How Cocktail Kingdom Grew From a Small Bar Supply Shop Into a Global Cocktail Powerhouse
You know Cocktail Kingdom. The ubiquitous bar supplier has you covered for glasses, shakers, spoons, or whatever other drink-making widget or whatsit, jigger or thingamajigger you may need. But do you know Cocktail Kingdom Hospitality Group? Well, the company’s lineup probably includes one of your favorite New York bars, even if you didn’t realize it. And it definitely includes one of your favorite bartender’s favorite bars.
There are the cool-kid favorites, such as Superbueno and Katana Kitten. There’s the living legend Mace, and the in-the-know agave bar The Cabinet. And now there’s the hot new thing, Cocktail Omakase, which opened this spring. So how did Cocktail Kingdom morph from a glassware and tools supplier into one of the industry’s most highly touted bar groups? It’s all thanks to mom. As it usually is.
When owner Greg Boehm was working on transforming the former Louis 649 space — a bar located at 649 East 9th St. in the East Village — into what would become Mace, his mother, Suzy, had what turned out to be a pretty solid idea.
“My mom said ‘don’t do construction in December, do it in January, and instead do a Christmas pop-up,’” Boehm recalls. “I’m still very grateful.”
I’d imagine so.
Miracle on 9th Street launched December 2014, expanded to four locations the following year, and 17 by 2016. Most recently? “Last year we had 231 locations worldwide between Miracle and Sippin’ Santa, our collaboration with Jeff ‘Beachbum’ Berry,” Boehm says. Hope mom got herself a cut.
The holiday pop-ups were just the beginning of Cocktail Kingdom Hospitality Group’s (CKHG) venture into the cocktail bar scene. CKHG now owns five bars that have garnered 23 collective appearances across the World’s 50 Best and its regional and extended lists. For Boehm and his businesses, evolving from barware to bar world empire was in some ways circuitous, and yet also obvious in hindsight, and the journey isn’t over yet.
From Cocktail Geek Glassware to Award-Winning Bar Group
Even before Suzy’s great idea, Boehm was already immersed in the hospitality world, an effort jumpstarted by the fact that his family’s publishing company — Sterling Publishing, founded by David Boehm in 1949 — published Salvatore Calabrese’s “Classic Cocktails” in 1997, with The Maestro’s tome selling more than 1 million copies. “From that I started meeting the who’s who of cocktail bartenders at the time,” Boehm recalls.
Boehm became a full-fledged cocktail geek, entranced by its history, lore, and recipes. The minutiae of the craft, the very granular details that you or I may overlook, led him on a constant quest of tinkering and tweaking. How could more bartenders in more bars make better drinks for more people? He set out to find out in 2008 by launching Cocktail Kingdom, at first sourcing and importing barware, and eventually manufacturing it.
Five years after diving headfirst into barware, Boehm decided to dip his toe into the service side of the business, opening his first bar, Golden Cadillac, in 2013. His work with bars began as less a passion for slinging drinks, though, than as a practical lab to experiment with how those drinks were served, in order to come up with superior tools. With help from one other surprise influence. “Well, I guess Hair Club for Men was my inspiration,” Boehm says.
“One benefit I still find intriguing is that if someone has an idea for a bar tool, a cool mug, or a glass, the company can go ahead and develop and make it for the bar. Not many places can do that.”
No, hear him out. “The thought was to have a testing ground for our barware, and to really make us understand how barware was used on a busy Saturday night,” he says. “There were these old ads about Hair Club For Men, and the guy would say something like ‘I’m not just the president, I’m also a customer.’” Boehm wanted to master his own products in the real world and then sell more of them to the masses viewing his imagined late- night infomercial in need. He may not be able to improve the bar owner’s hairline, but he could improve the bar’s bottom line, as it were.
After Golden Cadillac (which became Boilermaker, which itself bequeathed the locale to Superbueno) came Mace — housed in the space that Suzy so ingeniously spurred onto becoming a seasonal Christmas pop-up. The bar opened in March 2015 with a cocktail menu centered on highlighting the flavors of particular herbs and spices and became a smash hit. Mace helped launch partner Nico de Soto to international bar stardom, while nudging Boehm ever deeper into the hospitality realm. “The first sign that things were going extremely well was when Mace opened and impossibly quickly we were on World’s 50 Best Bars,” Boehm says.
Katana Kitten pounced into existence three years later, a project that was not only a critic’s darling but a breadwinner from the start. “Katana Kitten was the first bar that I opened that was truly both successful in terms of being well received and also economically successful,” Boehm says.
The idea behind the bar was to showcase a more carefree side of Japanese bartending, a sect seen as precise yet also at times perhaps rigid. “People had ideas about Japanese bartending that it was very serious and stiff, but one of my favorite things was going to Golden Gai,” Boehm says. The matrix of alleys in Tokyo is filled with innumerable, tiny bars catering to every drinking whim imaginable. In turn, the laid-back, chaos-embracing Katana Kitten drew a crowd. “It was well received. It did well, and it still does well,” Boehm says.
Managing partner Masahiro Urushido is the face of the bar, but he credits the system around him for the bar’s initial and ongoing success. “There are resources, support, and advantages that can be shared within a bar group,” he says. “It’s all about people. We were blessed with talented and committed opening staff, and today I’m grateful that I still get to work with many of those original members eight years later. Having successful sibling bars inspires me to keep our energy high to continue serving guests here.”
How CKHG Meshes With its Operators
For Boehm, opening more bars was never the end game. “It started organically, there wasn’t a business plan at all,” Boehm says. “Miracle grew to the point where we needed a solid structure. Then from that foundation we have been able to create a hospitality group that is now nice and polished.”
Not only was there a logistical foundation in place, but between Mace and Katana Kitten, a blueprint of sorts was born: high-volume, fast-paced, and fun, with inventive cocktails that appeal to the voting crowd and the drinking public at large, made by talented, driven partners with a strong concept. But Boehm never undertakes a project for the sake of it, ensuring each move he makes is strategic.
“I see so many people who have one success and think, ‘Oh, I did this, and this product sold well, so now I’m going to create all of these other products,’ and they all fail,” he says. “But our team is so good and I get great feedback from everybody. Everybody gives an opinion. We don’t just move forward.”
Boehm now collects charismatic star bartenders the way he used to hoard vintage books and glasses. And Cocktail Kingdom Hospitality Group is flourishing by empowering these talented creators.
“One of my ideas that I’ve always had is taking people I consider artists — and I certainly consider Nico, Masa, and Nacho [Jimenez, of Superbueno] artists, and take care of all the business, so they can focus more on their art, their hospitality, so they have less stress,” Boehm says. “Cocktail Kingdom takes care of all the back end and all of the boring stuff.”
De Soto has his hands full with myriad other projects of his own, but looks at the Cocktail Kingdom Hospitality family as a distinct grouping where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. “It’s amazing to see different types of bars, led by different personalities, achieving so much success,” he says. “No bar repeats itself, which is the group’s strength.”
Each bar in the group becomes a reflection of its face’s vision, while Boehm fancies himself the big-picture guy helping to direct the action from behind the curtain. “I’m somebody who flies at 30,000 feet and sees things and sort of manages,” he says. “But I just keep an eye on things, notice trends, work with teams. I’m much more of a team builder than somebody who is doing everything myself.”
“I believe it’s important to continue creating spaces that challenge, encourage, and empower people like me so that we can all continue to grow,” Jimenez adds.
Another huge benefit, of course, is the group’s ability to provide financing. Now those artists don’t have to worry about becoming the starving variety, either. “Beyond the reputation and recognition of the group, one of the biggest benefits was having access to a strong support structure,” Jimenez says. “The financial, marketing, design, and operational expertise within the organization helped turn my vision into a reality and provided the resources needed to execute my dream at a much higher level than I could have done alone.”
“It’s amazing to see different types of bars, led by different personalities, achieving so much success. No bar repeats itself, which is the group’s strength.”
The glassware itself is a pretty big perk, for that matter. “One benefit I still find intriguing is that if someone has an idea for a bar tool, a cool mug, or a glass, the company can go ahead and develop and make it for the bar,” says James Tune, partner in Katana Kitten. “Not many places can do that.”
As CKHG grew, the effort coalesced into more of a collective, well-oiled hospitality machine, rather than a bunch of standalone shops. “It is very much a unified force, and decidedly more so within the past year,” Boehm says. “It might be a little bit free form on the individual levels but at this point we’re fully integrated as a hospitality group. All of our efforts are combined.”
Cocktail Omakase & Beyond
Cocktail Kingdom’s newest member is Cocktail Omakase, a project created in collaboration with Yujiro “Kiyo” Kiyosaki, of Tokyo’s Bar Libre. “What I admire about our sibling bars is that each has a completely different identity,” he says. “Seeing their success reinforces an important lesson: There is no single formula for a great bar. With Cocktail Omakase, I have the opportunity to bring Japanese and Asian hospitality, techniques, and sensibilities to New York. At the same time, being surrounded by so many successful and innovative concepts constantly motivates me to keep learning, evolving, and pushing myself further.”
For Kiyosaki, who already has extensive experience as an owner-operator, the key aspect of partnering with CKHG was an alignment in values more than logistical support alone. “A bar is more than a business,” he says. “It is a place where people, culture, and hospitality come together. If a partnership allows you to grow while staying true to your vision, it can be incredibly powerful. If it does not, even the best financial opportunity may not be worth pursuing. ”
As each of these partners extols, it’s the people who make the real difference. “Cocktail Kingdom Hospitality is not simply a company that owns bars — they are a group that actively contributes to cocktail culture, hospitality, and bartender education,” Kiyosaki says. “This resonated strongly with me because I have always been passionate about developing people.”
Kiyosaki’s personal efforts include establishing the Bar Industry Academy in Japan, and he believes investing in the next generation fuels the industry on the whole. By partnering with Boehm, he’s now able to take his approach around the world. “I can share the perspectives and experiences I’ve gained in Japan and Asia while learning from the innovation and diversity of the New York bar scene,” he says.
While Boehm has thrived by being able to scale turnkey pop-up concepts by the hundreds, Cocktail Omakase is far from a plug-and-play operation. The bar books one-hour, prix-fixe experiences featuring four small-format drinks paired with bites from the kitchen. Customers select between alcohol-free, low-ABV, and spirited menus, each of which rotates on an almost shocking two-week schedule. A separate bar hidden behind a shoji screen, Bar 7, is a walk-in only space operated by long-time collaborator Mathew Resler, whose work with Boehm stretches back to the Golden Cadillac days.
Boehm and CKHG aren’t done, either. He says he’s exploring at least four different concepts at the moment, including the potential expansion of Cocktail Omakase into new locations. Up to this point, he has remained hyper-local — enough so that he viewed Cocktail Omakase as being in a new market. “It took a long time for me to even expand to the Lower East Side!” he says. Moving forward, though, expect there to be a geographical push outward. As long as the right partners, creative artists, and knowledgeable pros with aligned visions are in place, that is.
“When I expand to other markets I always want to have somebody there who has intimate local knowledge,” Boehm says. “I would never do that without working with somebody who is truly familiar with it, whether it’s a different city or a different neighborhood.”
As for Cocktail Kingdom itself, that niche bar supply store has turned into an omnipresent force, currently working with 240,000 global accounts.
Between the group’s barware sales, running its own bars, and the hundreds of pop-ups it produces every year, there’s an enormous treasure trove of data that now informs the team’s decisions. “I think we know things now before other people do because I have so much information,” Boehm says. Drink sizes and formats, alcohol levels, timing for customers, reservation system quirks and strategies, menu construction, and more.
It’s a powerful collection of information that provides a real backbone of science and math. But there’s also a well-honed magic to the hospitality that numbers will never be able to describe.
“For me, great hospitality is making people feel comfortable and also delivering more than they even expected walking into your establishment,” Boehm says. “People have certain expectations and it’s about exceeding those, mostly in subtle ways, and just making people’s day a little bit better with hospitality one step at a time.”
With that as his north star — and mom Suzy providing the occasional home-run idea — Cocktail Kingdom Hospitality Group is now an impossible-to-ignore force of the bar world.
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