Amit Singh and Marcin Malyszko are the founders of Mission Cocktails — a premium ready-to-drink craft cocktail brand that prides itself on giving back. The RTD Magazine panel had a chance to chat with the partners and best friends to learn more about their journey and their mission.
RTD: It's a pleasure to speak with you both and we're all eager to hear more about the Mission story. Our readers may already be somewhat familiar with Mission Cocktails as we've tested and rated several of your products, but please share more about you and your brand.
AS|MM: We've been cocktail lovers for years so Mission Craft Cocktails was a natural combination of a professional need to create and a passion for cocktails. When you can do that with your best friend and create a purpose driven brand – it provides all the motivation one will ever need to found a start up! Mission Craft Cocktails, was built not only to make a ‘better for you’ cocktail, using real juices and top shelf spirits…the real mission behind Mission Craft Cocktails, is our 5% giveback of all revenues to food banks.
RTD: What are some things that set the Mission brand and your ready-to-drink cocktails apart from others in the market?
AS|MM: The biggest and more demonstrable difference is our commitment to using real ingredients, real fruit juices and our single-minded commitment to making all of our drinks taste exactly like they would out of a bartenders shaker. We use the juice of 6 limes in every bottle of our margaritas Surprisingly, real lime juice in most ready to pour Margarita’s is very hard to find on the shelf. The other less tangible but no less important is the impact that every purchase of our drinks make within the community with out 5% give back.
RTD: What motivated you to enter the highly competitive RTD cocktail business?
AS|MM: A passion for cocktails, a desire to put our business acumen to work for a greater good and the ability to do it as best friends. When we started this, there was nothing in the space in terms of quality bottled cocktails and that tasted like they were made with real ingredients - it was white space for sure. Since then the market has become more crowded especially in the canned segment. We believe that the ultra Premium end of the market is just beginning.
RTD: What challenges did you face on your journey into the RTD business?
AS|MM: Not being from the industry was our biggest blessing and challenge. We had to figure everything out ourselves. Staying true on the product development process was the easiest and frankly the most fun! But convincing consumers, retailers and distributors that we're different and better than what they associated with traditional RTDs was our biggest challenge.
RTD: What would you consider Mission’s greatest triumphs to date?
AS|MM: Gold medals and any accolades we have won from our drinks pales in comparison to having funded over 26,000 meals for families in need in our first year in business.
RTD: Did you have any mentors in the RTD industry?
AS|MM: No mentors out of the gate, so navigating the industry was challenging. But we have now been blessed to be part of the Jack Daniels x Uncle Nearest Incubator for 2024 – and we can tell you that the mentorship we are now receiving has been a incredible and so well timed as we take the next step in our growth.
RTD: That's wonderful to learn that you were able to become part of that incubator program and receive additional guidance. But absent that guidance and if you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourselves about the RTD business or what would you do differently?
AS|MM: Clearly we wish we’d truly knew more about the 3 Tier distribution system and how difficult it is to navigate and also more about product development. We had to figure out how to scale making drinks from a cocktail shaker to a 5000 liter vat. It was a painful process – but we wouldn't change it.
RTD: What does the future look like for Mission Cocktails?
AS|MM: We are just scratching the surface. Continued store and state expansion, coupled with a new product rollouts and our goal of providing over 100,000 meals in 2024!
RTD: Amit and Marcin, thank you so much for speaking with us. It was a pleasure to learn more about Mission and we applaud your charitable endeavors in giving back to your community. Keep up the great work and we can't wait to see how much Mission grows in the time to come.
To learn more about Mission Cocktails, please visit their website at www.MissionCocktails.com.
