6 June, 2025

Cocktail sideline gives chef a new direction

Luis Cabrera’s margarita business has taken off. He speaks to Rob Drent about its beginnings in his Belmont garage, competing at a culinary Olympics and making breakfast for Barack Obama.

Recipe for success… Luis Cabrera is marketing a Kiwi-made Mexican classic to the world

The call to cook for former United States president Barack Obama came through at 10pm.
Auckland chef Luis Cabrera, who owned two Mexican restaurants, was told he had to be at the Sofitel at 6am the next morning with breakfast, lunch and dinner menus if he wanted to accept the assignment. It’s not every day a US president comes to town requesting Mexican food, so Cabrera jumped at the chance.
He suspects he was recommended by the Mexican Embassy which he often catered for.
When Cabrera arrived to cook for Obama, he had to hand in his cellphone and wasn’t allowed to tell his wife where he was.
The order came down from the former president’s suite for a breakfast serving of huevos rancheros (a Mexican breakfast dish with eggs, tortillas and salsa).
Cabrera had 11 minutes to cook, surrounded by American secret service agents “which was pretty intimidating”. However, Obama enjoyed the breakfast so much he invited Cabrera up to his suite for an official photo. The conversation was brief. “He was very kind and thanked me for cooking breakfast.”
That was in 2018. Cabrera’s culinary career was going well – he owned popular Mexican restaurants in Elliot Stables and the Wynyard Quarter with a growing reputation for their home-made margaritas – the cocktail that was to change Cabrera’s life.

Presidential seal of approval… Luis Cabrera with Barack Obama after cooking breakfast for the US leader in 2018

Cabrera was perhaps born to produce margaritas.
He grew up in Jalisco, a regional state that is known for producing that most Mexican of drinks – tequila – and as the home of mariachi music.
“Half my family is still there… I have a deep connection to the land, and the area – and tequila,” Cabrera says.
He was always interested in food and was working as a chef in Mexico when he won a scholarship to study culinary art in Venice in 2000.
It was the start of a love for Italian food. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in culinary studies, he began travelling and cooking. As a member of the Italian Chefs Federation he represented Italy at a culinary Olympics in Germany, winning a silver medal in the culinary artist category.
Contestants had to prepare a buffet – Cabrera’s was inspired by Aztec culture and included a spectacular pumpkin carved with Aztec motifs.
Cabrera travelled the world, working in Italian restaurants in Germany, Ireland, the United States, Mexico, and Australia and New Zealand.
But he moved back to Mexico in 2007, and “fell in love with my own food again”.
When he was cooking Italian food it was always easy to pair it with white or red wines, but Mexican food had no natural pairing. Most people would drink beer with their Mexican meal, he said. This was a gap he would later look to fill.
Cooking Mexican food, he began being invited to help cater for government events in Mexico and around the world.
“There was always an issue of what do you pair the food with.”
Carbrera created a margarita that was designed to go with food. Every barman has his own margarita recipe but Carbrera approached the drink with a chef’s palate.
Having enjoyed his previous visit to New Zealand, he emigrated here with his wife, Cecilia, in 2009.
He got a job working at Non Solo Pizza in Parnell, having been turned down by four Mexican restaurants in the city – one a fast-food outlet and the others run by Iranians, Fijians and Chileans, he says
The time was right for him and Cecilia to open their own restaurant – Besos Latinos in the Stables complex in Elliot St.
“I thought I could make good Mexican food for Kiwis.”
And so it transpired. The restaurant was so successful that after six years the couple opened a second location in Halsey St in the Wynyard Quarter.
All the restaurants’ furnishings – tables, chairs, plates, lamps and decorations – were handmade in Mexico.
“I started offering my margaritas and people started falling in love with my margaritas as well.”
It was a busy time. The couple’s children, Valentina and Fernando, were born at North Shore Hospital, and the restaurants were big operations, employing 26 staff.
“It was crazy workwise.”
Then 2020 and the Covid lockdowns hit. The restaurants were only able to sell takeaway food without alcoholic drinks.
Customers were missing Cabrera’s margaritas. He started making a few bottles which they could purchase from a Wynyard Quarter liquor store. He initially made just six bottles at time, but they would be snapped up as soon as they arrived. “Word spread around the Wynyard Quarter like wildfire.”
During the dull days of Covid, people started sharing photos of themselves enjoying his margaritas. Word spread to friends in Christchurch, Queenstown and Wellington. Cabrera began fielding enquiries from around the country.

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“I had two full-scale restaurants operating with 26 staff… but I was making more money from the sales of the margaritas.”

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After starting out making four-litre batches, filling milk bottles with margaritas, production quickly grew into a 20-litre bucket operation in the garage of his home at Williamson Ave, Belmont.
Once orders started rolling in online, he bought a small bottle-filling machine which took 20 seconds to fill each bottle. He began bottling at his restaurant.
Soon he was making 60 to 80 litres per week, and within three months this had risen to 160 litres, then quickly to 320 litres a week. “We were still in lockdown so instead of serving tables my staff began helping me clean bottles and put labels on them, and then putting them in boxes.”
Orders had reached such a level that Cabrera bought an automatic filling machine from China. He was still blending the margaritas in his garage, but filling bottles and labelling them in the restaurant.
When the first Covid lockdown finished, recovery was slow. Further lockdowns brought further uncertainty and slow recovery. “I had two full-scale restaurants operating with 26 staff… but I was making more money from the sales of the margaritas.”
He hoped the restaurants would go back to normal, “but the borders were closed and no one was going back to the offices,” he says.
“Keeping the restaurants open would have ended up adding more and more to my debts.”
After 12 years of successful operation, he decided to close both outlets at the end of 2022 to focus solely on margarita production. He had not long before got the keys to the Rosebank Rd factory where he has been based since.
Customers who knew Cabrera well came on board as investors, backing it to be a sizeable business. “I was a chef with the recipe and good intentions.” When it became apparent Cabrera was buying almost all the top-grade Patrón brand tequila available in New Zealand for his margarita production, it was clear that the business was scaleable.
He went to Mexico and negotiated a deal to buy 20,000-litre lots of tequila from another top-line producer, and with investors on board, set up a brewing and bottling plant at Rosebank Rd. “Things got really serious.”

Cabrera’s Aztec pumpkin which helped win a medal at a culinary Olympics

Even more so after he sent bottles to international spirits competitions and within a few months started to win gold medals, including a Triple Gold medal at the prestigious Major League Spirits awards in Michigan in 2023.
“That is when the investors saw the potential to sell globally, not just Auckland.”
Besos Margarita now has a distributor in Samoa serving the Pacific Islands and outlets through New Zealand, with the next step a move in Australia.
It has two main brands – Classica, the signature brand, and a habanero-chilli margarita – but is experimenting with other flavours: mango, cocoa and a cafe-espresso version.
“I’m really a chef making a cocktail,” Cabrera says.
Staff costs are small: Cabrera and part-timers such as spirits-industry expert. When the factory is producing, staff come in for the day.
He loves the fact he can live in New Zealand and promote the product locally: he’s had tastings at local liquor stores, Belmont Primary and Belmont Park Racquets Club, where he plays interclub tennis.
The scale has come a long way from his garage days. The factory has a 2000-litre vat and can produce 1800 bottles in an hour.
“We market it as the arguably the best margarita in the world – I have a lot of pride and respect for the product.”
This month he is speaking to the Restaurant Association. He hopes he can inspire and motivate others in the sector, which has endured difficult times.
Sometimes it’s not just about being resilient, he says, which can also lead to stubbornness, but seeing an opportunity and going for it. “People loved my margaritas and I realised I could specialise in something.”
And the gold medals keep rolling in. The Besos Margarita “Habanero” won another at a San Francisco RTD competition this year.
The company can be forgiven for blowing its own trumpet online in celebration: “All the way from New Zealand – crafted with Mexican soul and the finest 100 per cent blue agave from Jalisco, Mexico.”
Just the way Luis Cabrera likes it.