Bartenders talk about serving cocktails in 2021, plus what trends are in the mix
Dan Haggerty and Jeremy Hart weren’t sure what to expect as they prepared to open their new craft cocktail bar and eatery in early February. Although vaccine rollouts were well underway, New Hampshire remained under a state of emergency, with the statewide mask mandate still in effect and spacing restrictions at bars and restaurants in nearly every county.
Three nights into the bartending duo’s first week open at Industry East Bar in downtown Manchester, a friend came in to visit — and later ended up jumping behind the bar herself.
“She was just in the bar checking it out and she goes, ‘It’s really busy. If you guys need any help…’ and so then I was like, ‘Can you come in tomorrow?’” Haggerty said. “So she became kind of our barback and food runner for a little bit, just by being there.”
When the last of the restrictions were lifted early in the spring, “it was like the floodgates opened,” according to Haggerty, with a constant turnaround of thirsty customers that dwarfed even what he, Hart and executive chef Jeff Martin saw during their first few weeks. He can count on one hand the number of times that Industry East has closed early, at or before midnight.
“I didn’t think that people would consume as much product as they are consuming,” Haggerty said. “I don’t know if it was just because all they had been spending money on was Amazon and takeout, and so they were like, ‘Oh my God, I’m at a bar, and someone’s actually making me a drink,’ [but] people are consuming food and drink at an insane pace right now.”
In spite of their immediate success, the small team has also encountered challenges along the way, from finding adequate staffing to acquiring quality products for drinks.
Bar managers and bartenders of both new and established restaurants have faced all kinds of similar obstacles over the year and a half that continue to linger today. We spoke with several of them to get a sense of what life has been like behind the bar.
Setting the bar
Kellie Connolly, bar manager at the Copper Door Restaurant in Bedford, was out of work for about three weeks during the initial pandemic shutdown. She returned to a bar that was rendered completely unrecognizable, transformed instead into a “conveyor belt” for takeout orders.
“All of the alcohol was off the bar. Everything had been boxed up and stored away,” Connolly said of the early months of the pandemic. “The beer coolers and wine fridges were full because [we] were now able to utilize those in a takeout fashion. … But besides that, it was an empty hub, no longer anything of what you would have seen at a bar. It was very bizarre.”
Connolly was part of a small team of staff that were brought back originally and included both bartenders and servers. But with no bar in the traditional sense, there was no cocktail mixing.
“No longer were you a bartender. You were just a man on the team and it was everyone in and everyone out. That was kind of the mentality of it,” she said. “We all had positions, whether it was answering phones, running takeout orders, or doing the cleaning. It was all hands on deck.”
The bar would eventually see its alcohol replenished with the return of indoor and outdoor dining. Social distancing restrictions, however, required the Copper Door to use only half of its bar seats, with dividers placed between pairs. But even then, only parties of guests who came to the bar together were able to be in adjacent seats — unless the dividers moved, a single person sitting in one chair would make the chair beside it unusable.
“You could slide a seat down and make a three-person section, [but] you couldn’t move the chairs from one side to the other,” Connolly said. “It was like a game of Tetris, just constant moving. … Reintroducing people to the new landscape and just explaining everything to them how we were doing things was also a big part of the job.”
Bar seats were similarly spaced out at Shopper’s Pub + Eatery in Manchester, which originally closed for about a month and a half, according to general manager Nick Carnes.
“When we initially reopened indoors, we started with about five of our 16 bar and waitstaff,” he said, “and then it was just a solid six-month stretch where it was just myself and one other person every day, all day open to close, just trying to grind everything out by ourselves.”
Spacing is already an inherent challenge at Industry East with only 20 indoor seats. Carnes noted that, with the Residence Inn by Marriott hotel directly next door, Shopper’s tends to see an influx of customers who are traveling for work during the week. Especially in the early days of the pandemic, this meant out-of-staters who were essential travelers.
“Every now and then, you’d have one guy that doesn’t know anybody that just flew into town, he’d sit down and take up three seats [at the bar], and then nobody could sit in those other two seats,” he said. “So it was a mixture of making sure you could come out and have a good night … while keeping everyone else safe and making sure nobody else got sick.”
But overall, Haggerty said the consensus among patrons has been one of both positivity and gratitude.
“I think 99 percent [have been] happy, fun-loving people, being almost extra nice,” he said. “Generally, pretty much everyone is like, ‘Hey, I’m so glad that your profession is still a thing and you guys are open. Thanks so much.’ … But I mean, only a certain percentage of the population is still even coming out. We get people in here every single day that say this is the first place they’ve gone since last March.”
Similarly, the new location of Madear’s Southern Eatery & Bakery in downtown Pembroke that opened last October has introduced many more people in the area to the eatery’s scratch-made Southern concept. Co-owner, chef and mixologist Robb Curry said he and partner Kyle Davis now have a much larger kitchen and bar, as well as nearly twice the dining room capacity as their predecessor on Hanover Street in Manchester.
“For the most part, our guests have been very respectful and understanding,” Curry said of the overall response so far. “I do also see that people at the bar tend to be a lot more understanding because they see more of what’s going on between the kitchen and the front of the house.”
Regulars were also happy to return to the bar at Stella Blu in Nashua when it reopened last year.
“We … had to put time limits in place, but we weren’t having to really use them or say it to people,” front-of-the-house manager and bartender Elissa Drift said. “They were definitely respectful enough to kind of just go with the flow.”
While the Copper Door has steadily maintained a loyal clientele, Connolly said she has noticed a shift in bargoers’ overall habits within the last year to year and a half.
“Happy Hour starts a lot earlier now,” she said. “Normally that was around 4:30, 5 o’clock, but now it’s at 2:30 or 3. … What was the quieter time is now full of people that are just done with working at their house and are coming out for that afternoon cocktail. At least in this area, I feel like the whole flow has altered a little bit.”
Thirsty trends
Since Industry East opened its doors earlier this year, Haggerty has noticed distinct trends in the types of cocktails being ordered.
“The espresso martini is back in full force. I think I’ve made more espresso martinis in the last six months than I’ve made in the last three years,” he said. “A ton of people are ordering cosmos too. … All of those older drinks that kind of went away after the early to mid-2000s, when the craft cocktail movement had a boom, are now back.”
There has also been a significant boom in tequila-based cocktails, and not just because it’s summer. The most popular specialty drink currently on Industry East’s menu is known as the C.R.E.A.M. (as Haggerty explains, an acronym standing for “Cucumber Rules Everything Around Me”). That drink features a cucumber shrub and tequila base with lemon juice, a little bit of jalapeno to offset its sweetness and a cucumber ribbon garnish with salt and pepper.
“Even in February when we opened … everybody has been way into tequila. I can’t explain it,” Haggerty said. “I think maybe a lot of people are just getting into it that maybe hadn’t been, or they were just like, ‘You know what, I’m really tired of drinking vodka.’ … People will drink tequila on the rocks. I’ve also seen people get tequila old-fashioneds.”
Drift agreed that tequila is a leading trend in the cocktail world right now, followed by bourbon and also Aperol spritzers. Options at Stella Blu include a blood orange paloma with fresh pressed juice and a house-made mango habanero salt; a strawberry jalapeno margarita with pureed fruit and a zesty lime salt rim; and a tequila and mezcal-based drink called the Mezcalita, featuring pineapple juice, Cointreau orange liqueur and a smoky-flavored house vanilla bean syrup.
The espresso martini at the Copper Door — called the Rocket — has been among the eatery’s top-selling cocktails, according to Connolly, as well as the restaurant’s blood orange cosmo, which uses Solerno blood orange liqueur, cranberry juice and a freshly squeezed lime; and the “Pepperoncini-Tini,” featuring olive juice, pepperoncini juice and blue cheese-stuffed olives.
Connolly added that a menu of mocktail options was rolled out last year to rave reviews.
“I’ve really seen, especially since Covid, a spike in people coming out and choosing a craft mocktail instead of a cocktail,” he said. “We also have a few unique non-alcoholic beers that have been flying off the shelves.”
Madear’s has had fun with all kinds of creative drinks, including a few that are meant to be satirical of the times, like the “Covid rum punch.” Another one, known simply as the “Vax,” is a mimosa-style cocktail featuring orange, carrot and mango juices, ginger bitters and your choice of an “injected” ounce and a half of tequila or an ounce and a half of brandy.
“All of those are super juices, so the idea was it was something to build the immune system,” Curry said. “It was something that was immensely popular when the vaccinations came out.”
Ready-to-drink canned cocktails are also a major trend. Carnes said they became a game-changer at Shopper’s with the onset of the pandemic when it comes to customer volume.
“The main concern right now is if you don’t have the staff to really maintain with cocktails … the simplicity is where you need to try to make up for it,” he said, “and [the canned cocktails] are all good. It’s not like you’re downgrading by getting one.”
Staffing and production
Consumers may have returned to the bar in droves, but managers say the pandemic has resulted in unprecedented struggles in obtaining product. This goes for everything from specific liquor brands to some of the most arbitrary of cocktail ingredients — and, in some cases, even beer.
“Big names like Budweiser and Coors … have stopped production of bottled beers due to a glass shortage,” Drift said. “So what you see is what you get right now. Whatever is in stock is being blown through, and after that it will just be cans and aluminum bottles, or on draft.”
Early on, Haggerty said even getting basic supplies like silverware and rocks glasses was a challenge, due to the high volume of inventory ordering that took place as restaurants and bars reopened. Finding and maintaining a quality staff has itself also been an issue at times.
“It’s a little better now, but at the start it was like pulling teeth trying to find anyone,” he said.
Staffing in general has been tough at Madear’s, especially behind the bar and at the front of the house, Curry said. Moving out of the Queen City to Pembroke, a much smaller town, Curry said he had the idea that the space would get more of a basic drink crowd. But the opposite has been true, as over the last year he has sold more signature craft cocktails.
“It’s easier for me to get a server than it is a bartender. … Bartending tends to have a lot more responsibility behind it than on the service side, especially in our establishment,” he said. “You’re not only bartending, you’re also a liaison between the back of the house and the front of the house, so you’re at the first step of things coming out.”
Stella Blu transitioned to a tip pooling system for its staff, meaning that tips were divided amongst everyone based on the number of hours they work. Drift said that this has been an effective approach thus far at boosting the overall employee morale.
“We found, coming back from all of this, that the tip pool really does drive a better, more cohesive team,” she said. “There’s no ‘That’s my table.’ … I think guests get better service and better attention, and people are more willing to help each other because it’s for the greater good.”
Haggerty noted that a positive aspect to come out of the pandemic has been the renewed sense of solidarity among different places of business, especially for bar staff and waitstaff. He and Hart both picked up bartending shifts at Shopper’s while Industry East was still being built, for instance.
“Now that everyone’s been through the wringer … there’s been almost this revamped, new kind of inter-bar camaraderie,” Haggerty said. “It’s really cool now to be able to see that happening.”
Crafty Cocktails
We asked local bartenders and bar managers which types of cocktails have been trending lately. Here’s a snapshot of some of those drinks and where you can get them.
C.R.E.A.M. (“Cucumber Rules Everything Around Me”)
From behind the bar at Industry East Bar, 28 Hanover St., Manchester, 232-6940, industryeastbar.com
Mi Campo tequila
lemon juice
cucumber shrub
Dolin Blanc vermouth
ancho verde liqueur
jalapeno tincture
The “Rocket” espresso martini
From behind the bar at The Copper Door Restaurant, 15 Leavy Dr., Bedford, 488-2677; 41 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-2033; copperdoor.com
vanilla vodka
Baileys Irish Cream liqueur
dark crème de cacao
freshly brewed espresso
Chocolate coconut macaroon
From behind the bar at Stella Blu, 70 E. Pearl St., Nashua, 578-5557, stellablu-nh.com
Chocolate coconut cream
coconut rum
amaretto liqueur
toasted coconut rim
Blood orange paloma
From behind the bar at Stella Blu, 70 E. Pearl St., Nashua, 578-5557, stellablu-nh.com
tequila
fresh-pressed blood orange juice
squeezed lime
soda float
mango habanero salt
The “Vax”
From behind the bar at Madear’s Southern Eatery & Bakery, 141 Main St., Pembroke, 210-5557, madears603.com
carrot juice
mango juice
orange juice
lime juice
ginger bitters
(optional) tequila or brandy on the side
Industry East Bar’s espresso martini
From behind the bar of Industry East Bar, 28 Hanover St., Manchester, 232-6940, industryeastbar.com
Caffe Borghetti espresso liqueur
Vodka
Orange bitters
Chocolate bitters
Cinnamon tincture
Strawberry jalapeno margarita
From behind the bar of Stella Blu, 70 E. Pearl St., Nashua, 578-5557, stellablu-nh.com
Tequila
Fresh pureed strawberries
Jalapeno-infused simple syrup
Squeezed lime
Zesty lime salt rim
Featured photo: Sandy Rozek, bar and beverage director for the Copper Door. Courtesy photo.
