Ken MacKenzie: Fresh Victor / Quitting Tequila To Go Fresh

Fell Into Food Podcast

Ken MacKenzie, founder of Fresh Victor, shares his journey from crafting premium tequila to creating all-natural, cold-pressed non-alcoholic

Key takeaways

• The shift from alcohol to non-alcoholic mixers was driven by changing drinking habits and the need for accessible, high-quality cocktail experiences at home.
• Ken emphasizes that food and drink are central to human connection, memory-making, and shared experiences—elements often lost in convenience-driven lifestyles.

Main topics

• Evolution from tequila to non-alcoholic mixers
• The cultural significance of food and drink in human connection

Notable quotes

"When you lose that aspect of the experience, you're losing a lot of that connectivity."

"There's such warm, good memories around that and things that you're still talking about to this day."

Conclusion

Ken MacKenzie's journey from tequila pioneer to founder of Fresh Victor reflects a deeper

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hospitalitychain.com, the world's first online hub designed for the hospitality, culinary, and catering industry. From leading food and beverage brands to professional food service equipment, hospitalitychain.com makes sourcing simple. Search, select, buy direct, and save, all in one global marketplace. Speaker 2 (0:27) Ken, you've spent your whole career making things that people drink, you know, to be honest. First it was tequila, but now it's something with no alcohol in it. What changed? How does one go from alcohol to non-alcoholic? Speaker 1 (0:40) It's a great question. And it's one that I understood over a great course of time. It was the evolution of how people were actually drinking. And so for me, being very rooted in 100 % agave tequila and from early on, it was something that occurred over time where people were saying, hey, we love drinking the tequila. We understand that it pairs beautifully in cocktails. How do you make those cocktails? And that's really kind of how it began with me. Because I was trying to figure out ways to explain to people how they can make really exceptional, you know, premium cocktails at home without having to go through the rigor of, hey, I need a whole grocery list to achieve this. And where it really started was the distributor, you know, saying to me, hey, we've noticed that you make really beautiful cocktails, but it takes time. You know, you're boiling off the agave nectar with water. You're, you know, squeezing the limes. You're basically hand crafting each cocktail. And while it's a wonderful experience, how practical is that for a, the average consumer, but even of equal importance, and I'm sure you'll appreciate with your background from an on-premise perspective, they don't have four minutes. They have 15 to 20 seconds. Yeah. How do you really do that at scale? And the succinct answer I had is I don't. Actually, I've never sat at one of my own dinner parties. Like I actually love the aspect and we're very, I feel that we have a kinship here. I like being behind the bar. I like crafting these things and watching the instantaneous reactions of people going, wow, that's really good. Or what did you put in that? I wouldn't have it any other way. Speaker 2 (2:40) That's the thing. It's Speaker 1 (2:41) to your point Speaker 2 (2:42) is when it. It's so funny you say that. I literally just had a birthday party for my daughter and everyone came over and I'm grilling out and I'm busy cooking. And there's something about I'd rather be doing that and like busy and having the conversation than just everything's done and ready or somebody else is doing it and I'm trying to have a conversation. I don't know. It's something about the food and the beverage that allows, I don't know, for me, a more natural conversation than just trying to come up with some. random conversation. They're just, oh, how did you do that? And oh, what did you do there? I don't know. Yeah, to your point, I just I feel more comfortable behind the grill, behind the stove than just being out in front. Speaker 1 (3:20) I think it sincerely brings people together. I think there's the celebration aspect of we're breaking bread, food and drink, you know, and when it's done well, people stay a bit longer. They want to tell people about it. Hey, I just had the best time last weekend. I went over to so-and-so's house and they made these passion fruit so-and-sos. There's that aspect that we like to share experiences together. And I think to a great degree, that's been lost in convenience. Speaker 1 (3:55) Hey, we're just going to go out and get the easiest thing, the fastest thing, the cheapest thing. And for me, at least, I think that when you lose that aspect of the experience, you're losing a lot of that connectivity. You Speaker 2 (4:10) hit the nail on the head. And it brings me back. And I don't know why. It literally just hit me. And I go back to my wedding and I spent so much time on the food piece of it. So obviously I still had a caterer, but I physically went to the restaurant, had a connection with the chef because he actually had worked with me in prior life. And we built this whole menu. We did the taste. It wasn't your typical here. Here's your choices. Try it. What do you like? That's what we're going to serve. It was we crafted the whole menu around, OK, we have a food truck that we can bring out. you know, outside the venue and then we're going to bring everything in. And even to this day, the one thing that I still remember and everyone remembers was the food. It was the food. It wasn't the music. It wasn't, I mean, the venue was, was pretty and all that, but it was the food and people, I could still to this day tell you exactly what we had, where it was at on the table, what people were saying. And that just kind of goes back to that, that it's about the food and, and the culture. And that's what, that's what we want. I think as humans, like we, we earn for that. Speaker 1 (5:08) That culinary aspect that is so near and dear to childhood and memories and experience and growing up and then becoming adults and emulating that exact same thing with your children and et cetera is really something for me where with my grandparents and great grandparents, the cocktail experience was just as important as the food offerings. So there was a real sense of pride in what was being served. And I think when there's a disconnect or when people just say, oh, just get whatever or who cares? It doesn't really matter. I would I would, you know, push back on that and say it sincerely does, because look at like your wedding experience or anything else. There's such warm, good memories around that and things that you're still talking about to this day. Speaker 2 (5:59) Ten years later, it's crazy. But let's go back in time. You followed a woman to Guadalajara. With no plan, what convinced you that it wasn't temporary, that you were going to stay down there? Speaker 1 (6:12) Definitely her. That's the one word answer. Yeah. I had never been so sure of anything in my entire life. Like, you know, it Speaker 2 (6:19) was, hey, I am exactly where Speaker 1 (6:22) I need to be. I had never been there Speaker 2 (6:24) before. You Speaker 1 (6:25) know, it's like throwing a dart at a map. My folks, I remember my father saying, did you say Guatemala? What is happening right now? And me saying, no, Guadalajara, Mexico. It once being there, I think it's like any entrepreneurial outlook. You think, how can I justify spending more time down here from a monetary standpoint? You know, and for the most part. Having that entrepreneurial spirit, it really was, hey, are people already doing it? And are they doing it probably better than I could? And with the usual stuff, you know, and when I say usual, I just mean with the stuff that was very mainstream at the time, whether it was tech or whether it was artwork or jewelry or, you know, you can go down this long list of things that are done so beautifully down there. Everybody was already doing it. And I had nothing to add. Like, you know, there was no there was no new entry of a Ken McKenzie is here and now we can really get to work. What was. Really apparent to me very quickly was the culture around tequila there compared to Northern California. In Northern California, I had been conditioned to, there's only two ways to drink tequila, margaritas or shots. And we didn't have a lot of offerings back in the mid 90s. And so you were looking at, you know, mixed dough. Gold tequila, you know, either white or gold tequila. And you were definitely feeling it the next day, no matter what your age was, you were like, wow, that was a mistake. And so as I kind of conveyed this messaging to my wife's family. They were appalled. They thought I was, you know, raised in the forest or the barn. You know, what are you talking about? And so really exploring that disconnect between the U.S. and Mexico as far as like, hey, there are so many epicurean offerings down here and tequila is an extremely complex spirit. How is all of this occurring here? And we have no idea about it at all. And that just absolutely fascinated me. Speaker 2 (8:36) Tell me about the process of learning tequila. It's a fascinating process to me as I know plenty about bourbon, plenty about whiskey, plenty about, you know, a lot of other spirits that, again, are grown here in the States a lot more. Talk to me about, for those that listening that may not even know how it's made, because I don't think a lot of people even actually know how it's made or seen the plant, the agave plant that it comes from. So talk about that process of learning tequila. Maybe walk them through the process of how it's actually made. Speaker 1 (9:03) Yeah. So being in the U.S., I think there's a lot, especially way back when there's been a lot more education in the last two decades. But I would say that 25 years ago, there was a lot of confusion about what it even was. You know, whether it was tequila or mezcal or the worm, you know, all the different stereotypes that go into, hey, this is a low end kind of rot gut. you know, offering just to get intoxicated essentially for, for cheap. When you actually look at it in perspective, it's one of the most complex spirits in the entire world. You know, it has denomination of origin, so it can only be manufactured in five states of the 32 states of Mexico with, with the vast majority of the offerings coming out of the state of Jalisco. So where Guadalajara is in the highlands and lowlands. And