Good Morning! Hope you are all doing well. I have officially shipped out every last order from the In Good Spirits hoodie drop. Thank you all so much for ordering a hoodie and for supporting what we do for this newsletter. It truly means so much to me. 

In case you missed it, we are hosting the next Cocktail Dinner Club event on April 30th, with our friends at Suyo Pisco! This event will be held (as they all are) at my bar & restaurant, Ember & Alma, and it will feature 2 original cocktails, tastings and a full unique 3-course meal that utilizes the spirits as well. This event is sure to be a hit and it's likely to sell out, so if you want to get your tickets click here now!

I also posted this video this week about Where To Find Those Rare Tequila Bottles You Can Never seem to find. 

What Its Been Like Running a Restaurant This Year

I figured now would be a good time to check in and talk about some of the difficulties of running a restaurant in the year that is 2025. So a little background, I own and operate a bar and restaurant called Ember & Alma Cocktail Bar. I bought this restaurant with my mother 6 years ago and originally it had another name. You can hear the story of the first roughly 5 years by watching this video. But that video was posted about a year ago and so much has happened since then.

For one, we rebranded in October of 2024 and overall things have been super positive. We rebranded because our old name was confusing, we didn’t choose it and it needed to go. Since the rebrand though things have been super busy. We have been reaching people in our local community way more than we ever had before.

We got so busy that we had to somehow install a 3rd bar station, and I have been working service bar on the weekends to help out the bar because its been so insane. We started our series of monthly private dinners which have also been a huge hit. And while all of that has been great. Its been really hard to operate with so much looming over our heads.

Restaurants are already notoriously hard to run due to the tiniest of profit margins and these off again on again tariffs have been impossible to navigate. So much of the spirits we use come from other countries (especially Mexico) and a lot of the produce and other food products as well. Every carrot I have ever bought for the restaurant was grown in Canada.

I have had 3 meetings with my chef about trying to pivot rapidly if they do get enacted and it seems like at least the 10% tariffs will be going into effect. And while 10% doesn’t seem like much, the average restaurant profit margin is between 3-5% and if you’re really killing it MAYBE you can hit 10%.

A raise in 10% on prices that restaurants pay for produce and other food items, could completely erase any profit a restaurant could have if they don’t raise their prices. I don’t want to raise prices. I hate doing that because its not a fun situation to have to explain to any guests because to the guests you’re always the bad guy in that scenario, even if you are being forced into this situation. And even if its just to keep the small profit margin that is already razor thin.

Unfortunately, I don’t see how any restaurant survives without raising prices if these tariffs remain which is a bummer. And what’s even worse is the uncertainty of it all. If it was something certain at least we could plan for it but this on-again-off-again b.s cycle makes it even harder to plan for.

So tariffs and rising costs of goods have been a nightmare to try and navigate. I wont comment on any of the current state of immigration problems with a ten foot pole, to avoid angry emails sent back to me since anytime I’ve even mentioned anything related to it, I’ll then have some mouth-breathers in my inbox saying something racist.

Further down the newsletter, there’s a link to an Interview with Ivy Mix of Leyenda that we wrote about last week and why they are closing their doors. Everything she said was so true. Its already to difficult to run a restaurant & bar in the best of times. Now stack all of these things on top, its becoming more and more impossible.

So overall, how optimistic do I feel about this year in the restaurant industry? To be honest. I don’t know. The signs we’ve been receiving have been encouraging from a guests perspective and we seem to be getting busier and busier, but that can change at the drop of a hat. So much is uncertain, and as much as I believe in being a community space if costs keep going up or if people keep losing their jobs and the economy starts get worse, it could get very difficult. And not just for me, but for every restaurant.

I still hold onto hope that this year will still prove to be a good one, and I’m determined to not let this ruin my dreams. We bought the restaurant 6 months before COVID hit and we battled through that and so many other hurdles. We will adapt and we’ll survive and look to thrive in other ways if we need to. But boy oh boy. It would be nice to be able to sleep well again at night. And no that’s not a dig at my son.

Hold the Booze: One of Hong Kong’s Top Bar Goes Alcohol-Free—What’s Next?

I stumbled upon this article on instagram originally Hong Kong’s Award-Winning Bar Mostly Harmless Ditches Alcohol for a Bold New Adventure!. 

And it really made me think about the role Bars play in our lives and in society. 

One of Hong Kong’s cocktail darlings, Mostly Harmless (No. 45 on Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2024), just flipped the script: they’ve ditched alcohol entirely, rebranding as Mostly Harmless 0.042 (a nod to the 0.5% ABV legal limit). Founder Ezra Star—a sobriety-practicing, award-winning mixologist who was the GM at the Legendary bar, Drink, in Boston (rip)—admits sales might dip, but she’s laser-focused on reimagining flavor and community without the buzz. “Drinks are the excuse; serving people is the point,” she says.

Why This Matters

1. Trendsetting in a Boozy Hub: Hong Kong is a global bar capital, but this move challenges norms. If a top-ranked bar thrives sans alcohol, could this spark a wave of “sober curious” spots in liquor-heavy cities?

2. Farm-to-Glass Innovation: Mostly Harmless has always championed hyper-local, seasonal ingredients (think beeswax-washed gin with fermented honey). Now, they’re pushing boundaries with zero-proof ferments like ‘Chinese Medicine’ kombucha—proving creativity doesn’t need ABV.

Ripple Effects

• Consumer Shift: Pre-switch, 10% of their guests opted for non-alc drinks. With growing sober-curious demographics, this could tap into a hungry market—especially in health-conscious Asia.

• Industry Influence: Their sister bar, Call Me Al, handles the booze crowd, but if 0.042 succeeds, expect more bars to test hybrid models or pop-ups.

It remains to be seen if this will be a success longterm, but I'm actually surprised it took this long for a big bar to try something like this. Things have been trending towards Non-Alc options for a while and I also think the bar world needs a bit of a shake up.. One of the most fascinating take-aways for me was the quote that “Drinks are the excuse; serving people is the point,” But I think that remains to be seen. Are drinks just the excuse? Or are they a necessary ingredient? I'm not so sure. I am very fascinated to find out as the Non-Alc movement grows.

Would YOU swap your Old Fashioned for a fermented passionfruit kombucha?

P.S. Follow @mostlyharmlessbar to follow along with this development

Best Thing I Saw This Week

ThirstyWhale made this Intro to tequila video which we thought was really good! Give it a watch. 

In Other News:

• Last week I talked about Leyenda closing and I even made a video this week in tribute to that incredible little bar. This week Co-Owner Ivy Mix was featured on NPR’s Marketplace. It's a short listen about restaurant ownership, and why Bars are closing and as a Restaurant owner myself it hit home. 

• NotJustABartender teased the launch of a website full of recipes videos he’s made on his Instagram stories.

• Unprecedented flooding in Kentucky causes Buffalo Trace distillery to close indefinitely.