Wines resembling hard liquor can boost sales for restaurants with limited licenses
Cocktails can be a great source of profit for restaurants, but full liquor licenses can be expensive and, depending on the jurisdiction, bureaucratic hassles. But new low-alcoholic options are becoming available for restaurants with just beer-and-wine licenses, including an increasingly popular line of wines meant to taste like spirits.
These wines are different from the soju, sake, beer and traditional wine used to make low-alcohol cocktails, as they are meant to taste like the real thing. Operators have found that by using twice the amount, they can make passable full-strength cocktails.
“I discovered them a little over a year ago,” said Steve Applegate, one of two owners of Farmstand, a fast-casual salad-based concept in New York City, located in the Urbanspace Vanderbilt food hall.
The most popular is an agave wine, essentially undistilled tequila, according to Nick Capriccio, vice president of San Gabriel Beverage Group, which imports the beverage and makes other low-alcohol liquor copycats.
The agave is harvested, cooked, smashed and fermented by a tequila distiller, he said. But instead of being distilled, the liquid is drained off, filtered and bottled. A distilled agave spirit, such as tequila, is added to bring the alcohol level to 20 percent or 24 percent, depending on the state it’s distributed to. Regulations vary from state to state.
“It’s kind of like a fortified wine,” Capriccio said.
Most of San Gabriel’s other products are made from grapes sourced from a rectifier in northern California.
“That wine is very neutral, so it’s pretty close to vodka flavor,” Capriccio said.
For gin, he adds juniper and other botanicals, and he incorporates whiskey flavoring for a beverage meant to taste like whiskey.
“We’re actually working on launching a spiced rum and coconut rum right now,” Capriccio said. “We’re hoping to have the whole well covered.”
At Farmstand, with locations in Urbanspace and at Madison Square Eats, a seasonal summertime pop-up, Applegate said the drinks have done well. This summer’s offerings included a Lower East Side lemonade made with muddled lemon, rosemary simple syrup and whiskey-flavored wine, and a spicy strawberry margarita made from agave wine.
“They’re starting to catch on,” Applegate said.
Farmstand sold around 2,200 cocktails at $11 apiece in the 28 days it operated at Madison Square Eats.
Applegate uses twice as much of what he calls “session” spirits as he would full-strength ones, so the drinks pack the same punch.
“I wanted to see if people would be turned off by the idea of a session cocktail. Ninety-five percent of people were totally fine with it once I explained it to them,” he said.
Brand loyalists, such as devotees of Grey Goose vodka or Patrón tequila, may be turned off, but Applegate said he pours them a quarter-ounce sample so they can taste and smell the similarities.
Hank Tibensky, owner of Hank’s Juicy Beef, a New York fast-casual operation that specializes in Chicago-style Italian beef sandwiches, said customers have taken a shine to agave wine.
“People thought it was real tequila, without the after-punch,” he said, adding that he mainly offers it at catering gigs.
Andrew Gruel, chef-owner of Slapfish, a 10-unit fast-casual chain based in Huntington Beach, Calif., has been using low-proof spirit cognates for years, particularly rum, tequila and vodka.
“They sold them to us as if they were going to taste like a real distilled vodka, which isn’t the case,” he said. “You definitely want to mix something with them. But it’s a nice way to have something besides beer and wine.”
The chain’s most popular drinks are Bloody Marys and margaritas made with fresh juices. They’re priced at $6 during “Slappy Hour,” 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. every day, 8 p.m. to close Monday through Thursday, and $8 at other times. Like Applegate, twice the volume of alcohol is used as in a traditional cocktail.
Gruel has also tried making Bloody Marys with the relatively low-alcohol Korean spirit soju, which can be used legally with beer and wine licenses, “but this is the best,” he said of agave wine.
The current program is successful enough that alcohol accounts for between 8 percent and 10 percent of total sales, he said, significantly higher than the 1 percent or 2 percent more common at fast-casual restaurants.
Gruel is expanding the Huntington Beach location into a vacant space next door, where he plans to set up a raw bar. But he’s been successful enough with just a beer and wine license that he’s not going to the trouble to get a full liquor license.
At Q.E.D., an event space in Astoria, N.Y., that mostly hosts comedy shows, owner Kambri Crews began using agave wine and rum-flavored alcohol to make frozen margaritas and piña coladas over the summer, priced at $6. This fall, the venue is adding the rum-like drink to apple cider and charging $8 for it.
“People seem to really dig them,” said public relations and marketing manager Chris Gersbeck.
Full liquor licenses in New York carry a high and continuing expense, he added, as they must continue to be renewed.
“This is a good, kind of cheap way to get around doing that,” he said.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
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