Our Story
Non-alcoholic cocktails
for the alcohol agnostic
Mala Madre is Italian for "bad mother," and Katie Silbar is the resident bad mom here at Mala Madre HQ. She's not a chef, a world-renowned distiller or an award-winning bartender. She is a sober millennial mom who loves a great drink, and she'll happily pay for one that makes her feel like an adult at the table, included and just as important as everyone else who's drinking.
Her thing for bitter started in 2016, with her first Negroni, in Florence. Her first reaction? Ew. But like a lot of people, she kept sipping, and it grew on her, and kept growing on her, until "ew" turned into a full-blown obsession with bitter drinks.
In 2022 Katie stopped drinking and dove headfirst into non-alcoholic everything, hunting for the complex flavors she missed. She found some (praise be!), but our little bitter corner of the NA world was tiny next to NA beer and wine, and she thought it deserved just as much to choose from.
Many tries later
From kitchen
to canning line
After her son was born, Katie had a hard time finding her purpose at work. She'd been a teacher and a marketing professional, and she missed the daily grind of work that meant something, plus the fun of demands that never stopped changing. Her unmedicated ADHD didn't help. So she did what a lot of people do and built something out of a need in her own life: a delicious, complex drink she could enjoy next to a toddler snack at a birthday party, or with a Michelin-star dinner.
She wanted the drink. Not the buzz, the drink. The cold glass, the orange peel, the first bitter sip you appreciate more as the night goes on. Most of what's made for people who aren't drinking seemed to sand all that away. To her, most of it tasted cloyingly sweet, like a juice box with an adult price tag. Or it was wellness in a can, sold with a promise about her gut or her focus or her sleep, as if she needed a reason beyond wanting something that tastes good.
So she made her own, in her kitchen in Atlanta.
Not here to fix you.
Here to taste great.
What you won't find in Mala Madre
- No health claims
- No adaptogens
- No artificial anything
- No optimization culture
What you will
Real cane sugar.
bitter needs a friend.
Made for the bar, not the supplement aisle.
Here's what we won't do at Mala Madre: make a health claim, add a functional ingredient for the sake of marketing, or ask you to explain yourself. We're alcohol agnostic. What's in your glass is nobody's business, including ours. We just think it should be worth drinking.
Mala Madre exists because Katie wanted something worth drinking in her hand at every table she sat at, and it turns out she wasn't the only one. Non-alcoholic cocktails rooted in Italian amaro culture, for anyone who likes their drinks actually bitter.
bitter by choice.
Launching in Atlanta in 2027
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