Bernie Garcia
Bernie Garcia, president of Moctezuma's Mexican Restaurant & Tequila Bar
By Ed Avis
Do you think your margaritas are making as much profit as possible? Bernie Garcia, president of Moctezuma’s Mexican Restaurant & Tequila Bar, thinks your margaritas could be filling your cash register even faster, and his new project will help.
Garcia has developed his own orange liqueur, called Grandeza, and a special mini-bottle for it that hangs off the edge of a margarita glass. He tested his concept in three locations of Moctezuma’s, all located in Washington state, and sold 12,000 of the margaritas at $15.95 each over the course of a year.
“Our margarita sales jumped higher than ever before, so we knew we had something special,” Garcia says. “Our three restaurants that we tested it in (Moctezuma’s has added a fourth location since then) are in very different markets. In each market the margaritas have been a very big success.”
So how did a Mexican restaurant owner develop a new orange liqueur and fancy little bottle?
“The Cadillac margarita is our number two selling margarita, as it is for most Mexican restaurants,” Garcia explains. “But I didn’t like the fact we were using a cognac or brandy-based orange liqueur for them, because that’s masking the tequila flavor. I recently learned that Mexican restaurants used to use cheap mixto tequila in their margaritas, so they would use these stronger orange liqueurs to mask the flavor. But now people know about the 100 percent agave tequila, and they don’t want the cheap stuff anymore. So I felt it was time to develop a premium orange liqueur with a neutral alcohol.”
Garcia worked with a local distillery to develop the liqueur. He and the distiller worked on it for a few months, testing various versions with Moctezuma’s bartenders, chefs and customers. He estimates they tweaked the recipe 25 to 30 times before they landed on the perfect flavor profile.
“The alcohol in the liqueur is a neutral grain spirit,” he says, adding that Grandeza contains 40 percent alcohol. “We added dark agave nectar from Mexico for sweetness. There is also orange peel, orange juice, and a little bit of vanilla. It all just balances so well. Our liqueur compliments the tequila, rather than masking it.”
The idea for the little bottle came from the success of the little Corona bottles that many
Mexican restaurants hang off their margarita glasses with plastic clips. Garcia tested the idea with Gran Marnier in little bottles instead of Corona. Guests loved it!
“But I got to the point where I thought how can I make this better?” he says. “So I came up with the idea of a clip integrated into the mini bottle. A light bulb turned on in my head, and I drew a picture of the idea. I contacted my [intellectual property] attorney the next day, and I was blown away that no one had patented this before.”
About a year later Garcia had a patent on the bottle, and found a company to produce them.
He then hired two designers, one in Mexico for the logotype and one near him for the label. Afterwards he got approval for the recipe and label from federal authorities, and he pitched the product to Southern Glazers, the liquor distributor. Southern Glazers is distributing Grandeza in Washington and Alaska.
The first production run – 10,000 cases each of the mini bottles and the liter bottles – is rolling out of the distillery now.
“What’s great about it for restaurants is the profit potential,” he says. “It will cost about $3 per mini bottle. So if you sell a grande margarita for about $10, you could sell it for $5 more with this little mini. So you could profit $2 more per margarita. It increases the check average and the tip for the server.”
Garcia already envisions future products. He said two new versions of the liqueur -- raspberry and spicy jalapeno – are in development.
“We’re just super excited about it,” Garcia says. “We see a lot of great potential.”