Laura Taylor, Founder and CEO of Wayne-based Mingle Mocktails, spoke with BUCKSCO Today about growing up in San Diego, where she started her first business selling fruit door-to-door and dreamed of a future in entrepreneurship.

Taylor is frank about her troubled history with alcohol, dating back to fifth grade and continuing into her early career. She came up with the idea for Mingle when she discovered how difficult it was to choose sobriety while participating in the “work hard, play hard” culture of business.

Today, she’s working on expanding her line of sophisticated, better-for-you nonalcoholic beverages.

Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

I was born and raised in San Diego, Calif. It was great. I never planned on leaving California, but after college, I went to a six-month training in Milwaukee for my first job at Rockwell Automation Allen-Bradley. They train you, and then you go back out, and they were having a hard time finding people to stay in California that weren’t from California. So, I was like, “I’ll go to the San Francisco or L.A. office after training.”

I happened to meet my husband in the training program, and he’s from Chicago. He won the geographic challenge. We settled in Chicago and had our kids there.

Growing up in San Diego, what did your mom do? What did your dad do?

My dad worked for his father’s soap company. It was called Vogue Detergent. My mom stayed at home to raise us for a bit. It was me, my older brother, and two younger sisters. Then, when I was in grade school, she went to help my dad at the soap company.

What was your role in the family, as the second of four kids?

I took on the Type A, ambitious role. I always wanted to be a businesswoman, get out of the house, make my own money, and be financially independent.

How old were you when you realized that?

In grade school, I realized I had a bit of an entrepreneurial bug. We lived between two 7-Elevens, and my parents were fine with us walking, so we would look for candy money between the couch cushions.

I helped my brother with his paper route so I could make money. And my best friend, Debbie, and I would pick fruit in our backyards, wash it, shine it up with Crisco, and go door to door selling it.

Did you have other part-time jobs too?

Yes, from when I was 15 through college. At first, the only place at the mall that would take me was a men’s clothing store called Jeanswest.

I did that until I got my driver’s license, and then I switched over to a retail store where I wanted the clothes, which at the time was Wet Seal, so I could get the company discount. I was a top-performing salesperson.

I did retail in college and then got plugged into amazing on-campus food service jobs, because the benefits were phenomenal. Free food and flexible hours.

What did you take from those jobs that still sticks with you today?

The number one thing is an incredible, relentless work ethic. I’ve always shown up wherever I need to show up, stayed as late as I need to, anything to get the job done. Having pride in earning that little paycheck every two weeks and making it your own, that’s so important.

Did you play any sports in high school?

I played soccer up through high school. We had a really good team. A couple of gals on our team got scholarships to places like UCLA, but I just did intramural soccer at Cal Poly. It was good, though. It kept me out of trouble.

Was there a soccer game from high school that stays with you today?

I had one trick that my coach recognized and used as a weapon, which is that I’m a lefty, and I was a very good corner kicker. So, when you kicked from one corner, I could score a goal with my curved banana kick. I had goals featured in the local newspaper for that. It seemed effortless, but looking back, it was a pretty cool skill.

What kind of music floated your boat back then, Laura?

Alternative. The station we listened to was 91X. I grew up listening to Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow, Anne Murray … the classics.

But my best friend, who sold fruit with me, our first concert together was Thompson Twins. We saw Depeche Mode. So, more new wave. And then, moving up to Central California, I learned more about folk rock. I’ve always had a broad respect for music.

What was your favorite concert experience?

After I graduated, I saw Bon Jovi in Boston with one of my jobs. I’ve seen a lot of amazing artists through my career at dedicated company concerts. I didn’t really like Bon Jovi at the time, but from the second row, I gained an appreciation. As artists, their enthusiasm and their passion touched me so much. I’m a huge fan of any artist when I’ve gotten to see their passion on stage.

I have a picture of P!NK on my wall. She’s one of my badass role models. She’s amazing because she pushes herself to the limit. She’s like, “I want to do those acrobatic tricks. I want to climb a building. I want to fly over the stage.” And she does it herself. I respect that.

Why did you choose Cal Poly? What other colleges did you look at?

I had a comfortable childhood, but my parents told me straight up that I had to go to a state school. And one of the gals I worked with at Wet Seal, we did a road trip up to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo for their Poly Royal weekend.

I came home from that trip going, “There’s a beach. There are mountains. It’s a beautiful campus. The downtown is awesome. The party scene is great.” I set my sights there because I didn’t want to go to San Diego State, and we couldn’t afford the University of San Diego.

It was an amazing experience. I studied industrial engineering with a minor in packaging. I used plastic machines and extrusion machines. The teachers at the School of Industrial Technology were super hands-on. It was such a great group of professors that my sister ended up going in under the same degree.

Looking back, was Cal Poly the right choice for you?

Absolutely. But playing into what led me to Mingle, I was drinking a lot from a very early age, as early as fifth grade, and I kept it going at Cal Poly.

I can talk about it now because there’s a resilience there, but looking back, I see moments where I’m like, “Yeah, that wasn’t good.” It’s fine when you have nothing to lose. But as you get older, there’s more at stake.

Over the last 25 years, who were the people who saw promise in you and opened up doors for you?

My father forced me to do informational interviews with people, especially women who were in business, including a female executive at the Clorox company. It left a mark on me. He was trying to instill opportunity and potential in the workplace that I could identify with. And he hooked me up with a couple of internships that exposed me to different parts of manufacturing.

But as far as people taking a chance on me, I always worked hard for everything I did. I worked hard to get hired at Rockwell Automation, and then Accenture, and then IBM, and then Tableau.

As far as women along the way, I had a boss at Tableau who was incredibly intense. She prepared me to work with my Primary Investor, Bethenny Frankel. I talked to my mom about this boss, and my mom said, “You’re getting an MBA under her.” Because she was so hard to work for. But I’d worked with CEOs, so I knew how to navigate that.

You were living hard on both sides, both professionally and personally.

Yeah. I always prioritized my career and achieved my goals. But there was an underlying insecurity, having been the tallest girl in school until the sixth grade, not feeling comfortable with who I was.

You discover alcohol, and it takes that discomfort away. High school is tough, but when you’re drinking with friends, everybody’s your buddy. In college, you want to be the fun girl, so you drink at the parties.

My first semester was a little dodgy, adapting to having nobody to pull me back. But my parents were like, “You better get it together.” And I got it together. I studied hard. The school I was in, the professors, the career center, everything grounded me. But still, I was drinking.

So, what caused you to launch Mingle Mocktails?

I launched Mingle eight years ago. Leading up to that, I had an awesome, successful professional career, traveling the world, managing teams, learning how to be a strong leader, executive, and businesswoman. But I was drinking. It was a “work hard, play hard” mentality.

There was a point where I’m like, “I need to stop.” It’s what I needed to do for my family and for myself. It was so difficult because there were so many work situations. I remember one at the Las Vegas Strip, where the boss was like, “Let’s go to a bar,” and they didn’t have anything but water or soda.

I mentioned seeing passion in people. The CEO of Tableau Software, Christian Chabot, when he was onstage talking about the company, had rainbows coming out of his eyes. He was so magnetic. I said, “I want that.” So, I opened myself up to the possibility of doing something else that I felt passionate about.

After a year of sobriety, I was invited to a girls’ weekend in the Poconos. I was sick of drinking club soda, so I made my own mocktail, and I brought it in a one-liter bottle. When the corks started popping, I poured this pretty pink bubbly drink and felt this spark of joy. It was so powerful that I looked around with my girlfriends, and I’m like, “This is a game changer.”

I jumped into my office and did my research on what’s going on with mocktails. I had a business plan in a week and a half.

How long was it until you officially launched?

This was uncharted territory for me, and always working within such a structured environment, it felt incredibly risky. I networked and interviewed probably 50 people in my network to figure out how to launch a beverage company and understand why they fail, what it costs, and what makes them succeed.

I found a blogger who answered a lot of my questions, and I reached out to him, saying, “I live in Philly. I’m looking to start a beverage company, with no experience. Do you know of anyone? I don’t know who to trust.” There are so many shady individuals who prey on entrepreneurs.

He connected me with a guy who had direct experience launching a successful brand and a failed brand. And he had an incubation company. He alleviated the risk and accelerated the timeline. He helped establish my supply chain, warehouse, and all these resources. In less than six months, we propped up the company and made a product.

One of the business leaders I pitched to in my network said, “Laura, this pitch is great, but you didn’t do one thing. You didn’t ask me to invest.” He ended up investing twice.

So here we are halfway through 2025. What are you focused on? What are your priorities?

Innovation, growth, competitive leadership.

I had to educate buyers on what a mocktail is, and now there are all these other brands, so it’s important that I stay relevant and top of mind. Fresh flavors, fresh branding.

My son, two years ago, joined me to run logistics, and now he’s got a whole bunch of operations functions. And then my husband left his job a couple of months ago to run our sales organization.

This allows me to stay focused on building the brand. For example, on any given day, I might have back-to-back meetings — one with the press, another with a major retailer, and another centered on innovation.

What’s on the horizon you’re most excited about?

We are going to be announcing a line extension in October. We’ll preview it in September, and it will extend Mingle’s presence in a beverage category that caters to people looking for options that are nonalcoholic. So, I’m very excited about that.

And we just agreed upon a limited summer flavor with a national retailer that I’m excited to do next summer.

Your family must be proud of what you’ve accomplished.

Yeah. If you ask my kids what they saw, initially, they would say, “Mom was always busy. Mom didn’t pay attention to me.” But now they’re 23 and 21, and they have absolute pride.

My son, Drew, volunteered to do Dry July, and he’s posting about it on Instagram. He has verbalized how proud he is of me and the brand. My daughter, Reagan, interned for me for several months.

They’ve seen the benefit of setting a goal and going after it, and have seen it go from the kitchen counter to Whole Foods shelves. Last year, my husband said, “This brand has done so much for our family.” It’s heartwarming how positively impacted they all were by this whole experience.

What do you do with all your free time?

I nap, and I read probably a book a week, if not more. It’s my wind-down. I just started reading a book by 50-Cent: Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter. It just caught my eye.

Three last questions for you, Laura. What’s something big that you’ve changed your mind about over the last 10 or 15 years?

If there’s something you want to do, probably the biggest thing in your way is yourself. My daughter has embraced “you can do anything you set your mind to.” And that blows my heart up, because that’s what would have prevented me from launching a company. I didn’t think I knew how.

What keeps you hopeful and optimistic? It’s a crazy world out there.

Feedback. I had the amazing pleasure of being at Whole Foods headquarters last week in Austin. They had what they called a center store rally, where all the employees sat down to hear me talk about Mingle. Their feedback was so heartwarming and rewarding.

Did you, to use your language, have rainbows coming out of your ears?

Yeah. I said, “I’m not going to talk about my brand. Samples will be waiting outside the room. I’m going to talk about what inspired me to launch Mingle and how I got here. If I can launch Mingle, you can overcome your fears to achieve your goals too!”

It’s such a joy to share learnings that can be applied to anyone in life. I wanted to tell them that, if there is something they’re thinking about doing, they should just do it.

Finally, Laura, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

I’m going to flip it around and say the one thing that pushed me and drives me today is all the people who said I couldn’t do it.

I would say, “I’m looking to launch a beverage company.” A number of folks would say, “Don’t do it. It’s a waste of money. The failure rate is off the charts.” And I kept telling myself, “I think I can.”

My father, but especially my mother, always believed in me. She was the ultimate optimist and consummate cheerleader, always encouraging me and telling me I could do this.

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Publisher’s note: Helen Harris assisted with this profile.