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Margaritas to go are popular offerings during the pandemic

Ordering cocktails to go may feel all too familiar to those who have vacationed in cities like New Orleans or Las Vegas, where it’s not only normal, but celebrated.

However, for states like Arizona, togo alcohol services were often limited to drive-thrus at neighborhood liquor marts, making the experience feel a little less glamorous and a little more, well, like a trip to the local liquor mart.

Every day that Arizonans stay isolated pushes the population into unforeseen territory, as many industries scramble to innovate in response to COVID-19 restrictions. The food and alcohol industry, one of the nation’s remaining bastions of normalcy, may be one of the most notable examples of that. Melissa Robbins >> The Entertainer!

“It’s been a rough road,” says Adam Rivera, co-owner of Los Sombreros. “From the first weeks that we closed down … we laid off about 60 employees. So just letting go of our families, it’s tough.”

Many venues that once didn’t bother delivering even through third-party apps like Uber Eats and Postmates now offer their own takeout, drive-thru and pickup options to combat nationwide stay-at-home orders. While some may relish at the opportunity to order their favorite meal to their door, Valley restaurants and bars are clamoring to finally answer a call they’ve heard for years prior to quarantine: curbside cocktails.

“Guests have been asking for our margaritas to go for years, so we figured it’d be the best thing to do,” says Ashley Negron, director of operations and brand management for Macayo’s Mexican Restaurants.

“Before we were able to sell margaritas to go, our guests actually would buy gallons of our sweet and sour … and then get the tequila from a store somewhere and make our margaritas at home,” she said.

Prior to Gov. Doug Ducey’s executive order,

Arizona establishments had to apply for a separate license to deliver alcohol locally. Ducey changed that rule, however, as part of the government’s efforts to help keep local businesses afloat while the order is in effect.

Many Arizona bars, like Killer Whale Sex Club in Phoenix, now offer premixed cocktails online in up to six-person servings.

Restaurants, too, like Hula’s Modern Tiki in Phoenix and Scottsdale, now sell their signature drinks bottled to go. Many Mexican restaurants, like Macayo’s (with locations around the Valley) and Los Sombreros (in Scottsdale and Phoenix), tout bulk house margaritas.

Rivera says prior to the lockdowns, margaritas were always a top seller.

“Even when we were open for full business, that Steve-A-Rita … it’s definitely our No. 1 seller,” he says. “So, it was just very easy for us to come up with, ‘Hey, you know what? We know people love our margarita.’”

That hunch panned out, as the mixes appear to be a smash hit with locals. Negron said Macayo’s has sold over 5,000 margaritas in the month since it started offering them for delivery.

“We are an industry that has struggled a lot and been hit like many others,” she says. “But the support and encouragement has been really, really helpful.”

While Negron says Macayo’s got lucky finding empty, unlabeled bottles ready for margarita storage, Rivera said Los Sombreros had to take things a little more steadily with packaging its SteveA-Ritas. The work was worth it, though, to bring some stability to those who need it.

“Now that we’re open for online orders and having about 20 employees

with both locations, it just feels good to start bringing some of our people back,” Rivera says.

It’s also been a pleasure, he says, to watch customers realize they even have the option of ordering alcohol at the drive-thru. Along with the SteveA-Ritas, Los Sombreros also offers customers mimosas, bottles of wine, and variety packs of Mexican beer.

Negron and Rivera say the restaurants hope to continue offering delivery and to-go menus after the stay-at-home order is lifted, though the reimplementation of the old liquor license laws may prevent them from doing that.

For Macayo’s, that means going back to selling margaritas at its only location with a license for it, in Mesa.

Rivera said he thinks the coronavirus outbreak has changed the service industry for good.

“We’ve been playing it day by day and week by week, but I think that it’s going to change,” he says. “It’s not going to just reopen how it was before. I think it’s going to take some time.”

In fact, he says, this may be what motivates Los Sombreros to apply for a liquor delivery license once the restaurants are allowed to reopen. Maybe, by that point, Arizonans will be too acclimated to margaritas on demand to ever go back to sipping them at the bar.

Corrido and CRUjiente Tacos make the rounds of Arcadia

When Gov. Doug Ducey issued an executive order requiring restaurants to provide takeout and delivery only, Tequila Corrido co-owners Sarah Foote and Holly Simon saw it as an opportunity to push their product.

So, the women teamed up with CRUjiente Tacos to make delivery possible.

“We’ve never been able to deliver alcohol before in any form, and now they’re able to deliver bottles, drinks, shots, you name it,” Simon says. “As long as it’s an enclosed container, it can be delivered.”

They needed to up the ante a bit, so they decided to deliver the two companies’ products in a 1971 VW bus named Selena. Delivery is available from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Fridays and must be called in by 4 p.m. for same-day delivery.

On the menu are chips and salsa for $5; a 2-ounce shot of tequila for $10; a 16-ounce margarita for $30; or a bottle for $50.

“We’ve all seen memes about how it would be great to have the ice cream truck shotgun an adult tequila truck driving through the neighborhood,” Simon says. “We chose CRUjiente because we could do chips and salsa with them and make it fun.”

The partnership comes seven months after Foote returned to Arizona from Napa to acquire Tequila Corrido, which was founded by her uncle in 2008.

“I’ve worked here for many years in restaurants and I know I felt a really strong connection to Arizona,” Foote says. “I’ve actually moved away and moved back three times now. So, third time’s the charm.”

After she acquired that, CRUjiente was the first restaurant to serve the tequila. The name “Corrido” comes from the ballads that were sung by Mexicans after they returned home after smuggling tequila into the United States.

“If they made it back alive, they would sing these songs often around social injustice or really happy or sad times that invoke really positive warm feelings,” Foote says. “It was my Annika Tomlin >> The Entertainer!

uncle’s ode to the people before him who were smuggling tequila in illegally, and now he was doing it legally.”

The legend lives with every bottle and shot that is delivered.

Corrido’s tequila starts with its master distiller, Ana María Romero Mena, one of the only female master distillers in Mexico. She’s been in the industry for more than 30 years.

“She helped curate the laws for tequila,” Foote says. “She’s been a huge champion of tequila for a very long time, and super talented.”

Romero Mena is particular about the agaves and strands of yeast used during fermentation. She also hand-picks the barrels—the symphony barrels—from Napa to help age the tequila for its reposado and añejo.

“We roast our piñas a bit longer than normal, so you get some really amazing depth of flavor without adding any additives,” Foote says. “It is legal and widely practiced now to put in 1% outside sugars after the fermentation process. But we don’t do that. It’s a little bit more of a pure expression of tequila, but that also makes it harder.”

Simon’s favorite Corrido tequila is an unreleased, aged tequila that they hope to put out within the next year to year and a half. Foote and Simon love the Blanco tequila with a squeeze of some kind of citrus juice. The Blanco tequila is an unaged tequila that rests for 30 days after fermentation.

“We have so many amazing citrus trees lining the streets right now,” says Foote, whose products are available at Total Wine & More. “I take Blanco and I put one or two ice cubes in it, and I squeeze whatever citrus juice is available—blood oranges, oranges, limes or lemons.”

The partnership with CRUjiente is just as fruitful.

“We’re local and we’re really focused right now, especially on supporting the

restaurants that have supported us,” Foote says. “We’re a fairly new company, and to be able to have an opportunity like this to present itself and to work with our supportive restaurants has been really nice for us.”