Make it a Martini 

The New Year Should Come with a New Taste 

    With a flip of the calendar page, January 1st becomes the domain of the dreaded New Year’s Resolution. There it is again, be it the love line, waist line or bottom line–it’s that haunting aspect of life that doesn’t seem to fit into the ideal image of you at your best.

    Although Nightclub & Bar can’t do anything about your love life or tipping the scales in your favor, it can help out the bottom line. This year, take your Martini list and shake it up a bit, and rest assured that it will be one New Year’s Resolution you actually find pleasure in keeping.

    While overhauling an existing menu or creating one from scratch may sound about as appetizing as Aunt Belinda’s now-a-month-old fruit cake, breaking it down into segments make may it easier to swallow. Consider these the four key ingredients to the recipe for success.

    Serving a quality, enjoyable drink begins and ends with the product, especially in a Martini. Sarbak depends on his distributors to keep him updated, but warns against blind faith. “Some of them really don’t work, and you have to be careful,” he says of new spirits. “Since we are a trattoria and Martini lounge, we are somewhat upscale. Smirnoff is a fine vodka. Most places use it as a call, but we have it as a rail and try to serve a real quality cocktail here.”

    Among the top-shelf selection, Sarvak says Absolut, Smirnoff, Bombay and Tanqueray 10 are the highest selling at his establishment.

    With liqueurs and garnish, he errs on the side of quality as well. “I use a lot of Baileys and Godiva, a splash of Woodford Reserve Bourbon or a dollop of Patrón Tequila,” Sarbak says.
The garnish offers an extreme amount of creative license, with bars now using everything from ginger to Stilton cheese-stuffed olives. At Sarbak’s, it is a signature sliver of chocolate cut into an “M” for Martini and Matthew’s.

Developing the Menu
    There is such a combination of drinking and dining these days that it hardly seems necessary to reiterate how a Martini can complement a dish. Your menu, however, speaks worlds and can be the enticing factor in a guest’s decision to order a more expensive cocktail. Many bar owners forget that updating the menu, checking it often for wear and tear, and making it easy for a patron to explore will boost sales.

    James Busch, owner of Déjà vu Martini Lounge in Appleton, Wis., used to have leather-bound Martini menus, but has switched to a high-gloss, six-way, creased menu instead. While many would think that cost was the deciding factor in this, it was not. “People used to steal them,” he says. Busch reprints his menus often to avoid wear and tear and to supplement the five-finger discount that occasionally still occurs –– most often after a bachelorette party or two. Déjà vu Martini Lounge is the largest independent lounge account in sales for Svedka Vodka in the state of Wisconsin, and “My vendors will usually reprint them at their own cost,” Busch says. 
Change is not always an easy thing to handle. So, rearranging your cocktail list every time you reprint not only will annoy the printer, but your regular patrons as well. “I pretty much keep the look of the menu the same, because people are accustomed to it,” Busch says.

Marketing the Menu
    Marketing your list of custom cocktail creations is more than simply handing each customer a menu when they find their seats. Today, the world of Martini drinkers is rapidly growing and the competition is fierce — so get in the game. Enter as many categories as you can for best of city and statewide competitions. There rarely is a cost to enter, and the publicity is priceless. At the Velvet Room, in Milwaukee, Owner Mike Kozak hosts tastings, Martini Happy Hours and even personalized bride and groom Martini creations for weddings. All of the hard work paid off this year when the Shepard Express Review awarded the lounge with “best of” in the category of Martini, New Restaurant and Downtown Bar.

    Down in Birmingham, Ala., The Blue Monkey Lounge, awarded Best Martini by the Black & White city paper for the last several years, now also holds the honor of being among the top 10 in Grey Goose sales for the state. “We don’t use gimmicks,” says General Manager Jason Alison. “Martinis are our specialty.”

Profit and Progress
“When I opened,” Busch says, “I only had 14 Martinis on the menu.” Six years later, Appleton’s only true Martini lounge offers 105 Martinis, poured by memory by the  bartenders. The bar sells an average of 200 Martinis on a good night.

    At Matthew’s Trattoria and Martini Lounge, the staff opens and empties seven cases of vodka a month, and at Velvet, where the capacity is 250 people, Kozak says, “On a good night, we probably do 300 to 400 Martinis.”
At $6 to $10 a pour on average –– any questions? NCB

The X Factor

    Recipe books numbered in the hundreds are not feasible for many establishments, and Peter Gugni, manager of Reserve in Chicago, accordingly opts to keep its drink list simple and elegant. “Americans like things sweet,” he says, “so we keep it to a sweeter palate. Keep the book simple. We have seven to eight Martinis, and we don’t go overboard. The eight are really solid.”

The latest creation, not yet named at Reserve, includes the following:

1.25 ounces X-Rated Fusion Liqueur
3/4 ounce Peach Absolut vodka
1 ounce peach nectar
Garnish with a cherry, and title it with whatever strikes your fancy.