From Two Rescue Kittens to Lemonade Catering Across DFW
People ask where the name comes from, and the honest answer takes a minute.
It starts with two kittens.
Olive and Apollo
We were looking for a companion for our oldest daughter and found a rescue organization full of kittens who needed homes. We came home with two of them, Olive and Apollo, and we came home with something else we did not notice at the time, which was a connection to a group of people who ran fundraisers.
One of those fundraisers was called Kittens and Cocktails.
The batch that started it
Don, who everyone calls Boo Boo, made a fresh lemonade for one of our boys at that event. Nothing about it was a business plan. It was a dad making a drink for a kid at a rescue fundraiser.
Then people wanted refills. Then more people wanted refills. Then both our boys started asking for Boo Boo's lemonade at home, regularly, by name, and at some point we realized the thing we had been treating as a nice moment at a fundraiser was actually a product.
That is where the name came from. It was not chosen, it was what our kids already called it.
Weekends at the markets
The next part was slower and less romantic. We took it to farmers markets.
Frisco Fresh Market and Dallas Farmers Market became our two home markets and still are. Saturdays and Sundays, squeezing fruit, talking to people, learning what a crowd actually orders versus what we assumed they would. We learned more in a season of markets than we would have in a year of planning.
We learned that the cup size matters more than we thought. That people can taste the difference between fresh and batch immediately and will tell you. That not too sweet is the compliment worth chasing. And that the person behind the stand is most of the experience, which changed how we hire.
How catering happened
It happened the way it usually does, which is that somebody drank one at a market and asked whether we did events.
Then somebody else did. The wedding requests came first, then corporate, then grand openings and tenant events and festivals. We added staffed stands, then carts, then Billie Jean, our vintage truck bed cart, and eventually a lemonade trailer for the big outdoor events where a table will not do.
Now we cater across the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. Weddings, corporate events, private parties, festivals, and the occasional event where somebody just wants three hundred people to have something cold.
Why we still do the markets
We could stop. Catering is the business and markets are long weekend days.
We keep doing them because they are where we find out if we are still good. Nobody at a farmers market is being polite about a drink they paid nine dollars for. If it is off, they tell us, or they simply do not come back the next weekend, and that is a feedback loop you do not get from a booked event where the host is being gracious.
It is also where most of our catering clients meet us first. Somebody tries one on a Saturday and calls in the spring about their wedding, which is a much better way to choose a caterer than reading a website.
Come find us
Frisco Fresh Market on Saturdays and Sundays, and Dallas Farmers Market at The Shed most weekends. Come say hi, drink one, and decide for yourself.
If you already know you want it at your event, send us the details through the proposal form and we will put something together.
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