Shaking Up the Home Bar Experience: An Exclusive Interview with April Wachtel, Founder of Cheeky Cocktails
At some point, we’ve all dreamed of being able to whip up a perfect cocktail at home — the kind you’d sip at a swanky bar, complete with freshly squeezed juices and artisanal syrups. But, as April Wachtel quickly realized while teaching cocktail classes in New York City, the reality for most home bartenders was far from that dream. With the best ingredients being hard to find and the process too time-consuming, the idea of crafting a bar-quality cocktail seemed out of reach for many.
Not one to back down from a challenge, April set out to bridge that gap. In 2015, she launched Swig + Swallow, which later evolved into Cheeky Cocktails. Today, Cheeky makes premium, shelf-stable syrups, and juices, allowing anyone to craft top-notch cocktails right from the comfort of their own home. Whether you’re a seasoned mixologist or a cocktail enthusiast, Cheeky Cocktails makes it easy to enjoy the magic of craft cocktails without the hassle.
We sat down with April to dive into her journey, learn about the evolution of Cheeky Cocktails, and get her take on how she’s helping people around the world raise their bar — literally and figuratively. Read on for an inspiring conversation with the beverage industry veteran who’s changing the way we shake up drinks at home.
What inspired you to transition from teaching cocktail classes to starting Swig + Swallow, which later evolved into Cheeky Cocktails?
I knew I wanted to forge my own path from a very early age, and that started crystallizing around entrepreneurship when I was in college. One of the hardest things about bringing any idea to life is just getting started and having the confidence to take the first few steps, so initially, I started bouncing entrepreneurial ideas off of friends, then finally created my first real-life experiment in 2010 when I was a bartender in Boston. I founded an educational organization called The Boston Bartenders Collaborative, designed to help our community work together to share knowledge instead of competing with each other in silos.
We held expert-led seminars, and collaborated with each other to build seminars and to teach and learn from each other–it was awesome. The chefs and owners of our respective restaurants were really welcoming and generous, letting us use their spaces to host our meetings. I moved to New York in 2011 and realized consumers had a ton of questions, but no one was really teaching consumer cocktail classes. So, I started teaching at Astor Center, ICE, Haven’s Kitchen, Murray’s Cheese, and a chef demo kitchen called Audrey Claire Cook, in Philadelphia.
I realized in my classes that consumers didn’t have the same ingredients at home as craft cocktail bartenders had behind the bar, and so that’s when I started the process of creating a product line that would help meet their needs.
How do you ensure that your products are shelf-stable for up to two years without using preservatives or artificial flavors?
We use a process very similar to canning that allows you to heat and seal your products to extend shelf life. This works well with some ingredients and less well with others, so we are very intentional about what ingredients we use, where we source, and the recipes we create for our products. There is a bit of proprietary magic in the bottling process, and we do a ton of testing both during and after production.
How did Swig + Swallow transform into Cheeky Cocktails, and what were some key milestones in that journey?
I ran Swig + Swallow for three or four years with my friend and business partner, Gates Otsuji. Over those years, I kept a list of all the problems we needed to fix, and it all came to a head in 2019. We had a disastrous production run with nearly 30% breakage, and I put my foot down and said, “This isn’t working.” I took a couple of months to hike, kayak, and get some perspective and thought long and hard about whether it was time to shutter the business or if I still loved it. After two months, I decided I still loved it, but for it to work, I had to completely pull it apart and start again from scratch with everything I had learned.
There was a ton of change in the next few months. Gates and I decided to part ways (but are still great friends), I dreamed up a new name for the business, and I tested out samples with a new manufacturing process, new glass bottles, and new vendors. I was planning on re-launching as Cheeky in April of 2020, but COVID hit and I realized we needed to move faster.
We’ve now been in business for four and a half years, are sold in 1,200 accounts in 44 states, have done various celebrity collaborations, have been featured in some awesome publications like the New York Times, Bon Appétit, New York Magazine, and more, and we just closed a successful equity crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder–life is good.
Can you talk about the experience of expanding Cheeky Cocktails from a local service to an international brand available in 44 states and several countries?
Route to market (or how you will sell and distribute your product) is different for every brand. There’s a lot of research on common routes to market within consumer packaged goods, but exactly how you combine your strategy (e.g., launching into small local independent stores vs. national accounts, selling into food service, etc.) will differ by brand.
I’ve raised some money over the past four years, but we’ve always been cash-constrained, so my North Star has always been, “How can we get the farthest for the lowest possible cost?” We could never afford brokers or our own sales team, or until recently, to spend on marketing.
So, we onboarded onto every wholesale marketplace we could find and grew our account base to 500 stores without real distribution. Buyers from Nordstrom, Anthropologie, and Home Goods found us in some of our smaller retailers and became customers, which expanded our footprint to 1,200 stores and counting.
Are there any new product lines or innovations that Cheeky Cocktails is currently working on?
Yes. We just launched a Habanero Hot Honey and a Salted Marcona Almond Orgeat (our version of a luxurious almond syrup required for Mai Tais). We’re launching a Decaf Espresso Syrup and two-ounce bottles of our core flavors for gifting later this year.
What’s your favorite cocktail to make with Cheeky Cocktails products?
I love using Cheeky Espresso Syrup to make a silky stirred cocktail called a Revolver. It’s similar to an Old Fashioned but with coffee and orange notes.
Just mix two ounces of Bourbon with a half-ounce of Cheeky Espresso Syrup over a large cube of ice, give it a stir, and garnish with a fresh orange twist (make sure to express the oils over the cocktail for the full effect).
What’s one ingredient you think every home bartender should always have on hand?
It’s really tough to choose just one (unless the home bartender only makes one drink every time they want a cocktail, in which case it’s also specific to them.) So, I’ll cheat and say if you want a versatile bar cart, you can make tons of drinks with a few core ingredients, like Cheeky Simple Syrup, Agave Syrup, Honey Syrup, and Lemon and Lime Juices. Add seltzer water and you have the core ingredients for hundreds of classic and signature cocktails.
What have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as an entrepreneur in the beverage industry, and how have you overcome them?
In general, as an entrepreneur, you need to learn skills and execute them at a high level simultaneously, so building something that not only survives but thrives is objectively really hard. I think entrepreneurs who succeed love the arduous process of building and finding ways to get excited every single day regardless of the challenges at hand.
In my case, as a solo founder, I don’t have a partner to pick me up when I’m down, so I had to learn how to self-soothe and surround myself with the right people, energy, and activities to enable me to wake up every day excited for the next challenge. There’s been a ton of trial and error, but setting boundaries and taking time for yourself is really important to the entire thing working.
How do you see the role of Cheeky Cocktails evolving in the home bartending and hospitality industries over the next few years?
I spent nearly 20 years in hospitality, so it is at the very core of what we do. I love making other people happy and helping people feel empowered and great about themselves. I have massive aspirations for Cheeky as a business, but at the consumer level, it’s very simple. If we can surprise and delight our customers and make their lives a little easier and more enjoyable, then we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.
Reflecting on your journey from a beverage industry veteran to the founder of a successful company, what has been the most rewarding part of this experience for you?
Building a consumer product that people love (and love to share) is the most satisfying thing in the world. I say “building” rather than creating because it’s not a “one-time thing.” It’s a continual dialogue with your customers, and I love bringing people into the journey with us.
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