How to Mix It Up Virtually: Kennedy Events Talks Mixology Experiences with Avital Tours
Want to toast with your colleagues, but keep it virtual? KE Partner Paige recently shared a lively conversation all about cocktails with Avital Unger, the founder of the culinary experience company Avital Tours. Watch this short video to learn from Avital's experiences hosting thousands of people through live mixology sessions. You can still bring people together in a shared virtual experience while avoiding the pitfalls of delivering cocktail kits to your attendees' doorsteps!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Paige Buck: Hi. I'm here with Avital Unger from Avital Tours and I just have to start off by saying what a huge fan I am of what you’re doing…because I've been through your mixology experience and it was such an unexpected delight. I want you to take everybody else through what that experience is like.
Avital Unger: It’s so great to be here, Paige. Our mixology—our virtual mixology, I should say now. We are bringing our award-winning bartenders right into your home, and we’re also offering ingredient delivery that shows up before the actual experience so that we can bridge in real life, hands-on cocktail making with a bartender coming straight into your home. We have an MC, a host, as part of our experience that we’ve also provided so that your experience can run smoothly. So they run all of the tech in the background. They’re making sure the chatbox has all the conversions from tablespoons to ounces. They’re introducing your bartender to you. They’re making sure that all of your questions and your interests are going to be addressed and incorporated and customized into the actual hour-long event.
Paige: How do you find your mixologist?
Avital: We’ve been in business for almost 10 years now, and we’ve been working with bartenders and chefs from around the country when we were running in-person experiences in San Francisco, LA, and New York. These are bartenders that are not only knowledgeable but award-winning. They might have won a… They might’ve been nominated for a James Beard award, or they might’ve been at “Tales of the Cocktail” walks, been nominated for best bartender of the year, or they could have won multiple margarita competitions. So we love those awards, but we also love when they’re personable and we get to bring you into their home bar.
Paige: Great. You just hit on something I realized, that like in the pre-COVID, normal world, I go to a bar and I really don’t think very much about the personality of my bartender. I’m happy if they’re pleasant and attentive and they noticed that I was trying to get their attention, but now, you realize how much that matters and I know that was a huge part of the experience that I had when I was part of, one of your virtual experiences was just how like warm, personable, charismatic, easy-going…
So, the one that I did was the… Okay, I'm going to get the name wrong. What was it like a Blackberry Bramble?
Avital: Yes. Exactly.
Paige: Okay. Describe that experience? Because it involves crushing things and shaking things and…
Avital: Totally. I mean, it’s a fun cocktail. You know, we like to have citrus, shaken cocktails because it makes for a great virtual experience. So, we liked this one as a fabulous summer drink because you’re crushing your ice. So I’ve had guests show up with meat tenderizers or hammers because maybe they didn’t have a muddler at home. Or if you don’t have a shaker at home, we give you lots of alternatives that you can bring. We want to make it approachable, bartending in your own home, but that’s why we’re shipping the ingredients to you; so, you know, crushing ice or you can light something on fire or you can be using egg whites in your cocktails. We want to really be able to elevate your bar game at home as a fun experience, as well as learning something.
Paige: You’re getting all of these ingredients into your guests’ hands beforehand. How are you doing that? What does that like? What are those ingredients?
Avital: Yeah, so we’re actually shipping cocktail boxes with the alcohol. We do have mocktail boxes as well or we can leave out [the alcohol] for those guests who don’t want alcohol shipped to their home, but some other guests in their same group want alcohol. So I think that’s really important. First of all, it’s an all-inclusive box. We have specialty syrups in our boxes, [or] if bitters are required or specialty garnishes. This is really to elevate your home bar, but also we want our bartenders to be able to teach you so that you can do it next time yourself.
But again, a full box really coming to your house is not that easy; believe it or not. We have clients coming to us now and they’re saying, “Hey, you know what? We thought we could do it ourselves. We’ve been Instacarting around the country to our guests in Chicago or in New York, and wow, it’s really hard.” And I said, “yeah, you know, um, it is a little bit logistically complex.” We have a whole team of people who are literally just tracking packages, making sure that it’s going to show up on time before your event. We're also able to troubleshoot so that if something happens with FedEx, you know, I mean supply chains right now, you want a team behind you. You want people who are on your team, who are going to be able to make sure that every single person coming to your experience is going to have a good time and make sure their ingredients show up.
Paige: Yeah. Everything is like an extra challenge right now, so better for your clients that that be your responsibility than their responsibility and they’re just able to sit back and enjoy it. I mean, I know that’s why Kennedy Events is so excited to work with you because you’ve been doing this for quite a while now and you’ve ironed out a lot of kinks in that supply chain.
Avital: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve welcomed thousands of guests now and it’s growing, it’s growing. I mean, that’s what’s incredible about being virtual right now. We’ve had guests from all around the world joining in the same exact experience, making the same cocktail together. You know, our mission statement has always been to deepen human connection through storytelling and food. And that’s where the fun part and the stories come in, and being brought into your bartender’s home bar. Then also that I’m bringing world-class bartenders into your home so that you can connect with your colleagues and have fun. The best part about this is that we can get people from all over the country without traveling to have a similar shared experience and to have great conversation and deepen that connection. So, I mean, we’ve been able to bring people together all around the world and it’s just absolutely incredible.
Paige: I love it. And that's one of the reasons why we are so excited and have so much fun whenever we’re working with you, Avital. So thanks so much. This has been great.
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