Can Blue Blazer Save the Bar Industry This Winter?
For Esquire, I interview the partners of this new Chicago-based craft cocktail service aiming to help dining and drinking establishments.
My latest feature for Esquire hit the drinks section last week. In it, I spent much of last summer, and early fall, interviewing industry experts about where the craft cocktail scene is heading as bars continue to suffer during the pandemic.
In many parts of the country, drinking inside is not permitted, and that’s caused a serious strain on bottom lines for bars. One company I was excited to include in the piece was Blue Blazer, a new Chicago-based craft cocktail service aiming to help dining and drinking establishments continue to make money even though they cannot host guests inside. It’s owned by hospitality attorneys Brian Troglia, Joe Kreeger, and Josh Kaplan, who’ve spent nearly two decades representing top Chicago establishments like Alinea, Lula Cafe, and Smyth and the Loyalist.
With Blue Blazer designated as a manufacturing company, its setup for ready-to-drink craft cocktails differs from the new to-go cocktail laws in that it’s allowed to sell pre-bottled cocktails through online delivery platforms like Caviar, DoorDash, GrubHub, and soon Tock. The bottles are also sold at liquor stores and the establishments themselves.
How is all this done? All the booze is produced and bottled in a 2,000-square-foot warehouse facility in Skokie, Ill., with production overseen by in-house beverage partner Michael Rubel, who was previously over mixology programs at Big Star, Estereo, Longman & Eagle, and The Violet Hour. His team uses spirits from local distilleries as much as possible.
There are nine cocktails available thus far, from a Mai Tai to an Old Fashioned, with partnering bars Billy Sunday, Estereo, Lula Café and Queen Mary Tavern contributing original recipes. They range in price $12-$85, based on size.
In addition to helping bars with their cocktails, Blue Blazer is giving back to the industry in general, says Troglia.
“Representing all of these bars and restaurants as lawyers, it’s been a brutal situation,” he tells me. “There’s been a lot of pain in the industry. Especially in times when service gets cut back or is prohibited and then you have to lay off more of your workforce.
“One of the things we’ve done with Blue Blazer is build in a philanthropic element to it with 50 percent of the profits going into a pool for hospitality employees. We’re trying to give back to the community, too, in a time when this is a pretty brutal situation.”
Read the entire Esquire story right here.
[Photos by Matthew Lowell]
Hmmm.. sounds exciting. Maybe you can get a promo code and host a virtual party (along with tunes by DJ Lady D. 10% of all sales go to restaurant relief fund 8^)
Wow, what a great concept! Thank you for such an insightful look into the industry.