and I know there’s a million Bloody Mary mixers out there, but we found a way to make a Bloody Mary in a bottle that tastes as good or better than if you made it at home from scratch. We use a thick California tomato and all the right ingredients and we also take some of the aged wine barrels from the vineyards and we put in a homemade Worcestershire sauce that we’ve developed, age that and then add it to the Bloody Mary. It’s pretty damn great. And it’s nice and thick so it can withstand the ice and the alcohol as opposed to a lot of Bloody Mary mixers that after you add everything it just taste like pepper and water.
MH: It sounds great.
AW: Other popular flavors include the Mojito, which I think is going to be pretty popular. Yeah, the rum companies are pushing it and it’s becoming one of the more popular flavors. The mojito is a tough one to put in a bottle because most bartenders muddle mint, squeeze lemon, add cane sugar and then add soda water, so how do you put that in a bottle? What we did was we used a key lime puree, cane sugar of course, and we steeped mint leaves in huge tea bags, and steeped them overnight before adding the rum the next day. Before we drain it we add a little bit of peppermint extract to boost the potency, then we drain it and it really brings out all the oils and flavors of the mint and it tastes just like you muddled the mint. It’s really delicious.
MH: Are your mixers available only in California?
AW: No, we just manufacture in Napa Valley and we make it in 200-gallon kettles to control the quality, but we are working on selling the product nationwide and we have an export partner who is at the Japan FOODEX Show right now. The Japanese love products from the U.S. and from Napa Valley even more, so they’re very excited about the mixers over there. In the next few months, from the calls we get, it’s going to be pretty interesting.
MH: Are you going to be geared more towards on-premise or off-premise or equal?
AW: I want to keep the brand image up. I’m not going to bastardize the product by sending it to any Tom, Dick and Harry that wants it, like the discount stores or anything – I don’t think that makes sense. I want to keep it in specialty retail stores. I want to put a big push on that. I have been receiving a lot of calls from liquor distributors. I think they see the potential of pairing it with high-end spirits. So I think that is going to be happening also.
MH: Sounds like a great and interesting product and I appreciate the chance to get to talk with you. Is there anything else you’d like to go over?
AW: Well, my partner and I started this company several years ago and as I said the Maui product has really done well in the food service side and so we thought we’d take a stab at the retail business. We’ve found that dealing with the people on the retail side is just a different animal; it’s really great. They really care about the products that they buy from you. I’m not talking about the high-end user, I’m talking about distributors and chains. It’s really interesting seeing that because it’s nice to be appreciated for the quality of the products we put out. People actually understand and see that we put a lot of effort into making these products, especially at the shows, it’s nice to see firsthand.
Go to any spirits brand website and you will see a whole host of cocktail recipes that include, of course, the spirits brand in question. Obviously, the alcohol is only one part of the cocktail – juices and other ingredients make up the rest. Natural ingredients, such as fruit and vegetable and other things you would find lying around your home are becoming a popular alternative to the cheap mixers of the past, and have led to a huge wave of diversity in cocktail mixing. As a result, bartenders and now consumers are more willing to try new things.
As we reported yesterday, Nielsen numbers show that the flavored spirits category grew 3% in the 52 weeks to Jan. 13, 2007, with flavored tequila growing the most by a long shot. The fastest growing flavors were lime and cherry.
WSD sat down with Al Williams earlier this week, one of the founders (along with Mark Mahoney) of Creative Juices Inc., producers of Maui Beverage and Mixerz All-Natural Cocktail Mixers. To create Mixerz, Mark and Al traveled to a small test kitchen in Napa Valley to create a product that would bring consumers the best possible cocktail mixer, “using the freshest ingredients to create superior cocktails.”
Their mixers include: Mixerz Bloody Mary, Mixerz Cosmopolitan, Mixerz Mango, Mixerz Margarita, Mixerz Mojito, Mixerz Pomegranate and Mixerz Sour Apple, and go for a suggested retail price of $8.99-$10.99 per 750ml bottle. Let’s see what Al had to say:
Megan Haverkorn: Now that spirits companies are seeing so much escalation in the premium and super-premium segments, one way they’re trying to multiply the growth is by encouraging consumers to trade-up in cocktails. Obviously the mixer plays a huge part in the cocktail, so I want to start off by giving you the floor to basically explain your product and the role it plays in premiumizing the cocktail.
Al Williams: As you can tell the image we’re trying to project is more of a sophisticated look with the glass bottle and simple imagery because it’s going into liquor stores, gourmet specialty stores and going to be especially great for home parties. It will make it easier for the home partier to mix drinks without having to worry about making everything from scratch.
There’s a bit of a wine aspect to the product because we make it in Napa Valley, and part of our idea was to make a mix as good as some of the fine wines here. These kinds of mixers always get downplayed and there really has never been anything of this quality, so mixers have never really gotten the attention they deserve. I’m hoping that our product will get into the spotlight.
MH: So you’re gearing your product to be mixed more with premiums and super-premiums spirits?
AW: Obviously it can be done with anything, but the way I look at it is why mix an upscale spirits with a cheap mix. If you go into a nightclub, or a bar, or a nice restaurant and order a martini, they’ll get a great bottle of vodka, such as Grey Goose, and put it up on the bar next to the shaker, but then they’ll grab a generic juice or fruit, something that you might drink at home with your kids, and then they’ll save fourteen dollars. So that kind of didn’t make sense to me. I thought we’d make something higher quality than some of the juices that are in the supermarkets by offering a product that was made to actually complement the alcohol it’s mixed with.
MH: So you describe the mixer as an all-natural product. What exactly does that mean?
AW: It means that we don’t use any artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. We use mostly fruit juice and fruit puree. For the sugar we use a cane sugar, a dry cane sugar, which is actually better to digest and actually serves as a sort of preservative for the product. A lot of people don’t realize that sugar helps keep the product intact. And it gives it a much cleaner taste so that everything tastes fresh.
MH: It seems like the perfect time to introduce an upscale product like this because of the trading-up phenomenon among consumers.
AW: It’s really interesting. We’ve been working on this for a few years. Our main product line is called Maui Beverages, mauibeverages.com, and it’s a sophisticated premium fruit puree base that is used to make fruit smoothies and frozen cocktails in the food service industry. A lot of the bartenders that we deal with or that we’ve dealt with over the years kept asking us for high end juices or something that was easier or better to use than some of the generic juices that are used now. So we saw the retro-cocktail age taking place at the present time and I think it’s going to be continuing. More people are experimenting with the different flavored vodkas and rums so it will actually enhance our products.
MH: When you say the retro-cocktail age, what do you mean?
AW: Well, what’s been coming back over the past few years is the martini, the gimlets, the shaker drinks in general. Ten years ago you hardly saw those shakers come out and now every bar is doing something with the cocktail. It’s even gotten into the casual dining chains around the country, which is nice to see. Definitely they’re looking for a new profit center but it’s the customer demand that brought about these products. The customer is looking for a healthy product. They’re looking for new and exotic flavors like the pomegranate. They’re really interested in flavors from all over the world so we’re going to start introducing more flavors as we grow. Right now we have seven in the line.
MH: I just got back from the nightclub and bar show last week where Peter Cressy (president and chief of DISCUS) was talking about how the spirits industry is encouraging bartenders to use natural ingredients in their cocktails. What is it about the natural mixer that makes the cocktail so much more appealing?
AW: I think it’s just what has evolved over the last 10-15 years. We came through the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s with so much junk food, eventually increasing everyone’s health concerns over obesity, glucose levels, and high-fructose corn syrup. They keep finding out about non-dairy powders and artificial sweeteners, I mean there is a report every week about the health problems associated with these products. People are just getting sick of experimenting with things that are made quickly or are mass-produced, and they know there are going to be repercussions in the long run. They’re interested in how they look on the outside, as well as inside. I think a lot of people are saying, ‘hey, let’s eat healthier so we don’t have to deal with those things.’
MH: You know, red wine has exploded in the past couple of months –
AW: Must be great to hear if you like wine.
MH: Absolutely. I think this is a great opportunity for the spirits and the mixer businesses to get in on the health craze.
AW: I agree. We’ve been working on this and putting together ideas for a few years on what would be the best product to make, and instead of languishing for hours over what we should do, we decided, ‘Let’s get back to the basics. Let’s get back to what a drink is really supposed to be.’ And that’s using fresh juices and everything that’s real so you can taste all the flavors as opposed to, I’d say, 95% of the mixers on the shelf today that are using artificial flavors and colors, and it’s probably because they wanted to make them cheaply. But if I want to pay an extra 15 cents to make a martini that’s natural I think it’s worth it.
MH: Right. What is your most popular flavor at the moment?
AW: Well, we just launched a new product at the Fancy Food Show in L.A. and the response has been tremendous. We had some great response at the Nightclub and Bar Show also. The top flavors are looking like Margarita, which has always been a staple, and if you look on our site you can see some of the ingredients we use in our products. Bloody Mary I think is going to be a popular one, and I know there’s a million Bloody Mary mixers out there, but we found a way to make a Bloody Mary in a bottle that tastes as good or better than if you made it at home from scratch. We use a thick California tomato and all the right ingredients and we also take some of the aged wine barrels from the vineyards and we put in a homemade Worcestershire sauce that we’ve developed, age that and then add it to the Bloody Mary. It’s pretty damn great. And it’s nice and thick so it can withstand the ice and the alcohol as opposed to a lot of Bloody Mary mixers that after you add everything it just taste like pepper and water.
MH: It sounds great.
AW: Other popular flavors include the Mojito, which I think is going to be pretty popular. Yeah, the rum companies are pushing it and it’s becoming one of the more popular flavors. The mojito is a tough one to put in a bottle because most bartenders muddle mint, squeeze lemon, add cane sugar and then add soda water, so how do you put that in a bottle? What we did was we used a key lime puree, cane sugar of course, and we steeped mint leaves in huge tea bags, and steeped them overnight before adding the rum the next day. Before we drain it we add a little bit of peppermint extract to boost the potency, then we drain it and it really brings out all the oils and flavors of the mint and it tastes just like you muddled the mint. It’s really delicious.
MH: Are your mixers available only in California?
AW: No, we just manufacture in Napa Valley and we make it in 200-gallon kettles to control the quality, but we are working on selling the product nationwide and we have an export partner who is at the Japan FOODEX Show right now. The Japanese love products from the U.S. and from Napa Valley even more, so they’re very excited about the mixers over there. In the next few months, from the calls we get, it’s going to be pretty interesting.
MH: Are you going to be geared more towards on-premise or off-premise or equal?
AW: I want to keep the brand image up. I’m not going to bastardize the product by sending it to any Tom, Dick and Harry that wants it, like the discount stores or anything – I don’t think that makes sense. I want to keep it in specialty retail stores. I want to put a big push on that. I have been receiving a lot of calls from liquor distributors. I think they see the potential of pairing it with high-end spirits. So I think that is going to be happening also.
MH: Sounds like a great and interesting product and I appreciate the chance to get to talk with you. Is there anything else you’d like to go over?
AW: Well, my partner and I started this company several years ago and as I said the Maui product has really done well in the food service side and so we thought we’d take a stab at the retail business. We’ve found that dealing with the people on the retail side is just a different animal; it’s really great. They really care about the products that they buy from you. I’m not talking about the high-end user, I’m talking about distributors and chains. It’s really interesting seeing that because it’s nice to be appreciated for the quality of the products we put out. People actually understand and see that we put a lot of effort into making these products, especially at the shows, it’s nice to see firsthand.
posted at 1:26 PM
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