when you want, where you want.
The $15 Cocktail Is Back, Thank God
Photo: Justin Sisson/
Will Wyatt, an owner of the cocktail bar Mister Paradise, was on a bar crawl in London with a fellow bartender recently when he had a revelation. “We were bopping around,” he recalls. “We were both a little burnt out on the over-inventiveness. Went to all the places we were supposed to go: Tayēr + Elementary, Bar With Shapes for a Name — intense programs.”
They ended up at Satan’s Whiskers, a casual bar on a scruffy block in the Bethnal Green area. The menu was all classic cocktails, priced around 12 or 13 pounds. “The first thing we see is a coconut margarita,” Wyatt says. “We drank those all night.” Then, “we talked about other things, not the complexity of what we are drinking.”
Wyatt has brought that same spirit to the East Village with El Camino. There are eight drinks on the menu, including a negroni, gin-and-tonic, martini, and — as an homage — coconut margarita. Everything costs between $13 and $16. There are two beers, Guinness and Estrella, 11 wines, and some snack food. As for décor, Wyatt and his partners designed and built the place themselves, including the sign outside.
In an era of $22 drinks and cocktails designed to taste like pizza, roast chicken, or hot dogs, there may be a correction coming: A handful of seasoned owners are putting the brakes on the ever-accelerating cost and cleverness of the average mixed drink, leaning instead into familiarity, accessibility, and value.
One of the names embracing this new austerity might be surprising: Death & Co — among the city’s most prominent neo-speakeasies and now a national chainlet of high-end bars — is introducing a “fast-casual concept” called Close Company that will open in Nashville, Atlanta, and Las Vegas in the coming months, with a New York outpost in the works. Drinks there will hover around $15, and the spaces will do away with many of the hallmarks of the modern cocktail bar. There will be no host greeting guests, no seating-only setup, and no reservations needed. “It will feel a little less precious, a little more fun,” says Dave Kaplan, one of Death & Co’s founders. “It’s this idea of a cocktail bar that is more of a neighborhood bar.”
In Chicago, Kevin Beary, who is beverage director of the tiki bar Three Dots and a Dash, saw a similar opportunity to open something simpler — and cheaper. “I’ve been growing increasingly concerned that the newest generation of drinkers are not consuming cocktails,” he says. “I think it could coincide with how expensive cocktails have gotten in bars and restaurants.” He opened Gus’ Sip & Dip on New Year’s Eve with a menu of classics — Cosmo, mojito, Sazerac — and a line at the top that reads like it’s from 2008: “All Mixed Drinks — $12 ea.”
Of course, keeping prices low for customers means keeping costs down for the bar. One spot due for a cutback is inventory. Over the past 20 years, a gleaming wall of back-bar bottles has become a signifier of mixological seriousness. Close Company will carry one or two brands of vodka instead of ten. At Gus’ Sip & Dip, which has a wraparound bar, there isn’t even a back bar for customers to eyeball. “There are 38 bottles in the well,” says Beary. “One vodka, one tequila. We don’t have a bunch of inventory sitting around.” With fewer options, Beary can order what he needs in larger quantities at a discounted rate.
Close Company also plans to save money on construction materials: The new bars will have poured-concrete floors instead of wood, and vinyl banquettes instead of leather. El Camino, meanwhile, sits next door to HighLife, a burger joint that Wyatt and his partners opened in February. Because the businesses share an address, the various costs concomitant with maintaining a building can be shared.
Working harder to keep prices down may seem counterintuitive, but operators who have taken a similar approach have seen the gamble pay off. When the veteran cocktail-bar owner Erick Castro took over a San Diego dive named Gilly’s in 2023, he gave the space only a cursory glow-up, improved the cocktail program, made on-site games like pool free, and quickly reopened with $12 drinks, all ordered at the bar. “You’re not getting a table-side negroni,” he says. “We sell beef jerky and chips.” Business has been gangbusters ever since. “We didn’t spend a lot of money, didn’t have a lot of costs to recoup,” Castro explains, “so we could keep the prices low. Our guests don’t have to make up that cost.” (Drink prices have, however, risen — to $13 each.)
Wyatt learned at Mr. Paradise that something like El Camino might be feasible. When cocktail prices started to climb a couple years ago, Mr. Paradise followed the trend, bumping the average menu number from $16 to $18 per drink. After a while, Wyatt brought the prices back down to $16 — and sales went up. “That two dollars made a difference in enticing people to say, ‘You know, I’ll have another round.’ It causes people to not be as calculating. People started picking up rounds.”
Lowering prices also eliminates a kind of anxious expectation that comes with higher-priced drinks. “If I’m paying $18 to $22 a cocktail, I want a seated, calm experience with the people I’m with,” Kaplan says, “and I want that cocktail to be really, really great. If that attention to detail isn’t there, I’m going to leave a little frustrated.”
None of this comes as a surprise to Kevin Armstrong, one of the founders of Satan’s Whiskers, the London bar that first inspired Wyatt. “Money is hard to earn,” he points out, “and guests appreciate businesses that offer consistent and exceptional value.” When he opened, Satan’s Whiskers was far off the beaten path, but low rent allowed Armstrong to attract customers in another way: “We needed to be affordable enough that people could return to us several times in a week, should they choose.”
Does Beary think a shift to more affordable drinks will anger competing operators who might see their own drink prices as being undercut? When I ask him, he gives a chuckle. “I think there’s a lot of interest,” he says. “People are intrigued. Maybe people are angry about the prices, but I’d so much rather sell you two cocktails instead of one cocktail for the same price and have you leave satisfied.”
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