This is the year of multiple personalities.
The pressure is on like never before for bars and restaurants to pull out all the stops, think outside the box and stand out from the crowd. From top to bottom, everyone in the hospitality world will need to get inventive and identify coping mechanisms to keep the sanity—while still being profitable—in the coming year.
Why? Guests today are seeking more multifaceted unique experiences, and sometimes those are conflicting. For instance, it’s not unlikely for a consumer to want a vegetable-centric meal on a Monday and then enjoy an over-the-top decadent brunch later in the week. The same goes with beverages.
That means operators will have to flex their creative muscles even more than in years past to satisfy many audiences. This explains our 2016 trend report’s theme of taking on “multiple personalities” to please multiple types of people at multiple times.
We developed our annual preview of the hot trends and predictions for the restaurant and hotel industries based on industry observations, bicoastal and international travel, discussions with market leaders, meetings with hotel and restaurant clients, trade conferences and media interactions. We also spent thousands of hours conducting research in hotels and restaurants around the country.
Here’s a look at The Year of Multiple Personalities with some of the on-premise beverage trends for 2016.
1. Mocktails Are No Joke
Mocktail offerings are popping up all over U.S. food cities from San Francisco to New York. They target consumers watching their diets, designated drivers, pregnant women and even “foodie” children.
Some chefs have experimented with pairing an entire meal with mocktails. This gives them a unique opportunity to blend ingredients that complement the food without the overpowering strength of alcohol–or the cost.
One example is Vincenzo Marianella’s new restaurant Love & Salt in Manhattan Beach, CA, which offers three different mocktails made from ingredients such as sage, almond syrup, jalapeno and seedless white grapes.
Atera Restaurant in New York launched a temperance pairing menu this past May, creating mocktails inspired by classic cocktails. The Cote de Beet mocktail, for one, combines black currants and beets that have been aged in hopes of matching the taste of the rich red wine.
2. Watch out For Kombucha
Restaurants and bars across the country are getting creative with kombucha juice. They’re incorporating the trendy fermented tea beverage into cocktails to create more botanical and fruitful alcoholic beverages and developing new twists, such as the Kombucharita.
Breweries are even getting in on the concept too, working alongside popular kombucha drink companies to introduce new beer blends to their consumers.
Crooked Stave in Denver always has at least one kombucha on tap. The house speciality is cranberry-lavender, which is blended with one of the brewery’s saison beers. Another option is mango kombucha on draft mixed with its Vieille Saison.
Guests at 83 Degrees in San Diego can choose straight-up kombucha or have it mixed into one of three cocktails. General manager Nick Wheeler incorporates Living Tea ginger kombucha into his take on a Moscow Mule, and The BU lavender kombucha into the restaurant’s Kombucha Breeze cocktail.
3. Hard Soda is Just Beginning
Bubbles mania expands from Champagne and sparkling wine to fizzy water and fancy, house-made sodas. Restaurants and breweries have embraced this new preference by introducing their own house-made sodas, while producers are creating their own alcoholic and non-alcoholic brews by infusing them with ginger and other botanical flavors.
For instance, the LeCroix sparkling water brand incudes pamplemousse, peach-pear and coconut flavors, while Dry Sparkling has lemongrass- and cucumber-flavored waters. An influx of craft ginger beer producers are popping up as well, including Matsos Broome Brewery and Rachel’s Ginger Brew out of the Pacific Northwest.
And while the original “alcopop” Zima may have been discontinued in 2008, products such as Not Your Father’s Root Beer from Small Town Brewery in Wisconsin, and the Orange or Ginger flavors from Henry’s Hard Soda are on the rise.
4. Nitro-Coffee Cocktails
The popular morning drink continues to evolve with the popularity of nitro-coffee. Coffee shops and restaurants alike are expanding on the trend, incorporating coffee into alcoholic drinks and non-alcoholic coffee beverages by infusing new techniques and flavors to create balanced and “treatful” coffee drinks.
Saint Frank in San Francisco offers a Kaffe Tonic, an infusion of tonic water and fresh espresso, as a refreshing way to enjoy coffee.
Coffee Bar, also in San Francisco, blends ice, cinnamon and vanilla-infused, cold-brew coffee topped with milk for a beverage that combines the bitterness of coffee with the sweetness of Mexican drink horchata.
And St. George Spirits in 2014 introduced a NOLA liqueur made with rich Ethiopian coffee and infused with Madagascar vanilla, chicory root, and natural cane sugar.
5. Gin Gains More Ground
Proper Martinis and Gin and Tonics will never go out of style, but bartenders are putting a creative spin on the old-school drinks with barrel-aged gins on the rise. Aged in whiskey, brandy or rum barrels, these gins are infused with tastes of botanicals and sweetened with hints of vanilla, maple and brown sugar.
They’re easy to sip and the perfect complement in any number of cocktails.
A number of aged gins have hit the market recently. For instance, Citadelle Gin Reserve, a new addition to the Citadelle French Gin collection, sits in oak barrels for several months, giving it a hint of vanilla flavor before being bottled and sold.
Made with a mix of juniper berries, coriander and fennel, Death’s Door gin from Washington Island, WI, has a subtle botanical influence that allows it to stand on its own or be paired with other ingredients.
Starting off as brandy, Bummer & Lazarus gin from San Francisco-based Raff Distillerie is redistilled and infused with the flavors of juniper berries, orris root, coriander seeds, angelica root, bitter orange peel, lemon peel, cinnamon bark and licorice root.
Beehive Barrel Reserve Gin in Salt Lake City, UT, distills its strong botanical gin in hand-charred French oak barrels. The flavor profile is smoke, oak and vanilla.
And British gin brand Booth’s, which dates back to the 1740s, has just been revived. Booth’s Finest Dry Gin is gently mellowed in sherry casks, which softens the juniper notes and gives the liquid a unique and characteristic golden hue.
6. Tropical Cocktails Remain Popular
Tropical cocktails are making their way back into the mainstream. Umbrella-decorated drinks are on the rise and are bringing a little more flair to the glass.
Restaurants are recreating some of the popular cocktail drinks from the original Tiki days and are putting a fresh and creative spin on them with high-quality ingredients and fresh-squeezed juices. You may just see that Tiki glass at your local watering hole.
Barbara Lynch’s No.9 Park, an upscale French and Italian restaurant in Boston, this past July offered a cocktail class on Potions of the Caribbean focusing on the history of Tiki, the use of tropical flavors and drink mixing.
The Well Bar and Grill in Kansas City introduced a new Tiki cocktail menu in July. The restaurant also started Tiki Tuesdays on its rooftop, which features live island music and gives guests the opportunity to enjoy one of the many handcrafted Tiki cocktails.
Fairweather in San Diego offers an entire menu of Tiki cocktails, from an artisanal Pina Colada to the various takes on the classic Mai Tai, which keeps the bar bustling with locals and visitors alike.
7. Cocktail Pairing Courses
Pairing wine with food is a long-standing tradition, but this concept has been refreshed with cocktails. Bartenders are creating drinks with flavors specifically designed to complement dishes, and operators are developing pairings for multicourse meals.
This trend allows bartenders to highlight signature drinks and bring a new level of balance to main-course food offerings.
One example is the classic Sazerac at New York’s North End Grill, made with local Long Island Rough Rider rye. It’s paired with the restaurant’s Fiorentina-style Porterhouse Steak for a combination meant to balance the intense and rich flavor in the dish.
At Square Root in New Orleans, chef Phillip Lopez draws on his Mexican-American background to bring modern food paired with creative cocktails to his all-tasting menu concept.
8. Boozy Ice
Boozy ice cubes help keep your glass cold and your drink strong, and spiked popsicles are a fun adult indulgence. The Beyond Zero icemaker, a new innovation that freezes alcohol, is putting a cool spin on your favorite cocktail drinks, making it easy to turn them into delicious frozen treats.
Boozy Ice Pop Cocktails are big at Loopy Doopy, the rooftop bar at the Conrad Hotel in New York. They’re topped with prosecco and come in a variety of flavors, including Blueberry Peach, Strawberry Lemongrass and Empire Apple. Gracias Madre, a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, offers a Boozy Popsicle. The flavor rotates seasonally, ranging from blood orange and mezcal to tequila blanco with roasted pineapple and jalapeno.
9. Garnishes Go Wild
Instagram-worthy garnishes, from gold-dusted flowers, dehydrated fruits, sugar stirrers and designer straws, are growing in popularity. These cocktail embellishments give restaurateurs and hoteliers equal opportunity to add pizzazz to their beverage offerings.
Toki Underground in Fairfax, VA, tops its bourbon and pepper-honey cocktail with a perfectly smoked piece of pork belly. Bon Marche in San Francisco serves fun striped paper straws in cocktails such as the Last Metro, made with Pimm’s No. 1, Dubonnet Rouge, Montenegro, strawberries and lemon.
For operators looking to outsource, Dress the Drink offers culinary and mixologist garnishes nationwide. It can customize and develop any garnish based on the bar’s concept and drink profile, from shimmering exotic flowers floating in cocktails to gold flakes dusted on a glass rim.
Unique garnishes can take any cocktail offering to the next level—and merit a higher price per drink.
10. Bloody Mary Bonanza
Although Bloody Marys have always been popular, we expect to see more creative presentations of this fan-favorite. From inventive garnishes and new components to larger-than-life carts at posh brunch spots throughout the country, Bloodies continue to evolve from the traditional spicy tomato juice and vodka recipes.
The Bloody Mary Cart at 1313 Main in Napa, CA, has more than 20 choices for add-ons, including fried oysters, duck pastrami, fried shrimp cocktail, sriracha salt, fresh grated egg yolk cured in salt, kimchi brussel sprouts and candied jalapenos. What’s more, the restaurant makes the tomato juice from heirloom tomatoes grown in its garden, combined with lemon and spices for a one-of-a-kind recipe.
Bar Toma in Chicago offers a Bloody Mary Tower that’s meant to be shared for groups of two to four people; it has a slice of pepperoni pizza soaking in it.
And the All About Mary at Todd English’s P.U.B. in Las Vegas doubles as a meal, since it’s topped with a chicken wing, slider, cocktail shrimp, a corn dog and pickled veggies.
11. A Matcha Made in Heaven
Matcha, a powdered green tea with a hint of sweetness and many health benefits, is taking the world by storm. Just in the past year, matcha sales are up by nearly 55%.
Botanical drinks are also giving drink connoisseurs something to talk about. With consumers looking for healthier, less-sweet food and drink alternatives, many are turning to green beverages.
From teas to smoothies to favorite cocktail drinks people are asking for fresh plant-based ingredients. Mint, ginger and everything in between add a bit of freshness and flare to our favorite drinks.
Inspired by the age-old Japanese tea, MatchaBar in New York is the first specialty cafe that dedicates itself to matcha: Everything it serves is boosted by the green energy-supplying tea.
L.A. Chapter at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles has a full menu of ’80s inspired drinks. One is a Midori Sour, with Aylesbury Duck vodka, Midori melon liqueur, green Chartreuse, lime, honey, egg white and a matcha tincture.
12. More Wine on Tap
More restaurants and wineries are now offering wines on tap, as it’s an innovative and effective way to pour wine. Rather than going through the traditional process of popping open a stubborn cork, pouring from tap helps to keep things moving, plus the ability to keep the wine in kegs increases preservation time.
With the efficiency that it provides, several restaurants have turned to the popular trend. City Winery’s tasting room in Napa, CA, offers more than 30 wines on tap, including Mondavi, Barrett, Hobbs and Finkelstein.
The new Beer Park by Budweiser at the Paris Las Vegas, the city’s first rooftop bar and grill which was scheduled to open in January, will offer wines on tap in addition to its vast beer selection and cocktails.
13. White Wine Rises
White wine—particularly the moderately oaked variety— will continue to increase in popularity. Even traditional red wine drinkers are now exploring more white wines.
Sauvignon blanc and pinot gris are showing double-digit growth and chardonnay, America’s top-selling varietal, continues to rise.
French chenin blanc is gaining popularity and the dry and off-dry rieslings from Germany and Austria are continually the most prized.
Winemakers are using more oak and less interventionist methods such as native yeast in their wines. Kendall-Jackson Avant, Wente Vineyards, Morning Fog chardonnay and new entrant Tom Gore are just a few examples.
Andrew Freeman is president Andrew Freeman & Co., a boutique hospitality- and restaurant-consulting firm based in San Francisco. For the company’s full 2016 trend report, visit www.afandco.com.
