What Tahona Launch Pad Taught Me About Building a Caribbean Beverage Venture

Looking back at the programme that helped me turn a bigger Garden-to-Glass vision into a clearer, more practical path forward.

In April 2025, I submitted the Caribbean Drink Lab to the Tahona Society Launch Pad.

At the time, I knew what I wanted to build, even if I was still figuring out how to explain it.

The idea was relatively simple: bring mobile beverage processing and innovation infrastructure closer to the people and places where Caribbean ingredients are grown, and create more pathways for local agricultural produce to become valuable beverage ingredients.

But underneath that was something bigger.

For years, my work through Green Bartender had been developing around a simple idea: what happens when we reconnect the drink with the garden?

I had been growing ingredients, working with farmers, creating cocktails, reducing waste and telling stories through drinks. Garden-to-Glass was becoming more than a way of describing what I did. It was becoming the framework through which I understood the relationship between agriculture, hospitality, culture and the environment.

The Drink Lab was my attempt to build some of the practical tools and facilities around that work, and Tahona Launch Pad became an important part of figuring out what that could actually look like.

Why Tahona Launch Pad?

The Tahona Society, founded by Altos Tequila, created the Launch Pad as part of its wider support for bartenders and entrepreneurs.

Through Agenda28, the programme went beyond simply helping participants prepare a competition pitch. It introduced founders to ways of thinking about entrepreneurship that I found particularly useful because they were both practical and honest about what building something actually involves.

Looking back, two frameworks stand out to me in particular: the Infinity Loop and the Fermi model.

The Infinity Loop helped put language around something I was already experiencing: entrepreneurship is not linear. You learn something, test it, get feedback, rethink it and go again. That sounds simple, but it was one of the most useful ideas I took from the Launch Pad, because it made iteration feel like progress rather than evidence that you had got the first version wrong.

The Fermi model gave me a different perspective. It encouraged me to think about a business not only in terms of whether the idea was interesting, but whether the underlying assumptions could support something that could actually grow.

And then there was the Trough of Sorrow.

I appreciated that too.

Entrepreneurship is often presented through the finished success story. The programme made space for the uncertainty and difficult stretches that come with building something before anyone knows what it will become. That bit of reality goes a long way.

What stood out about the project?

I recently asked Valerie Kramis of Agenda28 what stood out to her when she first encountered my project.

Her answer was something I appreciated because it described the part of the work that had always mattered most to me.

She said:

“Your clarity of purpose. Green Bartender was never just about drinks; it connected creativity, sustainability, Caribbean identity, and community in a genuinely distinctive way.”

That is probably the simplest description of what I had been trying to do.

I wasn't trying to make sustainability an additional layer on top of bartending. I was interested in what happens when the ingredients, the people growing them, the people transforming them and the people experiencing them are all considered part of the same story.

That is where Garden-to-Glass became important.

From vision to something people could understand

One of the most useful things about the Launch Pad was that it forced me to make the idea understandable to somebody who wasn't already inside my head.

I had a tendency to see all the connections at once: agriculture, ingredients, farmers, bartenders, processing, hospitality, culture, waste, tourism and storytelling. The challenge was that seeing all those connections myself did not necessarily mean someone else could immediately understand the business.

Valerie later reflected that the project became “more defined and intentional” during the programme, particularly around who it served, how it could create value and what a sustainable path forward might look like.

That succinct point really resounded, the programme didn't give me the vision. The vision was already there. What it did do, was help give the vision structure.

The Drink Lab became clearer

The original submission described the Caribbean Drink Lab as a mobile beverage innovation hub. It was intended to bring equipment, processing capability and experimentation into places that might not otherwise have access to that infrastructure.

The idea was to take agricultural produce, including surplus, overlooked ingredients, and the "ugly" fruit, and create new pathways for those ingredients through beverages.

That remains the heart of the idea, but the way I think about it has become much clearer since then.

Today, I am increasingly thinking about it as T.A.P. Field Lab.

T.A.P. stands for Transforming Agricultural Produce, and the direction is becoming increasingly practical:

Processing. Activation. Connection. Innovation.

The purpose is to help close the food pathway gap by transforming local and heritage agricultural produce into useful, cocktail-ready beverage inputs.

That could mean processing an ingredient close to where it is grown, working with hospitality partners to bring that ingredient into a menu, demonstrating what is possible through an activation, or creating a pathway for an agricultural product that previously had nowhere else to go.

Building that capacity is important, because it makes these things possible at a greater scale.

But the infrastructure is not the idea itself.

Infrastructure as an amplifier

One of the interesting realizations that came after the Launch Pad was that I was already doing parts of this work.

I had been processing ingredients, working with growers, creating mixers and beverage products, doing pop-ups and hospitality activations, and experimenting with ways to turn local ingredients into something people wanted to drink.

The missing piece was capacity.

The right support structure would allow that Garden-to-Glass work to grow beyond me. It could provide a place and a set of tools where farmers, bartenders, producers, hospitality businesses and other collaborators could participate.

It could allow more people to experience what is possible with Caribbean ingredients, and ultimately help bring a bigger audience into the conversation about why the ingredients we grow, the biodiversity around us and the people who steward them matter.

That is a different proposition from simply buying a piece of equipment.

The infrastructure becomes an amplifier for the work.

What I was still figuring out

Valerie's reflection on the project also highlighted something important.

The vision was clear. The next question was whether the business model could support it.

That became one of the most valuable questions coming out of the programme: How does the Lab create value? Who pays for that value? What can happen with the resources I already have? What infrastructure actually needs to be built? What can happen without waiting for a major investment? And how can the model grow while remaining practical?

Those questions moved the conversation from:

“Wouldn't this be great?”

to:

“How does this actually work?”

That is a much better question to be asking.

The importance of starting where you are

This has probably been one of the biggest lessons from the experience.

It is tempting to think that the big version of an idea has to exist before you can prove it. But the work I was already doing provided a starting point.

The Garden-to-Glass framework had already been tested through real ingredients, real drinks, real growers, real hospitality relationships and real audiences. The next step wasn't necessarily to build everything at once. It was to understand what was already working, identify the gaps, and build the infrastructure that could help those pieces connect and grow.

That is where T.A.P. Field Lab is heading now.

Looking back at Tahona

When I entered the Launch Pad, I was carrying a very broad vision. I wanted to show that Caribbean agriculture, biodiversity, culture and beverage creativity could belong in the same conversation.

I still want that.

In fact, I probably want it more now than I did then.

But I have a better understanding of the importance of making the next step clear.

Tahona Launch Pad helped me see that an ambitious vision does not have to become smaller in order to become clearer. Sometimes you simply have to separate the pieces.

What is the purpose?

Who is it for?

What is the actual problem?

What does the venture do?

Where does value come from?

What needs to happen next?

Those questions continue to shape the work.

And the broader ambition remains the same:

to give the Caribbean a global cocktail voice.

For me, that means more than creating Caribbean-inspired drinks. It means creating pathways that allow our ingredients, our growers, our knowledge and our stories to travel further.

The Garden-to-Glass journey continues. And the next chapter is increasingly taking shape as T.A.P. Field Lab: moving value from garden to glass.

What is Tahona Society Launch Pad?

The Tahona Society Launch Pad is an entrepreneurship programme created to support bartenders and beverage entrepreneurs beyond competition participation. Through practical tools, feedback and mentorship, the programme helps founders test ideas, develop stronger business thinking and refine their ventures.

What is the Infinity Loop in entrepreneurship?

The Infinity Loop is an iterative entrepreneurship framework developed by Lara Zimmerman. It presents venture development as a continuous process of learning, testing, feedback and refinement rather than a straight path from idea to finished business.

What is the Fermi model in entrepreneurship?

The Fermi model is a way of breaking down a business opportunity into assumptions and estimates to understand its potential scale. In the Launch Pad, it encouraged founders to think about whether the foundations of an idea could support meaningful growth.

What is the Trough of Sorrow?

The Trough of Sorrow describes the difficult period that can occur after the initial excitement around a venture, when uncertainty, setbacks and the realities of building a business become more apparent. The Launch Pad used the concept to acknowledge that these experiences can be part of entrepreneurship rather than signs that a venture has failed.

What is T.A.P. Field Lab?

T.A.P. Field Lab is the evolving direction of the Caribbean Drink Lab. T.A.P. stands for Transforming Agricultural Produce. The concept focuses on processing local and heritage agricultural produce into beverage and cocktail inputs while creating opportunities for activation, collaboration and connection between agriculture and hospitality.

What is Garden-to-Glass?

Garden-to-Glass is the framework underlying Devon Samlalsingh's work through Green Bartender. It explores the connection between agricultural production, ingredients, beverage creation, hospitality, culture and ecological stewardship.

Why is the Caribbean important to Garden-to-Glass?

The Caribbean has significant agricultural biodiversity, culinary traditions and cultural knowledge, alongside a hospitality and tourism sector with the potential to create demand for locally rooted products. Garden-to-Glass explores how these strengths can be connected to create more resilient beverage pathways.

What did Tahona Launch Pad change about the Drink Lab?

The programme helped make the project more defined and understandable, particularly around its purpose, audience, value creation and path toward sustainability. The concept has continued evolving and is now increasingly taking shape as T.A.P. Field Lab.

Who is behind the Caribbean Drink Lab and T.A.P. Field Lab?

The work is being developed by Devon Samlalsingh, founder of Green Bartender, whose work combines agriculture, bartending, local ingredients and Garden-to-Glass thinking.

What is the bigger vision behind the work?

The broader ambition is to help give the Caribbean a global cocktail voice by connecting its agricultural ingredients, biodiversity, cultural knowledge and beverage creativity in ways that can create value locally while reaching wider audiences. And to answer the question, "What if, a drink can be an ecological act?"