If you haven't read WHY you should find a novelty drink for your bar, go back and read 7 REASONS YOU SHOULD CREATE A NOVELTY DRINK FOR YOUR BAR.
If you don't need any more convincing and are ready for some ideas so you can get started creating buzz at your bar, let me share with you the best 10 novelty drinks I have had that I couldn't stop thinking or talking about with other people.
1. The Big Ass Mule.I have to put this at #1 because it's the one we chose for our bar. Not to mention Moscow Mules popularity has spread faster than the zombie population on The Walking Dead. The way we do it is to fill the 96 oz. cup with ice, add 4 oz. of lime juice and empty a 12.68 oz. bottle of Tito's into the giant mug. Then top with ginger beer. One of our biggest sellers, especially on the weekends.
I have a blog post on this on the Barpatrol.net website you can read if you want which gives examples of awesome novelty Bloody Mary cocktails.
The 5 Best Bloody Marys on the PlanetThe point of this is to create an outrageous Bloody Mary with a great recipe and then pile food that is unique to your place on top. This is definitely one of the most effective and memorable novelty drinks you can serve at your bar. People will talk about it constantly and you will be known as THE place to go for a fantastic Bloody Mary.
Las Vegas is the yard stick's native home. You see these things everywhere. Frozen drinks in a skinny tube with a wide mouth up top and a giant straw to ensure you acquire the most painful brain freeze possible.
Most of the yard sticks you find have frozen drinks inside, so you'd need a blender or a slushy machine, but the more practical way to serve them would be on the rocks.
You can order these glasses online and put about anything you want into them: Lemondrops, Cosmos or any fruity martini that people would love to share.
These are native to New Orleans and usually involve some sort of hurricane or zombie-type cocktail. These work great in New Orleans because people can walk down the street with them and everyone says, "Where did you get that," and then they tell them the name of the bar which sends people there.
Problem is, you can't do that in most places, but people will still talk about and remember the blinky-mug cocktail they saw on Facebook.
This is a bit different because we're not talking about the container for once. The advantage is that you can put them in just about any cocktail to liven it up which gives you more flexibility on which drinks you want to highlight, and they have the same effect as the blinky mug and the string of yarn your cat can't ignore.
The skull bowl is perfect for any bar with that hard core rock n' roll ambience and image. There's nothing more badass and tough as nails than drinking a Fuzzy Navel out of a skull.
Beer towers are a major novelty attraction. In this day and age of draft and craft beer popularity, if you can serve beer towers that people can take back to their tables, you will be the talk of the town. Not to mention it makes your bar more efficient and the service faster because your bartenders won't have to pour pint after pint. Simply hand out a tower and that group of four is good for an hour. You can actually do the same thing if you serve sangria in your bar.
Yep, you can serve these with actual fake goldfish in them. This creates terrific novelty. And I have a bonus idea for you: in my e-book, The Big Black Book of Bar Promotions, I mention gold fish races as one of the promotions, which was one of our biggest successes at my bar.
You can marry these two together to have gold fish races and gold fish cocktails to go with it. If you organize this, you will create an incredible draw. I promise you that.
In order to pull this one off, you'll need to order plenty of watermelons, but people love this giant cocktail for sharing. What type of cocktail you put in it is up to you. You can also pump a watermelon full of vodka and serve the pieces, followed up by serving a cocktail in the bowl, so you're able to double your profits by using all of the watermelon.
That's all for this edition on novelty cocktails. If you have any awesome novelty cocktails you want to add, let me know.
Cheers, until next time,
Dave
