While many big-name brands feature in this report, Hamish Smith explains how there’s room for a broad offering as bartenders balance their approach.


If you've read The CLASS Report, about now, I could have a stab at what you’re thinking: a lot of the bestselling brands at the UK’s best bars are kind of mainstream. In gin the bestsellers are Beefeater, Tanqueray and Bombay. In vodka it’s Grey Goose, Absolut and Belvedere, in rum it’s Bacardi and Havana Club, in brandy there’s Hennessy and in scotch Johnnie Walker. Premium brands yes, but supermarket vibes, also yes.

There are a few forces at play here. The traditional wisdom is that recognisable brands lend familiarity and trust to a cocktail and the bar serving it. Not every customer is an early adopter looking for kimchi distillate, so sometimes a little nod from something familiar on the menu is what a customer is after. To more cautious customers this could be the difference between a bottle of lager and a cocktail.

Cocktail bars are open to brands with equity in the market. The bigger brands also don’t like to leave too much to chance – they’re willing to invest to mitigate any risk of losing out. And thus, pay to play has become a deep-rooted feature of the UK market. So, if you’re expecting to be a bestselling brand in bars on liquid credentials alone, you’ve brought a stick of rhubarb to a sword fight.

To start, we should say that competitive pricing is the first lever the bigger brands can wield, through scales of economy. The lower they can sell it, the lower the bar can sell it on. Then there are retros (retrospective discounts), which see incentives due when stock has been bought. It’s done in two ways: a cash retro (for example, £2 a bottle over a certain threshold) or a stock retro (for example a one on 12, a free bottle for every dozen sold). There can also be incentives around bar-led activations and more muscle means big enough budgets to take bartenders on trips and to events. It’s all part of the persuasion package.

The major battleground tends to be around house pour or menu listings. The house pour/speed rail is normally for off-menu classics, shots and spirit-mixer serves – which may or may not, depending on the sales mix of the bar, be more valuable than cocktail listings. The cocktail list meanwhile is not only a menu for the guest, but a brochure for the spirits company too, which can pay for inclusion. This is where smaller brands can make inroads through a single listing and, in some warm and fuzzy cases, bars allow the brand a cocktail listing without charging.

So, has the cocktail experience been sold to the highest bidder? No, it’s a little more nuanced than that. For most bars, the house spirits are about value for money, chosen from a narrower pool but still chosen. And big doesn’t mean bad – the largest brands have become popular for good reason, they’re normally of a consistent quality, with accessible profiles. Indeed, to cite just one example, many bartenders would prefer to have Beefeater and Tanqueray above a lot of the pseudo-craft gins out there.

So the brand must balance all these factors – not least that they are a business. Given the trading conditions of recent years you could understand why a bar might marry for money and not just love.

In many cases, bars take a more balanced approach, few going full-portfolio with one company, instead picking and choosing which brands they like, and then seeing what’s on offer. Some take it one step further – take Satan’s Whiskers, which does regular blind tastings to determine its favourites, then speaks to the brands accordingly 

Small players, big gains

While the big volumes are mostly the domain of the big spirits groups, that’s not always the case. Some smaller independent brands have found a way.

None better exemplify this than Tapatio and Ocho, two brands whose UK distributors have propelled them to the top of the market. In mezcal, Quiquiriqui is up in second off the back of hard work and good juice, while in gin and vodka, Boatyard has found traction off the back of its quality. Portobello Road gin is another to have found the right quality-price mix. In brandy you have Avallen and Seven Tails also making tracks while the big dogs lay idle. In American whiskey, Michter’s has become an established brand for the upsell and in liqueurs there’s Mr Black and Fair. Many of these brands feature in our Bartenders’ Favourites lists too, where we asked respondents what brands excited them most.

So, while the big brands control the volumes, it’s far from a closed shop. The door – or should it be back bar – is open. If brands find that sweet spot between price, liquid and love, space can open up quickly.