Inventory for July 9th, 2017
Cheers and welcome back to this week’s inventory! We’ve got a London bar launching the single ingredient cocktail, a free-flowing Negroni bar in New York, a study that is meant to determine if alcohol is healthy for us, and an analysis of the Casamigos sale. Enjoy!
We all know that social media plays an important role in branding these days, and this definitely holds true for bars and restaurants as well. Last week Grub Street posted an article that analyses how chefs can embrace the “power of the Instagram juggernaut” and use it to their advantage. Well worth a read on how social media is influencing our lives and the way we order, eat, and enjoy ourselves.
Duck & Waffle Launches Single Ingredient Cocktails
“Closed-loop cocktail pioneer Rich Woods has launched a menu of single ingredient cocktails at Duck & Waffle made with every part of the ingredient.” Woods’s menu features 10 cocktails, all of which use one key ingredient. Every element of the ingredient is put to use, a tomato will be used from skin to stalk. Woods wants to “illustrate how much flavour can be extracted from a single ingredient and show the levels of complexity that can be obtained from multiple elements of a single source.” Each cocktail is named after its key ingredient, think “Avocado,” “Red Pepper,” “Olive,” and “Tomato.” Apparently, it’s been hard to achieve consistency and uniformity of flavour in the cocktails. To combat this problem Woods has been preparing large batch cocktails, where he blends a small percentage of the old batch with the new. This ensures consistency of flavor.
A Pop-Up Bar in New York Is Offering a Free-Flowing Negroni Fountain
Take me there. New York-based bar Dante is hosting a pop up bar this summer. The bar is more than 100 years old and is known for its extensive Negroni menu. The pop-up will feature a free-flowing fountain of Negroni. The fountain, however, is not bottomless. You serve yourself a $14 glass, while the bartenders look on.
$100 Million Study Will Determine Once and for All If Alcohol Is Healthy
We all know the adage, a glass of red wine a day makes for a healthy heart. But how true is that really? Grub Street reports that the NIH is launching a $100 million clinical trial that will focus directly on whether or not a drink can prevent a heart attack. One caveat though: “Because this is such an expensive study, the NIH has decided to let the alcohol industry pay for the lion’s share of it. Five of the world’s largest alcohol manufacturers – Anheuser-Busch InBev, Heineken, Diageo, Pernod Ricard, and Carlsberg – have pledged $68 million so far.” Hooooow then, can this study be objective?
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which is overseeing the study, is trying to assure people that the industry won’t have any influence. “‘This study could completely backfire on the alcoholic beverage industry, and they’re going to have to live with it,’ its director George Koob says.” Take that with a grain of salt. Grub Street’s analysis is pretty solid: “Even if the study produces fantastic news about alcohol’s health effects, there’s still a chance they could be undercut if the public distrusts the results on account of the role Big Booze played. If the results aren’t good and end up linking moderate use to bunches of maladies, the alcohol industry can’t really dispute them because it backed the study, and sales suffer. It’s not clear how Smirnoff or Budweiser wins in either scenario.”
Can Casamigos Live up to Diageo’s $1 Billion Pledge?
On The Drinks Business, “Adrian Clarke, founder of boutique investment company Delarki, weighs up whether George Clooney’s Casamigos Tequila can live up to Diageo’s $1 billion price tag.” After the acquisition announcement came out, Diageo’s share price fell by 1.05% overnight and many people wondered if Casamigos could live up to its high price. According to Diageo, Casamigos is on track to sell 170,000 12-bottle cases this year. Still, even those sales do not a billion dollars make. “A condition likely put forward by Diageo as part of the agreement also stipulates payment will be made in two tranches: $700m upfront with the remaining $300m depending on performance over the next 10 years.” The Drinks Business argues that the only way for Casamigos to achieve fast growth is to become the bartender’s ingredient of choice for tequila-based cocktails. We’ll see if and how that happens over the next three years.
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