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- [00:02]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Modern modern modern modern modern we're prepping
- [00:11]
Eric Kozlick
for a voyage Modern the force of an old fashioned equals whiskey Mass times bitters acceleration.
- [00:19]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Why don't you make that a double
- [00:22]
Eric Kozlick
Modern Bar Cart what's shakin drinks fans? Welcome to episode 310 of the Modern Bar Cart Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Kozlick. Thanks for joining me for another interview episode where I track down the best and brightest minds in the spirits and cocktail world so that I can share their secrets with you. This time around. I'm joined once again by Dr. Kevin Peterson. You may recall him from his previous interviews here on the show, featuring his innovative Detroit cocktail bar and fragrance concept, Castalia and Sfumato, and his groundbreaking technical mixology book Cocktail Theory. I highly recommend those two interviews if you haven't already checked them out, but in this conversation, Kevin and I explore his latest project which involves sifting through several years of self reported customer cocktail ratings from his bar. But before we start crunching through these data sets, I think it's only prudent to limber up with a drink as a little preview of a topic we cover at length later in this conversation. This episode's featured cocktail is the perfect spicy margarita taken from Kevin's first book, Cocktail Theory. To prepare this recipe, you'll need 2 ounces of blanco tequila, 3/4 of an ounce of Curacao. Here Kevin recommends the Pierre Ferrand expression, 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice, 1 ML jalapeno tincture, 1 ML Serrano tincture and 1/2 ML Habanero tincture. Quoting directly from Cocktail Theory here, combine all ingredients in a set of shaking tins and and shake with 2 ounces of ice 4 to 5 ice cubes for 12 seconds. Strain through a tea strainer into a snifter glass and garnish with a dehydrated lime wheel. Dr. Peterson also goes on to write, flavors are not isolated single point sensations. They have both spatial locations like tip of the tongue, roof of the mouth, back of the throat and time evolutions. I used three tinctures to create an evolving time and space sensation of heat, as if a wave were traveling through your mouth from the tip of the tongue down your throat. Make three different margaritas using only one tincture at a time to feel the difference in timing and location of the three distinct pepper tinctures. End quote. By the way, if you'd like to play around with making tinctures like these at home, you can pick up some 151 proof Everclear or some other high proof grain alcohol and macerate some diced peppers in a small mason jar for a few days to a few weeks before straining them and filtering the tincture into eyedropper bottles for dispens. If you're like me, you'll discover the delightful differences in the flavor profiles of these pepper varieties and immediately start growing super hot peppers at home. Occasionally tear gassing your family out of the house when you try to make hot sauce. Or maybe you can just be a normal person and simply enjoy your perfect spicy margarita with that let's turn our attention back to the interview in this data driven conversation with Dr. Kevin Peterson. Some of the topics we discuss and include how winding down Castalia and Sfumato after a decade of service provided the impetus for this new project and why Kevin has set out to address a very different set of questions than in his last book, Cocktail Theory. Why? Matching a person with their ideal drink is very different and much more difficult, it turns out, from trying to make the optimal old fashioned or Negroni or daiquiri. This leads to a conversation about all the variables that go into cocktail sweetness, acidity, bitterness, booziness, effervescence, egg white spiciness and so much more. How does one begin to build such a high dimensional beverage algorithm in pursuit of aesthetic pleasure? We also discussed some of the algorithmic tests that good bar programs and bartenders can implement in order to zero in on guest preference more quickly. These include good menu writing, the classic bartender's choice speed interview, and the possibility for creating a guest profile with likes and dislikes. Along the way, we explore why spicy drinks might just be a trap, the sea change that I experienced the first time I tasted green chartreuse, the idea of perceptual thresholds in cocktails and in life, and much, much more. As always, I had a blast nerding out with Kevin and lucky for you, this is is a two part interview. So warm up your graphing calculators and enjoy this first half of our statistically significant conversation.
- [05:12]
Dr. Kevin Peterson, welcome back to the podcast.
- [05:15]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Good to be back. Thanks for having me.
- [05:18]
Eric Kozlick
So you are joining an elite group of multi multi guests. We've had a couple of conversations which I've really enjoyed, so we'll link to those. But could you catch our newer listeners up on who you are and give our returning listeners a sense of what you've been up to recently?
- [05:39]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah, absolutely. So a little bit of my background. I started my working life in kitchens, spent a little time in food, went back to school, got an Engineering degree. Did that for quite a while. I was a combustion engineer with General Motors, you know, ran a fancy lab and did tests all day, and then one day said, screw it, I'm gonna quit that and open a cocktail bar. And so I, I opened a bar called Fistalia in Detroit that was a perfumery by day selling fragrances that I made, and then at night turned into a cocktail bar where drinks were paired to those scents. And New Year's Eve was our last night. So I ran Castalia for almost a decade and now I've been lazy bum for about a month here and it's. It's a good life. I don't know.
- [06:35]
Eric Kozlick
Well, it certainly doesn't seem from this end that you've been lazy, but yeah, keep going.
- [06:41]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah. So, you know, spinning down a bar, there's a lot of moving parts that was a major effort. And doing it, you know, in the process of spinning them down made me really pay attention to how many memories, how many moments, how many people have passed through the space and sort of doing justice to, to everything that happened there. Yeah, it became kind of a weighty proposition. When you're just doing it day to day, it's easy to kind of gloss over those things. But yeah, bars are where a lot of important crossroads in life are decided and decisions get made and celebrations happen. And yeah, that was, you know, very emotional. Few months shutting it down and sort of having all these people come in and share their stories. But yeah, onto new projects for me, including working on a second book. The last couple years at Castalia, I was collecting data. Grabbed a couple of the data sheets here. Yeah, I realized that my audience is nerdly enough that they actually want to give me survey data on the drinks they're drinking on a Saturday night, which I don't know if that says more about them or more about me, but yeah, sitting on a stash, massive stash of data and crunching through it, looking for correlations between what underlying flavor preferences people have and what drinks they gravitate towards.
- [08:16]
Eric Kozlick
Amazing. So it's actual like you just held up a physical like sheet of paper, is this.
- [08:22]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah.
- [08:23]
Eric Kozlick
So you're, you're going through and like literally hand transcribing this and putting it into a digital format so you can crunch.
- [08:29]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah, I was definitely tempted to do it on an iPad. That would have saved a lot of effort, but it would have impacted the experience at the bar in a negative way. I really don't like the idea of screens being a part of cocktail time, you know? Qr code, menus. I don't know, I just, like. The bar is one of the few places where you can actually escape the digital realm for a few minutes, few hours even. And then to say, like, hey, welcome in. Here's a screen. Can you stare at this the whole time you're here? So, yeah, total pain in the butt to describe those. You know, I did a lot. My staff did a lot. But also I think some. Something interesting. You know, a lot of information gets conveyed in the weird little drawings people make. And, you know, you can sort of see the handwriting degrade from the first drink to the last drink. And yeah, there's something charming about actual pens and paper, too. So.
- [09:33]
Eric Kozlick
Yeah, I like that. I think it's worth kind of explaining the approach that you took to your first cocktail book, Cocktail Theory. I was delighted to be able to send that book to our participants in the Virginia Cocktail Games, where you and I were just talking about Virginia. I was able to send that to our 25 semifinalists in the Virginia Cocktail Games the first year we hosted that competition. And people. This was right after it came out, and people were absolutely blown away by it. You got recognized by the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards foundation as a. As a top 10 nominee for best new cocktail book, which. Real shame you had to go up against Jim Meehan on that one.
- [10:20]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah, it turns out that guy has been. Yeah, no, if I got to lose to somebody, it might as well be Jim.
- [10:27]
Eric Kozlick
Yeah, yep. Exactly. Exactly. So what was the project of the first book, and how is your new project making use of this customer report data? A different project.
- [10:41]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah. The central idea of the first book is how do you optimize any given drink, whether that's an old fashioned, a gin and tonic, a Negroni. And so I kind of put on my engineering hat and said, well, what are the experiments I would run? I would vary the ratios, I'd vary the temperature, I'd vary the dilution, and then honing in on what is the ideal range for a lot of different classics. And as I was doing that project, you know, it. It actually struck me when. When I was opening Castalia, gin and tonics were not a drink that I ever drank. And I realized, like, you know, and I kind of forced myself, like, okay, well, if I'm going to be running this bar and people are going to want all kinds of drinks, like, I. I don't have to like them, but I at least need to know what they're supposed to taste like, so I can sort of, you know, do the Straw test and, and make sure it's, it's okay. And so I learned what a gin and tonic is supposed to taste like, but I still didn't like them. Okay. I do not flash forward a few years because you just have to drink a bunch of them and then you start to enjoy them. But, you know, one of the core ideas is like, even a perfectly made gin and tonic isn't the perfect drink for somebody that doesn't like gin and tonics. So then there's this whole other element of, okay, we're creating these cocktails that are sort of ideal in some abstract sense, but how is it ideal for the drinker? It's like you're not putting this up into some measurement system to be analyzed and its perfection assessed. You're giving it to somebody who's going to sip it. And palates vary widely and some people like it a little more sweet and some people like it a little more bitter. And some people just don't even like the same drinks at all or the same spirits. And you know, you don't necessarily know what the palate of the person on the other end is. So, you know, a couple of questions arise. How do you figure out what that palette is? Can you do it in the span of like a first time guest coming in? Can you do it in two, three minutes? You know, as long as it takes to give like a menu spiel. Does this information need to be collected ahead of time? Are taste tests involved? And then once you've got the information, how do you turn that into a drink?
- [13:06]
Eric Kozlick
Yeah, they, they say that no battle plan, no matter how perfect, survives contact with the enemy. So as I think back to cocktail theory with these. Really, Really. I love how you use like the sort of like green, yellow, red smiley faces and sort of a scatter plot to plot these ideal dilutions, ideal temperatures. It was a really engaging and stimulating way to not only understand the technique that produces the best versions of whatever cocktail style you're thinking about, but, but also to be able to compare those cocktail styles. Right. Why is the Negroni so flexible? Why is, why is, I think it was like maybe the, the daiquiri was maybe a little bit less flexible. So there's, there's a lot that came out of the data and sort of like these ideal ranges that you established in this. But it seems like that is the key learning of a bar, right? Is that like it's, it's not about the cocktails, it's about the people that sort of walk in and drink those cocktails. So it makes complete sense that now that you've got all this data and all this experience, having run a bar for, for so many years, that, that you're now turning your attention to this seemingly thornier issue. Let's talk about that difference in palette thing, because I'm told that everybody's palate is different. I have my, I have my doubts and I have my some senses in which I believe that question. But how does this. Everybody's palette is different problem inform the way that you are going about crunching these data?
- [14:48]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah, you know, so on the one hand, there are archetypes. You know, you've got your bitter boozy enthusiasts, you've got your kind of light, bright, citrusy, you know, and if you just sort of look at the different categories of drink, people, you know, tend to lean towards one or the other. And, and some people will kind of drink from a number of categories and some people just stick to one category. So on the one hand, there, there are some sort of common ground things. But as I started to dig in and took a lot of data and said, how do you feel about egg white drinks? How do you feel about drinks with cream in them? How do you feel about carbonation? How do you feel about nitrogen bubbles? How do you feel about, you know, when you start to break it down, how do you feel about bitter? How do you feel about sour? How do you feel about salty sweet, umami? Nobody's quite got the same combination of preferences. And then I was also having people rate actual drinks. So one of the offerings at Castalia was a tasting menu. So we would do a seasonal menu, eight drinks, and we would do a tasting menu where you get a mini version of each. And because the menu is small, we're trying to span, you know, basically the entire sort of range of cocktails. Something's light and bright, something's deep and dark, something's bubbly, something's egg white. And so by the time people have sipped those eight drinks, they've kind of sipped something from each corner of the cocktail world. And it was insane how little correlation there was with anything. You know, okay, this menu has two boozy bitter drinks on it. People like one and not the other. This person likes both, this person likes neither. And, and then you ask them how they feel about bitter, and somebody says they like it, but they don't like the bitter drink. Somebody doesn't like whiskey, but they do like the drink that has whiskey in it. And, you know, my, my initial approach was going to be to say well, I'm just going to break it down to its components. You know, break a cocktail down to its components. There's tastes, bitter source, all the sweet. There's aromas, there's textures, there's different ingredients, you know, the base spirit or the liqueurs. And if I can just sort of get people's feelings on each one of these, then I can add them up and just sort of put it together together and there's a drink and it's crazy. It's like, like you have to look at everything at the same time. You can't look at them one by one. You know, let's say like an old fashioned is a barrel age spirit, some sugar, some bitters. A Sazerac is a barrel aged spirit, some sugar, some bitters, and a tiny little bit of absinthe. Well, somebody can like the, you know, the barrel age spirit, the sugar, the bitters, but they don't like the black licorice of the absinthe. And that throws the whole drink off. And you say, well really, that's only like whatever, a fraction of a milliliter, like way less than 1% of the cocktail. And now the whole thing is wrecked from that, like from, you know, somebody's distaste with that one ingredient. So, you know, the one thing, the one thing that we can sort of feel good about is that people do find drinks they like. You know, like, you look at the problem, you're like, oh my gosh, there's no way we could possibly solve this. Like, this is totally. The math would be insane. It's coupled differential equations and nonlinear this and that. And then you're like, but wait, there's like dozens of people like within a couple mile radius of me solving this problem right now. I mean, they're not writing out the equation, but they are like producing the drinks that bring delight to people. So, you know, there's some process. Can we capture that in mathematical terms? Can the data show it? Can we gain more insight? So to me it's less of like an analytical problem where it's like we need to like get the ultimate solution and get it mapped. And it's more like there's already a process that works somewhat. How well does that work? Let's measure how well just putting out menus and you know, freestyling drinks works as it is. And can we add some more insight to that? Can we improve the process? You know, maybe we can perfect it to the point where like every sip is just mind blowingly awesome. Or maybe we just get Rid of some of the really bad ones and some of the pretty good ones get a little bit better. And every once in a while we just absolutely hit the nail on the head.
- [19:35]
Eric Kozlick
Right, or you maybe you find a way to signpost a little bit more effectively so there's either a more rapid or a more consistent landing in the, in a, in a higher hedonic zone. Right?
- [19:51]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I think one of the really practical things that's coming out of this work is just better menu writing where I realize not everyone is going to have a giant database and like be crunching all these numbers behind the scenes and tracking all our customers. Because, yeah, as we already said, it is freaking tedious to like work through all of these surveys, but maybe somebody reads my book and just says, oh, there are a couple of phrases here that I haven't been including on menus that I really should because they're really critical in the decision making process and the, you know, driving the preference to or away from a given drink. Right, right.
- [20:35]
Eric Kozlick
Well, and I think another thing that struck me as you were explaining all of the complexity that you're dealing with is, you know, liking is itself a pretty fraught term because liking is not on a linear scale at the very least. Right. There's certain things about any drink that you could like and there might be other things in that drink that you dislike. So are the dislikes weak enough to be overridden by the likes, or is it like a weak dislike? Strong like, so that it's like I can ignore that, right? I can ignore, you know, maybe, maybe my dislike for absinthe is weak. Although that tends not to be the case, as I'm sure you know. And so that, so the, my liking for sugar, bitters, whiskey overrides that. And oh, I like lemon peel too, so throw that in there. Or is it the opposite? Is, is the dislike strong and overriding the like? So you have, you have these kind of. It's not just, it's not just one bead on a sliding 10 point or 100 point scale. It is multiple beads on multiple sliding scales that you're trying to balance here. So it looks more like probably sound booth mastering and EQ at a, like you said, at a mathematical level that we can't hope to translate to any sort of common sense approach. But you mentioned menu writing. It seems like that is a fruitful place for us to pause. What are some examples early on as you're sifting through these data that you think that effective menu writing or Communication can play a role towards getting people to that higher level of aesthetic pleasure or whatever we're trying to get them to.
- [22:16]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah, yeah, I think aesthetic pleasure is good. Good phrase for it. You know, I don't normally go to a bar and say, hi, I'm trying to really maximize my aesthetic pleasure tonight. But I think you guys can help me out here. But maybe I should. You know, some of the most polarizing elements. Bitterness is incredibly polarizing. And it's, it's a thing where not only do the people that don't like it really don't like it, the people that do like it really miss it when it's not there. And so just conveying where. Where are we on the bitterness scale, you know, and there's a genetic component to how much you sense that there's an experience component. And getting that right or wrong really makes a big difference. Spicy drinks are like, I don't know, a booby trap. You're never gonna get the right spice level for, like, any more than, I don't know, 25, 30% of the crowd. You know, I think this was some data that I analyzed sort of past the point where we were where I was still putting spicy drinks on the menu. But I would be very tempted to give customers a way to dial in their own spice, because so many times as I'm reading through the comments, four people sitting at the same table, it's like they got the same drink, like, out of the same tin. Way too spicy. The spice is right on. Couldn't taste the spice. I wish there was a little more spice. And it's like, guys, you got literally the same liquid. Like, like, this is not a me problem.
- [23:58]
Eric Kozlick
Yeah, so that's on you.
- [23:59]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
It is, but, like, so.
- [24:03]
Eric Kozlick
Well, isn't that. I mean, I feel like the, I feel like the solution for spice is already there in a very, very analog way, which is, of course, the, the spiced rim. Right? You do the. You do the half or three quarters spice rim, and then, you know, the Sal de Gusano or whatever it is, and then you can kind of go in as you choose. I mean, that's why, for me, I. This is a, this is a total tangent. But maybe, maybe you have thoughts. To me, I think the Batonga is like one of the most perfect, like, drink builds out there in that it's got so many little hooks where you can throw in a little added surface area, whether it's the, the, the herb knife stir. I call it the terroir knife or the, the salted rim. Or the, you know, the citrus that you put in there. There's just so many places and just have that, to have that little three quarter salted rim where if somebody totally doesn't want it, they've got that quarter of the rim where it's all theirs and they can be pure. But I don't know, how do you feel about the Batanga?
- [24:58]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah, I love that idea. I think, I love that drink. You know, I think giving people the tools to sort of tweak their own experience and just, you know, it's tempting to say, like, I've got the experience, I'm producing this work of art. It should be enjoyed exactly as I intend it. And it's could be a little hit to the ego to say, like, I don't know, as it is, as it sits right here in the glass, it's kind of in the middle of where the reasonable range is on several of these spectra. And we're going to give you the tools to sort of push it in a certain way. You know, some people like ketchup on their steaks and like chefs just have to deal with that.
- [25:50]
Eric Kozlick
That's right. That's right.
- [25:51]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
It's not about like the chef, how the chef likes the steak, it's the customer.
- [25:56]
Eric Kozlick
Interesting. Well, so I think what you're alluding to, right, is there, there's this in, in some of these situations that you're describing, right, there's this optimal range where let's say three of the four people at that table are going to be happy, right? And to me, one of the things that I've been more and more sensitive to, especially after having kids, because a lot of this has to do with like, how much sleep I get or like how much, how much of a given thing I can take, is that there's, there's a threshold where if I'm over that threshold, then I'm completely useless. But if you can just get me to the, to the good side of that threshold, and that threshold's like a very fine line, then it ends up being like, everything's fine. I haven't crossed that threshold yet. But the threshold, which is in many ways the way our sensory perceptions, we have these perceptual thresholds for certain types of flavors because our tongue and our olfactory epithelia are sensitive to concentrations of these molecules that we're taking in. So I don't know, what do you think of the notion of thresholds in what you're doing?
- [27:14]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
You want to give an example of like a particular sensory element let's say with capsaicin.
- [27:20]
Eric Kozlick
Because I think the. The issue you describe with these four people at this table perfectly describes it. You can give them the flexibility to be on whatever side of that threshold makes them the happiest. For some people, for the benign masochist who wants to push it over that threshold, maybe their pleasure doesn't start until they're over a certain threshold. Whereas with somebody else with that particular flavor, it seems like their pleasure takes place before they're even approaching that threshold. Like, the approach of that threshold even kicks off a set of feelings inside them that makes them suddenly not enjoy the drink so much.
- [28:01]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah. Yeah, totally. And a lot of times, that enjoyment curve is not symmetric. You know, it gets better. It gets better, better. And then, as you say, you cross that threshold, and now all of a sudden, it sucks. And, yeah, it's easy to, you know, think of, like, spiciness in those terms where you're like, okay, getting a little heat, a little more. This is cool. This is cool. Then you cross that line where you're like, okay, this hurts. Not into this anymore. And. And it's just dumb. So, yeah, thinking about where. Where those ranges are, and, you know, I think people have different sensitivities. So. So one thing that I saw in the verbal comments, people get to rate the drinks, and then they get to rate or. And then they get to leave some verbal feedback, some written feedback, and for the same drink, people will say, oh, I love the spruce note in here. Oh, the lychee was amazing. Oh, the pineapple note was incredible. I'm like, well, half of these things aren't even in the drink, but that's the impression you got. And the aroma is weird because there's so many different molecules that lead to an overarching impression. And I'm like, I don't know, maybe you're eating some weird pineapples that do sort of cross over with the six ingredients in this drink and sort of the overarching impression they form. So who am I to tell you you're not preceding pineapple, Right?
- [29:28]
Eric Kozlick
I just. I think that that's what distillers must think when they get the spirits judging feedback, like, especially because I'm on the gin panel, these distillers must be like, that botanical's not in there. That botanical's not in there. So, yeah, I definitely sympathize with that. The comments must add just so many more layers of complexity. But, you know, one thing I wanted to dig into here is, you know, I was reading through an outline that you sent me. And one of the tensions that jumped out as you're trying to sort of like use almost this algorithm, like thinking to dial in drinks to people's preferences is the difference between a drink that is most liked on average by the largest group of people, as opposed to those sort of transcendent moments where people like. I always think back to the first time I tasted green chartreuse as a transcendent moment. It was like seeing a new color. I didn't realize that this combination of sensations could exist on my palette. And so to me there was that transcendence. But that is not like you enjoyed
- [30:38]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
it in that moment. Or do you think it's more of a, like now you've got all this context and all this, you know, do you remember your hedonic rating in that moment?
- [30:50]
Eric Kozlick
I, you know, it's so funny. I don't actually remember the moment, but I remember the feeling because it was such a, such a positive experience and such a weird experience.
- [31:05]
Right.
- [31:06]
So like I, if I, if I were to fit into one of your archetypes, it would be the archetype of the person who picks the weirdest thing on whatever the menu is.
- [31:16]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Totally.
- [31:17]
Eric Kozlick
So that's the archetype that I am. It's funny because eventually I'd like to tie this back to psychology, but I am totally not a thrill seeking person when it comes to like roller coasters or. I would be stunned if I ever go skydiving. I'm not, I'm never going to say never, but like, not a single piece of me has any interest in that. But when it comes to something I can stick in my mouth, like as long as I have a reasonable assurance that it's not going to like hospitalize me, then I'm going for the flavor thrills. So I think that's what I liked about chartreuse. Like, the proof didn't bother me, the funkiness didn't bother me. All these different things pulling in different directions didn't bother me. And so that's why I think as soon as I discovered it, I ended up trying. Went straight for the last word. Like, what cocktails can I make with this? Went straight for that last word. And so that's why I think I confused my first last word experience with my first chartreuse experience. I remember going to New Orleans. There was this cocktail bar that served the most chartreuse like in the state or something like that, just outside of the French Quarter. And we ended up going there and there was a Flaming chartreuse shot called a gas mask. And so early on I ended up, like, doing the gas mask. And all these, like, initial formative chartreuse experiences are mixed up in my mind. So unfortunately, I can't isolate it to one thing. But yeah, anyway, total tangent.
- [32:48]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Well, that's awesome. And I think I do want to go back to one comment that you made, which is, you know, it's. It's how it made you feel.
- [32:57]
Eric Kozlick
Yeah.
- [32:58]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
And at one point, I was asking people to describe their ideal cocktail. Like, less than 5% of people actually described a cocktail. They described the feelings that they would have from drinking that cocktail. Like, the. The easiest solution to me would be, hey, Eric, describe your perfect cocktail. Well, it's got some cognac and it's got a little bit of rye, and it's got some Benedictine. And I'm like, okay, great. Put them in a glass, stir it up. Here you go. But that, like, nobody. Every once in a while somebody would be like, well, and I guess then it maybe has whiskey in it. But, you know, most of the comments would be like, okay, I want it to take me on this flavor journey. I want it to recall these memories of this long lost flavor. I want it to. So they would talk about these feelings or these situations or, you know, just, yeah, sort of being taken on a ride. And they spent almost no time describing what's in it, what glass does it go in, what does it look like, what it smell like. So, yeah, that was a very fruitless. But it's an important reminder to bartenders that, you know, it's not necessarily the literal liquid you're serving. It is that feeling you are creating in the customer, which is partly due to that liquid. But, yeah, your personality and the ambiance and the. All the things that surround that experience are major factors as well.
- [34:36]
Eric Kozlick
Well, it certainly seems to make a compelling case for the bartender's choice cocktail.
- [34:41]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Right.
- [34:41]
Eric Kozlick
Where the bartender does the asking of the questions.
- [34:44]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Right.
- [34:45]
Eric Kozlick
And I think you're describing this algorithmic thinking and gathering all this data that might help us to. In principle, wouldn't the technological version of the solution be like, you get the math to a place where we think it's manageable and then we create some sort of survey where people can create a profile.
- [35:04]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Right.
- [35:05]
Eric Kozlick
And then the profile gets fed into that bartender, looks up their profile.
- [35:10]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Right.
- [35:10]
Eric Kozlick
And so you bypass that step of the bartender's choice process where the bartender is physically interviewing this person, and you instead go with what the algorithm has already collected.
- [35:23]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Right.
- [35:23]
Eric Kozlick
Is that roughly kind of how you're thinking about this.
- [35:26]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, a lot of bartenders have an algorithm in their head, whether they call it that or not. Like, somehow, you know, there's many bars that don't have menus at all, and everybody working there is asking questions and taking the input. And maybe there's something behind the scenes where there's kind of a flow chart or maybe it's left more to the discretion of the bartender. But people do this all the time. And, you know, in some senses, this is just like a more formalized way of doing this. You know, the other thing that I'm sort of pushing for is collecting more data behind the scenes, whether that's a survey that's sent ahead of time, whether that's a profile that's kept in some database. But in the course of service, you know, the last. Know, my new bar that I was at, I. I saw the bartender go over to this table in six and be like, okay, you. What spirit? What classics? How do you feel about this? You know? And it. It took the. The bartender, like, many, many minutes to go around the table and collect all the information. Then he had to remember it all, get back, set up all the tins, and it's just like, this is very cool, but, like, from a business perspective, this is, I don't know, detrimental because. Yeah, every. Every customer that is sitting there not drinking, that's like, a seat that could be making money. That's not. Right. Right. And can we. Can we take some of this offline and simplify the job of the bartender? That bartender also, you know, if I say, well, I really like, you know, Vetiver. Can you make me a Vetiver cocktail? It's like, you don't have any already in stock. There's no time to, like, make a Vetiver liqueur after taking those five other orders and going back and be like, all right, but if you have that data a week ahead of time, you could order something. You could make a custom syrup. You know, if I'm booking my visit for two weeks from today, like, and you've already got my profile. Yeah, there's just a different set of options available. Much larger set of options available if there's a little more lead time.
- [37:43]
Eric Kozlick
Exactly. Yeah. You know, there's a bar. I don't know if you've spent any time in D.C. there's a bar called Copycat, and they have a sister restaurant called Astoria, and they both have these chalkboard cocktail menus where they'll list, you know, sort of these, these, most of them are just riffs on classics, right? So you have your Old Fashioned, you'll have your Mai Tai, you'll have your Manhattan, and you'll have your south side, and there all be riffs on those, right? And so it kind of takes you through these and they have, they're all sort of related almost in sort of like a, if a histogram is the right term or like one of those node charts where, you know, you've kind of got the branching families and different things are connected in different ways. Maybe two, maybe, maybe one cocktail is maybe cocktail A and cocktail B are connected with, with bitterness. And maybe cocktail A and cocktail C are connected because cocktail C, they both have like mint or something in there. So there's some, some convergence, but there's branching. And at these bars they're always happy to go off menu for you and do a bartender's choice cocktail, but they've sort of, they've got the seeds planted there. And usually nine times out of 10, even though you know you can do the bartender's choice, you're gonna be like, ooh, but that looks really good. So while, while you've been sitting there waiting to be served, you've already sort of decided on what you really want from, from the set list of offerings. So I think that's kind of an interesting way of kind of splitting that hair. But you know, you mentioned archetypes and I think really what we're zero in on now is this fact that we've got human archetypes that are walking through that door and then cocktail archetypes that we're sort of trying to, to match them with. And that all makes me think of the Big 5 Personality Index. Have you ever played around with something like that? You know what I'm talking. Hey everybody, thanks for listening.
- [39:52]
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- [41:07]
This episode was made possible with editing and sound design by Samantha Reed, data driven drinks, Insights courtesy of Dr. Kevin Peterson, and a little bit of interview magic by yours truly. This has been a Direct Fire Studios production. Copyright 2020.
- [41:28]
Dr. Kevin Peterson
Sa.