10 Tips on Creating a Healthy Bar Menu

Whether you are trying to capture sales from people focusing on their New Year’s resolutions or simply want to diversify your offerings, it's easier than you think to create a healthy bar menu. With these 10 ideas in hand, any business with a bar can work to ensure their customers have access to healthier drink options. Here's how.

A Healthy Bar Menu Starts with Wine

When you think about the healthiest possible alcoholic beverages, you have to consider wines. Specifically, red wines are some of the healthiest options for drinks because they contain antioxidants that have benefits for the cardiovascular system. Businesses will find that it’s easy to stock a few sorts of popular red wines to engage their customer base and keep them drinking something a tad healthier than ultra-sweet cocktails.

Provide a Distinct ‘Healthy’ Menu

Another way that you can have a healthier drink menu is simply putting your healthy drinks on a separate page of the menu. Customers tend to stick to drinks that they are familiar with consuming, so you can’t necessarily count on them to pick out the healthy options on their own. Instead, identify the offerings on your menu that are healthiest for your customers and then stick them on a single page or annotate your menu to identify that a specific drink is healthier than others.

Offer Healthy Mix-ins

The wonderful thing about alcohol is that you can make drinks that are sweet, savory, or combine a range of flavors. Providing a range of healthy mix-ins to a beverage can vastly increase the health value of a product. Think about providing sparkling water, lemon juice, low-calorie orange juice as mix-ins for your customers. That way, they get some nutrition along with their drink. Of course, you could always try more daring choices such as jalapenos that provide a little more of a bite to the drink!

Hop on the Seltzer Train

Even if you have not been to a liquor supply house in a while, you have definitely seen the commercials. Alcoholic seltzer drinks are ruling the world right now. In fact, some of the major companies have run into supply issues as a result of their customers’ incredibly high demand for their beverage of choice. Every bar and restaurant reading this needs to pick one or two favored brands of alcoholic seltzers and start offering them for sale. You’ll find that health-conscious people of all ages are buying seltzer. This seltzer makes a good mix-in or it can be served right out of the can. As far as flavor goes, buy more of whatever your distributor can keep in stock.

Provide Diet Sodas for Meals and Mix-ins

More and more people are trying to make their drinks healthier by cutting out excess sugar and sweetness. When it comes to cocktails like rum and coke, the obvious choice is to not compromise on the quality of the rum and instead cut out the soda. Fortunately, diet sodas offer the same crisp taste without as much sugary sweetness. While a restaurant will likely have diet sodas to offer, a bar might have to expand their inventory.

Invest in a Brand Soda Mixer Machine

A soda mixer machine, specifically one like the Coca-Cola Freestyle, could be a great investment for any bar or restaurant. It will offer dozens of flavors of soda using relatively few different syrups relative to older models. Moreover, the diet sodas that are mixed in this machine can work as healthy mixers in a variety of flavors that will have your customers buying and trying new ones every week. Vodka with diet grape Sprite could be a major seller that nobody else will have.

Provide Tea-based Cocktails

Too many people underestimate the popularity of using teas in cocktails. However, if the success of alcoholic tea brands has shown us anything, it’s that people like the smoothness of alcoholic teas since they don’t come with the associated bloated feelings like beer or alcoholic sodas. You can easily mix teas with various alcohols to make tasty cocktails that will keep your customers engaged. Releasing teas in the early part of the year or during summer will be the best option to capture an audience interested in staying healthy.

Include a Greater Selection of Low-Cal Beers

When most bars stock of a low-calorie beer, they bring a handful of options to the table. They know that other companies have since gotten involved with this venture and that other options are on the market, but they don’t want to risk not selling their stock. Your business should take the plunge and try integrating new, popular, low-calorie options on the menu to ensure your customers choose your bar for its many options.

Integrate Hard Sodas with Less Sugar

Hard sodas are a very popular option for people that don’t like beer or the burn of drinking straight alcohol. However, some brands are better than others when it comes to health. Find brands that have less sugar and lower calories, and your customers will thank you for it!

Create More Cocktails with Tequila

Tequila is one of the healthiest overall spirits that you can drink. It is loaded with benefits from better calcium absorption to lowering blood sugar and cholesterol. Find new and innovative ways to mix this spirit into your cocktails will provide your customers with a simple way to have a healthier drink than they would otherwise. Even people that don’t like straight tequila might enjoy it in a nice cocktail!

Offering your customers healthier alcohol can require a bit of a balancing act. You don’t want to maintain too much stock on items that aren’t going to generate sales. Also, buying into something that you’re unfamiliar with can be stressful. Using this list, choose the easiest ways to integrate healthier drink options onto your menu without harming your business models. Your customers will enjoy having increased options!