Easing of alcohol laws has helped some businesses thrive
Relaxed liquor-sales regulations, intended to help businesses weather COVID restrictions, have even helped spur new cocktail-related businesses, including two tied to popular state restaurants.
The pandemic helped kick-start Drink Mechanics, a small batch cocktail company featuring canned drinks created by longtime friends and bar veterans Aaron Stepka and Taylor Gillaspie. They operate out of Millwright’s in Simsbury, owned by Stepka’s brother-in-law Tyler Anderson.
A May executive order that cleared the way for takeout cocktails also allowed for delivery, so the business partners worked quickly to launch their venture: researching and developing recipes with fresh ingredients, figuring out how to properly carbonate the beverages, and buying and registering their delivery vehicle, a refurbished ice cream truck.
“The ready-to-drink (RTD) market has been one of the fastest growing sectors of the alcoholic beverage market for the past few years now, and obviously COVID has increased that number,” Stepka said. “So it was definitely an area that we were interested in, but I would say COVID led to executive orders that allowed little guys like us to get into that game.”
Drink Mechanics debuted in August, delivering canned drinks to customers throughout greater Hartford. The partners have crafted a variety of recipes: “Spa Water,” a vodka soda infused with fresh cucumber, mint and lemon; “Green Monstah,”
a take on a mezcal margarita with clarified celery and pineapple juices and a hint of spice from poblano pepper; and El Guapo, a carbonated Paloma-style cocktail with tequila and grapefruit juice.
They also like to work with fresh seasonal ingredients, and iterations of the “Kickstand” cocktail have featured local peaches and apples from Rogers Orchard in Southington. Stepka said he’s looking forward to using early summer produce in 2021.
While an executive order helped inspire the company’s debut, Stepka and Gillaspie hit a speed bump with a clarification in regulations in December. The state Department of Economic and Community Development issued updated sector rules requiring food “similar in quality and substance to a meal” to be ordered with any alcohol service.
Since Drink Mechanics has been working alongside Millwright’s, that would mean serving meals with each order, Stepka said, where previously they’d been selling cookies and beef jerky as accompanying food items. As that doesn’t work for them logistically, the truck is currently is on hiatus.
The partners are creating canned cocktails for Millwright’s, though, and they’re also helping can specialty drinks for other restaurants, like Farmington’s Fork & Fire.
“We ultimately want to be in our own space, manufacturing on our own like a microdistillery,” Stepka said. “We want to be in retail someday. We want restaurants and bars to be able to buy our product as well.”
John Brennan, who co-owns Elm City Social and the Olives and Oil restaurants in New Haven and Seymour, initially helped lobby the state to allow sales of to-go prepared cocktails in the early weeks of the COVID shutdown. Over the past few months, he’s taken it to another level, launching Small Batch Cocktail Co. to sell bottled drinks at liquor stores around the state.
Customers at approximately 60 retail stores can find Elm City’s “Rubber Ducky” cocktail, featuring SoNo 1420’s vodka infused with Citra hops, fresh cold-pressed
lemon juice, grapefruit juice and basil simple syrup. The 375 ml bottles, enough for “two heavy pours,” Brennan said, are packaged with a little bonus: the same rubber ducky toy that adorns the martini glass at the bar.
“We’ve just been hustling. Pretty much, the whole idea of it was just to try to diversify ourselves in this tattered economy,” Brennan said. “So far, so good.”
Small Batch next plans to release a bottled version of Olives and Oil’s “Notorious P.I.G.” cocktail, with strawberry-infused vodka, blood orange juice, lemon juice and Italian amaro simple syrup — garnished with a little pink toy pig.
“We wanted to make sure that people get the same experience at home that they would at the restaurant,” Brennan said.
Scott Dolch, the executive director of the Connecticut Restaurant Association, said restaurants’ innovation has been critical to survival.
“It's the adaptability and the creative side of our industry that is showing through, probably more than ever,” he said. “Because they have to be, and it’s an adapt or die type of mentality right now.”