Make-at-Home Margaritas and Martinis

Limited-edition cocktail kits have been bubbling up as a tool for promoting alcohol brands and their partner properties—ranging from entertainment IPs, celebrities, and sports events to food and beverage brands outside the spirits sector—as well as for engaging fans. With these products, consumers can experience the fun of opening the box and discovering what’s inside, making multiple cocktails using ingredients and tools that may be unfamiliar, and enjoying the final result, all while keeping the partners’ names top of mind.

Some examples from 2023 and 2024 illustrate this trend: 

• This month, Absolut is offering a $159.99 kit that allows fans to create three Wicked Cocktails Straight from Oz, to promote the Universal Pictures film Wicked, set for a November 22 release. The kit includes everything needed for five pink- or green-hued movie-themed cocktails, including cocktail mix, glasses, cocktail accessories, a recipe book, and seven small bottles of alcohol, as well as edible glitter. Influencer Evan Ross Katz, a Wicked superfan and Absolut ambassador, created a dirty martini for the initiative. The kits include a code to win a free ticket to the movie through Fandango, and the winner of an associated cocktail contest will receive a trip for two to the film’s premiere. 

• Seedlip, a brand of non-alcoholic spirits, paired in July 2024 with its brand ambassador Regé-Jean Page, best known for his starring role in Bridgerton, for a summer mocktail kit. It came with all the ingredients needed to make two cocktail recipes highlighting the company’s new product, Notas de Agave. The kit included Seedlip Notas de Agave, two cocktail mixes (Oasis Spritz and Sunset Spritz), Fever-Tree club soda, and a copper jigger. It also contained two candles: mandarin-bergamot to be paired with the Oasis Spritz and cactus fruit for the Sunset Spritz. 

• The Hispanic food brand Goya paired with Chivas in June 2024 for a Golden Hour Cocktail Kit that combines Chivas 12-year-old scotch with Goya-branded pineapple nectar and coconut water to allow users to make two cocktails, Pineapple Gold Rush and Chivas Coco Ice. The kit, priced at $31.99, was available in retailers in Florida, Texas, California, Illinois, and New Jersey, as well as online through Reserve Bar. 

• Grand Marnier liqueur and UNWRP, a black-owned luxury gift-wrap company, paired with rapper Teezo Touchdown in November 2023 to celebrate 50 years of hip hop and support The Hip Hop Museum. One component of the partnership was a cocktail kit for a Grand Margarita, available through Cocktail Courier, a kit specialist that is involved in several of the collaborative efforts discussed here. It included Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge, tequila, limes, and agave nectar, along with a cocktail pick and dehydrated star fruit as a garnish. The kit also came with free custom gift (w)rap. 

• Cocktail Courier and Metaxa 12 Star, an amber-colored Greek liquor made from muscat wine, fine wine distillates, and Mediterranean botanicals, offered an $89.00 kit to promote My Big Fat Wedding 3 when that film was released by Universal Pictures’ Focus Features division in September 2023. The kit gave users all the ingredients to make four to eight cocktails of two recipes, the citrusy Grecian Getaway and the coffee-flavored Athens Frappé Martini. Contents included a 750 ml bottle of Metaxa 12 Star, simple and vanilla bean syrups, three cold brew concentrates, coffee beans, limes, and oranges, as well as napkins, stirrers, and recipes for food pairings. 

• At the end of August 2023, the Italian aperitif brand Aperol offered a kit in collaboration with the U.S. Open tennis tournament, available through Cocktail Courier. Aperol was an official tournament sponsor, with the main element of that pairing being an Aperol Spritz Bar as well as a mobile truck selling this signature drink, along with accompanying snacks, to attendees on site. Another component was the $83.00 Aperol Perfect Serve Kit, which included a bottle of Aperol, Cinzano prosecco, Q Mixers club soda, and two oranges—enough to make 16 drinks—along with an orange Aperol visor. Aperol was a sponsor of the U.S. Open again in 2024, but the partnership focused on a capsule apparel collection rather than a cocktail kit. 

• Baileys, the Irish cream liqueur brand, partnered in May 2023 with Cha Cha Matcha, a chain of matcha shops in New York City and Los Angeles known for its colorful, Instagramable drinks, for a Baileys Sun-Kissed Matcha kit available through Cocktail Courier. The kit, which includes a bottle of Baileys, Cha Cha Matcha’s signature honey-infused ginger turmeric syrup, chai bitters, and matcha powder, made up to six of a three-layered cocktail that was promoted as social media-worthy. A matcha whisk, stencil, and a limited-edition, co-branded hat and silk bandana were also included.

• Among other property-identified merchandise available on its e-commerce site, Netflix offered $30.00 Love Is Blind cocktail kits from Cocktail Courier for sale in April 2023, at the end of season 4 of the reality series. The kit did not contain the alcohol needed to complete the two drinks—which could be made as mocktails or with the user’s choice of vodka, tequila, or gin—but it featured all the other ingredients, including grapefruit juice, passion tea, cardamom syrup, a pack of cherries, and a recipe card, along with themed cocktail picks. 

Other collaborative cocktail kits have appeared in the past. In 2018, for example, cognac brand Hennessy created cocktail kits with rapper A$AP Ferg and the fashion brand Opening Ceremony. But this has been a particularly active sector in the past year or two. Lists of spirits trends from researchers and publications tracking the industry show an upswing in premium cocktail sales in bars (with an emphasis on lighter varieties such as spritzes and bellinis), increases in sales of ready-to-drink cocktails at retail, and a rise in demand for non-alcoholic cocktails both at home and in restaurants and bars. All of these developments are consistent with the current interest in cocktail kits as a revenue generator, a promotional tool, and especially an experiential offering to drive fan engagement. 

A reminder that Raugust Communications’ monthly newsletter will be sent out tomorrow, October 15, 2024. The Licensing Topic of the Month examines the strategies licensors and licensees are using to capitalize on Halloween as a marketing and consumer products platform, while the Datapoint research spotlight analyzes the business models licensors are using to enter a popular experiential segment, namely branded cafés. If you do not yet receive this free digital publication, you can subscribe here.