Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Corrie Scully. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Corrie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

MiddleBar began in the middle room of our shotgun style apartment. When we moved in together, we wanted to build the World’s best library bar in the comfort of our own home. It was 2009, the Obamas reigned over The Land, and we wanted a place we could GATHER with our loved ones, RELAX, and ENJOY this precious time on Earth. (Who knew just how precious it was!) We built a long, narrow, pub height table in the center of the middle room. The warmth of the Redwood really invited people to belly up and engage. And as soon as MiddleBar was born, it took on a life all its own.

We’d go to the farmers markets, swoon over all the delicious foods and artisan goods, come home and cook and cocktail for whomever wanted to stop in. We developed a speakeasy style of entry, an open window where friends could Caw-Caw and be let in. We became constant entertainers for years. It was so fun! And MiddleBar was this joke, at first : a fake middle world that wasn’t really a bar, but was the platonic ideal of a bar where everyone was welcome, and the food, dink and hospitality was limitless. Our friends marked it a place on Facebook and began checking in there. It was hilarious to us. We got calls from people on the internet asking if we were open tonight. And people would tell us “you guys should do this!” and “this is the best bar!” But it was our hobby, our craft, our B story, frankly. It was an inside joke on Facebook, (Instagram hadn’t been invented yet) it was definitely not a viable business.

Then, during the Saints Super Bowl season 2010, poor Corrie was stuck in the kitchen the whole season making one Bloody Mary at a time. The problem with Bloody Marys is they’re hard to make, and even harder to make delicious, which is why most Bloody Marys are kinda meh. We were both bartenders throughout our twenties, and we both came to the relationship with a strong sense of what needed fixing. We’d always been the football house, and people would bring friends just to taste one of Corrie’s Marys. The more she made, the more the Saints scored, the more she pretty much had to stay in the kitchen making them. By the end of that season, Corrie had not only perfected the MiddleBar Mary, but the Saints had won the Super Bowl !(and Corrie got to go to New Orleans for the game!!!)

Once the Mary was tweaked and refined to create the GESTALT of the Bloody Mary, we could make it in larger batches. The next season, we sold MiddleBar Marys in gallon growlers, and people loved it! People really seemed to love what we did. Which was sorta funny and fun to us, so we began to collect data. Around this time, we entered our Sookie Sauce in a Meat Competition in Portland Oregon where the Foodie Obsessivism reaches a whole new level, and got Runner Up in the Open Meats Category! Total ringers! Similarly, we gave our Bourbon Poached Cherries to a local bake shop who won the KCRW Pie Contest with them. All this made us think, “Maybe we should do this.”

We’ve grown over the years from a food lab and blog to a boutique cocktail catering service. We’ve developed our own line of Farm Fresh Cocktails and in 2014 began selling to the public at Farmers Markets. In 2018 we transformed our commercial kitchen where we made all our products in house, into a beautiful community space and brunch venue we called MIDDLEBAR ON MARKET. This brought life to the historic Market St in Inglewood, and acted as a showroom for MB’s line of products, and allowed people to experience MIDDLEBAR’s brand of NOLA hospitality. Along the way we entered the Foodie Event circuit and received awards, and rave reviews amongst LA’s best restaurants and bars. We were named Best Brunch by LA WEEKLY and got 4.8 Stars on Google and Yelp!! All this we used as data to support the notion of whether we “should do this,” if people liked what we did, and if it had value in the marketplace.

Today, MIDDLEBAR has been voted Peoples Choice & Judge’s Choice BEST BLOODY MARY in LA, NOLA, and PDX. We were named Best Michelada in 2023. MiddleBar Mary is now avaialable in retail stores in 10 different states! Our wholesale gallons are sold to some of LA and Las Vegas’s best bars, restaurants, and hotels. But it all started in the middle room of our shotgun style apartment.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Corrie and Renie met at brunch, in the summer of 2006, at Hamburgers Marys, an iconic West Hollywood hang known for its legendary Drag Queen Bingo and Bloody Marys. While we both adored the Drag, we each felt the Marys left much to be desired. We’re both real Bloody Mary nerds, always on the hunt for best bloody, and like all Bloody Marys, there were problems with taste, texture, spice and consistency. We’d both been bartenders throughout our 20’s, and each brought a bit of Bloody bravado to the table. Corrie being from New Orleans, of course, meant hers had magic. Over the course of brunch, we bonded over bloodies, made out in the ladies’ room, and the rest is herstory

Corrie is a savant chef who, at the time, was working her way as a television producer. Renie was, and still is a shrink, with a penchant for mixology and design. MiddleBar, as our friends called it (to differentiate it from the bar we’d built in the front of the house), was a hobby, a healing place to enjoy music, hospitality, design, food and mixology.

Over the years it became clear that we had a winner on our hands, and have grown MiddleBar from the middle room of our shotgun style apartment to over 250 stores nationwide. We are a proud women owned queer company. We’ve been voted BEST BLOODY MARY in LA, NOLA, PDX.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

We spent 5 wonderful years serving our community through events, farmers markets, and eventually in Inglewood. MiddleBar on Market was truly our vision come to life. Families, musicians, artists, church folk, neighbors, and friends were all able to GATHER, RELAX, & ENJOY some precious time here on Earth. However, by the time our lease was up, prices in Inglewood had soared, and the landlord wanted to double the rent. So, we shut down the vision, and pivoted. That was 6 months before the world shut down.

We went forward with our multiple award-winning MiddleBar Mary. In January of 2020 we received our first 1000 gallons of manufactured MiddleBar Mary from our co-packer. We set out to conquer bars, restaurants, hotels, stadiums, and airports. By March 2020, none of those things existed anymore. So we pivoted again! This time to retail shops and grocery stores. We began Pandemic with 3 local shops, and we are now in over 250 stores nationwide.

So many businesses went under during the pandemic, big and small. Luckily the MiddleBar train keeps on keepin on, thanks to the pivot.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We put together a Kickstarter in 2014. We hoped to raise $10K. We ended up raising almost $20K. It not only got us started but kept us going for a while! It still keeps us going, and fuels us, to think about the people who have believed in us and supported us.

Contact Info:

• Website: middlebar.com
• Instagram: middlebarla
• Facebook: middlebar
• Twitter: middlebarla

Image Credits
middlebar