We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Maray McChesney a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Maray, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Several years ago, my partner, Matt and I were growing a spring herb garden in our San Antonio Beacon Hill-area front yard and wanted a botanical cocktail to enjoy in the late afternoons. Gin & tonics seemed like a good fit, but most commercially produced tonic waters contained high fructose corn syrup and artificial ingredients, which would make me sick. So Matt decided to research how to make a traditional tonic syrup, the old fashioned way, with real cinchona bark imported from South America. After that, making tonic syrups had become a hobby for Matt.

Then in the spring of 2020 when COVID hit, Matt was furloughed from his job. Naturally, he tended to his hobby of making tonic syrups to cure his quarantine boredom. When summer came around, plump tunas began to ripen on prickly pear cacti. So Matt decided to add some prickly pear tunas to his tonic recipe and that’s when the Prickly Pear Tonic Syrup was born. I took a photo of a vibrantly colored cocktail in our family kitchen, posted it to social media, and our friends began asking where they could find it. This came at a time when many people began experimenting with home cocktails, due to local bar closures. So Matt & I decided to fill orders and deliver bottles of the Prickly Pear Tonic Syrup to our friends’ homes around San Antonio. What started as a hobby quickly became a business.

Seeing the popularity of our tonics, Matt & Maray decided to start our company, Bexar Tonics, inspired by native and abundant plants growing in and around Bexar County and South Texas. We designed our own labels at the time and went through all of the steps to become a commercial business, landing our first commercial account with the popular hotel, Hotel Emma in The Pearl Development of San Antonio.

As summer turned into fall, prickly pear tunas became more scarce. Predicting that Prickly Pear Tonic Syrup would most likely be a seasonal flavor, Matt and I developed two new flavors. The first is Texas Wildflower, made with lavender and butterfly pea blossoms, as a nod to a Texas Spring, and the second is Smoked Fig, as a celebration of Autumn and Winter. Earlier this year, we developed a fourth flavor made with real Juniper berries from Juniper trees that grow abundantly in the Texas Hill Country.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Hi, I’m Maray and in 2021, during peak COVID season, I quit my office job to become a full-time tonic maker. I am the Co-Founder of Bexar Tonics, a San Antonio, Texas based tonic syrup company that celebrates the native and abundant plant species of South and Central Texas.

Bexar Tonics was created in late 2020 as a COVID home project by my partner, Matt and me.

Several years ago, Matt and I were growing a spring herb garden in our front yard and we wanted a botanical cocktail to enjoy in the late afternoons. Gin & tonics seemed like a good fit, but most commercially produced tonic waters contained high fructose corn syrup and artificial ingredients, which would make me sick. So Matt decided to research how to make a traditional tonic syrup, the old fashioned way, with real cinchona bark imported from South America. After that, making tonic syrups had become a hobby for Matt.

Then in the spring of 2020 when COVID hit, Matt was furloughed from his job. Naturally, he tended to his hobby of making tonic syrups to cure his quarantine boredom. When summer came around, plump tunas began to ripen on prickly pear cacti. So Matt decided to add some prickly pear tunas to his tonic recipe and that’s when the Prickly Pear Tonic Syrup was born. I took a photo of a vibrantly colored cocktail in our family kitchen, posted it to social media, and our Facebook friends began asking where they could find it. This came at a time when many people began experimenting with home cocktails, due to local bar closures. So Matt & I decided to fill orders and deliver bottles of the Prickly Pear Tonic Syrup to our friends’ homes around San Antonio. What started as a hobby quickly became a business.

Seeing the popularity of our tonics, Matt & I decided to start our company, Bexar Tonics, inspired by native and abundant plants growing in and around Bexar County and South Texas. We designed our own labels at the time and went through all of the steps to becoming a commercial business, landing our first commercial account with the popular Hotel Emma in the Pearl Development of San Antonio.

Then in 2021, the architectural firm for which I was working from home was being sold to a larger firm. This was the turning point for me, personally, as I did not want to move on to the larger firm, but rather focus on building our company and brand, while Matt landed a new job.

Bexar Tonics are now being poured in several downtown San Antonio restaurants and bars, and are stocked in some local retail shops, with the development of expanding into a grocery chain in the near future. Our syrups stand out for their vibrant colors and bold, colorful labels. Our flavors include Prickly Pear, Texas Wildflower, Smoked Fig and Juniper and are 100% natural and made with cane sugar.

Running this business is a full-time job for me as I handle all of the business ends, from marketing to bookkeeping, to making and bottling the tonic syrups by hand daily. I knew I had an entrepreneurial drive for many years, but never would I thought that I would literally be up to my elbows in tonic syrup… but I absolutely love it! Matt and I haven’t decided exactly how far we want to expand Bexar Tonics in the long term, but as proud locals, we definitely know we want to serve the San Antonio community for as long as possible.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Our company started on an extremely small scale out of our home kitchen. We used whatever funds we had in our personal bank account to order bottles and ingredients for our first batches of tonic syrup. We printed our own labels on our home computer. Then we received some financial help from our families to fund the fees needed to establish our first LLC, our business checking account, commercial space and business insurance. Everything we have been doing since has been boot-strapped, and we have just been growing, little by little, organically.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

I met Matt at his brother’s brewery in Waltham, Massachusetts in 2003. I went in for a beer and he was my bartender. We got to talking, exchanged numbers, went on our first date a week later, and we have been inseparable since. Living in the Boston area was taking a toll on both of us from the rising rent costs to the unbearable winters. In 2004, we came to San Antonio for Christmas with my family, When we left Boston, the temperature was 7 degrees Fahrenheit and icy. When we landed in San Antonio, the weather was 72 degrees and sunny. We were like, “hey do you want to live here instead?” So in 2005, we left Boston and moved into my grandfather’s old house and we haven’t left San Antonio, other than to visit Matt’s family in Philadelphia. We have one daughter, one dog, two cats, a fish and now a company.

Contact Info:

• Website: bexartonics.com
• Instagram: @bexartonics
• Facebook: @bexartonics

Image Credits
Kat Carey @darkroomfoto