Eddie Masjedi came up with the idea for his SnoBar company three years ago over dinner with his wife, Shannon. She was eating ice cream and he was having a cocktail, so he decided to mix the two.
“We put the best of both our worlds together,” he said.
Following up on his home-grown experiment, Masjedi met with food scientists to figure out how to mass produce his idea. He quickly realized why other frozen cocktails use only a few drops of spirits or use flavorings to mimic alcohol content.
“The most challenging part of this product was that it’s very difficult to freeze alcohol,” Masjedi said.
“We have overcome that and perfected the process,” he added, although he declined to explain how he did so.
Based in Santa Monica, SnoBar produces a line of frozen cocktails that have the same alcohol content as normal liquid cocktails. The company makes four varieties of ice-cream cocktails and two flavors of ice pops: margarita and cosmopolitan. The ice cream is sold in tubs while the ice pops are cocktails on a stick.
SnoBar products launched in December in Arizona, moved on to Las Vegas in March and will be available in Los Angeles by the end of this year. Eventually, Masjedi wants to distribute nationally to bars, nightclubs, restaurants, liquor stores and supermarkets.
The price for a SnoBar concoction is $8 to $12 in a restaurant or bar, about the same as the cost of a liquid cocktail. The company has about 10 employees that handle marketing and distribution; a contract manufacturer in Irvine makes the cold cocktails.
Masjedi said SnoBar’s appeal is that it’s the first frozen concoction with a full wallop of alcohol.
Karl Blatt, a bar consultant in Hollywood, believes SnoBar will find customers in warmer climates and festive bars, particularly Mexican-themed cantinas. But he questioned whether SnoBar will have staying power.
“My gut feeling is that it will be trendy,” Blatt said. “It will do well for a discrete period of time and then go out of fashion.”
Masjedi said that the demand has been overwhelming and that he knows he has repeat customers.
He said that the company has more than 50 flavors in development, but so far his favorite is Brandy Alexander Chocolate Chip.
