Post #578538 by Mai Tai on Wed, Mar 2, 2011 7:32 PM

I think that what Bongo Bungalow, Mr. Smiley, and others have said in this thread are important words.

How high of quality do you want your drinks...? is an important one. It's more expensive to make high quality drinks, and it actually takes a tremendous amount of skill, speed, caring, dedication, and poise and stamina to be behind the stick, especially on an extremely crowded night. Not just anyone can do it, or even have the amount of caring needed to craft each drink with precision. Have you seen the amount of speed and hard work that Mike Sr. at the Tiki Ti throws into his drink making efforts on a busy night? Same goes for Suzanne and others at Forbidden Island, or the bartenders at Smuggler's Cove. Ever watch Jim Shoemake or Sonya Runkle crank out perfect drink after drink with seeming ease, yet each one is amazing? You have to have someone behind the stick that is a huge cocktail aficionado, and can geek out over the certain nuances that particular ingredients can provide in a multi layered ingredient drink, whether that's a certain rum, juice, liqueur, particular brand of absinthe, hell fire tincture, etc.

It also takes a great amount of effort to either make your own fresh juices every day, or find a source for fresh juice. Same goes for the exotic syrups, as well as the not-so-exotic syrups too. A huge amount of time goes into sourcing fruit and all of the other ingredients needed, let alone transporting these ingredients, then taking the time to convert them into usable tasty ingredients that can be poured in a speedy fashion. Tiki Ti doesn't use fresh juice, but they do make or use custom secret syrups, and you can find Mike Sr. actually in the bar prepping long before opening hour.

So, if you're dedicated to making top notch cocktails, the next question should be is there actually a demand for these drinks in my area, and can those drinks be consistently sold? There is a reason why so many bars sell crap well spirits with crap mixers, and crap beer - that's all that their local clientele wants, and anything "fancier" and more expensive would be met with scorn and ridicule. When I went to Rum Jungle in Las Vegas a few years ago, I quickly realized that although they had a huge wall of rum behind the bar, it was really only 6 or 7 of the same rums repeated over and over and over. And although they carried Pirate XO, they didn't even have fresh (or canned) lime juice - or even simple syrup - to make a Planter's Punch!

Then you have to have the decor. For me, there has to be a huge escapism factor when you step into a tiki bar, a very "Disney-esque" experience like stepping into a dark ride and instantly being taken somewhere else. Forbidden Island has it, the Mai Kai most definitely has it, I hear that Frankie's has it too, even though I haven't been there yet, but not a lot of other places have "it".

So, in my humble opinion, if you are able to have top notch bartenders serve top notch drinks made from top notch fresh or canned ingredients in a good location with top notch decor and can consistently sell those drinks, then you'll most likely have the recipe for success. But you'll have to charge prices that match and can sustain quality cocktails, and pay to retain a good staff, and pay for quality spirits and quality mixers and ingredients, as well as deal with rent, utilities, and all the other overhead. Not an easy proposition. It's easy to see why most bar owners these days take the easy way out, and just serve crap stuff, because it's too hard to do things at the level that most of us appreciate here, and I'm guessing that most of today's bar owners can't be bothered.