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Bronya Shillo founded Fishers Island Lemonade 10 years ago this Memorial Day weekend.
Maaike Bernstrom
A local drink on a summery island is celebrating its 10th anniversary as a canned cocktail.
Every summer, the family and staff at the Pequot Inn serves up thousands of gallons of Fishers Island Lemonade.
Bronya Shillo’s family took over this 1901-founded establishment in 1996, and she worked as a bartender most summers to help her family out. In 2012, she was standing at the beer cooler, wondering if she had enough of the popular vodka and whiskey based cocktail or if she had to make another batch. “The recipe had been handed down, bartender to bartender, and it was the most popular drink,” she says. “We always ran out of it, and it was there, at the beer cooler, that I had this light bulb moment. I wondered if I could can it.”
Two years and lots of research and development later, Shillo debuted her canned version of Fishers Island Lemonade. That was Memorial Day weekend in 2014, and Shillo, of course, debuted her canned cocktail at the Pequot Inn.
Fishers Island Lemonade, she says, had and still has a cult following. “There has always been a demand for it, and it was one of those things, if people were visiting, they had to try it,” she says. “If kids, as soon as they were turning 21, then their first drink had to be a Fishers Island Lemonade.”
Shillo wondered if the refreshing drink, which has an ABV of 9 percent, could expand its fan base. That’s exactly what happened, as this weekend, Shillo and Fishers Island Lemonade is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
“When I started it, a lot of people wanted us to do a malt version instead of an actual cocktail, but I never wanted to go malt or to cheapen the product,” she says.”We had to manufacture it in a way to stay true to the cocktail.”
When she started her brand, it was basically a local brand, only distributed on the New York Island and in New York and Connecticut. Slowly, she has expanded her base, and Fishers Island Lemonade is now distributed in 19 different states. Most states are along the East Coast, but she’s expanding to Chicago this year.
The first order she ever placed was for 500 cases. “That was a massive order at the time,” she says, adding that she thought that order would last for a while.
But by Fourth of July weekend, she had a distributor personally reach out to her because he couldn’t find any Fishers Island Lemonade anywhere. “Those 500 cases were gone in an instant, and I knew we had to ramp up production,” Shillo says.
Shillo had to quit her job as a teaching assistant at Fishers Island School to manage her company full-time. Since Fishers Island Lemonade’s debut, it now has an extended line of flavors, including Pink Flamingo, which is a pink lemonade made with real cranberry juice so that it doesn’t contain any artificial colorings; White Peach, which she created when she began distribution in Georgia; Blueberry Wave, a blueberry lemonade, and Half & Half, which is basically a spiked Arnold Palmer or half lemonade, half iced tea.
Her canned cocktail, of course, is served at the Pequot Inn, where it all started. “I was very fortunate that I had a built-in test market,” she says.
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