Chicago didn’t legalize to-go cocktails until mid-June of last year, trailing most of the country by months. Anticipating that the city would eventually come around, Mike Treffehn, manager and lead bartender at Larry's in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, started testing recipes and organizing his space for batching. He bought 300 plastic bottles and was ready to sell drinks the day the to-go ordinance passed— but there was an issue. “One of the stipulations was no plastic. It was completely arbitrary,” says Treffehn. “Some folks chose to flout that, but I figured the last thing we needed was a $10,000 fine, so we bought a canner.”
With the rise of the hard seltzer, pandemic-era to-go drinks, and mega spirits brands like Bombay Gin and Absolut Vodka entering the market, canned cocktails have become one of the industry’s fastest-growing segments. Current annual sales are pegged at $20 billion, according to market research firm Fact MR. By 2030, sales will reach an estimated $146 billion.
Retail sales and multinational conglomerates dominate the category, but canned cocktails were a lifeline to lots of independent bars, restaurants, breweries, and distilleries last year. Now, after months of experimentation and customer feedback, these businesses are starting to look at how canned drinks will fit into and expand future operations.
Canning Technology
Can seamers are an old, industrial tool, introduced in the early 19th Century in England. The devices affix lids to cans and create an airtight seal to prevent oxidation and spoilage and, in the case of carbonated drinks, maintain the fizz.
Dennis Grumm launched Michigan-based Oktober Can Seamers in 2016 with a freshly designed seamer that he marketed mostly to craft breweries, as well as a small number of coffee shops. The device, available in models from $880 to $2,400, was attractive enough to sit out on a bar and allowed brewers to package one to a few thousand beers without buying an industrial canning line or waiting for an appointment with a mobile canner.
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There are other seamers on the market (Cannular Bench Top and Dixie Canners are mentioned in industry forums), but Oktober’s sleek, customizable machine has won praise from the bar community. Treffehn bought an Oktober for Larry’s, which is situated on the ground floor of a 344-unit apartment building. Rather than selecting a small roster of drinks to can and scheduling big production days, he focuses on making and canning cocktails to order. “The flexibility of having the seamer on my bar top, and making drinks à la minute, allows guests to have that cocktail bar experience,” he says.
Recently, Treffehn hosted a couple venturing out for the first time since having a baby. They could only stay for one round at Larry’s, but he was able to offer them the bar’s salted coffee Old Fashioned to take home. It was a win for service and revenue, and it’s a practice he plans to continue as long as to-go drinks remain legal.
Grumm says that one brewery has canned up to 108,000 beers in a month using his product. Each can takes just seconds to seal, and the seamers can be configured to fit a variety of can sizes—from 8-ounce sleek cans to 32-ounce growlers. Oktober sells customers blank cans (known as bright cans in the industry) and pre-labeled cans, each at a 500-can minimum and ranging from $0.35 to $1.25 each.
Micro Mobile Canning
For those who don't want their own canner, there are other options. Mobile canning lines and co-packing operations have serviced the beer industry for years, but their minimum runs are too large for most independent bars. However, in response to the pandemic, micro canning operations like Canned Cocktail Company and Walktails have begun to spring up. “If you want to have cool cocktails for delivery or on-premise sales, I’m the next step before going to a co-packer, building a brand, and doing a 10,000 can minimum,” says Kelly Levinson, owner of Canned Cocktail Company.
Levinson launched the business last spring and has since driven (in his mom-approved Town and Country van with a “CAN VAN” vanity license plate) from his New York home base to New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and Virginia. He has a business partner on the West Coast, too, and they have canned everything from mules, margaritas, hard seltzers, and mojitos to Manhattans, vodka soda, eggnog, and palomas.
Levison’s model is straightforward and labor intensive: He drives a seamer to a bar, where batched cocktails are standing by. He sanitizes, fills, and hand seals 50 to 1,000 cans and prints labels on the spot. As needed, Levinson also consults bars on how to optimize drinks for canning and shelf life. He charges $2 to $2.75 per can (including labor, driving time, cans, labeling, etc.) and offers 8, 12, and 16-ounce options.
Developing Canned Drinks
Sam Nelis runs the cocktail bar onsite at Barr Hill Gin Distillery in Montpelier, Vermont. When he started a to-go program, he and his team packaged everything—from the classic Bees Knees to the Jungle Cat, a gin-based Jungle Bird variation—in glass bottles.
“But there are limitations to to-go drinks. You can’t do eggwhite cocktails, and carbonation is tricky,” says Nelis, whose draft gin and tonics were particularly difficult to reproduce for to-go service. “We make our own syrup from the cinchona bark. It has an amber color and natural flavor. At first, we sold the syrup and gin mixed in a jar, along with a can of seltzer. But it wasn't the best product.”
Nelis bought an Oktober seamer and decided to pair it with the gin and tonic and Moscow mule from his draft program. From a tactile perspective, he prefers to can carbonated drinks; otherwise, without the added pressure or a nitrogen top-off, “you end up with a squishy can,” he says. But Nelis is less focused on the actual canning (“the easy part”) than refining his draft program and the actual liquid that gets canned.
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To get maximum carbonation, he removes all the sediment and solids from his batches and force carbonates kegs as cold as possible over the course of several days. He also recommends buying an inexpensive carbonation stone to insert into kegs to aid the process.
Starting a draft program is its own beast, and there are less resource intensive processes for carbonating drinks. In Treffehn’s à la minute approach, the bubbles from beer, soda, and tonic water have all held up well in cans, and one of Canned Cocktail Company’s clients has found that Polar Seltzer delivers all the carbonation they need without rigging a CO2 system. The only drinks that have gone flat for Treffehn so far have relied on sparkling wine and prosecco.
Cans in a Post-Covid World
In the future, Grumm believes more bars will follow Treffehn’s lead and sell guests a final round of drinks to-go. He also thinks canned cocktails have the potential to change bar real estate. “Local bars can turn into something almost like a kiosk. You can have this tiny little place with two tables and still serve many people,” he says.
This spring, Levison is launching a ghost canned cocktail concept in New York, and his drinks, each a collaboration with one of the city’s star bartenders, will be available through third-party delivery apps. “Even if delivery cocktails go away, venues and events will start to open up,” he says. That business will create opportunities for catering, weddings, and birthday parties, as well as private label drinks for golf courses, hotels, concerts, and more.
For the foreseeable future, visitors to Barr Hill will be able to take home cocktail four packs, and when the distillery can host events again, Nelis would like to stock roving bar carts with canned gin and tonics.
At the very least, when people can gather in small groups, Treffehn hopes that Larry’s can be part of their celebrations. “People will still want well-made cocktails to take home to small gatherings. Instead of wine, it’s like, ‘I brought four-pack from Larry’s.’”
Some last pieces of advice for those interested in canning cocktails: fill cans as full as possible to reduce oxidation, and communicate clearly with guests how quickly drinks should be consumed. Margaritas and other citrus-based drinks should be enjoyed within a day or two, but properly sealed stirred drinks and clarified cocktails can last for weeks.
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