It was a delightfully cheeky Ladies Who Lunch Conversation with April Wachtel, Founder & CEO, Cheeky Cocktails!

I thoroughly enjoyed our "spirited" 😉and of course, inspiring Conversation.

And from the thousands who viewed the videocast, I’m delighted that so many share my enthusiasm and admiration.

What’s not to love? April radiates a sincere joy, passion, plus a confidence and a hard-earned know-how fueled by experience. In fact, she could be the poster girl for truly audacious, spunky Happy Hours. Plural.

Hearing April reveal her journey, I could see a sparkly throughline connecting her company’s transformative products to a cocktail culture that celebrates life’s joys.

April's Cheeky Cocktails company is a line of Cocktail bar-quality syrups and juices for the home ~ and professional ~ bartender all made from fresh, quality, homegrown ingredients. You can use small quantities to make individual cocktails, or mix & match syrups and juices for foolproof "batched" cocktails."

And they also sell, ta-da: Garnishes. (They had me at Cheeky!)

In the videocast, I note how I first "met" April and her Cheeky confections ~ through WeFunder. Looking back, it was kinda' fateful and not a surprise since my heart has been captured by craft cocktails even before I authored Art of the Garnish.

April has made multiple appearances on The Today Show, Fox & Friends, and on various shows on Heritage Radio Network (we shared how fun and kind of kooky it is to be interviewed for HRN as the studio is part of the Roberta’s original pizza restaurant in Brooklyn that started as a shipping container.) She has also been interviewed for Forbes.com, MarthaStewart.com, FastCompany, GoodFood, Men's Health and now ~ Ladies Who Lunch Conversations and Garden Glamour! 😉

April rebranded her earlier company, Swig & Swallow, to Cheeky Cocktails in 2020. Cheeky’s woman and minority founded business experienced rapid growth that year; doubling their Brooklyn facility space, expanding the team, fueling happy hours for the world’s largest spirits companies and many Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies, and earning accolades in the New York Times, Men’s Journal, The Washington Post, Thrillist, among others. Cheeky is currently sold in over 1300 stores, bars, restaurants, and hotels, including the Omni, the Standard, and Bellagio ~ a kind of quadruple witching. They are anticipating further success with their new distributor the company signed on for Q4 this year to essentially double the business.

Through it all, April is just so delightfully adorable!

Listening to her, you'll feel like you too can shake up a drink and bask in her remarkable business ascent while taking in her remarkable story. I did. I indulged in her delicious Salted Marcona Almond Orgeat mix. Swoonworthy delicious! Just what Ladies Who Lunch would enjoy… With the candied ginger garnish Cheeky provided, as a finishing touch.

How nice is that?!

Tune in to learn how April fueled her entrepreneurial dreams. She filled a need, learned from those pesky obstacles that every business leader endures and embraced some healthy self-care along the way ~ tips that we can all benefit from ~ adding to a recipe for life’s best practices from a successful survivor and serial entrepreneur.

When I asked about the rather nuanced and exotic ingredients in the mixes and syrups, how the supply chain works ~ and if she sources locally or seasonally, it was so interesting to hear her explain that Cheeky uses high-quality raw materials but essentially, they are not complex. It’s the way they blend and mix the singular ingredients that makes the complex flavors.

We also discussed the burgeoning market for low or no-alcohol drinks. I recently wrote about this phenomena here on Garden Glamour, Message in a Bottle:Non-Alcoholic Spirits & Mixers Make Holiday Happy Hour Recipes Easy and Delicious, citing the Sober Curious or Halfsies fashions in today’s Happy Hours.

And Cheeky’s products are leading the market with their fresh, delicious options.

Experience and Growth

April Wachtel is a 26+year veteran in the beverage and hospitality industry. (She must’ve started shaking up drinks as a child ~ she doesn’t look more than 26 years old!)

Be that as it may, her resume spells out how she is an experienced mixologist, a mastermind cocktail and spirits instructor, Founder and CEO of Cheeky. April worked in every role from busser to bartender to beverage director to brand ambassador for Bacardi to beverage consultant for Diageo. She has developed recipes for the likes of Lincoln Center Kitchen and MetLife Stadium, and has taught cocktail classes to over 12K students online and in-person at five schools: Astor Center, ICE, Haven's Kitchen, Murray's Cheese, and Audrey Claire Cook.

Our Ladies Who Lunch Conversation is serious but also a giggle. I know you will enjoy it from start to finish.

Speaking of which, April is Not withholding her pearls of wisdom (play through to see what I mean) 😉 It was a wifi Brooklyn hitch. Ahhh tech gremlins... (In fact, our Conversation was bookended by tech gremlins.)

But we are plucky girls and overcame these obstacles with spunky charm.

In the end, I was able to secure those "pearls of wisdom" for you from April via an email Q&A.🥂

More Mastermind Inspiration from Cheeky’s April:

Q. What pearls of wisdom would you toss to an aspiring young woman who wants to start up her own business and more specifically, to launch a business in the beverage industry?

A. If you're starting a consumer product company (specifically in the competitive beverage space,) you must be maniacally passionate and obsessed and excited to work for years without pay to have even a chance of success. The startup costs and years it takes to grow a consumer brand are no joke and require real sacrifice. If you have this level of dedication to the problem you're trying to solve, you will get through anything. If you don't have this level of dedication or ability to work on your idea for years without pay, try something else with lower startup costs, like building a service business, content creation, etc. There's a lot of ways to test and grow an entrepreneurial idea that are profitable from day one and would be a great starting point for a new entrepreneur.

Q. You're hosting a fabulous cocktail party ~ who do you invite as your top 5 personalities?

A. I generally love and admire Barack and Michelle Obama, so they'd snag two spots for sure;) I'd round it out with Sara Blakely, and maybe Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg, but I would be more than a *little* stressed about meeting Martha's standards!

(I’m going to angle for an invite to that cocktail party.)

Q. A Favorite ~ or most favorite cocktail??!

A. This is such a hard question, as my tastes change often. I love a great Corpse Reviver #2 (gin, Cocchi Americano, lemon juice, orange liqueur, dash of absinthe), but also love Negronis and Dirty Gin Martinis (among many others!)

Thank you, April, for taking the extra time to complete our videocast with the follow-on kind of lightning round.

You’re the tops.

I ordered a number of Cheeky Cocktail mixers for the holidays. The aforementioned Salted Marcona Almond Orgeat is heavenly.

The Habanero Hot Honey is just my kind of tasty mix with a good tequila.

The Espresso Martini is the perfect dessert drink after dinner especially when you’re not really in the mood to start doing the grand mixology. With Cheeky’s mix, you just add the vodka (or not) and ice and garnish with three coffee beans. I used chocolate-covered “beans.”

I highly recommend you purchase from the Cheeky Cocktails website for your holidays. Why not take away the stress of at least one (big) element of your home entertaining while offering top-shelf, craft mixers and syrups that are soooo tasty.

You’ll have fun choosing from Cheeky’s many gift kits and sampler sets, too.