Craft Cocktail Culture Is Killing Bars

Craft cocktails are sexy for guests, but brutal for business. Programs built on bespoke ice, house-infused everything, and endless prep bleed money and time. They look like the future, but function like a hood ornament — shiny, expensive, and nowhere near the engine that actually keeps a bar alive.

My business brings me all over this wonderful country, and there are two places I always try to check out when I’m somewhere unfamiliar. The oldest (or divey-ist) bar, and the highest end cocktail bar. I’ve always been fascinated by the juxtaposition of the high and the low. I love drinks made with love, care, and purpose. The thought behind every ingredient. The precision in the execution. By the same token, there’s purity in simple, old things. The simple joy of a shot and a beer. The warmth (or extreme lack of it) from a dive bartender. Also I usually get my drink pretty quick…

For all the love I have for high end cocktail bars and what they produce, when I’m in these markets away from home, I usually find myself spending more time, and more money, at the dive bar. Why? That answer is just one of many gripes with the “myth” of elevated bartending. But to really understand it, we have to start with the why.

It’s hard not to love the idea of high end cocktails and “mixology.” There’s a theatrical razzle-dazzle to a beautiful cocktail and while the mixology revival has been going on for 20+ years at this point, theatrics in the bar are nothing new.

The ‘80s had Tom Cruise’s “Cocktail” that brought the flair bartending movement to light. My first bartending job was at a T.G.I. Fridays and I was forced to compete in bar flair competitions and yes, I had a lot of buttons. My next big job had a Martini with dry ice in the bottom for that misty flair. We didn’t have Instagram back then, but if we did these places would have been all over it.

Nowadays the social media effect is everything. Flashy and daring cocktails will get people in the door. If something goes viral on social media people will come in droves to capture a photo or a video to flex.

For the restaurant or bar, people are coming in the door, paying $15–$18 per cocktail ($19–$23 if you are in some markets), and you are getting free promotion in the form of others posting their experiences at the restaurant or bar on social media. The bigger the following the better.

This allure is not just limited to large affluent big city markets. Small markets and even chains are getting in on the action. Maggiano’s Little Italy launched a “Mixology Collection” to its cocktail menu which includes a smoked Old Fashioned presented in a smoke box. Big and small, corporate or mom and pop, everyone wants in.

The truth behind everything is a little more gray. If you are at a “purist” high end cocktail bar, every ingredient is a touch, meaning if there are 10 ingredients (different spirits, bitters, juice, syrup, garnish) there are 10 touches to make that drink. The bartender is grabbing 10 different items to make that drink — 10 steps to make one cocktail. The joke about these places has always been that people don’t want to wait 15 minutes for a drink. Because that is what it will take to get a drink at some of these places, that is regardless of whether the place is slow with a handful of guests or packed to the gills.

When at these places one of two things happen, I either drink less, which my liver appreciates, or I move to whiskey neat, which my liver is not as enthused about.

Then we need to add on the skill requirements of these types of venues. An operator is truly beholden to the bartenders they have: they know the drinks, they have the mechanical muscle memory to execute the drinks in as efficient and speedy a manner as is possible. Their talent also ensures a measure of consistency. But the moment that bartender calls in sick or quits, well, unless you have ample backups, you are, for lack of a better word, f*cked. Ticket times creep up, consistency drops, and the operator (and the guest) is left to deal with the aftermath which for the operator includes the added cost of training a new person to replace that bartender.

Cornell published an article stating that replacing a hospitality employee would cost the business $5,864 per employee. I should note that this was published in 2008, so theoretically that price will have gone up, and that over 50 percent of that cost was not hard cost but in lost productivity. Now imagine you go through four bartenders a year (not unheard of), these costs add up.

If the drink takes too long to make, that equals fewer drinks sold per guest, the service slips because of a lag in service and the consistency of the drink drops. Everyone loses. The guest loses and the operator loses.

When one is charging $18 for a cocktail, many feel the need to premiumize the drink with higher end ingredients. Most places want to fall in the 15–20 percent beverage cost on cocktails (I generally aim for lower), but more and more I hear of cocktails coming in at 28–33 percent cost as operators add in premium ingredients.

This is before we add in all those other fun costs like rent, fancy glassware, liability and other insurances, and, of course, the silent killer in the bunch: labor.

Someone has to make those syrups, clarify those milk punches, juice those lemons and limes, and prep those garnishes. Some places have a dedicated prep person — they don’t work service, they don’t get tips, they get paid hourly, and all they do is prep.

I was recently sourcing glassware for a client and most of the glasses they wanted were between $15–$21 a glass.

One can see where this all leads. Drinks, which are the margin leaders of the restaurant bar, become not so margin friendly in these scenarios.

Does that mean I think high end cocktail bars are dead and no one should open one? No. The truth of the matter is you can still offer great cocktails at an affordable price without sacrificing quality or ethos.

Simplify the menu. Not every bar needs 12-ingredient cocktails. Not every bar that has some 12-ingredient cocktails needs all of them to have 12 ingredients. Not every bar needs a 30-cocktail menu. There is something to be said for doing a few things really well. Sometimes people just want a well made simple cocktail. There is something to be said for a bar that can execute a great Daiquiri or Manhattan. They don’t have 6–8 steps and they don’t require a ton of prep. Simple and profitable. 

The batch bottle is your friend. Many of the best bars in the world batch some if not most of their cocktails. And by best bars in the world I don’t mean places I consider to be the best bars, I mean The World’s 50 Best Bars list. Dante (World’s Best Bar 2019) famously batches all its Negronis, with many on tap. In a “VinePair Podcast” a few years ago, Linden Pride, co-owner of Caffe Dante, said:

“We had to evolve the drinks menu because it had to be engineered in a way that could be based on speed and ease of replication. All our draft lines, except for two that have beer, have cocktails on them. We do a lot of cocktails on tap. There’s a lot of bottled cocktails that are batched, diluted, and frozen. Those obviously lend themselves to be able to get drinks out quickly. It also means that at any time during the day, when we’re busy enough, we’re able to sustain it. Somebody could jump behind the bar, make one of the drinks, and they would be perfectly served, consistent, and exactly as they always should be.”

By batching, you take a five step (or more) cocktail and turn it into two steps. Just add juice, shake, and strain. Or add bitters, stir and strain. Or pre-dilute, chill and pour (I love a frozen Martini).

The consistency stays the same across all drinks and the speed at which they are made accelerates, allowing you to get more drinks out when it matters.

(Disclaimer, not every state allows this. Idaho does not, while West Virginia and North Carolina have certain restrictions and requirements.)

One way to make your bar more profitable is to make the layout of your bar as efficient as possible. That bartender should never have to walk across the bar to grab an ingredient or glass. This step is missed more often than one would think. In an ideal world everything they need to execute their menu is arms length away. 

Skip the housemade ingredients when possible. I’m sure your housemade bitters are good, but so are a slew of companies who specialize in making bitters. This requires labor and space, and there are products out there that substitute so well that most consumers would never know the difference.

Engineer the menu. Your most popular item should be the most profitable. It’s OK to have that one “wow” drink, but treat it as an exception, not the rule. One or two is enough, not the whole damn menu.

People love cocktail bars, but they don’t want to wait forever to get their drinks. The longer it takes, the less apt they are to buy another. If drinks are $19 people may be less willing to order more. If that $19 drink has a cost of 30 percent, you need to sell even more of them to make up for the loss in margin.

Take care of your teams, invest in them, make the process of working efficient and worthwhile.

Make every aspect of the bar efficient — the drinks (and how they are made), the layout, the POS layout — and should you decide to batch (and you should), remember that you aren’t cutting corners. You’re making it more efficient, more profitable, and more consistent.