From Green Tea to Picklebacks, the New Era of Shots Is Packaged
Longtime bartenders Dave McCarthy and Connor Gough had been running bars in New York City for decades. They had seen all the popular shots come and go.
“When I first started bartending, it was Goldschläger; then Rumple Minze became popular; then you had Jägermeister, of course; SoCo Limes were a big thing for a while; and then Fireball came along and just destroyed everybody,” says McCarthy. “But there was always that one shot that was still lingering out there.”
He’s referring to the Green Tea Shot, a shaken mix of Irish whiskey, peach schnapps, and sweet-and-sour mix, sometimes topped with lemon-lime soda.
Though some believe Jameson first engineered — or at least popularized — the green-hued shooter, there’s no real proof. Whatever the origin story, by the late 2000s, it had become a ubiquitous call shot nationwide, something McCarthy noticed while working at sports bars like Stout NYC in midtown Manhattan.
“It was just not going away,” he recalls, and it was laborious to shake up hundreds of these shots a night. “So [Conner and I] were like, ‘Let’s just jump on that trend and take the components of what’s in a green tea shot and make it easier for ourselves, for the bartenders, and put it into a bottle.’”
The result, first released in October of 2023, was Slammit Green Tea Shot Whisky.
If shot culture 1.0 was simply drinking spirits straight, then shot culture 2.0 would be the era of liqueurs not necessarily originally designed to shoot, but eventually repurposed by young people for that function — everything from Goldschläger and Jäger onto Fireball and Skrewball.
With products like Slammit and other new entrants we’ve now entered shot culture 3.0: packaged products meant to mimic what young people are drinking — mostly shooting — outside of craft cocktail bars.
Let’s meet this new breed in what we’ll call the RTS category — Ready to Shoot.
Be More Chill
Not surprisingly, Slammit isn’t the only packaged Green Tea Shot. Also released on the East Coast in 2023 was Kamoti Green Tea.
Credit: Slammit
Founded by Dylan Fusco and Michael Pugliese, their reason for starting the brand was similar to McCarthy and Gough’s: “Bartenders in busy locations often have to hand-make hundreds of shots in a night,” Fusco told “Delaware Today” upon the brand’s release at that state’s summer beach bars. “The taste, consistency and amount of alcohol differs from night to night, leaving customers unsure of what they’ll get, and bartenders generally irritated by how much time these shots take to mix.”
However, while Slammit seems to focus more on the “fun” aspect of shot culture with no “weak AF” shots according to its website, Kamoti is more interested in capturing the lower-ABV, not-overdoing-it crowd, with a product tagline of “All chill, no chaser.”
If Slammit’s website has a clear aesthetic of “this is booze to be shot,” Kamoti’s leans more to physical fitness and wellness, featuring a midriff-baring woman in a cowboy hat on its landing page, alongside “health” bonafides in large font: low ABV, gluten-free, naturally sweetened.
(For what it’s worth, all distilled spirits are gluten-free regardless of base ingredient.)
And, while Slammit, made from 100 percent corn whiskey, has the amber color you might expect of a whiskey, Kamoti is clear with just a slight green tint, claiming only two ingredients: whiskey and “natural flavor.”
“Kamoti has less alcohol than a traditional shot, so although everyone’s tolerance is different, our fans love that you don’t need to sacrifice the party to avoid the hangover the next day,” claims Fusco.
“Currently, more than 80 percent of our business is home consumers — people who enjoy a shot with friends at home or bring a bottle to party or tailgate or other celebratory occasion.”
On the complete opposite end of the wellness spectrum, surely, is Shottys, prepackaged 8-packs of 15 percent ABV Green Tea Shots in portable, BPA-free cups filled with barrel-aged American whiskey “flavored with splashes of lemon, lime, & peach.”
Historically, the Green Tea Shot has strictly been the province of on-premise drinking. But the back of the Shottys bag lets us know this shooter has finally arrived at places like the beach, the tailgate, and even the movies.
“Before you’d have to walk into a liquor store and get a whiskey, get some peach schnapps, get a sour mix, if you even knew what sour mix is, and then try and make it at home — but you’ll probably mess it up,” McCarthy says. “Now you can actually get a proper green tea shot in a liquor store.”
Pickle You’re Fancy
Perhaps even more famous than the Green Tea Shot is the Pickleback, a previous generation’s top bar shot from Bushwick, Brooklyn, circa 2006 — now finally available as a packaged, ready-to-shoot product.
“When we started in 2018, there may have been two or three other pickle-flavored spirits on the market, but we were the first to label and market our product as a pickle shot,” says John King, The Original Pickle Shot’s owner and co-founder. “We created the pickle shot category. We’re very different than the other pickle spirits products out there.”
Credit: Granmedia – stock.adobe.com
Those other products include everything from The World Famous Pickle Vodka (launched in 2019) to Dirty Dill (launched in 2022) and Dill*ish Pickleback Vodka (2023). The Original Pickle Shot was inspired and brought to market by Pickles Pub, an Ocean City, Md., spot that claims to sell well over 100,000 pickle shooters per year. Its packaged product, made with pickle brine and corn vodka, and clocking in at 15 percent ABV, is specifically targeted toward at-home usage.
“Currently, more than 80 percent of our business is home consumers — people who enjoy a shot with friends at home or bring a bottle to party or tailgate or other celebratory occasion,” adds King, though he claims a recent surge in on-premise sales, as pickle-themed cocktails have become trendier.
Like many of these other at-home shots, though, The Original Pickle Shot leans into a false sense of wellness, too, with its website listing the requisite health stats in the largest font possible — under 47 calories (per 1-ounce shot), only 1.5 carbs, and just 15 percent ABV. The website’s landing page likewise depicts a thin woman in cowboy boots eating a pickle in a hot dog bun.
“It’s no secret that consumers are increasingly mindful of what they drink,” says King, while also noting the cost-consciousness of the era, especially for young people. The Original Pickle Shot checks in at around $16 per 750-milliliter bottle.
The Future of Shots
Of course, Shot Culture 3.0 will also inherently encompass some new ideas as well.
Gran Malo was founded in 2021 by Luisito Comunica, a Mexican content creator with over 100 million subscribers and followers across various platforms, and Casa Lumbre Spirits. They wanted a shot-specific brand inspired by traditional Mexican candy flavors and tamarind-flavored drinks that have long been popular in the country.
Grand Malo infuses blanco tequila with tamarind and Mexican chiles, and is packaged with a bottle top that doubles as a shot glass. Priced around $20 for 750 milliliters, it’s hard to beat for a young person looking to “precopeo” (pre-party). By the end of 2024, it had become the biggest new spirits brand in California, and has since begun expanding to more markets across the U.S.
“At Spirit of Gallo, we are always looking for opportunities to disrupt categories and authentically connect with new consumers,” says Britt West, chief commercial officer at Gallo Wine and Spirits, which serves as Gran Malo’s U.S. distribution partner.
If any category is being disrupted, it’s the made-to-order, on-premise shot category. Perhaps that’s because, according to a 2023 Mintel report, 74 percent of consumers say they trust the production quality of these RTS-style products more than that of bar-mixed options.
Shot Culture 3.0 not only offers ease of service and portability, but guarantees consistency of ingredients and ABV. If it’s true that young people are going to bars less, these RTSs bring what has long been the most in-bar order to the home. It’s what these brands like Slammit, Kamoti, Gran Malo, and The Original Pickle Shot are built on.
“There are some classic and powerhouse shot brands that have been out for a long time,” King says. “But this is something fun and new.”
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