With the many offbeat ideas that could be hatched in a bar, Susan Martinson landed on a really good one.

Keep It Simple Syrup (KISS), a locally launched alternative to artificially enhanced, preservative-laden flavorings, was this entrepreneur’s answer to a long run of discouraging circumstances.

“I like to say it was a series of life-changing events that culminated in a bar when I placed an order for a mojito,” explains Martinson, whose simple cocktail craving went unfulfilled because the bartender had no fresh mint.

After suffering a layoff from the job that brought her to Richmond-for which she gave up a rent-stabilized Manhattan apartment, purchased a car, and closed on her first home-being denied this indulgence might have been, well…dispiriting.

But Martinson rose to the challenge. Determined to harness natural essences for speed-rack convenience, she took to her kitchen and developed a mint-infused simple syrup that “captured the aroma, the flavor, and the color” of spearmint.

Through her tenure working at a coffee shop, Martinson became familiar with the contents of flavored syrups customers poured into their expensive coffees, and wanted to offer higher quality.

“To me, it doesn’t make sense to buy a premium beverage and add something that’s riddled with chemicals,” she notes.

KISS’ journey from a pot on the stove to retail aisles was a learning experience for its creator, whose background is in educational technology and knowledge management.

“That was one of the biggest challenges of the whole process, was to figure out how to get this made in the same way that I made it in my kitchen, which was steeping real spearmint leaves. I absolutely refused to allow artificial flavor to be put into this,” she explains, adding that in retrospect she might have named it “Complicated Syrup.”

In the course of preparing the product for market, Martinson discovered that she had stumbled upon a natural preservative – sugar. KISS’ sugar content – higher than that of the average simple syrup – is the key to its unrefrigerated shelf stability. To produce the syrup in large quantities, while maintaining the quality she demanded, Martinson turned to a master tea brewer with expertise in the steeping method.

“The ingredients and the process are truly what gives it its distinctiveness,” she notes.

Free of fat, gluten, and high fructose corn syrup, this all-natural syrup offers a tasty boost to assorted foods and beverages, including ice cream, cocoa, iced tea, and coffee, according to Martinson. The product has earned OU Kosher certification and inclusion in the Virginia’s Finest Program.

In just one year since KISS was introduced into 30 ABC stores throughout Virginia, it has expanded into nearly 130 ABC stores, some Krogers, and such independent grocers as Libbie Market. A mini bottle of KISS debuted in mid-November.

Martinson says she’s developed other infusions to be introduced in the future.