Instead of having a Cocktail Bartender come to make drinks for you, why not have the Bartender teach fun cocktail masterclasses instead.
This is absolutely perfect for smaller groups & extremely popular with Hen Parties, or smaller based offices just looking for a fun team bonding exercise.
Your cocktail bartender comes along & instead of having them do a service for an allotted number of hours. They’ll instead setup multiple stations for you & you guys make the drinks as a group instead. All we need is a table to put on cocktail masterclasses.
How do the cocktail masterclasses work?
We send in advance, usually an Amazon ordered package, the glassware you require for your chosen drinks. This is because logistics are impossible to deal with getting glassware to you from a centralised location in the UK where our office is based, without adding monstrous costs to the package.
So Amazon is our friend in this department. Then on the day, your cocktail bartender will show up an hour earlier than the class in order to set up for your hired cocktail masterclass.
They bring ALL the ingredients they need for the making of your cocktails. Including the ice.
Then we always split the group into 2, regardless of how large the party is. This assists in the flow of the event, doing it this way, there is always a group making cocktails & another group drinking the cocktails they just made. (but don't worry, you’re all still in the same room having fun together)
Once we have repeated this process 3 times & all people in the group have made 3 cocktails. The bartender leaves everything except their equipment behind, meaning you guys still have plenty of ingredients left over to continue making cocktails, long after the cocktail maker has left.
Can we just book the cocktail maker & buy the ingredients ourselves?
No:
As much as we hate saying no. Im afraid we have to provide the ingredients for this. Nothing to do with profit margins, we’re keeping these costs as low as possible & we trade based on labour, not ingredients costs. The reason for this, is about having control, to make sure we have the RIGHT ingredients for the cocktail masterclass.
Experience has taught us, that for these smaller group led events. 2 things happen.
The two things that happen
1:
Your group split the shopping lists down, get each person to purchase an ingredient, then when you combine them on the day, we have the entire list of ingredients required. In theory, fantastic idea. Should work right? Afraid not. Never has.
What happens, is one person tasked with buying the gin, decides that they don't like gin. So to make it bearable, decide upon themselves that they’re going to buy overly sweetened pink gin.
Then another doesn’t like Soda Water, so brings lemonade.
A third doesn’t know what “Chambord” is, so instead of googling it, brings along Amaretto, because it's their favourite.
A fourth tries to save a bit of money & buys Jif concentrated lemon juice, instead of fresh.
Before you know it, 5 out of the 15 people who were supposed to bring an ingredient have brought something completely different along & now its a cocktail makers job, to try make this work… It never does.
Or 2:
One person just does an online supermarket delivery, has it delivered for the start time of the event. Then as experience has taught us on many occasions, that Supermarket delivery is late. The cocktail maker is now sitting around, awkward & now also late, because there are no ingredients to start your event. Then to discover that the supermarket swapped out a bunch of the ingredients too without telling anyone, instead of Vodka, we now have Rum, or instead of Mint for Mojitos, we now have Coriander.
The masterclasses are 95% of the time held in super remote locations too, meaning the local shops have closed early. We cannot fix this issue. Then Monday, we deal with complaints because of things we were not even responsible for, have failed. Meaning, after incidents like this, we then get a complaint that the group could not make a Mojito, despite their own order, arriving late, with Coriander had nothing to do with us.
In the past too, there has been no ice, because the Hens AirBnB for the weekend has an ice machine built into the fridge. Which produced enough ice to fill 3 glasses…. for 12 people, which needed filled glasses 3 times over….
So we need to be completely responsible for all the ingredient purchasing, in order to make sure we have the CORRECT items for your event & we can't budge on this I'm afraid.
Some of our group doesn’t, or cant drink alcohol, how do we make sure they can make cocktails?
Happens all the time. We send you a menu to choose from, the cocktails that can be also made non alcoholic are listed on this menu. We would advise that if a guest isn't drinking alcohol. That you select 3 cocktails, that mention they can be made non-alcoholic. Then remember to tell us this. Easily taken care of in advance in our ingredient shopping for your cocktail masterclasses.
Experience also tells us, that A LOT of people, keep their not drinking a secret. The scenario that usually plays out, a stunning hen party & one of the guests is pregnant. But doesn't want to tell all the girls until the hen weekend. Beautiful surprise, what an elevation for the weekend vibe. Stunning…. However, from our perspective, we are now not prepared for such a situation & as previously mentioned. We could now be in a remote location, at an AirBnB, with the local village store closed. We can't fix this. By habit, our bartender will always pick up some Apple Juice when shopping anyway. Even if its not on the menu.
You’ll find all the other ingredients can interchange most of the time to compile a non alcoholic version. But apple juice makes a great filler for the moments when a spirit would be used. Unless the menu chosen is things like Espresso Martini, apple juice, or a fruit puree from another cocktail carried over is not helping us in this situation. To which our only solution, is that they still make the alcoholic version, so they enjoy the fun, but then pass the finished product to someone who would be able to consume it.
How do we enquire or book a cocktail making masterclass?
Click any of the buttons dotted down the page for the cocktail masterclasses. Someone in the office will give you a call in the days following to talk about your requirements, locations & any other information we need to know for this event. As well as answering any other questions you have about this cocktail making masterclass.
The minimum number of guests we will do this service for is 12. So if its less than this number, I'm afraid we can only offer service. You can find more on this here on Cocktail Maker Hire.
Then its just about picking out your cocktails & enjoying the event.