Kamoh Kambarami and Aly Wingler have vastly different tastes in beverages. Kambarami is content sipping tequila, while Wingler tends to gravitate towards complex cocktails.
“Aly gets really excited with the fancy drinks,” Kambarami said with a laugh..
The couple met during socially-distanced porch hangs with friends during COVID, got married in 2022 (“yeah, we kind of did the lesbian U-Haul thing”) and now have a 3-year-old son and 4-month-old daughter.
During her pregnancy with their son, Wingler naturally had to pivot to non-alcoholic beverages, but the selections were distinctly unsatisfying: either too simple (“cranberry juice with a splash of soda and a lime”), too sugary or too tasteless.
“We ordered probably every non-alcoholic wine and every mocktail that was available, and they were all garbage,” Kambarami said.
The Columbus, Ohio, couple set out in 2024 to create an alternative: a mocktail that feels like a fancy cocktail.
“People should be able to have a mocktail where you go out, have it poured over ice and be just as social as everyone else who is drinking,” Kambarami said.
Flavor Flair, and Fun Names
After diving into learning more about the beverage industry and the existing mocktail market, Kambarami and Wingler devised a series of flavors that had a “full-body experience”: rather than the one or two ingredients in the standard mocktail, their canned creations had more than ten ingredients.
Flavors range from:
- Spiced Mangorita for margarita lovers
- Soliberrity Daq for those wanting a strawberry daiquiri
- Water Tart-Quila to sate those who love a tequila sour.
- Berry Good Bramble to satisfy those with a craving for fruit punch
They landed on the name A Mockery fairly quickly.
“A Mockery just kind of rolled off the tongue and fit with our vibe of uniqueness and doing something different than everyone else was doing in the mocktail industry,” Kambarami said.
Committing to the Cause
With their flavors and name in hand, the couple partnered with a local brewery to move the drinks from concept to canned mocktail. The main obstacle was then to get their beverages actually into bars and restaurants, a time-consuming endeavor when both women already had full-time jobs and family responsibilities. They ultimately decided to have Wingler pivot away from her career in payroll services to focus on A Mockery full-time.
The focused attention quickly paid off: Not even two years since their launch, A Mockery beverages can be found in nearly 40 bars and restaurants in the Columbus area.
“Aly is out there going from place to place with our flavors saying, ‘If you want a mocktail on your menu, you gotta have A Mockery,’” Kambarami said. “People are really getting to know our brand in Columbus, which is exciting.”
Which is not to say every potential bar and restaurant has embraced stocking a can of A Mockery.
“You can quickly tell which spaces don’t support queer or minority-owned businesses by the way they speak to us after we explain who we are and what we’re about,” Kambarami said. “But that only motivates us more to find those bars and restaurants who are aligned with our values and the values of A Mockery.”
Kambarami said A Mockery can be a hard sell at gay bars, too, because of a strongly held belief that queer socializing inherently involves alcohol.
“We need to challenge the queer community to think differently about how we socialize and a lot more work needs to be done to challenge the stigma that alcohol has to be present when we come together,” she said.
Partnering With Pride
Stonewall Columbus immediately saw the benefit of collaborating with A Mockery, making them the official mocktail of Stonewall Pride, one of the largest Pride celebrations in the country. Sierra Prince, Pride event coordinator at Stonewall Columbus, said that the organization wants to be as intentional as possible in promoting sober opportunities for Pridegoers.
“A Mockery has filled a beverage gap in the community that promotes both inclusivity and alternative lifestyles, all while being an incredible and refreshing beverage,” Prince said. “We relish every opportunity to host organizations that support and sustain LGBTQ lives, and we love that we get to help grow a local lesbian-owned, minority-owned small business in the process.”
Looking ahead, Kambarami and Wingler want to get A Mockery into more establishments (“Obviously, we want to be profitable!”) but also challenge social norms around the need for alcohol in social settings.
“We get that for so many people, the idea of not drinking can be weird,” Kambarami said. “We want to be the company that really does things differently because our mocktails are both really good and really aligned with our community.” 🔥
IGNITE ACTION
- Learn more about A Mockery (including how to get them into your favorite bar and restaurant) by visiting their website here.
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