JD Mitchell and Eric Wentworth, Co-Founders of Modica
Cocktail company looks to expand market with healthier options for mixed drinks.
Like many people, JD Mitchell and Eric Wentworth, enjoy having a drink at the end of the day. But rather than taking the time to make one from scratch, the two MBA students simply wanted to find a ready-made mix that would suit their needs. That led to them hitting their local grocery stores, on the hunt for mixers that would fill this need.
Problem is, all they could find were options filled with a lot of ingredients the health-conscious duo wanted to avoid.
“Everything we found was full of sugar, preservatives, artificial ingredients – it all looks like it would just glow in the dark. It did not look like something that was going to make a tasty cocktail,” Mitchell says in reflection of what led him and Wentworth to create Modica, the cocktail drink mix company they founded during their days at the University of Louisville. “We've tasted a lot of mixers that are available in the market and are confident that Modica really strikes the balance between something that's convenient but also delicious and doesn't compromise on the quality or the flavor. We’re confident that with that formula, our backgrounds and the traction we already have, we can become one of the category leaders for this craftier cocktail category.”
Now backed with a $30,000 grant from Main Street Ventures (MSV) to help with their latest project, the enterprising entrepreneurs are looking to become the toast of the cocktail industry.
SIZE MATTERS
Available in five flavors including Tart Cherry Old Fashioned and Blueberry Lavender Lemon Drop, Modica – inspired by the word “modicum” (a small amount of a great thing) – traces its origins back to 2017. That’s when Mitchell says he and Wentworth began the journey to launching their cocktail mix company, which utilizes the 15+ years’ drink industry experience of the latter founder. All natural ingredients are a staple of each of Modica’s $20 16 oz. bottles.
Mitchell says most of the company’s products help make 10 cocktails per bottle, a good rate for retail and direct-to-consumer sales. Once he and Wentworth began reaching out to bars and restaurants, however, Mitchell says they kept receiving the same feedback.
“What we heard from them was, ‘Guys, this is the best. We love this mix. It makes everything so easy, fast, convenient for all our bartenders, but it's not really optimized for the way we work because they're often putting the bottles in the bar wells and then attaching their pour spouts,” Mitchell says. “We thought, ‘Okay, let's run a project where we just do a small-scale production of this larger bottle format that we can then use to really get into food service and hospitality so it's more optimized in that way.”
Eventually moving to Cincinnati and not knowing the city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem well, Mitchell says “the universe responded” by making MSV Director of Engagement Abby Ober his neighbor. Ober and Mitchell would get to talking, eventually leading to him and Wentworth applying for and receiving a $30,000 grant to help fund a small-scale production of a larger, 750ml bottle format set to launch in 2025. With the company already in about 300 stores across 24 states, Mitchell and Wentworth are excited about the prospects their bar-friendly bottles – backed by their MSV funds – will allow them to reach.
“There were other initiatives we wanted to try that we just didn't have the capital for. We thought, ‘Okay, we're going to hold those back even though we think it's a really great opportunity for growth until we have the resources and time allotted’ – the hospitality bottle being a great example,” Mitchell says. “When we heard of MSV, we thought, ‘Oh, this is the perfect opportunity (as) we have a project set and ready to really take these funds and run with them.’ We were beyond excited to find out that we'd received the grant and we could actually try this initiative that we had been wanting to try for the last six to 12 months.”
He has learned that “it’s absolutely true no one succeeds alone,” which is why Mitchell says entrepreneurs in need of similar assistance would be wise to reach out to Main Street Ventures.
“When you're doing something like starting a business and especially a CPG (consumer product goods) business, there's so much you don't know and so much you don't know you don't know that it's really important to surround yourself with entrepreneurs to really dig into the local ecosystem for support,” he says. “Main Street Ventures has been an invaluable resource, not just for the grant, which is, of course, absolutely incredible and that has changed the course of our business. But to be able to talk to other entrepreneurs about what's going on, to have meetings with them and talk through strategy has been invaluable.”
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