How bartenders and craft distillers are revolutionizing the fast-growing RTD category with bar-quality cocktails in a can.
When Tom Macy, a partner at Clover Club and Leyenda in Brooklyn, New York, created a bottled Paloma at Leyenda, he “discovered that it was better than the Paloma we made at the bar.” Intrigued, Macy sampled every ready-to-drink (RTD) product he could find and concluded: “We thought we could do it better.”
Macy teamed up with Clover Club and Leyenda co-owner Julie Reiner and created Social Hour. Launched in August, the brand’s initial offerings include the Gin & Tonic and the Whiskey Mule, made with New York Distilling Company’s Perry’s Tot Navy Strength Gin and Ragtime Rye Straight Whiskey, respectively, as well as a low-ABV Pacific Spritz with a rosé-wine blend from New York’s Finger Lakes.
The RTD category certainly isn’t new, and it was gaining steam before the pandemic. But with the bar industry crippled and no clear idea of when sitting on an indoor stool watching a bartender stir a Martini to life will become the delightful norm again, the canned cocktail has been catapulted into the spotlight. According to Nielsen, canned cocktails have generated $117.99 million off-premise during the pandemic (from March 7 to August 15); that’s a 146.6 percent increase compared to a year earlier.
Perhaps more important than the category’s volume growth is its clear direction towards premiumization, reinforced by the arrival of many high-quality craft offerings.
A Bartender- and Small Distiller-Driven Movement
“When I first started thinking about true cocktail-bar quality canned cocktails, my first thought was, ‘Why doesn’t this already exist?’ And I think the answer was that the market for them wasn’t established enough for large brands to want to jump in. Now that tide has shifted,” Macy says. “It’s been almost 20 years since Flatiron Lounge—Julie’s first pioneering bar in New York City—started teaching people how to drink better. I think there’s a much better general understanding now of what makes a great drink.”
For Los Angeles bartender Aaron Polsky, the canned cocktail enables bartenders to scale up their roles—and their income, beyond the venues where they work. Most recently of Harvard & Stone, Polsky launched LiveWire Drinks, a series of well-wrought canned cocktails that showcase recipes from top bartenders. The first to make a splash, just at the beginning of the pandemic in March, was Polsky’s own Heartbreaker, a Moscow Mule-meets-Paloma with vodka, grapefruit, kumquat, jasmine, and ginger. “We doubled our sales in July and beat our July sales by the middle of August,” Polsky says.
Neal Cohen and Yoni Reisman joined forces with Atlanta barman Miles Macquarrie of Kimball House and Watchman’s to officially launch Tip Top Proper Cocktails last fall. Cohen and Reisman worked in the music festival industry for years. “Along the way, we saw the demand for quality cocktails growing, but were frustrated by the movement’s inability to meet the demand for these drinks in high-volume situations,” Cohen says. Their solution was Tip Top, which focuses solely on the classics: an Old Fashioned, Manhattan, and Negroni served in retro-style 100ml cans. “Reception has been increasingly positive as people discover they can get a bar-quality classic cocktail conveniently at a time when visiting their favorite bar is not as feasible,” Cohen adds.
Other canned cocktail producers are pushing esoteric flavor limits akin to the most ambitious cocktail bars. Empirical, the brainchild of Lars Williams and Mark Emil Hermansen, two alums from the legendary Copenhagen restaurant Noma, developed a spirit base of beet molasses and saison yeast. In true Nordic fashion, their new Can 1 combines milk oolong tea with toasted birch and green gooseberry, and Can 2 mixes sour cherry, black-currant buds, and young pine cones with walnut wood.
Washington, D.C., distillery Don Ciccio & Figli is known for its range of Italian-style liqueurs based on 19th-century family recipes that now make a cameo in the brand’s new Perla RTD line. Some are bottled, but La Perla Ambrosia Spritz, which brings together the herbal Ambrosia liqueur with house-made vermouth and soda, is packaged in a can. “I first had the idea for a canned cocktail seven years ago, but thought now was the perfect time to launch,” says Francesco Amodeo, president and master distiller.
Organic producer Greenbar Distillery in Los Angeles also spawned a canned cocktail, an Italian-style spritz, in 2019, “after three years of trying to teach simple cocktail making to our tasting room visitors and realizing that most folks wanted to drink a good cocktail, not make one,” says cofounder Melkon Khosrovian. Prior to the pandemic, bartenders comprised more than 80 percent of Greenbar’s customer base, adds Khosrovian. Today, thanks to Greenbar’s new line of canned highballs, including Gin + Tonic and Single Malt Whiskey + Soda, Rum + Cola, 80 percent of its sales are now generated through retail, a saving grace in an upended economy.
Tracing the Origin of Canned Premiumization
The Cooper Spirits Company was one of the first to pioneer the craft cocktail in a can. In 2016, it launched Hochstadter’s Slow & Low Rock and Rye, which features straight rye whiskey, Florida navel oranges, raw honey, bitters, and rock candy. It clocks in at 84 proof and is packaged in 100ml mini-cans. Its success hinted at the premiumization that would soon guide the category.
In recent years, such sophisticated, niche products as Novo Fogo sparkling Caipirinhas and New York sommelier Jordan Salcito’s Ramona wine spritzes have garnered attention. San Diego craft distillery Cutwater Spirits even specializes in the canned genre; its latest offering is a Long Island Iced Tea.
Big brands have responded as well. Tanqueray, for example, just introduced its RTD trio—Tanqueray Gin & Tonic, Tanqueray Rangpur Lime Gin & Soda, and Tanqueray Sevilla Orange Gin & Soda. Bacardi’s lineup—Bacardi Lime & Soda, Bacardi Limon & Lemonade, and Bacardi Rum Punch—launched in May, and the debut was so successful that “We’ve already doubled our forecast for the year,” says Pete Carr, regional president of Bacardi North America.
