Today we’d like to introduce you to Richard Thomas.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I come from an industry family – my mother was a catering director in Corpus Christi and then at the Austin Country Club, my stepfather was an Executive Chef and commercial food salesman, and my sister is a managing partner and Sommelier at a restaurant in Portland, Oregon. The idea for draft cocktails for events actually came from my mom. She asked me if there was a way to serve high-volume craft cocktails for events that wouldn’t require an army of bartenders and cleaning shakers and the idea was a no-brainer.
Getting into the industry was, like it is for many people, a matter of necessity and happenstance. When I graduated from the New School in 2011, jobs in NYC were scarce, and I was in no hurry to grow up so I worked a lot of odd jobs. Hawking local newspapers and doing distribution, working retail, canvassing for the Working Families Party, guiding backpacking trips in the summers, even a stint working security for illegal raves in Brooklyn.
Problem was, I needed something more stable that paid more and my good friend offered me a job making sandwiches and bar-backing at a wine and beer bar in Bushwick. I needed to support my music problem (I play bass) so I took him up on it and worked up from there. I was supposed to be a professor or a lawyer or whatever, but so far I’ve never worked an office job and I don’t plan to!
I had the privilege of working with so many talented people in New York and was able to grow my tastes and learn techniques that I think Austin is only just catching on to. I think it’s Austin is the place to be right now and if the public’s tastes grow with the industry, Austin could absolutely be a global food and bev leader in the next decade.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think I’m remarkably fortunate and my struggles are those that the entire industry has faced in the past three years.
I’m originally from Corpus Christi, but I spent my entire adult life in NYC and moved to Austin in March 2020 for a fresh start and greener entrepreneurial pastures. I had been working for two years on opening a bar in Brooklyn, but it was a steep learning curve and I couldn’t make the deal that I thought I needed to be successful. My move unfortunately coincided perfectly with the start of lockdown, so instead of growing my social network and building a team to open a bar here, I decided to reinvent the wheel and do something I had very little experience doing events and e-commerce:
We opened in September 2021 and started gaining some traction only to have omicron and Dry January combine for a perfect storm. We’re scratching back, but as a disruptor in the industry (people tend to be skeptical of draft cocktails, much like they used to be of draft wine and it’s not something most people are even aware of) I think it’s going to take a little more time to catch on. We’ve added kits and catering and have a Cocktail Club subscription in the works, so this fall is our time to shine.
As you know, we’re big fans of Cantaloupe Island Cocktails. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Cantaloupe Island Cocktails’ mission is to bring high-quality craft cocktails out of the bar and into people’s homes, businesses, or wherever the party takes them. We use only the highest quality ingredients, fresh-squeezed juices, and premium spirits, and hand-make all of our own products in our kitchen here in Austin.
The company began doing only cocktails on tap for events, but we’ve expanded our offerings to include cocktail kits and event catering, and have a Cocktail Club subscription and frozen drink delivery coming soon.
We’re exceptionally proud of the quality of our drinks, and spend countless hours developing and testing our recipes. The techniques we use to produce our mixers are cutting edge, e.g. acid replacement, force carbonation, enzyme juice treatment, citrus oil extraction, natural foaming tinctures, sous-vide, and a novel method for producing juice-based syrups that control for sugar content to ensure consistency while only using whole ingredients.
I think people taste the drinks and think “wow that’s great!” but when I have customers and colleagues come into the kitchen for tastings and show them our production methods it really opens their eyes. Colleagues in the facility we operate in joke that I’m the mad scientist because the kitchen is full of meters and scales, pipettes, tanks of gas, and tubing. My most important kitchen tools, however, are my calculator and notepad. We use them more than anything!
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Give the people what they want. It’s easy to make drinks that suit my own tastes, but making drinks that are sold in batches of twenty requires getting into the hive mind and producing something undeniably good that almost everyone is going to enjoy. I think that I’ve succeeded in walking the line between crowd-pleasing and innovative, and I’m constantly striving to come up with original ideas that toe that line.
Pricing:
- Kits start at $60
- Draft Cocktails start at $125 gallon, $6/drink
Contact Info:
- Website: cantaloupeislandcocktails.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/cantaloupeislandatx
- Facebook: facebook.com/cantaloupeislandatx
Image Credits
Brandon Borrego
