Ready to rise to the challenge?

As announced earlier in the summer, The Publican​ has teamed up with flavoured cocktail liqueur range Volare and the Bar Academy to see if pubs really can make a success of cocktails.

We invited licensees from across the UK to enter our Cocktail Challenge - five pubs and bars would be given the opportunity to work with Volare's brand owner Hi-Spirits, and the Bar Academy's award-winning bartender and bar consultant Jamie Stephenson, to create a better cocktail offer in their outlets. Five of you…

After a huge number of entries we managed to come up with a shortlist of five outlets from across the country that will get the Cocktail Challenge treatment:

The five shortlisted pubs:​

- Severn View Inn, Lydney Gloucestershire

- Spinning Wheel, Chaddesden, Derby

- New Holly, Forton, Lancashire

- Walrus Social, Lambeth, London

- The George Inn, Eartham, Chichester

Over the next month Jamie will visit each outlet, along with representatives from The Publican and Hi-Spirits.

The licensees and barstaff will be interviewed and asked about how they want to improve their cocktail offer.

Jamie will then look at their range of spirits and soft drinks to see what solutions can be concocted, from existing easy-to-make recipes to creating brand new cocktail menus.

Each menu will be created using only the spirits that are already stocked by the pub - plus a small amount of free stock of Volare liqueurs, if required.

Hi-Spirits and the Bar Academy will provide all training and produce point-of-sale (including menus) for each outlet and will then launch the new cocktail offering. After six weeks each pub will be revisited to see how it is progressing and whether sales have increased - it is the belief of all concerned that a better cocktail offer will not steal market share from other categories, but instead grow overall drinks sales.

Working for pubs

Jeremy Hill, managing director of Hi-Spirits, owner of Volare cocktail liqueurs, firmly believes that the Cocktail Challenge will prove his point that cocktails can be easy to make and very profitable for almost any outlet. "This is a great opportunity to really see if cocktails make a difference," he says.

"My view is that competition among pubs post-smoking ban is going to be fierce. The battleground will be the quality of offering so things are only going to become more sophisticated. There's going to be no room for dumbing down.

"Our mission is to show how serving quality cocktails can be financially beneficial without being operationally challenging. It's not rocket science, it just needs some planning and operational savvy."

The Publican ​will be following the progress of each of the five outlets. After all the preliminary visits are completed we shall profile each of the shortlisted pubs and outline Jamie's plan to improve the cocktail offer.

And by the end of November we will be publishing the results from the Cocktail Challenge.

So get mixing!