William and Mary Graduates and current Richmond residents are putting “Richmond on the Rocks” with their homemade Bloody Mary mix.
William and Mary Graduates and current Richmond residents are putting “Richmond on the Rocks” with their homemade Bloody Mary mix.
Austin Green and Greg White, founders of Texas Beach Bloody Mary mix, were college buddies who decided to go into business together out of their shared love for Bloody Mary’s and the city of Richmond.
White, a Richmond resident for two years and bartender at Baja Bean, thought about entering the bloody Mary business a long time ago.
“Back in college actually, I had even flirted with the idea of making Bloody Marys for a living,” White said. “Just, you know, like a pipe dream. I never thought I’d actually do it. It’s kind of surreal.”
Green, a flower wholesaler who also has years of restaurant experience, had grown tired of the store-bought bloody Mary mixes available at most local restaurants.
“I’d gotten to the point where I wasn’t buying the Zing Zang’s and I wasn’t buying the pre-made mixes because I always had to do something to it, doctor it up in some way or the other,” Green said.
The “fateful night” of creation, as Green called it, was on New Year’s. The two of them and their friends decided to have a bloody Mary mix competition. Amongst beet juice and wasabi, and mango-habanero concoctions, Green’s mix won hands down.
“The one that Austin (Green) made, everyone agreed was the absolute best we’ve ever had,” White said. “Then roughly around that time we started talking together and we said why don’t we try and make this a product?”
The name of their mix is a toast to a popular beach spot along the James River. Both Green and White said they spent a lot of time there, even before they were Richmond residents.
“Basically our little friend group, our crew if you will, goes down to Texas Beach and hangs out there a lot,” White said. “That’s 50 percent of why I moved to Richmond. I was coming up here to visit, going back years, and in the summer time we’d go to Texas beach, hang out and just something about that drew me to Richmond.”
Green had other motives for visiting the city during his college years.
“To be honest with you, I think I dated more girls from VCU than I did from William and Mary,” Green said. “So I spent a lot of time in Richmond even before I moved here. And I’ve always loved Texas Beach for any number of reasons.“
Aside from their fondness for the local spot, Green called Texas Beach a “microcosm” of Richmond.
“I think Texas Beach is a pretty accurate cross-section of Richmond in some ways,” Green said. “There are a lot of different types of people that go down there. You’ll see people with their families, people who are going down there to fish and all kinds of different folks down there.”
The mix itself is more tomato flavor than horseradish, but still has a spicy, peppery kick to it. It is savory and thick, with no need to anything other than vodka.
According to White and Green, this is not the only mix they plan to produce. While there is no set timeline, they do have a kimchi bloody Mary mix in the works with more to come.
Though mostly made from local products, the mix is currently bottled in Virginia Beach and transported to their warehouse in Richmond because the city lacks its own bottling facility.
But, White and Green hope to have their own bottling facility in Richmond.
“There’s one guy out in Mechanicsville that does hot sauces, but it’s only set up for small bottles. He can’t do larger things,” White said. “So, long term, we want to change that. I mean, there’s a lot of people with good ideas, good recipes and they should be able to make their product locally.”
In the mean time, the “Richmond on the Rocks” is adding accounts almost weekly and creating new partnerships to produce locally grown products, including a recent partnership with Pasture for their homemade pickle juice.
While they hope to continue to expand throughout the state, both Green and White said they hope to bring more business, like their bottling facility, to the city itself.
Check out more details on their website here, and find out where to score some here.
Brad Kutner
Brad Kutner is the former editor of GayRVA and RVAMag from 2013 - 2017. He’s now the Richmond Bureau Chief for Radio IQ, a state-wide NPR outlet based in Roanoke. You can reach him at BradKutnerNPR@gmail.com
