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The electric Kool-Aid glow of cirrhotic corporate synergy
Plus: Way before RNDC, California had "No Delivery Complete"!
Dave Infante
July 09, 2025
Editor’s note #1: The column below was originally published on September 17th, 2020, when the boozeletter was much, much smaller. Given the recent announcement that Buffalo Wild Wings and Mountain Dew are offering a stunt “radler” for the summer, I figured this was a good time to pull this piece out of the vault. I cut it down a bit, and obviously there are a lot of early-pandemic and Twitter references (this was half a decade ago!) but the general sentiment still holds. Hope you enjoy.
Editor’s note #2: I am in Atlanta covering the 2025 Hemp Beverage Expo for VinePair today through Friday. If you’re here and want to meet up, get in touch and we’ll try to make it happen!—Dave.
Behold the DewGarita, something that exists on Twitter (and maybe even not on Twitter, who knows?) It is a nifty new collaboration between “new buds” Mountain Dew and Red Lobster, by which of course I mean it’s a precision-engineered marketing ploy-cum-branded beverage likely borne in the bowels of some boutique agency’s “collaboration warroom” and laser-focused on getting commodity shellfish-seekers to glug away some bucks out in Stripmallia. Fun stuff, I think!
The DewGarita is the latest in a long line of liquified marketing gimmicks hustled down our willing gullets by The Brands™. Like hiring for bullshit jobs, brands do it to get money and attention from “sad, sad end users who volunteer to be taken advantage of,” to lift a phrase from Willy Stalley’s 2011 blog about McRibs and hog arbitrage at The Awl (RIP.) Beyond that, what is there to say about the DewGarita? Ah god, so much. For starters: its electrifying hue, which it gets from the soda that forms its liquid base. Back in 2015, when BuzzFeed News (also RIP) asked a Mountain Dew executive to answer the simple question of What color is this terrific fructose runoff?, here is how it went (emphasis mine throughout):
"We don't try to say what color the product is internally," Greg Lyons, vice president of marketing at Mountain Dew, told BuzzFeed News. He called it "Mountain Dew color," which really didn't push things forward much. We pressed further.
"Neon," he eventually said, reluctantly.
"That's if you're forcing me to describe it. 'Mountain Dew color' is in my words. If you force me to use an adjective, that's what I'd use. But I'd prefer, if you write about it, it to be Mountain Dew color. Because there's not really a color we call it."
We’ll come back to that vexatious answer in a second. But first, let’s talk about what’s in this hashtag-DewGarita, shall we? In this thing Mountain Dew, of course. It’d better have tequila, too, because if not someone is going to class-action Red Lobster just like they class-actioned Bud Light Lime-a-rita for not actually being liquor-based, which, they have a point.2 Anyway I’m guessing there are some other margarita-oriented ingredients in there too. But I can’t confirm, because the brand isn’t telling. Per an item in Adweek:
So what’s actually in this drink? We don’t specifically know.
The brands told Adweek only that it’s a top-secret recipe made from Mountain Dew, tequila and “a few other special ingredients.”
As for the rim dusting? While at first glance it might appear to be Doritos dust, which would be absolute perfection, we’re told it’s simply a colorful salt.
The Dew Garita is reported to be the first in a series of menu collaborations between the restaurant chain and PepsiCo’s brands, including Frito-Lay and Quaker.
It’s the same routine all over again! There is nothing new under the sun, except for the DewGarita. You think this shit is a game?! It is most certainly not. What color is the that salt on the rim? It’s “colorful salt” colored, my good bitch! No more questions!
In comments to Adweek, Red Lobster executive Nelson Griffin helpfully added “The Dew Garita is the first delicious taste of the types of inspired menu items to come,” which made me wonder if those words ever actually crossed Nelson Griffin’s lips or they were drafted for him by a PR person or if there even is a Nelson Griffin at Red Lobster or he’s more of a Pepe Silvia type of fellow, which is to say no fellow at all. The people you hear on the laugh tracks are all dead, or maybe not. The DewGarita is available at your local Red Lobster, or maybe not. And on, and on.
But let’s assume this thing real and not simply a brand asset optimized for “omni-channel social,” or whatever. My fellow newsletter editor Ryan Broderick made another very good point about the DewGarita that’s been bugging me:
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