Mark Low from Mr Lyan Studio says the spirits list is mostly a thing of the past – but shouldn't be.

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Don’t get me wrong, if your bar is all no-branded-bottles minimalism in style and offering, with batched drinks the main selling point, a spirits list might not be for you. But if you have a healthy back bar of spirits and no list, you have to ask yourself why. Who are all the bottles for – the bartender or the guest?

That’s really what this boils down to – accessibility. Without a menu, guests are blindly reliant on your recommendations, guidance and having to constantly ask on costs. A price guide to your wares just makes the bar experience more transparent to the guest. Even in the swankiest restaurants, helmed by the world’s finest sommeliers, most people want some clarity on price. This leads to more confident and happier ordering, without a guest feeling like they’ve been duped or pressured into a purchase. A list leads to a natural conversation between guests and bar staff, which itself helps lead to a transparent upsell. Have you considered what these more open interactions could mean for revenues? Better experiences lead to return visits, greater linger time and larger spends.

This doesn’t mean you don’t try to hand-sell spirits; a list is an aid, not a replacement to interaction. Sometimes we don’t have enough staff (or staff with the requisite training) to strike up meaningful dialogue about what we offer. A list can start the conversation and provide some structure – it buys you time and sets out the prices without you having to.

Make it easy

The bigger the venue, the more you need a menu. There will be customers who aren’t sitting near the bar and can’t choose from sight. In smaller venues, having a procession of people awkwardly trundle through to browse the offering can also become an issue. Even if they’re sitting close to the back bar, why make them strain their eyes and crane their heads to read labels? Spending more money shouldn’t require more effort. We need to make it as easy as possible. And the spirits list needn’t be a standalone menu, it needn’t be exhaustive either. A few pages at the back of your cocktail menu can suffice. 

Somewhere in our journey to establishing cocktail culture, our bars have lost sight of the fact that spirits are great products on their own. It’s a beautiful moment when you’re in a bar and you have your eyes opened to something you’ve never encountered. From the novice trying a spirit category for the first time to the seasoned spirits drinker finding that a bar stocks a rare expression from an independent bottler – these are important parts of the bar experience.

Do yourself a favour and type something up. Even if it’s just core products and big-ticket items you don’t expect to fly through. Of course, this comes with some admin, which will vary depending on the approach you take, but it’s worth it. Train your team on what you have on the list that day, week or month, and use it as a way to highlight and sell dusty (but still delicious) spirits. A list doesn’t deal in packaging, so it can really help shift bottles that don’t stand out on the back bar.

To update an online list takes a matter of seconds or, if you’re going more analogue, a reprint or neatly scoring out with a line can suffice. Maybe you’ll have to politely state that something is out of stock and disappoint a guest, but then you will be poised to offer a recommendation of an alternative based on their initial selection. There’s actually value in this disappointment. It reinforces that your venue has an ever-changing offering with limited availability, encouraging future visits to see the latest additions and try to snag a taste of that elusive bottle before it’s gone.

If you really hate the idea of menus, take a leaf out of Black Rock’s book, with its flavour-categorised cabinets with tiered pricing gems stuck to bottles, or pubs where they colour code bottles into price brackets.

From the newcomer beginning to recognise producer names, category terms and getting used to pricing levels, to the expert hunting down the bottles they’ve always wanted to try, stumbling across something new they wouldn’t have spotted, spirits lists are a win-win. You’ll probably sell some extra measures with little to no effort. And who can argue with extra sales right now?