Lou Explains Why the Bar Tab Is a Moral Document (And Yours Is an Embarrassment)

The Bar Tab Is a Moral Document, and I Have Read Yours

I want to talk about THC drinks vs alcohol, but first I need to talk about the receipt. Because the receipt is where you find out who a person really is. And I have seen your receipt. I am not impressed.

Two rounds. Four people. One hundred and twelve dollars, before tip. I looked at this document for a long time. I turned it over. I checked the back. No explanation. No apology. Just a list of decisions, typed in a tiny font, that add up to a complete indictment of your judgment as an adult human being.

Let me walk you through it.

Line One: The "Craft" Cocktail

Twenty-two dollars. For one drink. The menu described it as "a smoked maple old fashioned with a house-infused black walnut bourbon and a dehydrated orange wheel." I am reading this to you verbatim because I want you to understand what happened. Somebody took an old fashioned, which is a perfect thing, and turned it into a science project. They smoked it. They dehydrated the orange. They infused the bourbon with a nut. You paid twenty-two dollars for this. You smiled when they brought it over.

I cannot help you.

An old fashioned is bourbon, bitters, sugar, orange peel. That is the whole list. That is not a starting point. That is the destination. When you start adding smoked wood chips and dehydrated citrus and walnut infusions, you are not elevating the drink. You are telling it you don't trust it. The old fashioned has been around since 1806. It did not ask for your input.

Line Two: The "Seasonal" Beer

Fourteen dollars. For a beer. It was "barrel-aged, double-fermented, and inspired by a Flemish monastery." A Flemish monastery. You are sitting in a sports bar in a strip mall and you ordered a beer inspired by monks who have been dead for three hundred years. For fourteen dollars. The monks would not have charged fourteen dollars. The monks had a different relationship with money, and also with God, which is probably why they made better decisions.

Line Three: The Service Charge, the Bar Fee, and the "Ambient Surcharge"

I am not making that last one up. Ambient surcharge. Eight dollars. For the ambient. For the air in the room and the music they were playing too loudly and the lights they dimmed so you couldn't read the menu and then charged you for not being able to read the menu. I have been to places that charged me for ice. Ice is weather. Weather is free. I do not pay for clouds. I should not pay for ice. And I absolutely will not pay for ambient.

Line Four: The Second Round, Which You Did Not Need

Here is where the document really turns against you. You felt fine after round one. You were having a good time. The conversation was going well. And then you did it. You ordered round two, because that is what you do at a bar, because stopping feels awkward, because somebody at the table said "another?" and you said "sure" before your brain caught up with your wallet. Another one hundred and twelve dollars, minus whatever the table math worked out to, plus tip on top of the surcharges, plus the parking you forgot to mention. You woke up the next morning with a headache, a slightly reduced opinion of yourself, and a phone notification from your bank that I would describe as alarmed.

This is the bar tab as moral document. It shows you what you agreed to, in the moment, when someone was playing ambient music at you and the lighting was too low and it seemed like a fine idea. Courts accept signed documents. The bar tab is a signed document. You signed it with your card.

What I Would Have Done

I would have had a Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned. A four-pack is sixteen dollars and ninety-nine cents. That is less than one of your smoked-walnut cocktails. Each can is eight milligrams of THC, fast onset, no drag, and it tastes like an actual old fashioned because it is made from the same ingredients bartenders use, not syrup and ambition. The conversation still gets good. The room still loosens up. You wake up the next morning without a receipt you are embarrassed to look at.

That is the entire comparison when you are doing THC drinks vs alcohol honestly, which nobody ever does, because honesty does not help the ambient surcharge industry.

One four-pack. Four cans. Four people at the table. Sixteen ninety-nine, plus whatever you are paying for the apartment you are sitting in, which you were paying for anyway and which does not charge you extra for the lighting.

You want variety? Fine. The Variety Pack is sixty-one dollars for sixteen cans. That is four four-packs. That is every character in the lineup: Lou's old fashioned, Mary's espresso martini, Herb's bellini, Jane's cosmopolitan. Eight milligrams each. One of everything. Sixty-one dollars. Against your two-round, four-person, ambient-surcharge-inclusive tab of two hundred and twenty-four dollars, the math is so embarrassing for the bar tab that I almost feel sorry for it.

Almost.

The Full THC Drinks vs Alcohol Audit, Settled

Here is the honest version of THC drinks vs alcohol that nobody puts on a menu because nobody at the bar wants you to do this math:

• • One smoked-walnut old fashioned: twenty-two dollars. One Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned: four dollars and twenty-five cents a can. The Lou's one actually tastes like an old fashioned.
• • The barrel-aged Flemish monastery beer: fourteen dollars. That money could have bought three cans from the Variety Pack with change left over for parking.
• • The ambient surcharge: eight dollars. For air. I do not have a product that competes with that because I do not charge for air. That is my competitive advantage.
• • The headache the next morning: free, and yet somehow the most expensive thing on the tab.

If Mary's M Train Double Espresso Martini is more your speed, that is also sixteen ninety-nine a four-pack. Rich, bold, double espresso, eight milligrams, and it will not require you to listen to a server explain the fermentation process. If Jane's crowd is coming over and they want something with a little more occasion to it, Jane's Fancy Shmancy Pomegranate Cosmopolitan is still sixteen ninety-nine a four-pack and Jane has standards, which is more than I can say for a bar that charges for ambient.

The four-pack is in the fridge right now, if you want to try the experiment yourself. No receipt. No surcharges. No smoked anything. Just the drink, at the right dose, in your own living room, where the lighting is whatever you want it to be because you are the one paying for the electricity and that is already in the electric bill, which is a separate moral document we can discuss another time.

Somebody at the table is going to say "another?" tonight. Know what you're going to say before they ask.

Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned. Straight up, classic, and a little stubborn. Just like the man it's named after. And it does not cost twenty-two dollars, which, at my age, is the most romantic thing I can say about a drink.

For adults 21+ only. Hemp-derived THC. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please drink responsibly and check the laws in your state.