Meet the SMU Cox Alumni Disrupting the Beverage Industry

Most students graduate from the Executive MBA program at the Cox School of Business with an arsenal stocked with business strategies and Fortune 500 opportunities. Steven McCarthy and John Dallager, good friends and Class of 2018 EMBA alumni, left with a little something extra: the blueprint for a startup that would redefine the canned cocktail landscape two cans at a time.

Founded in 2020, Toucan Cocktails offers a selection of award-winning classic cocktails to be mixed and shaken by anyone of legal sipping age—no bartender or mixology skills required. The company is poised to pioneer a brand-new category in the beverage industry, thanks to its differentiating two-can technology (hence the punny name). But just like any sophisticated craft cocktail, Toucan’s success goes back to basics: really good ingredients. 
 
Blending clear vision, a quality foundation, support from the right boosters and a twist of innovation, McCarthy and Dallager transformed Toucan from a scrappy entrepreneurial course project to the true market disruptor it is today.

McCarthy (pictured) and Dallager came up with the idea for Toucan when they were still in the EMBA program together.

Barreling toward a shared future 

Before going all-in on their spirited endeavor, McCarthy and Dallager were strangers, climbing career ladders in separate parts of the country. McCarthy, who studied biochemistry and biomedical engineering at Florida State University, was dabbling in startups—“I was bitten by the entrepreneur bug from the beginning,” he says—before landing at an international engineering firm based in Dallas. 

“I was a mediocre engineer, truth be told,” McCarthy says. “I loved what I was doing, but I wanted to give myself an edge and accelerate into management,” he says of his decision to pursue an EMBA.
 
Meanwhile, after completing his undergrad at the University of Colorado Boulder, Dallager played “corporate warrior” at California wine juggernaut E. & J. Gallo, ascending its department of consumer goods and products over the years. During his time as a beverage executive, he worked in Ohio, New Jersey, New York and North Texas, all the while noting a blind spot in his career pursuits. 

“I knew sales, I knew some marketing, but I just didn’t understand holistic business and what really makes a business run,” he says.
 
The future founders were both drawn to SMU Cox to pursue their EMBA degrees—McCarthy because of its culture, and Dallager because “SMU felt like home.” Once accepted, they were assigned to the same cohort, and even though the two are birds of opposite feathers, they hit it off. “I’m the loud one, and Steven is the smart one,” Dallager says. 
 
The divide, which extended to their backgrounds, proved complementary during their capstone entrepreneurship course and later, in their startup business. “John likes to dream big, and I like to solve big problems,” McCarthy says.

The design—two cans sealed with a plastic ring for peak freshness—is smart and sophisticated and just begging for a good shake. 

Mobilizing the classic cocktail 

The idea for Toucan Cocktails came while McCarthy and Dallager were still in the EMBA program. The story goes a little something like this: They’d just wrapped an exam and were craving a stiff drink—a dirty martini, to be exact. With no time to sidle up to a fancy bar and void of the necessary bottles for shaking up a proper tipple, they got to work hashing out a way to take the classic cocktail on the move. “Having a prefilled shaker was the ethos,” Dallager says. 
 
They named their project Unexpected Products and ultimately received a “generous B+” from Adjunct Professor John Terry for their efforts. It looks, however, like they earned an A+ in lasting impressions, because Terry became their largest investor as well as the chief operating officer of Unexpected Products, their now very-real technology arm overseeing licensing and packaging for Toucan and the other brands under their shaken beverage operation. 
 
“I’m a lifelong entrepreneur and have devoted my career to working with and supporting entrepreneurs,” Terry says. “I am fond of pointing out it’s not the concept, nor the money, nor the market that determines the probability of success; it’s the people in the deal. I was absolutely convinced from their time in class that John and Steven were the right people in the deal.”
 
What you see on Toucan’s bold, mostly monochrome website today is actually the sleeker, more polished product that blossomed from the pals’ clunkier capstone project. The final iteration, an exciting bar-raising invention with patented packaging, is the result of seven "generations of drawings” and three years of research and development. 

Featuring two cans sealed with a plastic ring for peak freshness, the design is smart and sophisticated and just begging for a good shake. “It’s pinkies-up but fun,” McCarthy says.
 
According to Dallager, the way the product operates is a cinch. “You just separate the cans, open both lids, pour the liquor into the mixer, add ice to the bottom can, snap the two cans back together and then shake it like a cocktail shaker,” he says. “We are batting a thousand when it comes to people just smiling the entire time because of the experience they’re having. Consumers actually get to experience a brand for the first time in a new way.”

Dallager (left) and McCarthy were both drawn to SMU Cox to pursue their EMBA degrees—McCarthy because of its culture, and Dallager because “SMU felt like home.”

The highest highs and the lowest lows  

Of course, there were some tougher at-bats for the founders. McCarthy says time was their biggest challenge in creating their product, adding that their refusal to sacrifice quality further stretched the calendar. 

Perseverance and patience got them through, he says. “I think the most important thing is to celebrate the small wins along the way.” 
 
Dallager, who cites launching a startup as “a very lonely journey,” says seeing customers “shake to smile” makes every headache, small fire and strategic pivot worth it. 
 
Terry says he knew McCarthy and Dallager were a success story in the making while they were still on campus, citing their “willingness to take good input and make adjustments as needed” as part of the reason. “They quickly recognized good ideas and improvements and weren’t married to the past. They didn’t linger over any decisions that better positioned the company,” he says.

Flying high and dreaming bigger 

Going forward, the founders hope to turn their patented technology into a vessel applicable across all beverage and even food verticals, in turn solidifying ready-to-mix (RTM) as a category as pertinent to consumer needs as the buzzy ready-to-drink (RTD) sector. 

“There’s nothing wrong with the ready-to-drink options out there,” Dallager says. “Our new RTM category, however, addresses personalization and preferences that aren’t recognized by RTD today.”
 
The aha moment for customization came while the two were at Starbucks listening to caffeine loyalists rattle off bulleted orders. Hearing requests for less cream, no dairy, more ice and the like led the pair to imagine their two cans filled with varieties such as Frappuccino cream on top and coffee on bottom, boba above and tea below, or infant formula powder over electrolyte water. 
 
Thinking even bigger, the two posited a way their tech could give back, visualizing a hybrid of protein and electrolyte water for victims displaced in disaster areas. “Anywhere you would need or want a separation of ingredients for peak quality and freshness that you can combine and have the experience or the customization of preference—it just made a ton of sense,” Dallager adds. 

Here’s to Cox 

Today, Toucan is celebrating a partnership with alcohol retailer Total Wine & More, which has agreed to carry the product in four of its brick-and-mortar locations (two in Dallas, one in Houston and one in Austin). In 2025, the brand plans to extend its reach nationwide, triple sales and increase its flavor profile, which currently includes a lemon drop martini, a margarita, a bourbon old fashioned and an espresso martini for December. 
 
Both founders credit the Cox EMBA program with the success of their business thus far. “We wouldn't have even started the company without the program, and we wouldn’t have known how to do it without the tools we learned while there,” McCarthy says. 

Humbled and grateful, Dallager adds, “It just shows the power of having a great network and the right people on the deal, and that grit and persistence is what pays off for entrepreneurs.” 
 
In other words, it comes down to mixing the right ingredients in just the right way.