As a bartender, you’re juggling a dozen orders, chatting with customers over background music and keeping track of cash and cards sliding back and forth across the counter. But in the end, you’re only as good as your drinks. That’s what led Eric Tecosky, bartender-turned-entrepreneur, to create Dirty Sue – a premium olive juice used to make dirty martinis and Bloody Marys that has designs on expanding into an international brand. “Bartenders make a ton of martinis, and one night I was by myself when a big party came in and it got a little crazy,” Tecosky said. “Someone ordered a dirty martini, but when I went to grab the olive jar, it was full of olives but there was no more juice.” He was forced to head to the storage room for another jar, leaving his customers to wait. This was not the first time it had happened. “I would have two, sometimes three open jars of olives with no juice,” he said. “So I’m trying to get this jar open and I think, Why has nobody bottled olive juice yet?” That’s when inspiration hit. Tecosky worked with a team of investors to create Dirty Sue, a blend of olive juice specifically for cocktails. The product contains no olives – just juice, which is twice filtered from Spanish olives and complements many cocktails, including gin and vodka dirty martinis. Read the complete story in the Nov. 2 edition of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal.