Cocktails to-go a ‘lifeline’ for KC-area restaurants, bars. How long will they last?

Westport Cafe and Bar’s specialty cocktails were a top-seller before the pandemic.

So when the owners reopened in early June — after a two-month-plus shutdown for the COVID-19 crisis — they wanted to showcase the specialty drinks again. But many customers are still wary of dining in, preferring carry-out.

So the French restaurant leased a frozen drink machine and is whipping up two drinks — Pimm’s Cup and frozen Bay of Bengal with lemongrass-infused rums.

A bartender pours the mix into a plastic container, seals it and attaches a bendable straw. With temperatures in the 90s, the drinks are so popular the owners plan to buy the machine, and they’re emphasizing the new drinks with a slightly new name: Westport Cafe Bistro and Cocktails.

Cocktails to-go were a COVID-19 shutdown survival strategy that just may become a permanent menu item.

Restaurateurs first ramped up carry-out just to pay the bills. They started selling groceries, then meal kits and liquidating their wine cellars. Those operations that specialized in craft cocktails began bottling and sealing them to sell with their to-go orders, much like they sold beer and wine.

Now Chaz on the Plaza in The Raphael Hotel offers barrel-aged Manhattans and a peach and mint Moscow mule. At The Belfry in the Crossroads, customers can take home its signature cocktail, the Grand Fashioned (batched, bottled and heat sealed). The Antler Room has several selections from Japanese Cocktail to Mezcal Trinidad Sour.

“With restaurants at reduced capacity and after a time when their dining rooms were closed, it has really been a lifeline, We are very much in favor of it,” said Bob Booney, CEO of the Missouri Restaurant Association. “I wish more municipalities were forward-thinking like Kansas City with the cocktails to-go, the tables outside.”

But how long will cocktails to-go last?

The Missouri Restaurant Association pushed to get the cocktails to-go waiver, and it has been extended through the end of the year in Missouri. In Kansas, it goes until Jan. 26, 2021.

The majority of the 500 Missourians recently surveyed by the National Restaurant Association said they are in favor of allowing cocktails to-go to be a permanent offering. The association has not done a Kansas survey.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said he would likely support a measure to make it permanent since to him it is no different than the sale of beer or bottled liquor.

“So it’s not just like going to buy a Slurpee from 7-Eleven and you just hop in your car,” he said. “This is allowing in many situations a mixologist or bartender whose craft is actually making interesting mixes and cocktails to be able to sell more broadly any number of drinks.”

Adam Mills, president and CEO of the Kansas Restaurant & Hospitality Association, agreed.

“If you think about it, there really isn’t any difference between going to the liquor store and getting a drink to go from a restaurant in a sealed container,” he said. “ Microbreweries can already sell growlers of beer to go. For years, we have had a wine doggy bag law that allowed people to purchase a bottle of wine with their meal, enjoy it responsibly and then take it home with them to drink with their leftovers and desert. It just makes sense to continue to allow it.”

Mills added: “Incremental sales are so important when you’re operating at reduced capacity for business. Liquor to go has literally helped our industry keep people working. ... I expect that we will be visiting with the legislature next year to make this permanent.”

St. Louis-based Mission Taco Joint with two KC locations was one of the first in Missouri to sell pre-batched margaritas in sealed containers during the shutdown. Two days later, someone in the St. Louis-area “ratted us out” to the Missouri Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control, said Mission’s co-founder Adam Tilford. Its license, like many bars and restaurants, only allowed the sale of packaged liquor in its original packaging.

When Mission Taco Joint pivoted to selling margarita kits, sales dropped from $9,000 in two days at four locations to $6,000 in a week. That is why Tilford joined with the Missouri Restaurant Association to extend the cocktails to-go waiver.

“The ability to sell alcoholic beverages gives us a fighting chance, in an industry with already razor-thin margins,” he said.

Staff writer Allison Kite contributed to this story.