Craig Cordes was home on holiday from his corporate finance job in 2007 when his high school friend Antonio LaMartina, presented him with a semi-outlandish proposal — Capri Sun-style alcoholic beverages.
The idea that started as a melted margarita puddle sloshing around inside of a plastic bowl is expected to generate $27 million in revenue this year.
“In a time where you have cell phones communicating instantaneously, everything is about now, now, now and our product is a now product,” said 28-year-old Craig Cordes, co-creator of the to-go-pouch-packaged frozen cocktails named Cordina. Cordes is a 2006 University graduate and a Louisiana native
LaMartina’s concept for the pouched pleasure spawned from a trip to a Gulf Coast beach. LaMartina had trekked to his hotel room to retrieve a margarita pitcher but was denied re-access to the beach due to glass restrictions. He ran upstairs to transfer the spirited slushy into a plastic bowl, but the beverage had melted upon his second return to the shore.
Facing a total buzz kill, LaMartina saw his nephew sipping on a Capri Sun and a light bulb switched on.
Cordes said when LaMartina first pitched the idea, he thought it was a failure waiting to happen, but after a night’s sleep, Cordes woke up ready to take on the task. He quit his job in New Jersey and moved to Houston to work full-time so he could easily travel to Louisiana.
Cordes, LaMartina and his brother, Sal LaMartina, began attending trade shows and learned that flexible pouches for liquids could be equipped with a screw-on top — making them easily portable and resealable.
The entrepreneurs began working on their product alone during nights and weekends, dedicating money from each paycheck toward their product, and in 2009, after quitting their full-time jobs, the three friends opened Big Easy Blends — the manufacturer of Cordina drinks — in a 2,000-square-foot location.
“Now, four years into it, we have expanded into a 55,000-square-foot facility and have employed 144 people at the highest point,” Cordes said.
Cordina now offers five drink flavors — watermelon and lime mar-GO-ritas, strawberry daiq-GO-ris, pina-GO-lada and choc-GO-late mudslide — in stores, including Walmart and Walgreens, around the country.
But the drinks’ popularity didn’t always exist.
“The beginning was miserable because everybody that we talked to said they would never drink out of a pouch,” Cordes said.
After Cordina’s appearance, many pouched cocktails from brands including Smirnoff and Dailys surfaced. Cordes said the difference between Cordina and these products is that Cordina beverages are resealable and the others have “tear-off tops,” making them a one-time-use drink.
Cordes said there were a number of catalysts that “were the fuel to get the car started.”
In 2010, Cordina won a packaging award from Beverage World magazine for functionality. Around the same time, the company was admitted into Idea Village, a not-for-profit business incubator in New Orleans, where it won an entrepreneur challenge. Then, in 2011, Cordes and his comrades were offered a major business deal.
“Walgreens called us to do a nationwide deal in 2011 for 2012 programming,” he said. “We never looked back after that.”
Cordes said the company is quickly expanding and continuing to innovate its product. They recently released a football-shaped pouch — perfect for tailgating. He said the product’s growth has been from grassroots advertisements and word-of-mouth.
Though the company has a nationwide deal with Walgreens, Cordes said the product hasn’t fully penetrated the nation yet and is more popular on the East Coast. However, the $2 beverages can be found in every state except for Wyoming, Alaska, Utah, Pennsylvania and Montana.
“We haven’t really even scratched the surface of what we can do,” Cordes said.
