Crafting cocktails for a crowded bar can be a tall order for any bartender.
Crafting cocktails for a crowd of 150,000+ people? Well, that means it’s time to unite the Breakthru mixology team.
For the fifth consecutive year, Breakthru Beverage Nevada served as the exclusive adult beverage provider of the Life Is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas. The festival once again set an attendance record, selling out general admission tickets for the first time ever. Breakthru’s team batched and served 22 unique cocktails for the massive, millennial-driven crowd. On the first day of the festival, Breakthru sold a record high number of drinks – nearly $1,000,000 worth of beverages, with Festival Mules and Frosé topping the most-ordered list.
Serving an audience of this size has been a challenging, and rewarding, experience for the Breakthru mixology team. Drew Levinson, Breakthru VP, Business Development Emerging Craft Brands, shared a brief recap of what the team has learned about executing this type of program each year of the 5-year history of the festival.
YEAR 1
Drew Levinson: That first year, we just wanted to execute an elevated beverage experience to a big festival like Life Is Beautiful. We built the “Alchemy Garden,” which is where we worked. We took craft spirits, craft beer and boutique wine and built these booths where we served the drinks. We probably had 30 booths lined up and it was cool – when people found it. It was in a corner of the festival. Most people didn’t catch it. We knew we needed to take this idea and make it accessible.
YEAR 2
If we wanted to drive premium & craft spirits, we needed the right vehicle, so we developed a batching cocktail experience that we divided into multiple locations. It was an improvement for us, but we might have overshot our capabilities. We had 53 unique recipes sent out to 100 locations, and we did it out of a two-bay garage. We didn’t have the space we needed, but we were getting on the right track.
YEAR 3
This year we absolutely hit our stride. We had the space needed to produce. We had the team to make the cocktails and now, we had this really cool beverage program. One big difference this year is we also had a partner who was able to help us serve our drinks – Spectrum Concessions. They run all of the bars and concessions. They’re a fantastic partner.
We also learned to switch from draft beer to caned beer this year – much easier to execute and great exposure for a brand like Dos XX. The manpower to service draft equipment is extensive. Cans are easier. The branding you get from cans is huge.
YEAR 4
We learned the wine program needed to be dialed back. There just wasn’t the demand for wine that we were hoping to achieve, so we simplified the wine program. We focused on rosé and had great success with that varietal. We owned “Rosé All Day.” It was a huge hit. We also switched to larger format beers – 24 ounce cans. We increased our beer sales with the bigger cans.
YEAR 5
We reconfigured the bottle service areas because we’ve learned this festival isn’t conducive to that. We eliminated that area and expanded the VIP area to make it more accessible to attendees and had a lot of success. We focused the cocktail program on 24 unique cocktails and just refined it. We focused on the winners as opposed to the huge cocktail list of a few years ago.
Finally, there is a big demand for learning among LIB attendees. We launched a cocktail education program called “Cocktail School” where we engaged the home bartender and used that experience to demonstrate our expertise in mixology. It was a big hit.
Each year, Drew and the team of mixologists & beverage development specialists continue to craft one of the best beverage programs for any large-scale festival in the nation. This innovative beverage experience wouldn’t have been possible without the talented and hard-working team, led by Levinson, Jody Lawrence and Andrew Pollard of Breakthru Nevada. The group also included Breakthru Colorado’s Mike Henderson, Breakthru Florida’s Nick Nistico, Breakthru Illinois’ Eric Hay, Natalia Cardenas and Mike Page, Breakthru Nevada’s Mike Doyle, Jeremy Merritt, Michael Shelter, Rodger Gillespie, and Breakthru Wisconsin’s Dan Dufek. Andy Seymour, Leo Degroff, Lulu Martinez & Sean Kenyon of Liquid Productions completed the team known as the “Breakthru Wrecking Crew” batch team.
Congratulations to the Breakthru Beverage team on another great showing at Life Is Beautiful!
