LiquidZERO Founder on Building a Zero-Sugar Margarita Mix
A restaurant owner named Mariano Martinez poured margarita mix into a broken soft-serve machine and, by accident, invented an American classic.
Fifty-five years later, nobody had fixed what was actually in the mix.
I love frozen margaritas. But somewhere along the way, too many of them became sugar wearing a tequila costume. Some clock in around 600 calories.
You know how this goes. The first one, on a patio somewhere, goes down easy. You order a second expecting more of the same. An hour later, you understand: you didn’t drink two margaritas. You drank two sugar bombs dressed up as kids’ Slurpees with a liquor license, and the sugar is why you feel lousy.
I got tired of that math. So I built one without the sugar.
That sounds easier than it was.
The hard part wasn’t removing the sugar. The hard part was making a zero-sugar margarita still behave like a frozen margarita. It had to freeze properly. It had to taste like lime, orange and tequila instead of diet candy. And it had to be simple enough that nobody needed to understand the science behind why it worked.
No stevia or monk fruit standing in for sugar (they always taste like an apology). Zero sugar, no weird aftertaste and a bright flavor that doesn’t flinch about saying so.
That became LiquidZERO.
More than 100,000 cocktails later, LiquidZERO cocktails have been served in restaurants, resorts and major venues and events like FIFA games and the Grand Prix Arlington Indycar race. Early on, the Dallas Cowboys tasted it at a restaurant and liked it enough to bring it to the stadium. Our on-the-rocks margaritas, old-fashioneds and mojitos are now sold at every home game at AT&T Stadium.
Now we’re bringing that same thinking home. Everything is already worked out. The lime. The orange. The sweetness. The texture. The ratios that make the Margaritas actually freeze.
Add water and tequila, then put it in a blender or slushy machine. I already did the part where you stand there adjusting things, tasting things and assuring your friends the last batch was better.
The ones we now sell at stores, on our website and on Amazon are the same mixes we made for restaurants, not watered-down versions. Classic Lime and Strawberry, both zero sugar or a low-sugar blend, are available at Central Market, on our website and on the way to Amazon.
Today I’m throwing some fresh Hatch chiles into mine. Lime, tequila and chile have been a good match for a long time. No reason to stop now.
Dallas gave the world the frozen margarita machine.
Fifty-five years later, we figured we could give it something better to put in it.