The New American Dream
Role:
Creator
Producer

Modmix Beverages - Pilot 4
Gretchen Nix
California, USA
written by Kristin King-Ries

If you’d seen Gretchen Nix a few years ago her in her surgical scrubs, you might
not have guessed she’d soon launch a successful company making organic cocktail mix.
When Gretchen worked in the OR as a Surgical Physicians Assistant, she and her co-
workers spent a lot of time over ruptured spleens and open hearts chatting about
business opportunities. She lived in Austin during the height of the tech boom and the
papers were full of stories about some guy who started a little company in their
garage and sold it for a million bucks. She and her colleagues told each other, ‘I
could have done that. Pass the scalpel.’

Money from the tech boom flooded into Austin’s restaurants and bars. Designer vodkas
and organic grain-fed beef were hot. People wanted the best of the best. Hip new places
in Austin listed high-end ingredients on the chalkboard under the day’s special. Bars
updated old cocktail recipes from the fifties like Cosmopolitans and Martinis, and the
spirits industry was quick to add premium brands to their lines. A few bars even had chalkboards for specialty drinks featuring fresh produce from the farmers market. This inspired Gretchen to make over-the top cocktails at home. But she quickly learned the
beverage industry forgot to update the mixers. All she could find were dusty bottles of Margarita and Tom Collins mix on the bottom shelf. Gretchen knew lots of health-
conscious people who refused to eat chicken unless they approved of its childhood home
and yet drank high fructose corn syrup, dyes, and artificial flavors because there were
no healthy or premium alternatives. Gretchen thought, ‘I can do better than this.’

Like many of us, Gretchen had tons of ideas that never saw the light of day. So when she
got the idea to create over-the-top drink mixes, she wanted to be sure it had legs. She
spent a year peeling pomegranates, testing recipes made with freshly squeezed juice with
a bit of unrefined cane sugar in her kitchen. She researched the beverage industry in her spare time and realized it wasn’t just her local package store that was behind the times. She’d hit on an untapped market.

To Gretchen, using the best ingredients meant going organic. ‘I wasn’t trying to be
cutting edge or make a “green” or progressive statement.’ Gretchen is Texas born and
raised, and environmentalism wasn’t part of her world growing up. She simply wanted to
make the best product. The people who were willing to pay top dollar for healthy,
organic, great tasting food and alcohol would be willing to do the same for mixers,
and no one was selling.

Once she made the decision to start a business, all she had to do was take the biggest
risk of her life. With no money, no experience, and no connections, she set out to
make her dream a reality. She needed to learn the ins and outs of the one of the most secretive, clubby and competitive industries, the spirits and beverage industry, find
organic suppliers, a certified organic manufacturing plant willing to meet her
standards, design packaging, create a business plan, convince investors, come up with
a marketing strategy, and—you get the picture.  She had to pitch organic mixers to
guys in suits who thought of drinking cocktails as ‘getting polluted’ and convince
them that an expensive product with a short self life would make a sound financial
investment. “They thought the term organic mixer was an oxymoron.” But Gretchen knew
that women make 80% of purchasing decisions in US households, and women would get it.

Gretchen knew how to network to get her business started. She called friends and
friends of friends. Tricia McCracken and Joni Ryan joined her early on, bringing their marketing skills and knowledge of the beverage industry. Gretchen met a blogger at an
organic wine tasting who loved the idea and started plugging Modmix on the internet.
She joined organizations for women in business. Some men in the industry they liked
the idea and helped out as well. Word spread just like in the old shampoo commercial,
‘she told two friends and she told two friends, and so on and so on… ‘

Almost everyone she met with in the industry repeated the discouraging statistic that
99% of new businesses fail. Three women breaking in to the old boy beverage industry
was unheard of. There were days when Gretchen wondered what the hell she was doing.
She still has those days once in a while. “Sometimes I get so stressed out,” Gretchen
says.  She couldn’t have made it happen without her partners and the support she got
from her informal network of friends and bloggers.

Modmix is off to a promising start. They’ve added two more products to their line, the
French Martini and Mojito. A large beverage retailer offers the product in stores
throughout California, and it’s on shelves in Oregon, Washington, Georgia and
Massachusetts. Modmix is also available on a handful of internet stores such as BevMo!
and BTC Elements. MSNBC recently featured their product in a story on green holiday
ideas, and the staffs for Oprah and Martha Stewart’s TV shows have been in contact.
Modmix is still the only USDA certified organic producer of mixers.

What does the future hold? One of the challenges Modmix faces is finding organic
suppliers. They wanted to buy local, or at least from the US, but suppliers told them
it wasn’t possible. There simply aren’t enough organic fruit growers to keep Modmix
supplied year-round. But things are changing. The numbers of organic farms continue to
grow. Another challenge is to reach consumers between the coasts where sales of organic products haven’t caught on in the same way. Midwestern party mavens committed to making
the perfect French Martini can order Modmix online. Pretty soon, Gretchen hopes Modmix
will be coming to your town.