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Designing Bars that Make Money

During Hawaii Cocktail Week I attended a seminar called Designing Bars that Make Money at the cafe/gallery Loft in Space. The seminar was lead by Tobin Ellis of consultancy Bar Magic, Kate Gerwin of the bar Imbibe in Albuquerque (and also of Bar Magic), and Julian Cox of Rivera and several other bars in Los Angeles.

Here are some notes on what I thought was interesting - with some of my thoughts at the end. 

Design and Philosophy

• Tobin Ellis says, "Everyone is saying 'I love craft cocktails but my next bar will be a sports bar that makes money.' You will never pay your bills on cocktail aficionados. You gotta get the Cosmo drinkers, and you gotta get the Bud Light drinkers." 
• Most people talk about the menus and cocktail program first, but Bar Magic believes in business plan first - market analysis, concept, feasibility, and then design the cocktails. 
• A lot of clever bar designs have the bartenders turn their back to the customers when making the drink - which is the opposite of what you want; the interaction.
• For cocktail bars Julian Cox recommends batching, cocktails on tap, bottled cocktails to speed up service. Note that these techniques aren't legal in many states.
• If you're a small bar opening, the one place you can save a lot of money is by not buying an expensive POS system.  
• Don't share all your recipes: having specialty cocktails/ingredients gives people a reason to come to your bar versus one down the street.
• Customers who follow drink specials aren't loyal customers. Have drink specials if you want, but don't expect that to increase business over all.
• Working with food trucks can save all the effort of having a food program. 

Equipment

• For cocktail bars, some time/space-saving equipment can include approved open-ingredient refrigerators (a new thing, apparently), and refrigerated garnish/ingredient drawers.
• Spindle mixers can make your Ramos Gin Fizzes a lot faster than you can shake them.
• The reason Hoshizaki doesn't sell the freezers that make 2"x2" cubes in the US is because they are not energy-compliant, not because they don't exist. 

Ingredients  

• According to an experiment by the French Culinary Institute, the best time for citrus juice is 4-8 hours after squeezing, so there is no need to squeeze to order. 
• If the menu supports it, consider making lemon and lime sour mixes in advance of shifts - the sugar extends the life of the citrus juice by a few hours,plus it's like mini-batching.
• Use shitty vodka in your well as it makes the most profit. "If your crowd doesn't care, you shouldn't care," says Gerwin. She also said they don't make much effort to up-sell to premium vodka brands, because they make more profit on the well vodka than they do on the premium brands. 

Staffing

• Let bartenders bartend (read: sell). Hire bar backs and janitors for everything else and let bartenders just focus on making drinks and talking to customers, not cleaning things.
• Consider having a back-of-house service bar for seated/served guests, as they don't need to see the bartenders.
• Kate Gerwin says that having consistent drinks between all bartenders is more important than having one person who makes "the best" version of some drink. All drinks should be made to the same standard unless it's an up-sell.
• That said, at Imbibe most of the bartenders are pros at speed and accuracy, not at arcane cocktail knowledge. Thus when a cocktail nerd asks for a drink, the bartender may ask Kate or the other expert; likewise when it comes to bachelorette drinks Kate may hand the order to another bartender. 
• Consider having a chart of what each bartender rings nightly and how much they collect in tips - this encourages healthy competition and reduces employee theft.
• Give every bartender working that night a bonus on any night where a sales record is broken. 

My Opinions on All This

• First I should note that the speakers for the most part were talking about building bars from the perspective of profit. As a consumer, I don't care about the bar's profit, so these are my opinions from the cocktail nerd consumer perspective.
• High-volume bars cater to the lowest common denominator of customer.
• If your well liquor is crap, I don't care if your mint is fresh. Your bar serves crap drinks.
• If every bartender isn't of the same quality at a venue, then I'm not a fan of a bar, I'm a fan of a bartender and will follow them to the next place when they leave for a better job. 
• A bar is as good as its worst bartender. 
• Fast bartenders are concerned with speed and profit, not with quality. Cocktails at high-volume bars, even ones that claim to be perfect with their speed pouring, are never as good as they are at craft bars. 
• I'd rather pay extra for the luxury of time for bartenders to do it right, and for the space in which to enjoy it.
• I think this would make a fun debate at a cocktail convention....

 

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A Bevy of Bottles with Oversized Labels

I keep seeing bottles with oversized labels. The most common is Angostura Bitters, which was created that way by accident. (The full explanation is here.)

The other bitters with an oversized label (typically consumed as a digestif rather than in cocktails) in Underberg. 

Then there is Basil Hayden's bourbon, which has only a partially oversized label.

More recently, this line of wines was produced for Safeway grocery stores. The details on it are in the press release here.

And even more recently, I saw this aquavit, which may or may not come from the bar Aqua Vitae in Oslo, Norway.

Anyway, they're popping up everywhere these days. 

Message on a Bottle: The Programmable Vodka Display

Liquor brands, especially vodka brands, have to do a lot to compete for attention on the shelf. Some accomplish this with tall bottles, others with oddly-shaped bottles that don't fit on the shelf or bottles shaped like skulls, and still others with bottles that light up when you pick them up.

Someone just stepped up the game. I saw an ad for this new vodka Medea that has a programmable rotating LED display.

I was curious as to how one programs it, so I went to the website where they have a video. With only a couple of buttons but the option to write several long messages one letter at a time (avoid words with "Z" as you'll be pressing the button 26 times- and the space bar comes after "Z"), you'll probably finish drinking the bottle of vodka long before you finish programming your message of "LETS GET CRUNK TOGETHER."

Watch the video here:

How to Program a Message on Your MEDEA Bottle from Medea Spirits on Vimeo.

After watching the video I'm tired and frustrated and I haven't even tried to code the thing. It reminds me a lot of the Macbook Wheel.

New Bottles: 1800 Tequila

I really like the 1800 Tequila Essential Artists series, for which artists submit their work to be included on tequila bottle labels. Well, they just announced their new batch: 12 new bottles culled from 15,000 online entries. You can see them all here.

Some of my favorites from the new batch are below the jump, as is a link to a YouTube video of the series.

New Packaging for Two Tequilas

Cabo Wabo and Tres Generaciones recently changed packaging. That is all.

Derby Designs

Limited-edition bottles in honor of this weekend's Kentucky Derby.

Woodford Reserve:

Woodford Reserve Bourbon is the “Official Bourbon of Kentucky Derby 135” and has served as the official bourbon for the past eleven years. Capturing the adrenaline-filled world of horse racing through the eyes of a jockey, Woodford Reserve, an award-winning small-batch bourbon, is honoring the country’s favorite horse race with the release of its limited edition 2009 Kentucky Derby bottle featuring artwork by retired jockey Tom Chapman.

Early Times Pre-mixed Mint Julep:

In recognition of its “Official Drink of the Kentucky Derby” designation, Early Times commissioned renowned equine artist Celeste Susany to create an original oil painting of an actual scene at Churchill Downs® for its 2009 Derby bottle. 2009 marks Celeste’s 10^th anniversary of painting the artwork for the Early Times Mint Julep commemorative bottle. Entitled “Dueling Towards Destiny”, this year’s painting depicts two powerhouse horses in stride racing towards the finish line with the Derby crowd and famed Twin Spires in the background. Launching in April 2009, the newly labeled one-liter pre-mix bottle will be available in limited quantities throughout the United States for a suggested retail price of $14.99.

Also, this year for the Derby, Maker's Mark is making their pre-mixed Mint Julep available to more places, including California.

Thujone Delivery Vehicle

Wow- This is a great animated website, promoting a product in cool bottles with limited edition goth-style art.

It's too bad about what's in those bottles. They have the European legal maximum amount of thujone, the chemical in grand wormwood that is the supposed hallucinogenic (but isn't really unless you poison yourself with it). In the EU the limit is 35 parts per million as opposed to 10 in the USA.

The thujone is placed in 25% alcohol (most vodka is 40%, most absinthe is around 65%) then made less bitter according to the text on the website. So you get the minimum amount of flavor and the minimum amount of alcohol with the maximum amount of thujone. 

Oh well, at least for once the website is pretty.

Now Your Sneakers Can Match Your Tequila

You've probably seen the very awesome 1800 Tequila Essential Artists campaign, in which artists get to do bottle designs for 1800 Tequila.

Well now they've hooked it up so you can design a pair of sneakers with the bottle art. It's pretty cool, though the cost adds up the more art you use. Here are a pair I designed.

Want!