For more than a month, customers at Vancouver’s Little Conejo have been able to pair their to-go tacos with margarita kits, including fresh citrus juice, handmade syrups, mango-pineapple purees and full bottles of tequila or mezcal.
The taqueria, one of the metro area’s 10 best new restaurants in 2018, sits less than a 10 minute drive from North Portland, where it ran a sister food cart before the coronavirus pandemic struck. Along with hundreds of other Washington state restaurants, Little Conejo has used the extra revenue from selling spirits to stay afloat until Gov. Jay Inslee allows restaurants to reopen their dining rooms.
“I think it’s something that just should be done everywhere, just to keep everybody in business,” said Michael Dynes, Little Conejo’s co-owner and a former bartender at Northeast Portland’s Noble Rot.
South of the Columbia River, calls continue to mount for Oregon to follow the lead of dozens of other states that have allowed restaurants and bars to sell cocktails to-go. Those states, which include Oregon’s neighbors to the north, south and east, will soon be joined by Pennsylvania, a state widely considered to have some of America’s strictest liquor laws. Meanwhile, a change.org petition requesting the additional privilege organized by the gin-focused Pearl District cocktail bar Botanist House had gathered more than 1,600 signatures by Thursday.
The Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which manages the sale and distribution of alcohol within the state, relaxed rules around the sale of beer, wine and marijuana shortly after Gov. Kate Brown ban on-premises dining March 17. Last week, the agency allowed Oregon distilleries to start offering their own products for home delivery, including both spirits and some canned and bottled cocktails already approved for sale. But adjusting the statute that limits hard alcohol to on-premises consumption would require a special legislative session, and could draw concerns from temperance groups, the OLCC has said.
So far, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board has granted licensed bars and restaurants the right to sell spirits, as long as they’re kept in their factory-sealed containers and sold with food. Businesses from Seattle to Spokane have rolled out cocktail kits, using the revenue from their sale to retain employees and keep their businesses open.
Back in Vancouver, Amaro’s Table beverage director Sara Newton makes cocktail mixers with berries, stone fruit and herbs from dandelion to catnip to lemon balm that appear each day on the restaurant’s Instagram page -- in addition to being an expert on the Italian liqueurs known as amari, Newton is studying to be an herbalist. Newton sells each 32-ounce jar for $17.50, with customers paying extra for bottled spirits or takeout orders of the restaurant’s fried chicken.
Amaro’s Table keeps its liquor prices close to retail levels, so margins are slim, especially compared to the markup that bars typically charge for cocktails. Still, the added revenue offers a way for Amaro’s Table’s to continue offering a version of the elevated craft cocktails it’s known for. Newton thinks Oregon should follow Washington’s lead.
“For the service industry, this is devastating,” Newton said. “Anything we can do as a state to employ more people who are pretty close to being destitute is something I think we should capitalize on.”
On Vancouver’s east side, Rally Pizza is selling boozy ice cream floats with blackberry sauce and cans of gin and tonic from Portland’s Freeland Spirits — a product Portland restaurants are barred from selling. The restaurant, run by longtime Ken’s Artisan Pizza chef Alan Maniscalco and pastry whiz Shan Wickham, plans to roll out margarita kits in time for Cinco de Mayo. The restaurant has seen a run on its own selection of amari.
“Washington did a really good job of opening these things up to small businesses,” Maniscalco said. “They were really smart, and really fast.”
Still, Washington State business owners hope to join businesses in states such as California, Idaho and New York in selling pre-mixed cocktails. Right now, restaurants might be charging one and a half or two times what they pay for bottles of tequila, whiskey or gin, a far cry from the usual four-or five-time multiplier added to ingredients in pre-mixed cocktails -- the profit engine for most modern restaurants. At Little Conejo, Dynes sold a rare bottle of Mezcalosfera de Mezcaloteca mezcal to a loyal customer for $185; on their regular menu, that same spirit goes for $32 an ounce.
“I think it’s kind of cool that people are making drinks in their house again," Dynes said. "But 80% to 90% of the people that come in are like, ‘Can’t you just make it for me?’”
-- Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com, @tdmrussell
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