Building an Amazing Cocktail List
Cocktail menus came into their own in the last few decades with the boom in interest in craft cocktails. Where cocktail lists were once the domain of high-end bars, now guests at even the smallest rural dive bars are looking for a cocktail list. That means every bar needs a cocktail menu, and it needs to be designed to drive profits.
When considering items for your cocktail list, keep your margins in mind. The biggest benefit of having a cocktail list is that it will drive your guests to purchase certain items. Make sure that you have done your costing and price your cocktails to maximize profits.
What Needs to be on your Cocktail List?
Not all bars are the same. The cocktail list for a neighborhood bar or the alley dive will be much different than the list for a high-end gastropub. The demographics and psychographics of your clientele, your location, and your brand will all determine what your cocktail list needs.
The ideas below are just to start you on the path of developing your list. One of the joys of bar ownership and management is the ability to be creative. You can push the standards, create new ways of doing things, and stand out. But, you need to make sure that you stay rooted in your concept, and that any menu you put out provides your guests with a cohesive experience.
Make sure that you include your employees in creating your cocktails list. Let them present ideas, make and test original cocktails, and have a say in what is being served. Not only will this add more creativity to the process, but it will also ensure that one person's tastes are not the only thing reflected on your menu.
How Long Should Your Cocktail List Be?
Some bars have cocktail lists with just five drinks, while others have extensive lists of well over 100 different cocktails. For most bars, five drinks isn’t enough, and 100 is far too many.
One thing to consider when determining the length of your cocktail list is the growing issue, especially among younger guests, of menu anxiety. Many people get anxious when they are presented with too many options and can not easily sort through them to determine what they want to buy. That means longer is normally not better.
At the same time, you need to give your guests enough options so that there are drinks on your list that appeal to different tastes. You don’t want to only have bourbon or rye whiskey-based cocktails or only include variations on a vodka martini, unless that is your concept. Your goal should be to present a well-rounded list of cocktails for your guests.
There is rarely a reason to include too many traditional cocktails, since your guests will order those anyway. It is a much better idea to put a unique twist on an old fashioned on your list than a traditional old fashioned that your guests will order without being prompted. That being said, if there is a trending cocktail that maybe your guests wouldn’t think to order, even if it is a classic, it could be worth including on your list, for example, an espresso martini or a traditional daiquiri.
For most bars, the optimal cocktail list is going to be between 12 and 24 items. That gives you enough room to include cocktails based on different base liquors, with different preparation methods, and different flavor profiles without overwhelming your customers.
Balance Your Spirits
Especially if you are limiting yourself to just 12 cocktails, you need to make sure that you are offering a variety of spirits on your list. While you can group spirits in many different ways, for most bars it makes the most sense to think about spirits as 6 different base liquors: vodka, gin, rum, whiskey, tequila, and brandy. For many bars, brandy is not something that they focus on, and not a main ingredient in their cocktails. That means you can simply list down to five base ingredients.
You also need to keep non-alcoholic or low-alcohol cocktails in mind. These should be part of your cocktail list to make sure that you are appealing to the increasing number of guests, especially in the under-30 crowd, who are deciding where to drink based on the availability of non-alcoholic beverage options.
To make sure you have a balanced cocktail list, it can be as simple as having roughly the same number of cocktails of each base liquor. So, for a 15 cocktail menu, you could have three drinks based on vodka, three on gin, and so on.
The only issue there is that different liquors have different popularity. Some of the differences in popularity will be regional and some will be based on what is popular. For example, a cocktail list for a bar in Texas will normally include more tequila-based drinks than a menu for a bar in Newcastle, England which will probably lean hard into whiskey. A bar in Macedonia might feature different cocktails using Rakija, while most people outside of the Balkans don’t even know what Rakija is. You need to keep regional tastes in mind.
If I were putting together a 15-item list for a bar where I live, in Southern Indiana, based on regional preferences and what sells here I would do something like four vodka cocktails, three whiskey cocktails, two rum cocktails, two tequila cocktails, two gin cocktails and two non-alcoholic cocktails. That way the spirits that sell best in the market are used more, but the list still offers a lot of variety.
Don’t Play to one Flavor or Technique
Unless you are running a very specific niche bar, you need a variation in preparation techniques, ingredients, and even the type of glasses you use.
Too many bar cocktail lists feature only sweet cocktails. I plant the blame for that on chains that have been creating sugar-laden cocktail lists for decades. Unless you are a tiki bar and serving only sweet, tropical drinks, you need more variety. On the other hand, there are plenty of bars that want to stay as far away from those tiki drinks as possible and have lists that feature only liquor-forward cocktails. You need variety to appeal to the widest audience possible. Make sure your list includes some drinks that are more herbal, some that are sweeter, some that are fruit-forward, and some that are liquor-forward. Different people have different tastes. You need to make sure that you have flavors that will appeal to men and women, young and old alike.
When it comes to technique, make sure you have some drinks that are shaken and some that are stirred at a minimum. You don’t want the preparation of each cocktail to look the same to your guests. When customers see bartenders using different tools and techniques it peaks their interest and can encourage them to ask questions, try new things, and expand their knowledge. Besides, if your whole list is made up of cocktails that require muddling, your bartenders could be prone to bad flashbacks from about 15 years ago when Mojitos became hot, and just walk out the door.
Make it Seasonal
People want different drinks in different seasons. Unless you are located in the Caribbean or some other tropical location, your guests’ tastes will vary based on the time of year. Your menu should reflect that. Generally, that means more liquor-forward whiskey, brandy, or other dark liquor-driven cocktails in winter, and sweeter, more fruit-forward vodka, tequila, and rum drinks in the summer.
You should also try to work with local, seasonal ingredients when you can. If you live in an area that produces fruit, using local fruits during harvest can be a great way to keep your cocktails local, unique, and seasonal. Consider classic foods associated with different seasons like apple cider and pumpkin spice in the fall or citrus, herbs, and berries in spring. Not only will a seasonal menu make sure your menu fits what your guests are looking for, but it will also make sure that your menu has variety throughout the year and doesn’t go stale.
Make Sure you Can Execute
Not all bars have the guests or the team to pull off every type of cocktail. Your average neighborhood bartender is not going to take the time to shave off a piece of grapefruit peel to use when shaking a cocktail to brighten a drink. For that matter, many neighborhood bars don’t even have real grapefruit juice (the cheap can stuff doesn’t count), let alone an actual grapefruit.
Ingredients are just one thing to think about when looking at your ability to execute. You also need to consider your physical bar layout and the skill level of your staff. Your physical bar layout needs to be set up in a way that makes it easy for your bartenders to make your cocktails. One of the most important metrics to track in your bar is the time it takes to serve a drink. Without the proper physical setup, you cannot optimize that metric. If your cocktail list contains items that require bartenders to gather ingredients from different areas or use tools that are scattered around behind the bar, your guest experience will suffer.
When it comes to your employees, you need to be honest with yourself about their skill level. While I believe that you can train anyone, anything if they want to learn it, you cannot take someone who doesn’t know how to swim, throw them into the ocean a mile offshore, and teach them there. You need to strategically build people's skill levels over time.
Be What You Are
One of the concepts that we touch on almost every week on this blog and the podcast is the need to have a cohesive concept. Everything about your bar from the website, to your exterior, to the interior design, to the service standards and menus needs to all fit into a single cohesive concept. If you are a dive bar, you probably shouldn’t have $18 cocktails with Cynar in them. Likewise, a high-end cocktail-focused bar probably isn’t a good fit for a Michelada.
Your cocktail menu must be cohesive with the rest of your concept. Otherwise, you will confuse your guests and they will not understand what you are. That will lead to them not enjoying your bar as much, and maybe not becoming a regular. When you provide a cocktail list that fits exactly what your customer expects, the list itself can only improve and not muddle their experience.
Executing your Cocktail Menu
Once you have created your cocktail menu, you have to pull it off. That comes down to training your staff on how to make the drinks and creating the physical list that you present to your guests.
Training Your Team
A cocktail menu is only as good as the drinks that get served to your guests. Your guests must get the same drink every time they come in and order a cocktail, regardless of who is working. You need to make sure that you train everyone on your team to execute them properly.
Training your team for a cocktail menu rollout requires that you walk them through the process of creating the drinks until they come out perfect every time and everyone has had an opportunity to try them and understand them. One of the best training methods is Tell, Show, Do, Review. Tell your team about the cocktail, the ingredients in it, and the process of making it. Show them how to make the cocktail and each step involved in detail. Then have them do it, making sure they are following the exact recipe and everything down to the presentation is perfect every time. Finally, take the time to review the drink standards, ingredients, and everything else. The goal is that every cocktail should be identical every time it is made, regardless of who makes it.
Presenting Your Menu To Your Guests
No cocktail menu works without a way for your customers to know what is on it. You have a lot of choices when it comes to how you present your cocktail menu to your guests. You could go with chalkboards, digital menu boards, or some other way to display the menu on your wall. Or you could design and print out a physical paper menu and put it on a menu board, in a menu cover, or laminate it.
The main thing that you need to keep in mind is that the way you display your menu needs to fit into your overall concept. A high-end bar in the middle of a big city probably shouldn’t just hand folks an old crumpled sheet of paper, just like a custom handmade leather menu cover might seem out of place at a rural dive.
Make sure you consider the readability and formatting of your menu to make it easiest for the guests to find what they want to drink. You should also consider where you place items on the page. The top and bottom items in a column tend to be ordered the most and should represent higher-margin items. Finally, you need to consider how you display your prices on the menu. You want guests to order what they want to drink, not what they want to pay for. It is best to put the price in the description, and not aligned to the right side of the page. You should also consider leaving off the dollar sign and decimals so that the price is less obvious.
For more information on menu design make sure to check out The Bar Business Podcast episodes Menus That Sell Parts 1, 2, and 3 that go into detail on menu design best practices.
Final Thoughts
Creating a cocktail menu is something every bar needs to do. Cocktail lists are key to driving customers to purchase higher-priced and higher-margin cocktails. Plus cocktail menus create a better guest experience. A properly executed cocktail list is one of the most important tools to drive sales that any bar can have.
If you are looking for tips on how to price the items on your cocktail menu, make sure to check out 5 Steps to Cocktail Pricing for Bar Profits. If you are looking for assistance in optimizing your cocktail list to drive sales and increase profits, schedule a free thirty-minute strategy session with The Bar Business Coach to learn how we can collaborate.