Laura Taylor

Laura Taylor is the founder and chief executive of Mingle Mocktails, a nonalcoholic beverage company based in Wayne, Pennsylvania.^[1] She launched the brand in 2017 after a two-decade career in enterprise software sales at Rockwell Automation, Accenture, IBM, and Tableau Software, motivated by her own decision to stop drinking alcohol and the absence of appealing nonalcoholic options at corporate events.^[1][8] NielsenIQ identified Mingle as the fastest-growing brand in the nonalcoholic spirits category in 2023 and later ranked it the No. 1 nonalcoholic cocktail brand in the United States.^[3][5]

Taylor grew the company from $7,000 in first-year sales — generated by hand-delivering bottles to country clubs and specialty stores on Philadelphia's Main Line — to more than 13,000 retail doors across 45 states, including Whole Foods Market, Walmart, Target, CVS, Total Wine & More, and Wegmans.^[1][17][14] In 2023, Bethenny Frankel became a strategic investor after organically reviewing the product on TikTok.^[10] In 2024, Mingle secured a national distribution partnership with Republic National Distributing Company, one of the largest alcohol wholesalers in the United States.^[11] A co-created exclusive flavor launched in every Whole Foods location in January 2025 produced a 6,256 percent increase in net sales.^[5]

Taylor holds a B.S. in industrial engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.^[10] She was named to the Forbes 50 Over 50 Lifestyle list in 2025 and the Inc. Female Founders 500 in 2025 and 2026.^[7][6] She is a founding board member of the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association and a 2019 Tory Burch Foundation Fellow.^[9][10]

Taylor grew up in San Diego, California, the second of four children.^[10] Her father ran Vogue Detergent, a family soap company; her mother stayed home to raise the children before joining the business when Taylor was in grade school.^[10] Taylor showed early entrepreneurial instincts, selling fruit door-to-door in her neighborhood as a child.^[6]

She enrolled at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering.^[10] She later described the degree as an unlikely but direct foundation for her career in beverage entrepreneurship. "I'm one of the few who can say that my degree in Industrial Engineering helped lay the groundwork for my transition from the corporate tech world to founding Mingle Mocktails," she told Bartender Spirits Awards.^[10]

After graduating, Taylor took a position as a sales engineer at Rockwell Automation Allen-Bradley, which required a six-month training program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.^[10] She met her future husband during the training; rather than returning to California as planned, she settled in Chicago.^[10] Her early assignments included making sales calls at steel mills and potato chip factories — work she later credited with teaching her the fundamentals of enterprise relationship management.^[9]

Accenture (2000–2006)

Taylor joined Accenture as a senior manager, where she spent six years developing national programs and managing executive relationships with Fortune 100 clients.^[9] The role deepened her understanding of organizational structures and decision-making processes — skills she would later apply to pitching retail buyers. "I made it a point to learn about organizational structures, business processes and key motivators that drive decisions as part of my past job," she told Women in Retail Leadership Circle. "I applied those same skills to engaging with retailers and retail buyers."^[9]

IBM Global Business Services (2006–2014)

Taylor spent eight years at IBM in progressively senior alliance leadership roles, serving first as North America Alliance Leader for SAP and then as Global SAP Alliance Leader at IBM Global Business Services.^[8][9] The positions required extensive travel and immersion in what Taylor described as the "work hard, play hard" culture of enterprise technology, where alcohol was embedded in deal-making and client entertainment.^[1] During this period, she and her husband relocated from Chicago to Berwyn, Pennsylvania, both holding demanding corporate positions.^[1]

Tableau Software (2014–2019)

Taylor joined Tableau Software in 2014 and held three progressively senior roles over five years, culminating as Senior Director of the Global Systems Integrator Program.^[8] She was inspired by Tableau CEO Christian Chabot's visible passion for the company, which she later described as a catalyst for her own entrepreneurial ambitions.^[10]

It was during her time at Tableau that Taylor made the decision to stop drinking alcohol, in 2015.^[1] She found the social consequences more difficult than the physical ones. "When I put down the wine, I had to pick up seltzer or water," she told The Philadelphia Inquirer. She described feeling isolated at the corporate events, cocktail parties, and retreats that had defined her professional life.^[1] For two years, she attended work functions with nothing but sparkling water while colleagues drank wine and cocktails around her.^[9]

Mingle Mocktails (2017–present)

The idea for Mingle Mocktails came during a weekend trip to the Pocono Mountains in February 2017.^[2] Taylor was joining a group of neighborhood women for a girls' weekend. Before the trip, she took her daughter to Whole Foods and bought lavender essence, juices, citrus, and herbs.^[10] In her kitchen in Berwyn, she mixed what would become the Cranberry Cosmo and poured it into a one-liter bottle to bring along.^[2]

As the other women opened bottles of wine, Taylor poured her concoction into a glass and sat down. For the first time since quitting alcohol, she felt socially connected.^[2] "When I came home from that trip, I immediately didn't even say hello to my family, I went to my laptop and looked at what was going on in the adult non-alcoholic category," she told Retail Dive. "They didn't even have a name for it."^[2]

Taylor had no beverage industry experience. She later acknowledged that she Googled "how do you start a beverage company" before taking any steps.^[8] She originally named the brand "Lola's Mocktails" before brainstorming more than 120 alternatives — including, by her own account, options as unpromising as "Swirl" and "Sterling" — before settling on Mingle Mocktails.^[10]

She held a launch party with product for sale in November 2017, while still employed at Tableau.^[1] She generated $7,000 in sales by year-end by delivering bottles to country clubs and specialty stores in her spare time.^[1] She hired her first full-time employee — a salesperson — in May 2018.^[1] Full-year 2018 sales reached $85,000 across four flavors, with distribution in 400 Stop & Shop stores across New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.^[1] Taylor raised more than $100,000 from friends and family to fund the early operations; she also sold her husband's wine collection to help finance the company.^[1][10]

Taylor ran Mingle in parallel with her Tableau position for approximately a year and a half. She left Tableau in early 2019 after securing placement in Whole Foods.^[1][8] At the time of her departure, she told The Philadelphia Inquirer she was targeting $500,000 in 2019 sales and aimed to exceed $10 million within five years.^[1]

In June 2019, Mingle debuted its fifth flavor, Blood Orange Elderflower, at the Summer Fancy Food Show in New York.^[12] By December 2020, the brand was in more than 3,000 retailers, including over 100 Whole Foods Market locations across the North-Atlantic, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic regions, as well as Wegmans, Acme, Safeway, and Cost Plus World Markets.^[4] In 2021, Mingle was named the official mocktail and mixer for the ShopRite LPGA Classic, and Taylor spoke at the event's Women's Executive Day Panel.^[13] The brand expanded into Total Wine & More in 2022.^[14]

In 2023, NielsenIQ identified Mingle as the fastest-growing brand in the nonalcoholic spirits category, and the company reported 250 percent year-over-year revenue growth.^[3] That same year, Bethenny Frankel — whom Taylor had placed on a vision board when she first launched the company in 2017 — organically reviewed Mingle on TikTok.^[10] The review led to a conversation, and in July 2023, Frankel became a strategic investor and partner.^[10]

In March 2024, Mingle announced a national distribution partnership with Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC), one of the largest alcohol wholesalers in the United States, expanding into 30 new markets.^[11][3] Taylor described the deal as a milestone: "We're thrilled to be the first RTD non-alcoholic company to partner with RNDC this year."^[11]

In January 2025, Mingle launched a co-created exclusive Pineapple Paloma flavor in every Whole Foods location nationwide.^[5] The collaboration — which Taylor initially doubted, telling Inc. she thought, "We're this small nonalc cocktail company and you're Whole Foods — you can do whatever you want" — produced a 6,256 percent increase in net sales and a 252 percent spike in year-over-year unit sales.^[5] By 2025, the company was profitable and had achieved double-digit year-over-year growth for three consecutive years.^[5] NielsenIQ ranked Mingle the No. 1 nonalcoholic cocktail brand in the United States.^[5]

In September 2025, Mingle launched Mingle Mood, a functional beverage line infused with adaptogens and nootropics including ashwagandha, L-theanine, and lion's mane.^[18][20] The line drove the brand's highest-revenue month in history within its first 90 days.^[18] In October 2025, Mingle won eight awards at the International Non-Alcoholic Competition, including a Double Gold for its Blood Orange Elderflower Mimosa and recognition as a Top 20 Non-Alcoholic Beverage of the Year.^[10]

By October 2026, Mingle had scaled to more than 13,000 retail doors with revenue growing more than 50 percent year-over-year.^[17] The company launched a limited-edition Espresso Martini for Sober October.^[17] Taylor headlined a sit-down conversation at BevNET Live New York City 2026 alongside Samantha Fletcher, Senior Category Manager for Adult Non-Alcohol at Whole Foods Market, discussing strategies for emerging brands pitching to national retailers.^[15][16] Mingle was named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in August 2026.^[6]

Taylor was named to the Forbes 50 Over 50 Lifestyle list in 2025.^[6] Inc. Magazine named her to its Female Founders 500 list in the Trendsetters category in 2025 — one of four women from the greater Philadelphia region on the list — and again in 2026.^[7][6] Mingle Mocktails was named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2026.^[6]

In 2019, Taylor was selected as a Tory Burch Foundation Fellow, a competitive program supporting women entrepreneurs.^[9] She is a founding board member of the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association, the trade association for the category.^[10] She holds membership in Les Dames d'Escoffier Philadelphia, an invitation-only organization for women leaders in food, beverage, and hospitality.^[10] Mingle Mocktails is WBENC-certified as a women-owned business.^[9]

In 2021, Mingle was named the official mocktail and mixer for the ShopRite LPGA Classic.^[13] The brand has also served as the official mocktail sponsor of the Academy of Country Music Honors Awards in Nashville.^[10]

Taylor lives in Wayne, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two children.^[1][6] She met her husband during a Rockwell Automation training program in Milwaukee; he is from Chicago.^[10] The couple relocated from California to the Philadelphia suburbs for their respective corporate careers.^[1] Her daughter Reagan Taylor has appeared alongside her publicly, including at a guest lecture at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.^[6]

Taylor has spoken publicly about her decision to stop drinking alcohol in 2015 and has described the social isolation of sobriety as more difficult than quitting itself.^[1][9] She has cited Sara Blakely and Tory Burch as entrepreneurial inspirations.^[10]