I’ve been thinking a lot about collaborations of late. The other week I was in Adelaide, speaking at the Distillers SA conference and talking about what distillers might learn from the best bars in the world.
That’s because the bar and spirits industries face similar challenges:
- the cost of goods is always going up;
- competition has never been more fierce;
- and every day is a fight for the attention of consumers who have a myriad of ways to spend their time.
And just as you can often get good quality cocktails from the local corner pub these days, the standard of craft spirits has never been higher. That means it is harder to compete on quality than ever before, whether you’re a bar or a distillery.
And when it comes to competing on price? Well, indie Aussie distilleries can’t match the pricing that the largest spirits companies in the world can offer, and nor can indie bars compete with the big groups and pub chains.
So where does that leave indie bars and distilleries?
Well, the best bars in the world have worked out how to capture attention and create a feeling in people, two topics I talk about on this week’s episode of Drinks At Work. Put simply, they mean something to people, they create memories, feelings, emotions. They are more than just drinks.
I was in Hong Kong earlier this month for the drinkapalooza that is The World’s 50 Best Bars, and had the chance to speak to some smart and interesting people from bars that, let’s be honest, I might never actually make it to in person — bars like Himkok in Oslo, which is where my guest on this episode, Paul Aguilar Voza, is the R&D Manager.
Himkok has been around since 2015, and has picked up numerous accolades along the way. Himkok is the Norwegian word for moonshine, and the venue is part bar, part distillery and part tap cocktail joint, as Paul talks about here. He talks about their menu development process — it takes between eight months and a year for their menus to come to life — and about how they’ve structured the bar and their roster for high volume but innovative cocktails.
But he also talks about their approach to collaboration through their menus, which has exposed the bar to new audiences despite the bar being 10 years in.
I really enjoyed talking to Paul, there’s some thought provoking stuff in here.
Below, I’ve got a few key takeaways from my chat with Paul about Himkok — in particular their approach to collaborations — and the details on the upcoming Three Horses guest shift at El Primo Sanchez in Sydney.
“It’s Norway. If we had more people [working] in the bar, we would go bankrupt.”
Himkok — which is the Norwegian word for moonshine — caters to 450 people, split across their distillery bar (which is a more cocktail like table service experience), their outdoor cider bar, and their tap cocktail bar, which itself can hold 250 people — and with just two bartenders on the stick.
They do all of this across each space, Paul says, with just 12 staff members.
“[In Norway] salaries are high, costs are high, taxes are high,” he says. That has driven them to make their workflow as efficient and sustainable as possible. “We have extraordinary people working there,” Paul says. “We’re a good school. A lot of people have passed through Himkok’s doors, and have eventually opened their own bars.”
“We built them a very good deck.”
If we think spirits have it tough in Australia — and no doubt they do — they at least have it better than they do in Norway, which Paul says is not just the darkest of markets (you can’t market alcohol to the public), it’s also a small market of just six million people, around the same size as Sydney.
So at Himkok they find interesting ways to get around it the marketing prohibition and introduce themselves to new guests.
“We did a fashion show with a fashion designer; last year we teamed up with Sony Music, a record label,” Paul says.
The trick here is that they turned the collaboration on its head; where so many drinks have been inspired by music, they made the cocktails first and asked the record label to be inspired by the drinks.
Their most recent menu centred on a collaboration with Norwegian design duo Studio Sløyd and creative agency 2.edition. Himkok created the cocktails for their new menu — a process which itself took eight months to complete — and then invited in the designers for a tasting and familiarisation with the 13 cocktails-strong list. The result was 13 accompanying design pieces which they auctioned off.
“It reached a lot of media globally,” says Paul, noting that it was featured in Wallpaper magazine, too. “That’s why we do these menus, to get traction and to promote ourselves in a completely legal way. And to promote Norway — that’s very important.”
“A lot of people are starting to come to us, with ideas for collabs.”
“Sometimes I get the feeling we’re all doing the same thing.”
The drinks style at Himkok, Paul says, would feel familiar to many bartenders working today. The drinks are flavour-forward with a clean, Scandi appearance — something they have been doing a long time. But talking to Paul, you get a sense that he’s keen to break that mould to some degree.
“We don’t even have Milk Punches anymore,” he says. “We’ve done it so many times.”
Maybe — as I wrote about on Monday about the Drink of the Year awards Top 50 — we really have passed Peak Milk Punch.
And another thing...
It’s Halloween tomorrow night, which — well, I don’t really care much for. It’s very American. What I do care for, however, is agave spirits and sherry, Mexico, and new Melbourne bar Three Horses. The recently opened Melbourne bar is coming to Sydney this weekend for a takeover at the also recently opened El Primo Sanchez in Surry Hills, to celebrate the Dia de los Muertos. There will be good drinks, of course, but you’re also invited to bring photos of your dearly departed loved ones, to celebrate their memory, as is the custom in Mexico. The event begins at 4:30pm this Sunday — learn more at elprimosanchez.com.
