Here’s something I wrote for Grub Street that I think may interest some of the people on this board. There appears to be a micro trend of new cocktails bars, opened by experienced cocktail people, that have decided to focus on classic cocktails sold at reasonable prices ($12-$17). It was interesting talking to these bar owners and finding out the various ways they found to keep costs down and pass the savings along to the customer. The primary way to do this, it seems, is to cut back on inventory. Instead of carrying 15 different gins, you carry one or two, use them in all your gin drinks, and buy the brands in bulk at a discount. What you expect to happen at these bars does: cheaper drinks causes people to buy more rounds and sales go up. Let’s hope more bars see the logic of this approach.
Hear, hear! A return to the golden age!
Makes sense to me. Plus, most of the classics don’t call for bespoke house-made ingredients which costs extra payroll time for the people who prepare them.
There’s a place for a bar with fifteen different gins, but most bars and restaurants really don’t need to do all that. And shouldn’t. I see all these menus where each drink is comprised of unique ingredients, as if their choice of specialty spirits has made all the difference in the drinks. Nonsense.
As someone who lives outside of a major metropolitan area, where just the act of ordering a Manhattan is taking your life in your hands, I would love to find a place that serves classic cocktails that are well-made at a reasonable price (Meauxbar in NOLA was a great example). The few places going the craft cocktail route in our area tend to go with the over-top mixology drinks, which I am fine with, but sometimes you just want a nice classic and the high-costs just keep us from going out and supporting them as often as we would like.
The rampant overstocking in US bars and stores is also a contributing reason as to why so many European bottles can be so difficult to find in their home countries. Not that I minded seeing and calling a lonely-looking bottle of Bonal from behind a bar in Philadelphia, but they had 20 others looking equally unused. A return to San Francisco and a stroll down Haight a few years ago, turned up 3 small liquor stores stocking Bonal. I know at least a dozen stores in Manhattan that stock it.
In Paris? Maybe two… if you’re lucky and it’s in. Basics from just next door like Averna? Cocchi vermouth? Good luck.
Martin, I think it is much worse than that. I was listening to a recent podcast Philip Duff did with Salvatore Calabrese, and basically his thesis is that modern craft cocktail bartenders are moving towards the kitchen/becoming chefs. In other words, most of the new cocktails are extremely difficult to ever replicate outside of where you can order them. Creativity is more important than anything else, and to be honest, when I am having a more molecular/gastronomical experience in NYC, it is rarely as good as a really well-made classic. Few drinks have ever risen to the deceptive simplicity of, say, Toby Cecchini’s riff on a Japanese Cocktail or his gimlet. I truly hope that Robert is right, and it seems like a return to normalcy is in order, but I have my doubts.
Separately, there was a great article in Wine Enthusiast about high-end cocktail bars in Manhattan increasingly being a place where there are no regulars. People go for their 1.5 hour Resy slot for impersonal service ordering $35 pre-batched drinks and only care about their Instagram photo. I’m pessimistic. This is the result of the bar business being impossible to make work economically in a place like NYC.
I was chatting with Garret Richard the other day and he mainly blames “50 Best” and the other competitions for distorting the industry. I only paraphrase, here, but these competitions have become the primary (only?) strategy to differentiate yourself as a bartender or bar, and so it becomes a sort of stunt drink arms race that has nothing at all to do with hospitality.
Meanwhile, yesterday I noticed this (rather superficial) piece in the NYTimes about apparently-successful nightclubs closing in New York. The piece identifies three factors: drastic rent increases, drastic insurance cost increases, and lower alcohol consumption. On the latter, they state:
Nightclubs make money mainly by alcohol sales, and their core demographic are ages 21 to 34. But that crowd has been drinking less than they were prepandemic, according to a Gallup survey, for a variety of possible reasons that include less in-person socializing and a general awareness of alcohol’s risks.
“You’re seeing a real shift in alcohol consumption,” said Max Chodorow, a hospitality industry veteran who owns Jean’s, a restaurant in Manhattan that also holds a subterranean club. “So in turn, you’re seeing a real shift in the sustainability of nightlife in its current format.”
I guess the idea here is that if the kids were drinking more, it might offset 300% rent increases or skyrocketing insurance costs. I haven’t set foot in a nightclub in decades, but I presume that’s one kind of bar where the mixology remains rudimentary and careless at best? Perhaps some NY kids are saving their alcohol budget to drink weird expensive drinks at Schmuck?
I moderated a panel of bar owners at the Chefs Conference in Philadelphia last weekend. An audience member asked about this issue of Gen Z drinking less. All three said they hadn’t witnesses what so many articles have cited recently. In their experience, young people are still drinking plenty.
The people I’ve spoken with have noticed the drop in Gen Z drinking. Their N/A cocktail programs have legs, they aren’t a fad that’s dying down. Some musician friends of mine rent out their recording studio, and the younger bands aren’t even bringing beer with them to sessions, can you imagine? There will always be a home for stunt drink bars, but the “lower cost classics” bars are probably a sign of the coalescence, consolidation and mainstreaming of the aging X/millennial market. I went to a fantastic bar in Edinburgh back in 2016 that nailed the inventory discipline mentioned earlier in the thread. They had a cocktail menu of a half dozen drinks that recombined maybe 15 different spirits total. Plenty of people just drank beer and cider. I imagine the future of the average bar will look more like that. I also suspect more places are surviving by adopting the mixed-use restaurant/bar/club/speakeasy model, where one business functions as multiple “venues” for multiple markets.
Good to hear Philly can still drink, but I bet those increasing costs are lowering the number of bars, keeping the relative demand stable at those that are still standing.
I wonder if the difference in anecdotal experiences has something to do with the type of business you run in conjunction with how exactly drinking habits are changing.
It seems like there is a larger group of people not drinking at all, but I suspect there’s a bigger effect for businesses in people who DO drink simply not drinking as much. Something that probably has a bigger effect on nightclubs vs. bars where traditionally alcohol consumption was more moderate per person.
To be fair, it’s kind of tough to become a regular if you are limited to staying at a place for 90 minutes at a time. If I’m going to be a regular, it’s going to be at a place where I can “stretch out” and relax without worrying about a time limit. We were recently at Lucky Tiki in LA and just as we were getting to know our bartender and the folks next to us, boom, we had to leave. Hard to create those connections that make lifelong customers of a place.