Bloody Mary company finds a new home in Port

Inventor of mix sold by Target takes aim at national, international market from his lakefront headquarters

    Entrepreneur Ryan Timm has big plans to expand his share of the Bloody Mary mix market nationally and internationally — all from his new headquarters in downtown Port Washington.
    “We’ve been a Wisconsin brand ever since we started four and a half years ago, but we didn’t have much of a presence in Wisconsin because we were on the other side of the state in Prescott, near St. Paul, Minn.,” Timm said from the headquarters of Miss Mary’s Mix in the Port Harbor Center, 222 E. Main Street.
    The company moved in August but the official announcement of its new location won’t occur until early next year when Timm plans to host a Bloody Mary walk in February at several local bars and restaurants.
    Timm said his decision to move his company and family to Port Washington occurred when he was visiting the area.
     “We were looking to move, and I was FaceTiming with my wife and said, ‘Why aren’t we looking over here,’” he said. “We knew we wanted to live near the water and be in a community with about 10,000 people.”
    Miss Mary’s Mix is currently sold in Target stores in 11 states, primarily in the Midwest and the Dakotas.
     “Probably the biggest feather in our cap was about a year ago when Target approached us to be in a test market of about 110 stores,” Timm said. “It’s done extremely well at Target, so now we’re undergoing expansion throughout their chain and we’re hoping to be in excess of 500 stores.”
    With the success of his mix at Target stores, Timm said the company’s market is moving more toward direct-to-retail as opposed to liquor distribution at bars.
    “Liquor distribution is always going to be part of our business because our bar business has absolutely exploded and you need liquor distributors to service those, but we definitely see our future in other stores,” he said.  
    Timm said Bloody Mary cocktails have always been his drink of choice, and he discovered the formula for his concoction when he managed a couple of golf courses near Prescott.
    “We would make the mix in small batches and people consistently wanted to buy it by the bottle,” he said. “There’s a lot of downtime in the golf business during the winter, so I spent that time developing the brand and a way to maintain the flavor profile in bigger batches.”
    Timm said one of the reasons for the mix’s popularity is its unique ingredients, which include tomato spice for its base.
    “Every Bloody Mary mix you see out there either uses a tomato paste or juice for a base,” he said. “The reason most people don’t like Bloody Marys is because they’re too tomatoey, thick, heavy and salty because that tomato-paste base washes out all the other flavors and you have to add so much salt to break through that heavy tomato flavor.”
    He also said the mix doesn’t have any major allergens like gluten, soy, fish and wheat.   
    “As far as the bar business is concerned, it’s great for our premise because we don’t have anything that people can be allergic to,” Timm said. “We’ve gone to great lengths to source ingredients that give the flavor profile we want, but maintain our quality of standards.”
    In 2016, Miss Mary’s Mix won several awards in Chicago’s Bloody Mary Festival, which included two gold medals in the judge’s choice and best garnish categories and a silver medal in the people’s choice category.
    “We were in competition against some big companies and local bars. Nobody beat this one bar in six years and we won on our first try,” Timm said. “That was the first validation we got where we thought, ‘Maybe we’re on to something here.’”
    Timm also received several awards for his mix in the Los Angeles International Spirits Competition this year.
    The company is expanding its product line by creating a Caesar mix — a slight variation of a Bloody Mary that uses clam juice — strictly for Canada. Canadians won’t touch a Bloody Mary, Timm said.
    “Our formula is not so different from a traditional Caesar because we’re not so thick and heavy or tomatoey,” he said. “If you just add clam juice to a Bloody Mary, that isn’t going to fly in Canada.”
    Timm said there isn’t much competition for mass-produced Caesar mix.
    “There are only about two companies that produce Caesar mix in Canada. If you go to a liquor store here in the Midwest, you can see there’s about 10 to 20 different Bloody Mary mixes,” he said.
    Timm also wants to bring the Caesar mix to the U.S. to be sold at specialty stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.
    “It has very clean ingredients, so we would bring this mix back as a natural and organic product,” he said.
    The company is in talks with a major airline to serve the Bloody Mary mix to passengers.
    While Miss Mary’s Mix is expanding its horizons in the air and internationally, Timm is proud to call Port Washington home.
    “We want to introduce Bloody Mary fans in Port Washington to the brand by being involved with all the local festivals like Fish Day and Pirate Fest,” he said.