Today we’d like to introduce you to Elsa and Chris DeGroot.
Hi Elsa and Chris, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
In 2020 a husband-and-wife team left the corporate world behind to make margaritas… cold press cocktail mixers that is.
Our story was a covid silver lining. Chris worked for American Airlines which, like all airlines, was slammed with the drop in travel. He left as a part of a large org restructure in the summer of 2020 and started working on the research & development of the Tepetán product full time the next day. The very next day after leaving corporate, not a day was wasted. This came so naturally because we had always discussed the topic every Friday night when tediously making our first weekend drink at home, “why has no one bottled a fresh margarita mix that actually taste good?” For years both Chris and I (Elsa) worked full-time jobs, and never took the leap to start something ourselves, but the events of 2020 handed us that chance.
Making fresh cocktails is tedious. But if it doesn’t taste fresh, it’s not worth it. You know when you’ve sipped a fresh-squeezed orange juice; same goes for a margarita. Getting juice out of a piece of fruit, into a bottle, and onto a shelf is at odds with freshness. Most mixers are heat pasteurized and preserved far beyond freshness. We use a more recently commercialized method to achieve safety while helping retain what we love about fresh juices: the taste, color, mouth-feel, and nutrition. After we bottle our mixes, they go into a chamber that is flooded with cold water, creating tons of pressure. The pressure works at the molecular level to eliminate the bad while helping retain the good. We juice and mix, keeping everything as fresh as possible so that you can choose a well-made cocktail over a glass of beer or wine during your at-home happy hour.
I (Elsa) in 2020 was a full-time parent to our two daughters, then 3 and 2 years old. In January of 2021, after Chris had fully explored recipes and preservation processes, I started running with the business as we moved from developing the product into more branding, sales, and marketing, which is my background. Chris developed financial models, accounting, product development, and all the science that goes into our mixers. Our friends lovingly called him “beaker” because for months our kitchen looked like a lab. I was an eager taste tester on a daily basis but was most engaged & excited when we started the branding process.
One night in January of 2021 after putting both our daughters to bed, I came down to our kitchen to find Chris heading into a long night of juicing limes, oranges, cucumbers, mint, and jalapeños. I saw the mounds of fruit and started chopping alongside him. Fast-forward 12 hours later, we are still awake and in the High Pressure Processing facility with 330 unlabeled test bottles of our first batch of mixers. This was when it all clicked for me. If this taste great, we had created a new product that others must try. Chris’ goal for that first run was to measure pH levels, longevity of the product, and packaging. Meanwhile, I was recording the process for my personal Instagram and already thinking of the list of friends I could contact to try it to give us feedback. That week our roles were defined and today we split the business based on our strengths.
We moved out of our home kitchen after several gallons of spilled lime juice plus a few tears & moved into a shared commercial kitchen still in Oak Cliff. On May 23, 2021, we sold our first bottle at a pop-up market hosted by the owners of Another Round, who enthusiastically supported us in our local community. Two days later, we were stocked at our first retail store, Biagio Wine & Spirits in Victory Park. The team there has always been our cheerleaders and sells a ton of our product to this day! Our first retail break was thanks to a friend who made the introduction & is part-owner of Socorro Tequila. The genuine support and connections people made for us those first few months is what gave us fuel to work long hours while still managing a home with young children.
After 9 months of selling, we are now in over 25 retailer stores (soon to be over 32 stores) and few restaurants in the Dallas Ft Worth area. We have a long long way to go but are encouraged by the response. We are building out our own production kitchen space with bigger and better equipment to keep up with our margarita-loving fans.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has been scary leaving a steady job behind, so the struggles are more about maintaining perspective. Other struggles are things that cause a momentary panic but we get through; things like large juicers breaking in the middle of a big production day. Aside from operational challenges that a small batch production business faces, our greatest struggle is finding balance.
Tepetán is now our third child. It is part of our daily conversations, demands attention around the clock, and is growing beautifully but not without some pains. Going from a somewhat predictable schedule to an entrepreneurial lifestyle with two preschool-age kids is a lot of work. We love making a product that is carving out a new space in the cocktail mixer category, but it comes with 18–20-hour workdays some weeks. We carry a running mental load as parents on daily tasks both for our immediate family and for our new mixer baby. At times we manage what we see in front of us that week, so to be able to keep all the balls in the air, but as anyone starting a business knows, one is bound to drop. Some days it can be we are short a hand in the kitchen and other times we realize we have forgotten to feed our dog all day.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We make cocktail mixers from cold-pressed juices for a super-fresh tasting cocktail without all the work. You know when you’ve tasted fresh-squeezed orange juice; the same is true for a margarita.
We really like margaritas but often drink a beer or glass of wine at home because it’s easier than squeezing limes and making simple syrup much less adding more adventurous ingredients. Most cocktail mixers are heat pasteurized, processed, and preserved and they taste that way. This may be okay for a Superbowl party when you want options, but not okay for a Wednesday night transition from work to family and friends. We didn’t see anyone else solving our “problem” so we decided to do it for ourselves.
The answer to our question of “why isn’t anyone doing this” turned out to be because it’s hard. The pasteurizing and preserving is done to ensure safety (an FDA requirement) and hold a consistent flavor for longer, making it viable for retail distribution. The processes are common and cheap which is why these mixers are so prevalent.
We weren’t going to start the business if it that was our only option. Fortunately, we learned about a more recently commercialized method to meet our safety standards while retaining the flavor and brightness of fresh juices. After we bottle our mixes, they go into a chamber that is flooded with cold water, and then more and more cold water is forced in which creates tons of pressure. The bottle isn’t feeling the pressure so much as the molecules both inside and outside the bottle. This lasts for 3 minutes. And that’s it. The potential bad things are eliminated but the good things that give rise to flavor and nutrition are largely retained. We worked with a university lab on shelf-life studies and have been very happy with the results.
We don’t leave it to just that process though. We also inspect our fruit at least a couple of times before juicing and are crazy about keeping our juices cold and with minimal exposure to oxygen so that they’re as close to fresh as possible when we bottle our mixes.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
That’s a great question for us. I (Elsa) was excited about the idea but also thought (maybe hoped?) it might pass and we’d go back to the security of paying jobs and predictable schedules. We have young kids and a mortgage so the stakes feel high. Now that the business is real, it comes down to how we manage the risk. We’re constantly trying to figure out how to do more with less in the business, which I think is common to any entrepreneur. This isn’t one big bet but rather a series of smaller bets where we’re doing everything; we can improve our odds.
We took a small bet on a juicer, that one led to a couple more. Each investment we make in equipment and labor has a wind behind it. For 6 months I packed a small cooler in the back of my car and walked into independently owned liquor stores and gourmet grocers searching for small bets. Once the number of stores increased, we found enthusiastic partners through liquor brand reps that wanted to give our sails more wind. We’ve taken on a couple of new part-time employees for sales and marketing because some smaller bets paid off.
Contact Info:
- Email: elsa@tepetan.com
- Website: https://www.tepetan.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tepetanmixers
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tepetan
Image Credits
Andrew Adams
