The State of Bottle Service

The creation myth on bottle service is murky, but most fingers point to Saint-Tropez, Ibiza and London in terms of origins.
    Since the early ‘90s, bottle service has matured steadily past being a trend in American society and carved its own niche into our everyday lives of nightlife. What many felt would die out, calm down or simply be replaced by some yet unknown phenomenon has survived and prospered to unbelievable levels. Much of that prosperity is due to men such as Pink Elephant (New York City) Co-Owner David Sarner and Marquee (New York City) and Tao (Las Vegas) Co-Owner Noah Tepperberg.
    Tao Nightclub recently hit the pages of The New York Times with its $55 million in revenues for the past year, and Sarner’s Pink Elephant has sent out far more than one 6-liter bottle of Cristal at a price tag of $40,000. Bottles of vodka that came with club real estate to the tune of $200 each five years ago now are going for an average of $350 in the largest American markets. Bottle service has become synonymous with a night out for more than just consumers.

A Little History
    They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and it was necessity that prompted David Sarner to offer bottle service in his New York City venue Spy Bar more than a decade ago in
    1995 and to be one of the very first to make it mandatory in his Manhattan establishment Chaos in 1996.
    Currently Co-Owner of the city’s Pink Elephant club, Sarner looked at bottle service as a luxurious answer to a serious problem.
    “I was at NYU taking micro- and macro-economics,” he says. “I had such a mass influx of people coming to the space, and it became so difficult for my waitresses to get through the crowd. People were getting annoyed, because they couldn’t get liquor fast enough, and my waitresses were spilling drinks. I had supply. I had demand. But they couldn’t come together.”
    Co-Owner of New York City venue Marquee and the Las Vegas nightclub Tao, Noah Tepperberg was settling in to his own classes at the University of Miami back in 1996 and getting very used to the benefits of bottle service as a customer at the city’s hotspot Liquid.
    “I would say the first time I really felt like bottle service had become a craze was probably in 1996 when Liquid opened in Miami,” Tepperberg says.
    It was a craze that would affect him long after those nights in Southern Florida. Tepperberg now partners in two of the most established bottle service clubs in the country.
    While bottle service has become destined to be classic and earned its own brand of venue tenure, the word “trend” has not left the vernacular just yet. These days there are trends within the concept itself, causing certain aspects of bottle service to ebb and flow, and keeping the whole genre fresh and new.

Bottles and Bottles of Bubbly
    Champagne is on everyone’s lips in 2007. “A lot of our sales come from Champagne,” Sarner says. “I have noticed in New York City, there is a lot of high-end, because there is a more sophisticated drinker in New York.”
Sarner’s sales depend heavily upon Dom Perignon and Perrier-Jouet Fleur Rose, but both Sarner and Tepperberg’s consumers also have been caught by the craze of Cristal and, more recently, Veuve Clicquot.
    “I would also say that we are starting to sell a lot more Veuve Clicquot,” Tepperberg says. “The new yellow label, which is now Jay-Z’s brand, is a
top item.”
    With musicians claiming spirits as personal signatures, the music and fashion industry is interwoven into the bottle service world. Champagne more than any other is promoted and consumed mercilessly by celebrities, but the bubbly holds another on-premise charm for those in secondary and tertiary markets where the laws prohibit certain aspects of bottle service.
    “If I were a betting man,” Sarner says, “I would say you will see some state liquor authorities pushing for guidelines for serving. It is certainly not something I am in favor of, but I understand it. You have an on-premise license, and you are responsible.”
    With Champagne at 12 percent alcohol by volume on average, it does not count as a hard spirit. In states such as Arizona, where all bottles must be locked on tables and poured out only by servers, or states such as Utah where bottle service is illegal, Champagne offers a loophole in some cases. The spirit also is marked up at a higher rate than big brands of hard spirits in most venues.
    “The 6-liter Dom Perignon costs us $1,000 to buy,” Sarner says. “We charge $25,000.”
    In restaurant/bar hybrid venues such as Tepperberg’s Tao in Las Vegas, Champagne adds a very pleasant mark up to the dinner tabs.
    “Tao does some bottle service for dinner,” he says. “It is a high-energy dinner spot, and occasionally people will order liquor, but most of the time it is Champagne.”

Hard Bottle Sales
    While Champagne does account for much of today’s profits, vodka is still the crystal clear queen of the hard spirits. One surprising trend within bottle service that both Sarner and Tepperberg have noticed is the consumer’s move to boutique brands in both mixers and spirits.
    “Level vodka is a really big brand that we are pushing,” Tepperberg says. “People are ordering a ton of it. People are also asking for shot-makers or shot glasses when they order bottles as opposed to just making standard cocktails.”
    In New York, Sarner is now selling his own Pink Elephant brand vodka, which is produced for the company in France and imported. While it presents a complex licensing issue for the group –– it took them a year and a half of legal work, since an individual legally cannot produce, import and sell in the state –– it adds profits at $350 a bottle inside the club and $32 a bottle at participating off-premise retailers.
    Following close on vodka’s heels are the rum brands such as 10 Cane and Mount Gay and cachaça brands, such as Sagatiba from Brazil. With the Mojito and Caipirinha craze continuing, patrons are becoming more and more involved in the process of actual mixology inside the clubs as well as concerned about the freshness of ingredients in each glass.

Promoting What Customers Already Want
    One of the ways in which America has surpassed the exotic places like Saint-Tropez in bottle service is service itself. The leaders in this aspect of the industry are constantly searching for new and inventive ways to improve service, often traveling overseas and blending in amongst the competition and consumers at clubs here in America.
    “I also own Dune in the Hamptons,” Tepperberg says. “We have a metal tree there that has three 375-milliliter bottles of Absolut. There is a regular, Mandarin and Ruby Red. Instead of buying one bottle and one flavor, you can have three. I have yet to see this done in any other place, by any other brand. Absolut seems to be the only one.”
    The trio on the tree retails in Dune for $450, but that price includes some exceptional service. In the thoughts of both Sarner and Tepperberg, bottle service has an emphasis on the second half of the designation. Tepperberg’s Marquee management system includes a 20-point manual on the steps of perfect bottle service that each server, busser, and security person is required to know.
    Service also means creating extra celebration and having fun. These days, the Pink Elephant has customers competing in literal “bottle wars,” with men carrying out enormous bottles in processions with sparklers and confetti.
    “We have this feeling of spontaneity, but it’s orchestrated,” Sarner says. “When a huge bottle goes out, we put on the Star Wars soundtrack. All of our drummers have pagers, but they show upat the table, and it seems random. It definitely has the desired effect. When someone orders one of the largest bottles, our sales spike for the next45 minutes.”

The Future
    The future looks very bright for bottle service in this country. While always will be people offering legislation in opposition, the fact that the phenomenon has moved solidly past a trend into a legitimate, consistent operation bodes well for bottle service enthusiasts. Trends within service and operations surrounding bottle service continue to keep things fresh, and with the increased trend of home mixology, consumers are much more consumed by what they are drinking.
    Yes, bottle service is here to stay. Not as a trend but as a cornerstone. Not as a momentary Saint-Tropez fashion we imitate, but as a level and type of service America provides second-to-none in the world.
    “I think for us now, it is simply the norm,” Sarner says. “In Europe, you only see it in high-end nightclubs in certain cities such as London, Monte Carlo or Paris, whereas here, you now see bottle service in Des Moines and Cleveland.”                            NCB