Post #373625 by The Gnomon on Mon, Apr 14, 2008 10:48 AM

It all comes down to the protection of trade secrets and proprietary information.

Certainly, mixes are essential when high volume comes into play. VJB, knowing this showed no shame in reversing his advice to steer clear of them. No doubt, he kept the formulae of his mixes close to the vest to ensure that you had to go to Trader Vic's to get the drink you wanted done right.

I'm guessing that he also took steps to preserve those formulae so they would not be lost. They probably still exist someplace. Unless it is written somewhere in his will that the custodian of those formulae take a specific action to keep them alive, whoever owns their rights seems to have thrown quality out the window and opted to substitute it with cheap ingredients.

Based on VJB's philosophy, I'm sure that all of his mixes are made up of ingredients that are readily available, so that if your main source dries up you can go to ten others without losing stride. The whole key revolves around who inherited his formulae and what has since become of them. You can bet that if the Trader ever imagined the kind of crap "his" mixes have become, he would not only have published the formulae, he probably would have handed them out on cocktail napkins to all of his patrons.