Welcome to Mixology Magazine!

A view on the world of bar culture from a Central European perspective. MIXOLOGY co-founder and publisher Helmut Adam explains the inner workings of Germany’s bar trade magazine.

Over eleven years after we started MIXOLOGY magazine we’re finally launching an English edition. Our brand is already well-known in the international bar hemisphere, although (apart from a small bi-lingual blogging period back in 2007 to 2009) readers from abroad had to rely on Babelfisch and the likes to find out, what’s going on in Europe’s largest beverage market.
The story of MIXOLOGY magazine started in a souterrain bar in Berlin-Mitte. And as ex-bartenders we still feel deeply rooted in the bar trade, though we spend our days mixing words rather than liquid ingredients today. We are the largest journalistic publication for the bar industry in the “GSA countries” as we call them: Germany, Switzerland and Austria. And now we’re finally going to establish a window to the world.
That world of bar has changed tremendously over the last ten years. And the world of publishing has changed, too. We do still publish a print magazine and we disagree with the notion that “print is dead”. The number of our magazines sold is rising steadily. And last year even proved to be one of the most successful years for our publishing house – thanks to our print. This gave us the opportunity to reinvest into our website and finally install an English platform.
The World of MIXOLOGY
While our German print is still going strong, the amount of time we are devoting to our online publishing activities has grown steadily over the years. The German MIXOLOGY ONLINE version now sees at least one new story per day. Our brand new English website will start with three to four articles per week. But we’re confident, that we’ll have the same amount of stories published on both platforms in the near future.
Now, what will MIXOLOGY ONLINE be like in English?
It will be a view on the world of bar culture from a Central European perspective. Some of our stories will run on both platforms, German and English, and some won’t. A story about working in Berlin as an expat bartender for example will rather appeal to readers from abroad, while the news of Charles Schumann opening Les Fleurs du Mal bar will be of interest to readership at home and on other continents.
No Vanity Publishing
For a start we’ve pulled some good stories from our archives. And we’ve added a couple of new articles written by a talented team of native speakers from Berlin. We plan to employ the services of professional trade writers from other regions when required, as we move along. As co-founder and publisher of MIXOLOGY magazine I’ll try to contribute here as often as possible. Some pieces I’ll have edited and some I will not. As you might have discovered while reading along, English is not my first language. And rather than mask that fact I’d like to keep that German accent in my lines. It’s where the roots of our magazine lie after all.
Which brings me to the next topic. MIXOLOGY has established great relationships with trade publications in other markets and regions over the years. In the UK, the Benelux countries, the Czech Republic and in China, just to name a few. We help each other with contacts, stories and imagery almost on a daily basis. We’ll be able to continue with this much more in the open now and link out to great stories on other platforms as we find them.
Our Transparency Rules
How does MIXOLOGY work commercially? While we have a very healthy base of over 2.100 print subscribers our main revenue source is advertising. It’s undeniable that trade magazines will never be a great investigative force in the world of publishing. The bar world is a small box and where brands and media form partnerships a lot of “diplomacy” kicks in. It’s vital to be transparent about this. Over the years we’ve developed a transparency system you can find here on our website. It explains how we act, when we run competitions for brands, how advertorials work and how we deal with press trip invitations.
Part of the success of MIXOLOGY as both a magazine and a trade platform lies in being close to the bar community. The rise of social media enabled us to stay in touch with readers on a daily or rather hourly basis. On Facebook over 50.000 fans follow our page. Our Twitter channel currently has over 9.000 subscribers. And we do a bit of Instagraming, too. If you’d like to get in touch, please mail us at [email protected]. We hope you’ll enjoy reading and discussing our magazine. Please let us know what you like and what you don’t. Prost!