Welcome back to BevNET’s spirits newsletter. From slanging $4 cocktails (ah the good ol’ days!) to canning martinis, we’re looking into how a bar’s 25 year-old brand equity can transfer to the shelf. 

What insiders are reading: Pernod Ricard’s earnings aren’t fun but involve fun-sized formats, and trading up as you know it is dead.

Thanks for reading. 

-BevNET spirits editor, Ferron Salniker

Can two decades of happy hour fame translate into shelf sales? Verlaine, the Lower East Side bar synonymous with New York’s lychee martini, is aiming to find out by taking a canned version of the drink beyond its home market.

• Recently, bartenders across the country have brought the lychee martini back from its early-1990s roots, but anyone walking by Verlaine for the past 25 years would never know the cocktail went out of style. 

• The martini – made with vodka, pineapple juice and lychee puree – originally landed on the happy hour menu for $4 a pop in 2001, aimed at bumping up business in a quiet neighborhood post-9/11. 

Now the cocktail makes up 80% of Verlanie’s total bar sales, averaging 14,000 lychee martinis sold a month to guests lining up around the block on weekends. 

The bar team canned that money maker last year and has been selling it across New York – now it’s heading to other locations.

Verlaine joins a few bars and restaurants that have attempted to shift brand equity to the shelf, including Via Carota and Talkhouse Encore, and most successfully, Fisher’s Island, which sold to Gallo.

• But there’s a slightly different strategy here: the expansion rides a broader shift in cocktail menus as bars revamp nostalgic drinks and as the martini gains steam. 

• Espresso martinis can be found in many bottled and canned iterations, but Verlaine’s is the first straight canned take on the lychee martini. 

Will filling that whitespace be enough to pop off in other, more tropical, climates? 

Read the story

New features on BevNET:

• The Launch Explorer, which gives a comprehensive and detail-rich look into new product launches across food/bev CPG in the year so far.

• A series of insights reports into major trends in food, NA beverage and beer as compiled by the editorial team, including one on how the adult non-alc category is splitting in 2026.

Explore

One of the Southeast’s largest beer distributors, Gulf Distributing Holdings, is investing in its spirits division, pairing a newly created leadership role with a $60 million infrastructure investment.

Read the story

Ready-to-drink (RTD) brands are doing disproportionate work in bev-alc innovation – and the brands investing in innovation are twice as likely to grow their overall business, according to a new NIQ report.

Get the full breakdown

The spiked sports drink competition is getting another major player.

Read the story

Most founders think getting a distributor is the hard part. Scott Rosenbaum, co-host of the Business of Drinks podcast, has spent 20 years in beverage alcohol distribution and knows landing one is just the beginning. 

In this episode, he mentors Daeyna Grant, a first-time founder building Gold Crush, an RTD rum-based cocktail, one bar and liquor store at a time. Together, they break down what it actually takes to land the right distributor — and how to make the relationship work once you do.

Listen now.

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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Have a tip to share? Reach out to Ferron Salniker, spirits editor at fsalniker@bevnet.com

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