Shop Small is a monthly series highlighting small business owners from diverse backgrounds. This series aims to go deeper than your typical product roundup, diving into the inspirational stories behind some of our favorite brands. By taking a behind-the-scenes look at how their shops came to be and highlighting the products they (and their shoppers!) love, we hope to put a deserving spotlight on these marginalized business owners.
Although they hail from different worlds, Modica founders Eric Wentworth and JD Mitchell found common ground with cocktail and mocktail mixers. The inspiration for Modica came from their busy lives. After meeting in business school and working full-time jobs, they both wanted to come home to a delicious cocktail.
Not only does Modica create tasty mixers, but the brand takes a health-conscious approach by prioritizing good-for-you ingredients like vitamins and electrolytes. From the juicy Blueberry Lemon Drop to the tart Cherry Old Fashioned, Modica sells a variety of mixers on their site, which also features creative drink recipes.
Whether it's giving away drinks at Pride events or selling at local markets, Eric and JD value in-person interactions where they get to speak with, learn from and inspire members of their community. Building Modica required many late nights, hard work and years of bartending experience, but the duo agrees it was well worth it — they even hope their journey can motivate other young queer people to start successful businesses.
To learn more about Modica, we spoke to Eric and JD, who share everything from their best-selling flavors to how the brand came to fruition.
What is unique about Modica's products?
Eric: No one is quite approaching cocktail mixtures the way we are with functional ingredients. Our drinks are better for you, packed with the vitamins, superfoods and electrolytes, and are honestly the best-tasting mixers on the market.
Ingredients are probably the most important part of our business. It's not just about making sure we use the best quality ingredients for the best-tasting product, it's also about what we're not using. We'd never want to use anything artificial, so our mixers don't include preservatives, high fructose corn syrup and fake colors or flavors. Everything that goes into our mixers is the best quality, so our customers can have a cocktail or mocktail that is just as good as what they'd get at a bar.
Modica Turmeric Ginger Mule
What are your best-selling flavors?
Eric: We launched two new flavors last summer — the Cacao Espresso Martini and the Blueberry Lavender Lemondrop, which has quickly become a bestseller. People love it because it's fruity and juicy, and has a little bit of sophistication with the lavender. We feel it depends on the season. During the summer, we sell a lot of margaritas and in the winter, it's all about the old-fashioned mixers.
What does the name, Modica, mean to you?
Eric: It's hard to capture a name that really symbolizes what you're trying to build with your brand. Eventually, we came to the name Modica, which is taken from the word modicum and means a small amount of a great thing. We maintain a pretty well-balanced diet and try to do the same with alcohol consumption. All of our drinks include functional ingredients, so you're getting some good stuff with each one.
What was it like starting Modica, since you both had full-time jobs?
JD: Exhausting — and some of the little details took longer than anticipated. We spent a few years getting the recipes right and searching for a co-packer and manufacturer who could produce it for us. And since we don't use preservatives, it's a really specific process so finding the right team was a challenge. We set our first production date in March of 2020 and naturally COVID happened and we had to delay until November.
Interestingly, you launched in 2020 and the dry movement has been pretty big post-COVID.
Eric: The dry movement was very big, especially since people were drinking from home a lot more. It ended up working out for us even though we were thrown for a loop (in a good way). We thought mocktails would be a small part of what we do, but now half of our sales are non-alcoholic mixers. It's been an interesting industry shift we didn't expect.
It's refreshing to see a company putting an equal amount of energy into mocktails.
JD: Part of it comes from that we're both gay and have spent plenty of time in queer bars. We also both take pretty frequent breaks from drinking alcohol and given that gay bars are so central to our culture, we wanted to provide a product that'll allow people to still be comfortable and safe, and to just have a good time without feeling like they're losing out. And from the drink side, we didn't want them to feel like the only alternative to a cocktail was juice or a Diet Coke.
Eric, did your bartending experience contribute to the brand's success?
Eric: It definitely helped to have a finger on the pulse of what cocktails are trending. Aside from that, it's also the creation process and almost a year of tasting cocktails. Coming from that background and knowing the way to balance ingredients and flavors was a big advantage for us. That's something some other brands may not have going for them.
How do you involve consumers in the process of developing new flavors?
JD: We do a lot of in-person events like markets, fairs and Pride events to connect with consumers. These events are enjoyable for us because the interactions are not purely transactional. We're also having great conversations with our customers. We love to hear how they're using Modica and the different recipes they're making.
