Most casual-dining restaurants sell a lot of beer, and most of what they sell is the mainstream, mass-marketed lagers that Americans love so much.
But Todd Cederholm, though a trained sommelier, is a self-proclaimed “beer nut,” and as director of operations for the three-unit 5 Napkin Burger chain in New York City, he got to put together the beer list.
Click here to view part of 5 Napkin's beer menu.
“When we visualized the 5 Napkin Burger concept, we saw it as an American bar and grill,” he said. Although the restaurant has sushi, entrée salads and an array of other things you’d expect at a bar and grill — chicken tenders, fish and chips, mac and cheese — “you’re constantly going back to the idea of a burger and a beer,” he said.
The restaurant has eight burgers, including an ahi tuna burger, a turkey burger, a vegetable burger and a 16-ounce burger for two.
It also has between four and 10 beers on tap, and 75 to 80 in bottles.
“I wanted to make sure no one got bored,” Cederholm said.
“You can always have one beer to represent each style,” he said — one Pilsner, one amber, a pale ale and a stout — “but within each style there’s such a spectrum. You can give someone’s palate different flavors within each style.”
Cederholm divided his lagers alone into four categories.
“Lagers don’t get the appreciation they deserve,” he said, adding that he wanted to expand his diners’ beer horizons without shoving an education down their throats.
So rather than divide his list between mainstream and craft beers, he mixed them together, In that way, someone who enjoys Budweiser or Corona might be convinced to try a different beer in the “Pilsner & Euro Pale Lagers” category.
He also sought out lesser-known varieties of well-known breweries. For example from Yuengling, whose lager is the beer of choice for many Philadelphians, he put the porter on the menu. Similarly, he picked Samuel Adams’ black lager to represent that brewery.
Each of the three restaurants — one each in Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Hell’s Kitchen areas, and a third in the Queens neighborhood of Astoria — has a slightly different beer list and a slightly different sales mix. Cederholm said that at the Hell’s Kitchen unit, he orders between 50 and 60 cases of beer each week, of which about five cases are mass-market beers.
He said he sells about two cases of Magic Hat #9 each week, two cases of Otter Creek Copper Ale, and a case or case and a half of other popular craft beers.
“There’s not one beer on the list that I don’t sell at least one bottle a week,” he said.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].