Gabby Fitzpatrick

Gabby Fitzpatrick lost her job in the pandemic and turned the margarita she used to make behind a college bar into a canned cocktail brand.

Neither of them could pin down the introduction. Banyas thought it came through a venture investor or somebody else they both knew, and said so on air. What he knew was that he liked the branding before he liked the drink, and that his family runs a tequila night every Fourth of July that ends with an ocean swim at midnight. Most of the hour went on the thing two young consumer brands actually have in common, which is discovering that the customer is not who the deck said she would be.

She grew up in La Canada, next to Pasadena, went east to Boston College, and became the group's designated bartender, licence and all. What she liked was the clean build: few ingredients, no pile of sugar, and tequila as the base that made it work. She did not bartend after graduating, because her mother would have killed her after four years of tuition, and went into pharmaceutical conference coordination in New York instead. The brand she built later is deliberately not a ranch and not a beach: urban, honest, a little cheeky. Two flavors, a strawberry basil called Son of a Basil and a lime margarita called Devil of a Lime. Five percent of proceeds go to underfunded school districts, donated by zip code, down to pens and notebooks for a specific classroom.

The pharmaceutical conference business was derailed entirely and she was out of work. What she started instead was an alcohol brand, a category where she cannot sell direct to a customer, which means she cannot see who is buying and has to go stand in the market to find out. So she sells it liquor store to liquor store, town by town, and she answers every message that comes in. Nine states carry it in stores. Thirty three can have it shipped. The school district donations turned out to double as her way in the door, because a store owner's wife teaches in one of those districts and that is a conversation worth having. The demographic she designed for was the millennial woman. The people buying it turned out to be men in their forties and fifties in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

The growth is other people's word of mouth, one request at a time. She says the messages asking her to bring it to a particular zip code in a particular state are honestly how she gets distribution, which is why she replies to all of them. Her belief that education is a route to equality is why the five percent goes where it goes. It is a small amount of money against the problem and she says so.