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IF AT FIRST you don't succeed ... redesign, repackage, resize, remarket and return your product to the shelf.
That's the approach David Briggs, owner of New Orleans Original Daiquiris and Fat Tuesday's bars, is taking in his company's second launch of off-the-shelf-nonalcoholic drink mixers.
Unenthusiastic sales for the quart-size nonalcoholic mix version of the drinks that made his daiquiri bars a multimilliondollar business prompted David Briggs Enterprises Inc. to yank the bulky cartons from shelves this month and start over. The quarts have been available in grocery and liquor stores since December 1998.
Briggs remembered what initially pulled him into the daiquiri business: an observation that while people like to drink the frozen beverages, bartenders hate preparing them. He improved the process in his own bars by employing rows of massive blenders that need little attention. Reproducing the product at home should be just as simple, he reasoned.
By the end of July, grocery and liquor stores throughout the South will stock Briggs' new and improved "Blend-a-Paks" bright nine-ounce boxes of liquid mix that conics in seven flavors, including Pina Colada and Mudslide. When mixed with alcohol and ice, the contents of each box produce a single blender full of drink, leaving no surplus of mix to store. The simple concept, Briggs believes, will recharge the ailing wholesale arm of...