If your RTD brand is going to get off the ground, it’s necessary to know what consumers are looking for and find a way to connect with them. If your brand can find ways to improve upon the consumer experience within the category, you’re off to a great start.
In this talk, Lawrence Cisneros, CEO of Drnxmyth, broke down the harmony between his brand and the authentic cocktail experience consumers are after. He talks through the technical side of how his product became the first to incorporate fresh juice into their RTD beverage and how this has opened up new opportunities for his brand to can a well-crafted consumer experience.
“For us, ingredients were the key,” explains Cisneros. “Really understanding what consumers want is a tricky thing and you sometimes have to think about it before they even realize what they want.”
Lawrence Cisneros 0:09
I’m Lawrence Cisneros, co-founder and CEO of Drinksmith. When developing a product, it can be hard initially to know what to focus on. From the start, we maintained a singular focus: what do consumers really care about? Understanding consumer desires is tricky—you often have to anticipate what they want before they even realize it themselves. For us, ingredients were the key. While consumers loved the convenience of seltzers or canned tequila sodas, we realized that what makes top cocktail bars special is fresh juice. We set out to solve a singular problem: how to bottle a fresh-juice cocktail in a way that consumers love.
Lawrence Cisneros 2:11
Drinksmith became the first company to use unpasteurized citrus in a spirits product, creating the world’s first fresh-bottled cocktail. Many industry veterans claimed it wasn’t possible due to oxidation issues. Coming from outside the industry as a former attorney, I brought a fresh perspective to this eight-year journey. Initially, no distillery in California was equipped to handle fresh citrus under FDA and ingredient-traceability standards, so we brought California ABC and TTB manufacturing licenses directly into an existing fresh-juice bottling facility.
Lawrence Cisneros 3:59
To avoid heat pasteurization—which destroys fresh flavors, nutrients, and sensorial qualities—we adopted High-Pressure Processing (HPP) or cold pressurization technology, similar to modern cold-pressed juice companies like Suja or Evolution Fresh. HPP applies 85,000 PSI of cold water pressure to the bottle, neutralizing microbes to deliver five to seven months of shelf life without heating the juice.
Lawrence Cisneros 5:31
However, pre-batching spirits directly with unpasteurized citrus dulls the flavor profile over several months compared to a short-term kegged cocktail. To maintain bar-quality freshness, we had to separate the spirit from the fresh ingredients inside the packaging until the moment of consumption.
Lawrence Cisneros 6:30
That led to a five-year R&D effort and roughly 30 trial-and-error attempts to invent a proprietary bottle chamber. Existing cap technologies only held 5 ml, but we needed 85 ml of volume at the top capable of withstanding cold high-pressure processing.
Lawrence Cisneros 7:27
By obsessively focusing on consumer experience and solving these technical hurdles, the investment paid off. Outstanding mixologists and premium spirit brands actively partner and co-brand with Drinksmith because our product maintains the exact level of fresh-juice quality served in world-class bars.