The Cheeky Team
As a team composed entirely of bartenders and hospitality professionals, we are committed to ingredient quality, and we develop all of our recipes and educational content in-house, based on our decades of experience bartending, and working in and around food & beverage programs.
Cheeky began its journey in 2015 when our founder and beverage industry veteran, April Wachtel, realized students in her cocktail classes wanted to share the best cocktails with their friends and guests, but when it came to making them, felt overwhelmed and less-than. April wanted to help people make better drinks and feel like amazing hosts, and launched a batched cocktail service called Swig + Swallow, which evolved into a bottled cocktail mixer company sold on Amazon, Amazon Fresh, Foodkick by Fresh Direct, and in Whole Foods, among others.
2019 was a challenging year for the business, and April realized there were two options; to incorporate four years of learnings and overhaul the brand from name to product mix and everything in between- or to shut it down. She decided on the former, and scheduled the Cheeky brand launch as large format syrups and juices for batched cocktails, for late April 2020. Unlike the “fully mixed” Swig + Swallow cocktail mixers, Cheeky’s syrups and juices are shelf-stable replicas of the ingredients professional bartenders stock behind cocktail bars, so they can be used with thousands of recipes from cocktail books and online publications, or your favorite bar.


In March, COVID entered the US and took over New York City (Cheeky’s home base), and shuttered bars and restaurants around the country. Anticipating that social distancing was here to stay, Cheeky pivoted yet again, and launched a smaller home-cocktail-sized version of the syrups & juices along with a bartender affiliate program, hoping to provide opportunity for some of our talented friends who became unemployed or under-employed during the pandemic.
Cheeky has been recognized in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Thrillist, Vinepair, and other publications.
In the process, the Cheeky team has grown and has partnered with bartenders and spirits companies as well as a range of Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies to power happy hours, cocktail classes, and moments of connection across the country.