Picture This
Fox & Hound Restaurant Group Launches New Beverage Menu

Pictures are worth a thousand words, it has been said, and for Fox & Hound Restaurant Group, pictures are part of what sells thousands of drinks.
    The group — which owns and operates entertainment restaurants under the Fox & Hound and Bailey’s brand names, both with upscale-casual concepts —  rolled out a new corporate beverage menu at 87 properties in mid-June.
    The menu features a variety of cocktails, beers and wines, and a notable entry in the new menu is Fox & Hound’s proprietary beer Red Fox Amber, brewed with the caramel and black malts.
    More than 25 specialty cocktails turn up in the new menu. The drinks are described and categorized in the menu in sections such as Teas & Lemonades, Kickin’ Cocktails, Martini Madness and House Favorites, which includes Fox & Hound’s award-winning signature Kryptonite Rita.
    One special feature of the menus is that the beer and wine sections of the menu contain custom inserts allowing each location to customize its beer and wine selections and other food and drink specials.
    “The properties appreciate being able to customize the menus based on their guests’ preferences,” says Erin Shipley, director of marketing for Fox & Hound Restaurant Group, with whom we recently spoke.

NCB: Why did Fox & Hound decide to redesign its menu?
Erin Shipley: The previous beverage menu had been in place for over a year, and we felt we needed something new and fresh on the tables. We added large, beautiful drink shots and made a huge focus on our signature drink, the Kryptonite Rita, and our signature beer, Rex Fox Amber, by putting those two beverages on the cover of the menu. The inside front cover also contains a short, fun and fictional story about “The Legend of the Red Fox.”

NCB: How did the idea of leaving beer and wine pages blank for localized inserts come about, and what have locations done with it so far?
ES: With 88 locations, the stores needed the ability to include numerous local favorites. All of the stores have particular, mandated drafts, but some of our units may have 12 handles, and some may have 36. So, we designed a template for each store to use, based on number of tap handles, and they just fill in the blanks and print out their beer menu on the designed paper that we send them.
For wine, we have two different tiers, so the store is able to merely print out their particular tier on their corresponding designed wine paper.

NCB: How do the open beer and wine pages interplay with the standardized cocktail selections in the overall scheme of the new menu?
ES: We wanted a menu that could be used in every state we have a Fox & Hound or Bailey’s. With that in mind, we wanted to have open beer and wine pages to make each menu more store-specific. With beer as our main focus, we placed the beer selections in the middle of the menu close to the appetizer and happy hour “blister pockets.” These blister pockets have an adhered pocket on either side of the page so that individualized happy hour and appetizer inserts can be inserted and are easy to read for the guest.

NCB: How did the concept arise of doing such huge drink photos with minimal text?
ES: Basically, pictures sell drinks. Guests are more interested in trying a new drink if they know what it will look like. It’s also more fun to look at a menu when there’s something to actually look at. We’ve included pictures of mixed drinks, bottled beers, draft beers, wines — even appetizers and desserts to capture the reader’s attention.

NCB: Who developed the cocktails, and in what ways are they (or some of them) new to the menu?
ES: The new cocktails were collaborated by Fox & Hound Restaurant Group and our valued partners and Patrick Henry Creative Promotions. Many drinks were sampled to get the best of the best. We removed the drinks that were slow-movers and added six new drinks based on taste and appearance. Since pomegranate is big this year, we added our Pomegranate Margatini.
And we added the new liquor, ABSOLUT Pears, with our new drink, the Orchard Breeze. Everyone wants what’s hot in liquor drinks, so you have to stay ahead of the curve.