It began with a crate of unwanted oranges.
A farm in Mission, Texas. A surplus that wouldn't make the grade. A small dehydrator and a stubborn idea about garnishes.
Sarita Mendez spent ten years tending bar in Austin before she ever ran a dehydrator. The orange-wheel garnish — the one a thoughtful bartender used to slice fresh each shift — had quietly disappeared, replaced by sad bottled cherries and a sweating bowl of citrus at the well. She wanted a wheel a bar could keep on a shelf, that tasted like fruit, and that didn't cost the planet to make.
In 2024, she walked a Rio Grande citrus farm and asked what happened to the fruit no one would buy. The grower opened a shed. Crates of oranges sat there, fated for compost — too small, too misshapen, too freckled. She offered him a price. She took them home and started drying.
"A bar should be able to pour a proper old fashioned in February. The fruit shouldn't be the part that fails."
The first batch sold out in six weekends across four bars. The second batch was four times the size, and went to eleven. Two years on, Sarita's Fruit Work supplies thirty-six bars and restaurants across Texas, plus a small but loyal mail-order following of home cooks and amateur bartenders.
The method has barely changed. Slow heat. Long hours. No sugar, no sulphites, no shortcuts. Just the patience the fruit was always asking for.
Sarita Mendez
Born in McAllen, trained on the back bars of South Austin. Sarita built the Fruit Work to be the kind of supplier she wished she'd had when she was running service — quick to answer, slow to dry, and unwilling to compromise on what's in the tin.
Two years, six wheels.
The whole story is in the sourcing.
Where the fruit comes from, how it's grown, and what we do with what would have been wasted.
Read on: Provenance →