DALLAS — Even as the world deals with a pandemic and many are slow to return to eating out, Mariano’s Hacienda in Dallas still draws a socially-distant but bustling crowd on a Friday night. Almost every table that’s open is filled with smiling families or coworkers celebrating the end of another week, and in the hand of nearly every adult is the same thing--a cold margarita.

Many of the diners will tell you they had that drink picked out before they even got to their table. Sure, the food is clearly a hit with the crowd, but everybody knows, at Mariano’s it’s all about the margarita.

“We do a lot of margarita sales,” said manager Kyle Flowers. “Everybody wants to come get the original frozen margarita because, let’s face it, the man who invented the frozen margarita machine--you’re going to want to get that.”

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The namesake of the restaurant, whose face still looks over the dining room from a painted portrait on the wall, often dressed in a classic bandito outfit.

Today, though, Mariano Martinez mostly goes for a more laid-back look at home while his trusted team keeps the drinks flowing at his Dallas restaurant and the three additional locations he’s built in the Metroplex over the years.

Mariano Martinez sits outside at his home (Spectrum News)

“If you ask me, ‘What are you best at?’ I’ll say, ‘Well, I’m a good problem solver,’” said Martinez.

Solving a problem, after all, is how Martinez staked his claim to fame--the frozen margarita machine.

Martinez grew up in Dallas in a family that had long been part of and leaders in bringing and popularizing Mexican food in Texas and the U.S. In the 1960s, Martinez said he was pursuing music in a local band and eventually decided to enter the family business.  

In 1971, he opened his original restaurant in Dallas with the goal of bringing a consistent, high-quality, and high-energy Mexican dining experience to the area. Martinez recalled hosting a party for the press before the restaurant opened. To get people talking, he put on the bandito outfit for the first time and served champagne and cabrito (roast goat) to his guests.

He said the stunt may have worked too well because at the restaurant’s opening night, the restaurant was packed with a giant crowd and Martinez’s greatest problem occurred--his margaritas were getting poor reviews from people.

Martinez said one man complained his frozen margarita--which was made from his father’s famous recipe--took forever to get, was not cold, and maybe the most problematic - was just alright. Martinez said he confronted his bartender about the drinks and found his staff was overwhelmed by margarita orders that night.

“He said, ‘Your blender broke an hour ago. I had to run over to my house and get my own blender to keep these damn things going,’” said Martinez.

So, he set out to find a way to make that drink live up to expectations and assure it’s served cold, consistent, and quickly. After all, Martinez said he’d put all the money he had into this business venture and he couldn’t be put out by the drink he’d hoped would wow the crowd.

Then inspiration struck.

“The next day I stopped by a 7-Eleven to buy a cup of coffee that I couldn’t even afford, and I walked out with a billion-dollar idea,” he said.

Martinez said he’d become fixated on the Slurpee machine at the back of the store and it became clear to him: do that but with margaritas.

He went to work and by using an old soft serve dispenser, he created his first frozen margarita machine. Suddenly, his bartenders could make the drink large, precise to the recipe batches at the beginning of the night, and pour them fresh and fast to every thirsty patron.

Others told Martinez that it would never go over, that people wanted a hand-made cocktail and not something from a machine, but he said the opposite happened.

“It went there, front and center on the bar, and people had never seen it, and they were mesmerized by it, and, in fact, they wanted one from that machine,” he said.

Obviously, the margarita machine took off. Today, you can find those machines churning out frozen cocktails at restaurants and bars all over the place.

The Mariano's Hacienda restaurant margarita machine (Spectrum News)

The original machine has been replaced at his Dallas restaurant with a fleet of top-line units; one simply won’t cut it these days. His first certainly sits in a place of prominence, though, as it was retired from use and placed in the Smithsonian National Museum in 2005. Martinez says it now sits in a section dedicated to the Mexican food revolution right alongside other great creations and even a picture of his great grandmother.

Martinez says looking back on his creation, he still doesn’t feel like he invented something of such prominence. He says, at the time, he didn’t even patent the machine and likely missed out on a mountain of money as a result, but he’s done pretty well none the less and says that’s not really a huge regret for him.

“I can honestly tell you that I’m not in it for the money,” he said. “I just wanted to be a person of value. I didn’t want to be put down or belittled.”

Martinez says that’s why, all these years later, he still shares his story so widely.

Growing up as a young kid, he experienced his share of racial discrimination and just general getting picked on in the school yard, like most, but he always used those experiences as motivation to become someone and do great things. He said that and the entrepreneurial spirit are two lessons he hopes he can pass along to others.

“An entrepreneur is always dreaming up new things and I think that’s one of the reasons of my success is that I’ve continued to evolve and continued to change,” said Martinez.

He still continues innovating today and adding to his restaurants and offerings. Of course, he’s glad to pass on some happiness in a glass too.

Martinez recalls stories over the years of people drinking one of his margaritas to escape tough times for a moment, take a break from the reality around them. He said a group of soldiers once told him their margarita machine on base helped give them some fond memories and moments of camaraderie during their deployment overseas. Martinez said one of the biggest honors he still receives all the time is the simple bow people always seem to give him when they learn what he created.

“In this tumultuous world that we live in today, of this pandemic that we’re going through right now, both the virus and racial injustice, I think maybe more people should calm down and sit back and enjoy a margarita,” he said.

Thanks to his machine, many likely will.

A plaque recognizing Mariano Martinez's margarita machine as the world's first (Spectrum News)