New Drink Menu Book with fun stories to read as you wait for your drink to arrive.
( Begin Copy )
Drink: Pink Diamond
My personality? Let’s put it this way – I’m a sip of bliss. I’m a rare treat. I’ll bring out the dazzling starlet, the Audrey Hepburn in you. Taste me, and you’ll live liquid romance bathed in the sweet warmth of a velvet smile. Hey, like you, I can’t help being so popular...Tonight I’m triple-booked! My first date? He proposed to me. What was he thinking? My second date? Turns out, he was married. Puleeze!
I’m ready for my encore.
Because I’m a desired jewel - an intoxicating gem. I’m a rare Pink Diamond, discovered at the Rialto Cafe, where all happy endings begin.
Drink: Mojito
Can you even get a Mojito in Ireland, or Russia or Antarctica? Doubt it. Everybody’s living under overcast skies in those places. Denver on the other hand, is practically mountain tropical, with 300 days of sunshine a year.
Sunshine just makes people happy.
That’s why people love taking off their clothes here, to sport flip-flops and shorts the moment the temp tips over 50 degrees. Do you actually need the Toucan and coconuts? You could just go to your own Fantasy Island, the one on the patio of the Rialto in the district by the Venetian Canals. Why not? Anything is possible. And at least here, you won’t get voted off the island.
Drink: Manhattan
The energy of a city. It’s the ingredient that makes a city great. Like the right ingredients in a timeless drink. Hollywood, Chicago, Manhattan and yes, Denver, all have a pulsing city vibe.
An alluring power.
Where does it come from? The doctors, lawyers, artists, bankers, ballerinas, bartenders, bus drivers... Everybody who does something, something to make it all work. It’s the spark of people, determined to make a difference, a mark or a name. It’s people who get up and scream with joy when their ball team knocks one out of the park. It’s people, who make a place. Manhattan is the biggest city imaginable. But where you’re sitting is just as big. A Manhattan in any city, makes that city great.
Drink: ‘Velvet Curtain’ (Silver Screen)
I was late. This is my first date in a month. I was the one who cancelled on her before.Twice. I hope she waits for me. My big promotion at work is slowly stealing away every moment of my own life away from me. She’s different. She’s always trying to meet me in beautiful places.
Now, I’m running through alleys.
Like a madman, to get to her, before it’s too late. It’s like being in a movie. Like at the end of the film when the guy has only one chance to redeem himself. Oh, man, I think I’m a little in love with her. No, I do love her.
Drink: ‘Gypsy Pink’
He’s really late, and I’ve got butterflies. I’ve been sitting here for over an hour. People are staring at me. I just smile. They don’t know that it’s all ok. I saw his reflection, in the pool of pink light, glimmering in the center of my glass. I feel like it’s a vision of good things.
This is crazy.
I feel like I’m in an old photograph, and some gypsy is telling me he is the one. Wait, there he is. He’s running toward me. He’s out of breath. He’s so beautiful. I’m releasing the butterflies…
Drink: Red Dirt
In Denver, the whole place is bricks. Bricks stacked on bricks. I realized just now: A human hand had to touch each brick. The average wall has a thousand bricks, maybe two thousand. How many walls in a house? Ten walls? How many buildings in Denver? Twenty-five thousand? So, that’s a thousand bricks multiplied by ten walls times twenty-five thousand buildings. That’s means it took two hundred and fifty million motions of a human hand, to make Denver.
Wow.
My bartender just brought me my drink. I’m going to shake her hand. I just like to connect a hand to a face. I mean that in a good way.
( End Copy )
( Back Story )
A not so typical drink menu book becomes an engaging, urban storybook, original writing and photography, not just glossy photographs of drinks.
There’s always a challenge:
A celebrated downtown Denver hotel and lounge, wanted an alternative to the typically glitzy, yet considerably banal, high gloss ‘beer ad’ style of drink photography found in every cocktail drink book in town. Let’s call it dime a dozen, ‘drink porno’.
And there’s always an interesting solution to a common problem:
!nkStain, Inc and design studio, IdahoSTEW, invented a drink menu and functional example of ‘lounge art’. We knew a precious feeling book of short writings and photographic images, both a cocktail menu and engaging storybook, would get attention and sell drinks. We composed 200 to 300 word stories to mirror the experiences educated professionals encounter in everyday city life, and mixed it all with drink names and themes.
So…
Lounge patrons love having an original concept provoke their thoughts. Lively customer conversations are sparked. The ice is often heard breaking between strangers who have a laugh over a drink book anecdote. The predictable hustle and prod for drink dollars was masked long enough for the lounge to champion an interest in the experiences of educated, urban Denverites.
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