We were lucky to catch up with Tito Mayorquin recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Tito, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.
There are three main ways our businesses differ from the event bar industry standard:
#1 – The drinks themselves.
One main industry standard is store bought syrups and juices that are cheap and laden with sugar and preservatives. Works great if the goal is just to give people a palatable buzz (not to mention it cuts corners on money and time spent prepping). But intoxication and checking “bar provided” off the event check list is not our goal. I work to craft my cocktails to invoke the experience at your favorite artisan bar.
My passion for fresh and uniquely curated drinks is why I started Chakal Mixology. With over 20 years in luxury hospitality and bartending, I have learned a glaring truth that fresh is always best. If you use amazing ingredients you can keep the recipe simple and still come out with an incredible product. This is why I fresh squeeze my citrus and make all of the syrups I use from scratch. Though mixology is still largely undervalued, I feel our work is similar to that of a Chef. There is so much to be explored and mastered in this field. Especially in the area of mocktails or alcohol free beverages, which brings us to number two.
#2 – “Mocktails”
The next place the bar industry in general (not just event bars) falls short is in the area of alcohol free adult beverages. Many people want to enjoy a vivacious drink with flavor complexities similar to what you would find in a craft cocktail without the effects of alcohol. Whether it is just to take a break from drinking or abstain totally. The current options broadly offered are a mix of soda and juice or an undesirably flavored alcohol alternative (which if you read the label is just water, “natural flavors”, color and preservatives).
To be fair, better brands are starting to emerge – but I decided to take the matter into my own hands. I make my own line of alcohol-free spirit alternatives (not currently for sale) called MimMix. I use rinds, peels, herbs, spices, dried fruits and other whole foods to create the desired flavor profile. I sous vide the ingredients together and strain to produce a delicious and complexly flavored base that highlights the notes of the spirit I am trying to mimic. I take our mocktail/alcohol-free offerings seriously and seek out ways to make them especially unique and delicious.
#3 – The bars themselves.
Our latest frontier in changing the event bar industry standard has been the bars that are offered themselves. Status quo at the moment is a glorified countertop with hidden shelf behind. Visually pleasing for the onlooker, but far from ideal for a bartender that desires to efficiently craft drinks. We recently launched Top Cherry Event Rentals & Services as a solution to this problem.
You can either rent one of our professional bars that is equipped with draining ice sink, shaker rinser, speed rail and ample storage, or rent the items we supply that will transform the standard bar into a more efficient work space.
Why is this important? The answer is two-fold:
1) A better experience for your bartender. We all know it is hard to find good talent and once you do, even tricker to keep them. We believe that prioritizing the experience of your staff by giving them a great work environment (plus paying and feeding them well) increases their loyalty exponentially. When the talent (as we like to call them) are well taken care of, they can focus on what they do best and operate at peak performance.
2) When your talent is operating at peak performance, your guest receives the best experience. Vibes are real. Stressed staff equals stressed service which creates lack luster memories or even complaints from the attendees.
Bottom line, people remember the way you make them feel. That goes for event staff and guests alike. They may not see the corners you cut, but they will definitely perceive them!
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.
My name is Ernesto Mayorquin, but everyone knows me as Tito. I was born and raised in Sinaloa, Mexico. I graduated from college with a degree in Industrial Engineering. After working for a short time in my field, I realized I need to learn to speak English to advance in my career. My father had moved to Sonoma, CA to support the family after a major economic downturn. I decided to join him there and attend college to learn English even though I knew nothing about the system and had no other connections in the United States.
I took a job as a busser to support myself through college and was eventually promoted to server as my English improved. I graduated with a degree in ESL and moved back to Mexico to work in my career field. After spending some time in my industry, I found I was bored and unfulfilled in this career path. I decided to go back to Sonoma and explore my options. I really enjoyed working in hospitality and was offered the opportunity to bartend. I worked as a bartender for many years and loved the craft and interaction with my guests. However, after meeting my wife I was ready for something more.
My father and grandfather were entrepreneurs and it has always been a dream of mine to own my own business. I love the art of mixology and dreamed of having my own mobile bar to serve from. I sold my beloved mountain bike for seed money and started Chakal Mixology while still working full time.
I found a vintage Argosy Airstream trailer that was in pretty rough shape and spent the next two years cleaning, preparing and customizing it into the fully functioning bar on wheels it is today. Along the way we purchased an incredible portable professional bar (made by The Portable Bar Company) to work from so that we were not held back by construction on the Airstream.
The original plan was to just use the bars for our services. We then realized (by working other events from the standard bars provided) that there is a great need in the event industry for professional and efficient bar set ups.
We decided to think bigger and offer our unmatched bars to event planners, caterers and other professional bartenders. Not everyone needs our caliber of drinks at their event, but they could definitely use a more efficient and functional space to serve from!
Our vision for Top Cherry Event Rentals & Services is to change the status quo for the caliber of bar provided for event staff to work from. Even if the bars we offer don’t fit the aesthetic, we offer tools and items that will turn even the average countertop bar into an efficient work space.
Our passion is to serve, and that translates into every aspect of our business. Our passion may not lead to the highest profit, but it certainly brings the highest level of fulfillment!
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
My side hustle started with the dream of owning my own mobile bar for events. I sold my mountain bike, even though I loved it, because I had no other capital at the time to invest in my vision.
I found a beat up 1972 Argosy Airstream trailer for the right price and decided I would try my hand at turning it into a mobile bar (even though I had no previous construction experience and owned no power tools!).
My wife and I began to demo the trailer and quickly realized this was going to take a lot of time and money to get to the caliber of bar we desired. Since we were both working full time and did not have the funds to pay someone to complete the work, we needed a plan to still make money on the side while completing this project.
We decided to purchase a smaller professional bar we call the Rutherford Bar so we could start taking bartending gigs during construction. We made sure to focus on finding clients that appreciated true craft cocktails made from fresh ingredients. The discerning client that understands mixology can be an art form to be savored and not just a means of getting your guests intoxicated. I feel this standard was PIVOTAL to establishing our brand.
A key milestone for our business is when we were given the opportunity to serve at two back to back Y Combinator events. Y Combinator is an elite start up investment company and they were looking for the mixology experience for their guests (the event space already provided bartenders, but they understood the difference in mixologist craft cocktails). Thankfully our reputation got us the referral!
There were approximately 350 guests at each event and we made sure to pull out all the stops! We spent long hours creating negroni cocktail caviar to be enjoyed out of a vile as a garnish for our “Weird Science” cocktail. More hours were spent gluing feathers onto an arrow pick to garnish a color changing mocktail we called “The Avatar” inspired by the iconic movie. Many other handcrafted details (plus our fresh ingredients/balanced recipes) and being sure to only recruit the best mixologists in the area solidified our success.
Y Combinator continues to be one of our best clients and we were blessed to recently work a 1,000 person event for them, which was an amazing feat for this mom and pop company! We staffed and decorated 6 bars over 3 levels that each had a different specialty cocktail. We could not have pulled it off without the grace of God and the amazing loyal crew we have of mixologists that always answer the call because they know we will treat them right.
Through much prayer and hard focus on paying off debt, we came to the conclusion it was time to go “all in” if we were going to see this business grow. We ditched the side hustle mentality, quit our jobs and embarked on the journey of a lifetime that continues today! The saying that with great risk comes great reward has proven true in our lives.
After two years of significant investment, hard work, and the purchase of MANY power tools (huge shout out to our friend Lalo for his construction/instruction skills and Innovative Spaces for cutting the window!) the Airstream mobile bar (aka Carneros Mobile Bar) was completed and has changed the game in mobile bartending! I will talk more about this when I discuss our decision to pivot the focus of our business.
This journey certainly is not for everyone. We work more now than we ever did when we were in the corporate world. The difference is now our efforts, time and imagination go into building our own dreams instead of someone else’s.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Once we decided to go full time working for our business, we had to hit the drawing board as to how we were going to sustain ourselves through the changing seasons. We had dabbled in renting out our mobile bars and realized there is a serious need for functional bars in the event space. We decided to launch a second business focused on event rentals, specializing in providing professional bar set ups for events.
But what to name it? We came up with the name because of a common phrase I would say incorrectly (English being my second language), but my wife loved it so we kept saying it as an inside joke… whenever something really good happened I would say, “That’s the top of the cherry!” Of course Top of the Cherry Event Rentals & Services is too long, so Top Cherry Event Rentals & Services was born.
Our favorite part of this business is that it works so well alongside Chakal Mixology. The most challenging part is getting event planners, caterers and other clients to understand the vast benefits of having a professional bar set up as opposed to “making it work” with the glorified countertop situations offered by every rental company we have come across. The light in the tunnel is that once our clients experience one of our bars, they fully grasp its benefits and keep coming back.
Since our Airstream mobile bar was designed by a bartender, it has ultimate functionality and is fully loaded with commercial grade equipment. To address the need for aesthetics we sponge painted it by hand with real copper paint and used chemicals to patina the bottom. The interior is inspired by the many types of wine barrels (the look of): oak walls, steel end caps, marble floors and concrete countertops. The large service window opens up to reveal hundreds of corks from local wineries in the Napa and Sonoma area. The Carneros Mobile Bar is truly one of a kind and we originally planned to keep it just for our services. Now that we are sharing it with event spaces all around the area, it gives us great joy to see other bartenders reaping the benefits of an amazing work space as well as the venue itself boasting its unique charms for the enjoyment of all.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.topcherryevents.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/topcherryevents/?hl=en
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tito-mayorquin-928b33311/
Image Credits
Noelle Burton