Cocktail Bartending in Chester County
Spirit Forward is a Philadelphia based craft cocktail bartending team, and Chester County is where some of our biggest nights have happened. An office campus in Chesterbrook that has us back every year. A private estate in Paoli where the bar changed shape four times in one night. A backyard in Phoenixville for a hundred and sixty four people. A winery in Chadds Ford on Father's Day.
The office campus that has us back every year
One campus in Chesterbrook has us back year after year, for holiday parties, tenant events, and summer happy hours, for three different companies on the same property.
The holiday party is our favorite kind of job. Half party, half workshop. We set up stations and taught a room full of people how to make their own eggnog from scratch, VSOP brandy and dry sherry and a grated nutmeg finish, and everybody left with the recipe printed on a card. There was a live band. The full menu ran four deep: the eggnog, a Santa's Sangria with rosemary in the glass, a Peppermint Espresso Martini, and a Merry Margarita with cinnamon and hibiscus.
For the other half of the year, a hundred and seventy five people out of the office at three thirty on a June afternoon, and a menu built for exactly that: a strawberry mojito and a watermelon spritzer pressed fresh that morning. The lavender margarita came with a dehydrated lime wheel.
One estate in Paoli, start to finish
Seventy five guests on a private estate in Paoli, and the bar changed shape four times over the course of the night.
As guests arrived they were handed a welcome spritz with local strawberries and a basil leaf. Cocktail hour was a circle bar with the glassware displayed on a pillar in the center, pouring a stirred bourbon and Campari drink with Aztec bitters and a cosmopolitan over crushed ice. The Pimm's Cup came with a full fruit bouquet in it. Through dinner our team worked tableside, taking drink orders and keeping the wine cold. Then the after party moved to the pool and turned into Havana: a living mojito bar with mint everywhere, a pineapple and maraschino rum drink, espresso martinis, and ice cream floats for the kids at the outdoor movie.
Backyards and gardens
A backyard in Phoenixville, a hundred and sixty four guests, two bars. One on the patio, one against the back wall of the dance floor. The menu was a Smoked Sazerac with a lapsang tincture and an absinthe rinse, a Wildflower Fizz of blanco tequila and strawberries topped with sparkling cucumber water, a Honeymooner with house vanilla vodka and passionfruit under sparkling wine, and an Aperol spritz with grapefruit and torn basil. The couple also had a canoe full of beer. We kept that canoe afloat.
We've poured weddings at Terrain Gardens in Devon and in private homes in Malvern, and more.
Showrooms and product launches
A family-owned appliance store in Malvern brings us in whenever they launch a new line. The format is unusual and we love it. We build the cocktails using the appliances on the showroom floor, so the distributors and designers in the room get to see a new ice machine do its thing in the glass, with a master mixologist walking them through it. Literally product marketing in action.
Corporate happy hours and picnics
A wealth management firm in West Chester hired us for a happy hour of eighty five, so we named the house cocktail Liquid Assets. Gin or vodka with lemon and strawberry, finished with a rosemary sprig. It went over well.
We've also run a company picnic in Phoenixville and a Father's Day bar at Chaddsford Winery, where we built a French 75 on gin and an old fashioned with a red wine shrub made from their own bottles.
Where in Chester County we've worked
Chesterbrook, Malvern, Paoli, Devon, Phoenixville, West Chester, Chadds Ford, Coatesville.
That list gets longer every season.
Let's plan yours
Tell us the date and roughly how many people. We'll take it from there.