3 min read
Key Points
- Aesha Scott is stepping into the drink business with Drop, her coconut water-vodka canned beverage.
- The Below Deck chief stew revealed which yacht guest drink orders make service easier—and which ones don’t.
- Scott said Drop is part of a larger career shift as she thinks of her future beyond reality TV.
Aesha Scott has spent years making sure someone else’s drink was exactly right.
As chief stew on Below Deck, she has served cocktails to demanding superyacht guests, memorized preferences, and learned very quickly which drink orders are easy and which ones are about to become a problem.
Martinis, margaritas or Aperol spritzes? Those, she can work with.
“It’s so easy. You just put three different things in a shaker and Bob’s your uncle,” Scott told Delish during an exclusive interview.
Guests who order strawberry daiquiris get a much different reaction.
“I’m like, ‘No,’” she said. “They’re just so messy, they’re so much more time-consuming, they use so many more ingredients. And you just know that they’ve got a taste for irritating drink orders.”
Now, Scott is using everything she learned from years of yacht service for something of her own: Drop, her new canned vodka and coconut water drink.
Drop came from a much simpler order. On her days off while working in hot places, Scott used to mix vodka and coconut water for herself. Eventually, while serving guests on yachts, she started thinking about what it would be like to have her own drink to pour.
“I’d think to myself, ‘How cool would it be if I could create [something] that I could be serving to guests one day?’” she said.
The idea first took shape in Australia, where Scott originally worked on a peach seltzer after being approached about creating a drink. But once the drink existed, she realized it would be joining an already crowded shelf.
“Everyone does a seltzer,” Scott said. “It’s so boring. Let’s do something no one’s done before.”
That brought her back to vodka and coconut water. Scott knows coconut water can be polarizing, as she didn’t even like it for most of her life, and only started drinking it because she wanted electrolytes while working in the heat. Eventually, it grew on her.
For the U.S. launch, Scott took Drop independent and redeveloped the recipes, which now include original, peach, and pineapple. She was especially focused on lowering the sugar and calories without making the drink taste flat.
“If I’m going to have sugar, I’d rather eat some candy or really enjoy it,” she said. “I don’t want to drink it.”
She also wanted the cans to look bright and bold without becoming so busy that they disappeared on shelves. Scott describes herself as “very chaotic” and “very busy,” but she knew the drink had to be bigger than her personality alone.
It also had to be something people would actually reach for. Her time on yachts gave her a very direct education in what guests want to drink, from porn star martinis to espresso martinis to lychee martinis, and she thinks vodka remains the easiest common denominator for a lot of drinkers.
Drop also arrives at a moment when Scott is thinking seriously about what comes after Below Deck. She loves the show, but she doesn’t want it to be the only thing people associate with her forever. She wants to start a family eventually and let fans see other sides of her beyond the chief stew they already know.
“I have been doing Below Deck for so long that I am in this stage of my career now where I’m trying to pivot a little bit,” she said. “I don’t want to just be known as Boat Girl.”
Drop fits neatly into that next chapter. After years of being the person responsible for everyone else’s perfect drink, Scott is finally putting one of her own into the cooler.