The Bar Tab as a Moral Document, and Why Yours Is an Indictment
I have the receipt right here. Literally. I am standing in the parking lot, it is eleven degrees, and I am going through this thing line by line on speakerphone because somebody has to. You are welcome. This is what I do. I audit. I find the problems. I tell you what they are whether you asked or not. And this old fashioned thc drink situation, this bar tab situation, this "we charged you for craft ice" situation, is a problem I intend to document for the public record.
The bar tab is a moral document. Every line item tells you something about the man who signed it. And what yours is telling me right now is not flattering.
Line by Line: The Full Audit
Let us begin.
Line one. The smoked rosemary garnish surcharge. Three dollars.
Somebody put a smoked rosemary sprig in an old fashioned and handed it to me like a hero. I should have called the police. You do not garnish an old fashioned. You do not improve it. You do not wave a burning herb over it like you are blessing a casserole. You sit down, you shut up, and you drink what works. An old fashioned is whiskey, bitters, sugar, orange peel. That is it. That is the whole philosophy. You do not add rosemary. You do not add smoke. You do not add drama. And I am absolutely not paying three dollars for the privilege of watching a bartender ruin a classic cocktail in real time.
Line two. Craft ice. Four dollars.
Ice is weather. Weather is free. I am not bankrolling a charity for the sky. "Craft ice." They cut a giant cube out of a block and charged me four dollars. You know what that is? That is a man with a knife and a lot of confidence charging me four dollars for frozen water. I have a freezer. My freezer makes ice. My freezer does not charge me. My freezer has more dignity than this entire establishment.
Line three. Old fashioned. Eighteen dollars.
Eighteen dollars. For a drink that is, at its core, a glass of whiskey that someone waved an orange peel at. Eighteen dollars, plus the three-dollar rosemary crime, plus the four-dollar sky water. That is twenty-five dollars for something that was ruined before it reached the table. And I paid it. Because I was sitting down and my coat was already off and leaving felt like too much of a statement. That is how they get you. They make you comfortable and then they rob you slowly and you let them because standing up in a restaurant is a whole thing.
Line four. The tip.
The suggested tip options were twenty percent, twenty-five percent, and thirty percent. There was no option for zero percent. There was no option that said "the drink was ruined by a rosemary sprig and I am emotionally damaged." The screen just stared at me with those three numbers and a little spinning circle like I was taking too long. I picked twenty. I am not a monster. But I want it on the record that I did it under duress.
Line five. The "venue fee."
I do not know what this is. There was no explanation. It was just there. Two dollars. A venue fee. I was charged money for being inside a building. A building I chose to enter. A building that wanted my business. And they charged me for the building itself. I am going to start charging people a venue fee for my parking lot. Two dollars. You want to stand near my car while I am on speakerphone? That will be two dollars. See how they like it.
The Only Receipt I Can Live With
Here is what a good receipt looks like. I will tell you exactly what is on it.
Four cans. Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned. Eight milligrams of THC each. No bartender. No rosemary. No craft ice. No venue fee. No spinning tip screen staring at me like a disappointed parent. No surcharges. No smoke. No drama.
Real old fashioned flavor, bitters, orange, oak, done correctly, in a can that was made by people who understand that an old fashioned is not a canvas for self-expression. It is a drink. It has been a drink since before most of these bartenders were born. It does not need help. It does not need a sprig of anything. It needs to be left alone and consumed by a man who has had a long day.
That is the receipt. Four cans. Sixteen milligrams of nothing going wrong. No tipping a screen. No paying for weather. No watching someone torch an herb over my glass like a medieval ritual. Just the drink, the way it is supposed to be, in the parking lot or on the couch, wherever you want, because nobody is charging you a venue fee for your own couch.
If you want to see what an old fashioned thc drink is supposed to look like before the bar industry got its hands on it, I wrote more about this in Damn Right It's an Old Fashioned: A Case for the Classics. Read it. Take notes. There will not be a quiz but you clearly need the education.
And while you are at it, if you want to see what else we have done correctly, the Variety Pack has all four cans so you can conduct your own audit of the competition. Spoiler: the competition loses. The competition charged you four dollars for ice.
The cans are in the fridge right now. No receipt. No surcharges. No rosemary. Just the drink.
You are welcome.
The bar tab is a moral document. And four cans at sixteen ninety-nine is the only moral position left.
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. For adults 21 and older only. Hemp-derived THC. Please drink responsibly and check the laws in your state.
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