Owned by Derek and Ashley Pech, Chillco Drinks is a Colorado company that also serves up colorful beverages at Empower Field, Folsom Field and Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre — but Ball Arena is its first location with a permanent booth. The couple is excited that it’s a year-round venue with constant events from home games for its sports teams to major concerts.
“Ball Arena was really circled on our wish list for the last year or two,” Derek says. “But with the volume of events that they have, we also had to get our staffing built up enough to handle the other venues before we reached out to Ball Arena. We wanted to make sure when we reached out to them and we were accepted, we were ready for it.”
They felt ready last August and worked with the venue to get logistics set up before moving in. Chillco's frozen drink machines require direct access to lots of electricity, and Ball Arena’s aluminum beverage requirements designed to target sustainability meant Chillco would have to adjust its usual “adult Capri Sun”-style pouches.
Chillco uses see-through packaging to showcase the vibrant colors of its drink mixes, which it recently upgraded to be made with real fruit juice. The Ball Arena stand is called Chillville because the Peches wanted people to be able to say, “Let’s go to Chillville!”
Typically, the company's drinks come in see-through packaging to let the product shine.
Courtesy Chillco Drinks
“It feels like your toes should be in the sand somewhere,” Ashley says. “Like you should be somewhere tropical. It feels like someone took a mango and smashed it up and put it in a drink.”
Derek and Ashley moved their family to Colorado from Iowa four years ago when Derek, who is also a veteran, took a radiology management job at Sky Ridge Medical Center in Lone Tree. Ashley has a graphic design and marketing background and was hired by a friend to design a logo for a similar concept: bringing frozen drink machines to restaurants for free, then charging a fee to maintain the machines and provide mixes.
The Peches thought they could create a similar operation here.
“We totally meant it to be a side gig at that time,” Derek recalls. “A few months later, we got into Fiddler's Green and then pretty quickly we tried to pivot the company to not doing the bar and restaurant thing and really just focusing on selling frozen drinks at high volume at big venues.”
Chillco is now in four of the Front Range’s biggest venues. It sells rum-based drinks at Empower Field and Ball Arena, where it also offers a frozen margarita. At Boulder's Folsom Field, liquor sales aren’t allowed except in the suites, so Chillco slings frozen wines there. The company sells vodka drinks at Fiddler’s Green because there was already a rum smoothie stand at the venue and they wanted to be respectful of existing vendors.
Sometimes Chillco will sell margaritas or Blue Hawaiians on the rocks to keep up with demand, as the machines take extra time to freeze after a long string of sales. Whatever alcohol is involved, the goal is to serve delicious and eye-catching drinks.
“Every venue is so different; every crowd is so different,” notes Ashley. Country shows tend to provide some of the highest sales, and the crowds at EDM shows appreciate the fun colors, she adds. At Empower Field, Chillco sends hawkers out from a home base behind the scenes to sell the drinks. It does the same for the grassy general-admission area at Fiddler’s Green. At Folsom Field, the company has a trailer in addition to sending hawkers out.
How Ball Arena Is Different
“Ball Arena is our first actual frozen drink stand, designated just for frozen drinks,” Ashley says. “It was pretty cool to see it all come together.” Chillco is now an official partner at Ball Arena, and the facility installed additional outlets in Section 112 to accommodate its three machines (each requires its own power circuit).
To keep its signature colorful look despite having to serve its drinks in opaque aluminum cups, Ashley designed custom coffee sleeves with a blue background covered in leaves. Chillco is also adding gummy candies to the Ball Arena drinks, which have gotten rave reviews.
“One of my favorite things is people seeing the cups and just being like, ‘Oh my God, what is that? I want it,’” Ashley says. “So it's been a process of, how can we do this and still make the drink attractive?”
The sleeves for the cups, which are in the process of being printed, are fully recyclable to fit with Ball Arena's sustainability policy. Because coffee cups are more angled than Ball aluminum cups, Chillco had to make a custom die cut for its sleeves.
The Chillco menu at Ball Arena includes six flavors: margarita with tequila, strawberry, blue Hawaiian, mango, green apple and piña colada with rum, which has been the top seller — a surprise to Ashley, since strawberry and mango have been most popular at other venues. However, Derek points out, the drinks come pre-packaged at other venues, whereas at Ball Arena, customers select flavors when they order and can choose up to two flavors per drink.
The Peches hope Chillville will soon be instantly recognizable to Colorado’s sports fans and concert-goers. Derek still works in health care but hopes to eventually be able to transition to working full-time for Chillco, as Ashley does now.
Between juggling activities for their two sons and running a business where the schedule is determined by the venues they operate, it’s a busy time for the family. But Derek says this chaos is much more enjoyable than the chaos of a hospital, where some people are having “possibly the worst day of their life.”
“My blood, sweat, and sometimes there's me crying in the corner to provide the tears, has gone into this,” Ashley concludes. “But it's all good, it really is. We have a great team of people that work for us.”
