In an industry dominated by men, it’s refreshing to see women thrive in the liquor business. One of them is Vicki Lyon, a martini lover from Balgowlah, who found success from her business, SOPHisticated Cocktail Co.
As you can imagine from the name, this cocktail business is all about premium cocktails. They have bottled cocktails and gift boxes but the store’s best-selling items are the premium goon bags.
It all started when Ms Lyon saw the gap in the market for premium ready to drink cocktails. “With a passion for mixing my own cocktails at home for friends and family, I have decided to take my love of a good mix and bottle them for everyone to enjoy,” Ms Lyon said in her website.
Before building her own brand and venturing into the ready-to-drink alcohol business, Ms Lyon spent many years in the digital marketing space. She was a Chief Marketing Officer for various media companies and served as director for Ooyala, a privately owned company focusing on video content workflow management systems.
In October 2020, she finally launched her business and it’s clearly been received well. Ms Lyon shared customers seem to buy an average of two bags at a time and around 35 percent of their orders are repeat orders.
The goon bags, which come in either 750ml and 1.5L, have three types of cocktails: a margarita, cosmopolitan and espresso martini. The pouches are from AstraPouch, a New York-based company that specializes in eco-friendly flexible packaging and related filling technologies including pouches, bag-in-box, dispense systems.
To keep the product fresh for up to 6 weeks before and after opening, SOPHisticated Cocktail Co uses nitrogen in their pouches.
While the bags are sourced from the US, Ms Lyon still wanted to support locals so she got her vodka from a local distillery, the cranberry juice from another local supplier and the tequila brand from two Australian companies.
“When I started looking for products to use in my cocktails, I was adamant I would use the finest, freshest and most local ingredients I could find. This has made the big difference in repeat business, as there is nothing as fresh on the market,” she shared on her LinkedIn page . Due to the success of her ready to drink cocktails, Ms Lyon will soon launch pina colada in goon bags.
