Chains boost sales with innovative cocktails, beersChains boost sales with innovative cocktails, beers

In a marketplace battered by slumping sales and traffic and rising commodity and fuel prices, restaurateurs are turning to their beverage programs to help boost business and profitability.

While creative alcoholic beverages can help bring a sense of fun and pizzazz to a restaurant, they can be extremely good sales generators, as well, according to Chicago-based research firm Technomic Inc.

Smokey Bones Bar

When it comes to adult beverages, as a general rule, the higher a restaurant’s average check, the higher the percentage of sales derived from alcoholic drinks.

“This is because there’s more [customer interest in] higher-priced cocktails, beers and wine, both by glass and by the bottle,” said Donna Hood Crecca, senior director of Technomic’s Adult Beverage Resource Group.

Casual-dining chains such as Chili’s Grill & Bar and T.G.I. Friday’s generate about 14 percent of average sales from beverage alcohol, whereas more upscale brands like Bonefish Grill average closer to 17 percent. Upscale steakhouses can see sales of 25 percent or more from alcoholic beverages, she said.

However, casual-dining concepts that have a strong focus on a particular adult beverage — such as beer-centric Buffalo Wild Wings or BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse — often prove to be exceptions to the rule by generating upward of 25 percent of their sales from alcoholic beverages.

Those chains also are some of the few in their segment that reported an increase in revenues in the latest quarter.

Cindy Busi, worldwide director of beverage for Hard Rock International in Orlando, Fla., currently is working to re-launch the 142-unit chain’s beverage program for 2014. Plans call for the incorporation of more classic cocktails, such as the Manhattan and the Sazerac, interpreted through a modern lens.

For example, the Hemingway Daiquiri will incorporate spiced rum instead of regular rum, agave nectar rather than simple syrup, and cherry liqueur and house-made sour mix, “giving it a little spice and flavor,” Busi said.

“If you give [customers] a better experience, they’re not necessarily cautious about the price,” she said.

A little something extra

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Unique drinking containers and standout garnishes can be helpful in driving drink sales, according to Jason Passmore, senior manager of beverage innovation for Ignite Restaurant Group Inc., the Houston-based parent company of two casual-dining chains — 130-unit Joe’s Crab Shack and 15-unit Brick House Tavern Tap.

At Joe’s Crab Shack he’s introducing a piña colada, served in a hollowed out pineapple and topped with an “over-the-top garnish” of whipped cream, toasted coconut, a pineapple ring, a cherry and two pineapple leaves.

“We tested that out a few months back, and it did phenomenally,” he said. The drink is being rolled out in April.

Mason jars also have done well for the chain, he said.

“We’ve been careful not to just throw everything in a Mason jar, but we’ve found cocktails that fit the vessel,” he said. Among those are a strawberry-peach sangria made with Moscato — a wine varietal particularly popular among Millennials — fresh strawberries and peach wedges.

“It’s really surpassing our expectations,” he said. “I knew it would do well, but it’s doing really, really well.”

So, he added, is the new Bloody Mary, which is being rolled out systemwide in April. It is served in a glass rimmed with a mixture of crab boil and Cajun seasoning, black pepper, and kosher salt. The drink is garnished with a snow crab leg skewering an olive, a celery stick and a lemon wedge.

Prices of those cocktails vary depending on the location, but they average $8 to $10.

At Brick House Passmore is exploring more fresh ingredients, including fresh lime and freshly muddled basil, which he adds to gin to make a limited-time-only Basil Gimlet.

With brown spirits increasingly gaining popularity, Passmore combines Jack Daniels with muddled strawberries and fresh lemon juice for his Jack Berry Smash.

Brick House’s Bloody Mary, which is made with Bloody Mary mix, stout beer and pickle juice, also contains an over-the-top garnish: a skewer that includes a deviled egg, a slice of salami, smoked Cheddar cheese and an olive. Cherry peppers and a celery stalk also are included in the drink, which is rimmed with ground, spicy pork rind mixed with other spices and salt.

Those drinks are in the $8 to $9 range.

Generating excitement

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California Pizza Kitchen's Appleberry Sangria, left, and Caribbean Sunset Sangria, right

California Pizza Kitchen Inc. in Los Angeles introduced several new beverages earlier this year, including red and white sangria, large-format craft beer, and hard pear and apple ciders.

“We also have beautiful new stemware and beer glasses that we’ve rolled out,” said Brian Sullivan, California Pizza Kitchen’s senior vice president of culinary innovation.

The Caribbean Sunset Sangria is made with white wine, passion fruit, rum, apple juice and mango purée, while the Appleberry Sangria contains red wine, cranberry juice, orange juice and raspberry purée. The sangrias are served in Burgundy wine glasses and sell for $8 each.

Sullivan also introduced wine flights at the chain, allowing guests to order three 3-ounce pours for $12. They can choose from among red, white or “adventurous” wines. That last category includes new offerings such as Moscato and a Cabernet Sauvignon-Shiraz blend.

The chain also bumped up its draft beer serving size from 16 ounces to 18 ounces and is offering a variety of popular craft beers in 22-ounce bottles.

“We just needed some excitement around our beverage program,” Sullivan said.

Updating an adult beverage program excites not only the guests, but also the staff, said Denny Marie Post, chief menu and marketing officer for Red Robin Gourmet Burgers in Greenwood Village, Colo.

“You can do all the innovation you want, but the guest relies on the team member to make suggestions,” she said. Adding a greater variety of beer and new cocktails — both classics from Red Robin’s bar heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, and new selections developed by beverage director Donna Ruch, who was hired last year — “has made us more relevant to our workforce, and they share that with their guests,” she said.

Mike Herchuck, corporate beverage manager of Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill in Orlando, Fla., recently introduced a new “beverage book” to the chain’s 66 units, featuring more margaritas and sangrias. He also debuted spiked lemonades, such as the French Lemonade, made with vodka, elderflower liqueur, lemon and citrus flavors, for $7.75, and a Honey Ginger Lemonade, with bourbon, ginger liqueur, orange juice and lemon sour mix, for $6.95.

Smokey Bones Bar

For the signature Fresh Diamond Margarita, Herchuck developed a way to make his own sour mix to order. Bartenders squeeze two wedges each of orange and lime; add tequila, simple syrup and orange liqueur; shake it with ice;  and serve it on the rocks. The drink is priced at $8.75.

“You get a very fresh-flavored orange margarita that I’d put up against any margarita out there,” he said.

Herchuck also wants to expand Smokey Bones’ beer program. But with a limited number of beer lines at many of the chain’s units, he is temporarily relying on a robust bottle program that includes aggressive pricing. The chain is offering a bucket of five mainstream domestic beers for $10 and a craft-beer sampler bucket of four bottles for $12, “which is cheap, cheap, cheap,” he said. “It’s our way of offering variety without having to open all those beer lines to do it.”

He said it also will help him to compete with bars until he can get more beer lines installed, at which point he will be able to sell the beers at a similar price but a higher profit.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @FoodWriterDiary.