Stirred, Not Shaken: The Bar Cart boxes a pandemic-era success story out of cocktail kits
The Vancouver company ups people’s happy hour at home
The Bar Cart’s Hastings Sunrise Cocktail Kit features Arbutus Blue Gin.
Stirred, Not Shaken is Stir’s cocktail series featuring locally made drinks that incorporate the best-of-B.C. ingredients. Sometimes, the beverages are shaken.
A WEEK AFTER the March 2020 lockdown, the team at Lavish Liquid Event Bar Service made a swift pivot: with no events to tend bar at, Chris Chuy, Jason Schlackl, and Reece Sims launched the Bar Cart, which makes and premium craft cocktail kits for pick up or delivery. It proved to be the little cart that could.
“We had a bunch of inventory for prescheduled events that were cancelled,” Chuy tells Stir. “It’s now become a business of its own and is here to stay.”
The kits include everything but glassware and ice, from alcohol and fresh fruit juices to craft bitters, and house-made syrups.
As an example, take the Hastings Sunrise. Pretty in purple and pink, the cocktail is based on Arbutus Blue Gin, which won gold at the 2021 Canadian Artisan Spirits Awards. The kit also contains Hastings Sunrise Mix (with hibiscus, grapefruit, elderflower syrup, and orange bitters) plus fresh rosemary and little clips for garnish. It makes eight drinks and goes for $73. (The 375-mL bottle of gin is $30.99 at Legacy Liquor Store).
The Zero-Proof Lionsgate Mule.
There are non-alcoholic selections, like the Zero-Poof High Tea Kit. It comes with a 375-mL bottle of Lumette (a non-alcoholic gin from Vancouver Island); a high-tea mix of lemon, rosehip and hibiscus tea; blackberry honey syrup; and grapefruit bitters, along with dried-lemon wheels for garnish. With enough for eight drinks, it’s $55.
The Bar Cart offers virtual cocktail classes, too, and delivers, for a fee, to Vancouver, the North Shore, Richmond, Burnaby, New Westminster, Port Moody, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, and some parts of Delta, Surrey, Langley, Pitt Meadows, and Maple Ridge on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. (You can pick up from the commissary that the company works out of at 100 - 177 West 7th Avenue.)
There’s more to the service than fancy drinks.
For one, there’s the opportunity to create fun ways to connect with people.
“We often partner with charities through our virtual events and classes to create more fun, engaging experiences while we are stuck at home,” Chuy says. “It’s about educating people about cocktail culture and experiences. The freedom to create new cocktails, features, and experiences daily is probably one of the best parts of the job… Besides also seeing how quickly it’s growing.”
Then there’s the art of the cocktail.
“It is a craft for sure,” Chuy says. “There is so much that goes into just making the spirit itself. Cocktails are created by either focusing on the flavour profiles of the spirit or inspiration from a life experience, story, picture or music.
“You may notice some of the inspirations from our cocktails come from landscapes or areas within our city, like the Lionsgate Mule and Hastings Sunrise,” he says. “We’ll soon be adding a VanDusen Sour.”
More information is at the Bar Cart.
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