Deep in the heart of Tualatin, Straightaway Cocktails mixes award-winning canned spirits for everyone from Alaska Airlines to Costco. It’s a company that pours with a purpose.
Straightaway’s small team does everything from recipe writing and batch brewing to bottling, canning and shipping from a 49,000-square-foot Southwest Manhasset Street facility, sending ready-to-drink cocktails around the nation.
“It’s very much home-grown talent,” said production manager Chris Navarro. “We’re craft brewers. We’re craft distillers. We’re teachers in some instances. We’re this group of guys that have come together and are producing some top-notch cocktails that are on airlines, that are at Costco, that are at major grocery chains.”
Last month Straightaway opened a Portland International Airport tasting room where the pre-mixed drinks pour directly from its cans and bottles.
Founders Cy Cain and Casey Richwine launched the company with a little-known, lemon-based cocktail from the Philippines that Richwine found in a classic 1930s cocktail book. Their Lintik, or “Lightning” in English, went through more than 50 iterations to perfect the taste.
The pair opened a Portland tasting room in 2018, juicing fresh lemons on the sidewalk out front and crafting batch cocktails in a tiny backroom until the operation outgrew the space. They then maxed out the capacity of a production facility in North Portland before landing in Tualatin.
Last June, Portland Business Journal ranked Straightaway 24 on a list of Oregon and Washington’s fastest-growing companies, citing 160% revenue growth over two years.
It partnered with Alaska Airlines in 2023, creating an Oregon Old Fashioned and a rotating cast of seasonals for the carrier. Costco and other grocers stock its Advent calendar-inspired 12 Nights of Cocktails. Local outlets like Lecker Liquor in Tualatin carry its spirits, and the company continues to grow its membership club, shipping two limited-edition bottles to members quarterly.
Still, the company that moved to Tualatin to accommodate that growth remains small enough that everything they make passes through human hands with minimal automation. It stays true to its B Corporation ethos, partnering with businesses across the area and donating a percentage of earnings to non-profits.
New Director of Innovation Nora Furst spends her days as head of recipe development, designing new cocktails in a long, narrow lab that looks out on the production floor from the heart of the facility.
Her job: Create cocktails and make sure they are tasty. She starts with ethically and, whenever possible, locally sourced ingredients like Oregon hazelnuts, apples and honey, and needles directly from Cain’s backyard Fir trees.
“I feel like I’m Willy Wonka a little bit,” she said with a laugh.
Furst joined Straightaway last spring after decades in hospitality, including co-founding a Michelin-recognized beverage consulting firm and opening an iconic San Francisco bar.
Like Cain and Richwine’s original Lintik, her blends are tweaked and tasted to find the right balance. This methodical process is also a collaboration that relies on multiple palates sipping through dozens of rounds to perfect recipes, then repeating them to scale up to a production-sized batch.
“We’re always doing it the hard way,” Navarro said. “If it doesn’t jibe with us, then why why bother selling it?”
That perfectionism landed Straightaway’s Mai Tai the Bartender Spirit Awards 2025 Cocktail of the Year.
On a busy Friday afternoon, with production humming all around them, Furst, Navarro, and cellar manager Kelsey Cable tested a nearly finished cocktail collaboration that Cable imagined, and Furst built.
They volleyed ideas for the minor changes – does it need a little more salt, or a little more acid, maybe vinegar or citric acid – to “brighten” the middle, then moved on to a Dirty Martini earlier in its evolution.
The Martini is a “gleaning project” and collaboration with Yakima-based Mama Lil’s Peppers, for which Straightaway worked with a Portland distiller to make its own gin-blend.
Gleaning, using by-products or products that would otherwise be wasted, is a core tenet of Straightaway’s sustainable approach.
Another new Furst creation will blend a specialty batch of gleaned Bauman’s hard cider with leftover Straightaway Pinot Noir brandy, and a cider pressed from gleaned apples, house-made bitters, and house-made nocino.
House-made is another core principle. The bitters, liqueurs, and amaro are used as ingredients but not retailed.
Though the company does not have a Tualatin tasting room, it occasionally hosts events in the production facility.
At press time, Straightaway was still finalizing details for a loading dock bottle-and-can sale event. For evolving details, visit straightawaycocktail.com.
