Laurie Leahy is a graduate of Cornell University's prestigious School of Hotel School Administration (now SC Johnson Business School) who founded her catering business Food Fantasies in 1983, creating events in NYC and the surrounding areas for names such as Def Leopard, Elizabeth Taylor, and Vice President Al Gore.

Max Leahy started bartending at 18 and continued until he was 30. He has worked in every type of venue from catering halls, to high-end restaurants, to bars and nightclubs in NY, RI, and CA.

During his time as a bartender, he first noticed that at least 50% of his patrons in a small bar in West Hollywood would drink vodka or tequila mixed with soda.

When questioned why this was their drink of choice, the answer was the same: they wanted a cocktail that was free of sugar and low in calories & carbs.

He then saw the meteoric rise of White Claw seltzers. He realized that many patrons wanted a low-calorie sugar-free beverage with some flavor.

The biggest flaw he identified however with all of the flavored hard seltzers was that there was no way to have the flavor mixed with the patron's spirit of choice (ie. Grey Goose, Don Julio, etc..).

It's then that the idea came to him, to create a simple mixer with 0 carbs, 0 calories, and 0 sugars that could be mixed with a spirit of choice. With just 4 ingredients, Cocktail Stix is free of preservatives.

His first thought was his mother Laurie could help him create such a product. While she is a talented chef, she explained to him she is not a food chemist.

Using her connections through the Cornell Hotel School she found a retired flavor engineer from the largest soda company in the world (Hint: It's not Pepsi).

The three would spend the next 5 years and over 50 variations of each flavor tweaking and testing to make Cocktail Stix the delicious mixer it is today.