The First One · copy

The First One

March 25, 2025

Thursday, March 8, 2025, at 10:30 p.m. I realized I wouldn't be sleeping that night. I was out having a great time in the Village, but as I grabbed my third Diet Coke, I was frustrated that there weren't any good NA options beyond club soda or soft drinks. I knew something had to change.

13 days later, I soft-launched the Elevated Bear. I didn't know what to call what I was doing yet. But starting before I'm ready has never been a problem for me.

I had a name, a bear logo, and a belief that the people in every room I'd ever walked into deserved something better in their glass. That was the whole business plan.

Then came the Food is Medicine Coalition Conference.

I was working at God's Love We Deliver, a New York City institution that has been preparing and delivering medically tailored meals to people living with serious illness since 1985. As the Manager, Meetings & Event Planning, FIMC was my client, and I knew this was the perfect opportunity to showcase and present non-alcoholic options in addition to the traditional wine and beer they were planning on serving at their welcome reception. The room was full of people who think about food the way I think about drinks: as something that heals, connects, and communicates care. It felt like exactly the right place to put something in people's hands for the first time.

That something was The Honey Jar.

I'd been developing it for a couple of weeks. The idea was warmth, something that felt like an exhale. Decaf black tea as the base, because it was an evening event, and the body doesn't need the buzz. Fresh ginger. Cinnamon. Orange juice and lemon juice, both squeezed to order. Local honey to round everything out and tie the name to the glass.

At the time, I was calling it a mocktail. That's the word I had. It was the word the industry had. It was the word people understood.

I've since retired it. There's nothing wrong with it; it just implies the drink is a copy of something else. The Honey Jar was never a copy of anything. It was built from a feeling, and it worked because of that.

The response that night stopped me in my tracks.

People were grateful. They wanted to know what was in it. But more than that, they were grateful there was an option that didn't contain alcohol and wasn't an afterthought.

I made a little video that night, still flushed from the day, trying to put it into words: "Smell that aroma, taste the spices dance on your tongue, that ginger, that cinnamon, the acidity from the orange and lemon juice." I was grinning like an idiot.

Here's what I know now that I didn't know then: The Honey Jar worked because it was built around a sensory intention, not an ingredient list. Every element had a structural job.

I didn't have language for that yet. I just knew it tasted right.

The methodology came later. The language came later. ENAB, Elevated Non-Alcoholic Beverage, came later. But The Honey Jar was the first proof that building a drink around an intention produces something people feel, not just taste.

That room at God's Love We Deliver taught me that.

SoBear Events became The Elevated Bear a few weeks after this. The methodology got named, documented, and eventually built into a curriculum. The word "mocktail" got retired. A lot changed.

The Honey Jar has been revisited. I've learned a lot since that first iteration.

If you want to follow what happens when you build drinks the long way, with intention, with method, with a little obsession, the newsletter is the place to be.