WRITTEN BY MARGARETT WATERBURY
PHOTOS PROVIDED BY STRAIGHTAWAY COCKTAILS
STRAIGHTAWAY COCKTAILS
IN PORTLAND, OREGON
A Market Explosion Shapes One Company's Future
Cy Cain (left) and Casey Richwine (right)
I
magine a time-lapse of the beer and wine aisle at your favorite grocery store over the past several years. The sun rises and sets. Shoppers come and go. Shelves are depleted, replenished, and depleted again. At some point, everyone starts wearing masks. And all the while, what started as a tiny little RTD section with a few cases of Mike’s Harder and a handful of wine coolers grows, and grows, and grows, eating into shelf space once occupied by pilsner and pinot noir. “It’s like a volcanic eruption from the seafloor,” said Cy Cain, co-founder and CEO of Straightaway Cocktails in Portland, Oregon. “This category didn’t exist five years ago, and now an island is getting formed off of Maui.” If RTDs are a new Hawaiian island, that 62
makes Straightaway Cocktails one of the first tropical plants to sink its roots into fresh volcanic soil. After starting with ready-to-serve spirit-based cocktails, the brand has expanded to wine-based canned spritzes, liqueurs, amari, and vermouths, all underpinned with a playful, cheeky aesthetic coupled with an unwavering commitment to high-quality ingredients at all costs — even if it means a cosmopolitan of a slightly different color.
RTDs are Straightaway’s Raison D’etre For many producers, RTDs are an afterthought — a product extension for production distilleries, a way to wring more value from a canning line at a brewery, a shelf play
“We very much approached this from the drinking side of the bar.” — Casey Richwine for wineries. Not so at Straightaway. When it opened in 2018, the company’s inaugural product line consisted of five bottled cocktails encapsulating years of tasting, tinkering, and trials. “We very much approached this from the drinking side of the bar,” said Casey Richwine, the company’s co-founder and chief production officer. He and Cain were both avid home W W W . ARTISANSPIRITMAG . C O M