Five Businesses Born at a Bar The back-of-the-napkin business plan is not just a myth. Here are just a few examples of business ideas that took shape over drinks.

Once in a while, the drinks let loose a sparkler of an idea and a cocktail napkin takes a turn as notebook. We went looking for entrepreneurial ideas conceived at bars. Here's what we found.

1. When the green chiles they'd ordered from their native New Mexico didn't arrive at their home in Tampa, Fla., Allison Rugen and Carlo Marchiondo made a logical next move. "We walked across the street to a local bar to drown our sorrows," Rugen says. "Up on our semi-drunken high horses, we ranted about the superior job we would do as chile distributors." Then--on a cocktail napkin they still have--the duo jotted down the plan for Southwest Chile Supply, a company that now includes restaurants, wholesale accounts and chile merchandise.

2. Three martinis and 10 cocktail napkins from Chicago's Boka. That's what it took, in 2007, for Daniel Adamany and Aaron Nack to come up with the business plan for their IT company, Ahead. Last year's revenues? $130 million. Definitely enough cash for Adamany--a Grey Goose man--and Nack--who prefers Belvedere--to order a few celebratory martinis.