Lou's Official Verdict on THC Cocktails vs Bar Tab: Ice Is Weather and Weather Is Free
I have the receipt in my hand right now. I am looking at it. I have been looking at it for four days and I am not calming down about it. The bar charged me for the ice. Not the drink. Not the glass. Not the seventeen minutes it took the person behind the bar to look up from their phone and acknowledge I was standing there. The ice. There is a line item. It says "ice." It has a price next to it. I am a reasonable man and I am telling you this is a crime.
Ice is frozen weather. Weather is free. I did not invent that principle, I simply recognized it, which is more than I can say for whoever printed this receipt.
This is my official verdict on THC cocktails vs bar tab, and I am going to tell you exactly how this audit went, because somebody has to say it and I have been waiting by the phone.
The Audit: A Full Accounting of What They Are Actually Charging You For
Let us go line by line. I have done this professionally. I sold pipe for thirty years. I know how numbers work.
The drink: fine. You walked in, you ordered something, somebody poured liquid into a container. That is a transaction. I understand transactions. I respect transactions.
The "mixology fee": I am not going to dignify that. You stirred it. You used a spoon. A spoon is not a credential.
The "craft ice surcharge": here is where I got loud. Craft ice. CRAFT. They froze the water in a different shape. It is still water. It is still frozen. It is still weather. A cube is not artisanal because someone cut it with a saw and gave it a name. That is not craft, that is geometry, and geometry has been free since Euclid.
The "ambient music fee": I did not see that one coming. I did not ask for ambient music. I did not consent to ambient music. If anything, they should be paying me. I could hear it outside in the parking lot, which is where I conduct most of my important business calls, and I did not appreciate the intrusion.
The "smoked rosemary garnish" on the old fashioned: I am going to stop right there. Somebody put a smoked rosemary sprig in an old fashioned and handed it across the bar like they had just solved a cold case. You do not garnish an old fashioned. You do not improve an old fashioned. You do not smoke anything near an old fashioned except a cigarette, and even then you should feel a little guilty about it. You sit down, you drink what works, and you keep your herbs in the kitchen where they belong. I should have called someone.
What a Bar Tab Is Actually Paying For (Spoiler: Not the Drink)
I have thought about this carefully and I have concluded that a modern bar tab is roughly forty percent beverage and sixty percent apology money. You are paying for the inconvenience of being there. You are paying for the ambient discomfort of a stool that was designed by someone who has never sat on anything. You are paying for the experience of waiting while a person with a very specific type of vest explains the provenance of the bitters.
Nobody asked about the bitters. I did not ask about the bitters. I said old fashioned. That is a complete sentence. That is a full order. The bitters are implied. They were always implied. We have been implying bitters in this country for over a hundred and fifty years and we were doing fine.
Here is what I have started doing instead, and I am telling you this as a man who spent three decades not wasting money on things that do not earn it. I opened a can of Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned at my own kitchen counter, on my own ice, which I made myself, for free, because I own a freezer and the sky does not charge a surcharge. Eight milligrams of THC. Real bitters, real orange, real oak flavor. Classic. Correct. Nobody garnished it with anything. Nobody charged me for the shape of the ice. Nobody explained the bitters. I did not need the explanation. I have been alive long enough to understand bitters.
The drink was good. The bar tab was zero. I am winning.
The Full Variety of Things They Will Charge You For, Going Forward, Based on Current Trends
- The ice (established, documented, currently in litigation in my mind)
- The air in the glass above the ice
- The light that hits the glass (ambient lighting fee, see above)
- The journey the citrus peel took to get to the rim
- The moment of silence between when you ordered and when they started making it
- The name on the menu that has an accent mark in a word that does not require an accent mark
- The vibe
I am not making the vibe one up. I have seen a receipt that said "atmosphere." I did not enjoy the atmosphere. The atmosphere was loud and the stool was wrong and someone near me was explaining NFTs to a date who had clearly already decided to leave. You cannot charge me for that atmosphere. That atmosphere was a penalty, not an amenity.
My Official Recommendation, Issued Today, Non-Negotiable
Stop going to bars that charge for the ice. I know that sounds dramatic. It is not dramatic. It is math. Every dollar you spend on ice that fell from the sky for free is a dollar that could have gone toward something that was actually made, by actual people, with actual ingredients.
The Variety Pack exists. It has all four of them: Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned, Mary's M Train Double Espresso Martini, Herb's Very Manly Peach Bellini, Jane's Fancy Shmancy Pomegranate Cosmopolitan. Eight milligrams each. No alcohol, no hangover, no man in a vest, no receipt with a line item that makes you want to sit very still and think about your life choices. Sixteen cans. One price. No ice surcharge, because I put the ice in myself, for free, because I am not a fool.
It is in the fridge right now. I already checked.
If you want to understand more about why we built these the way we did and why the dose matters, I wrote some of that up over in the Opinions somewhere. Herb took most of the credit for the science. He always does. That is a separate issue I am also auditing.
The Verdict
Ice is weather. Weather is free. The bar knows this, and they charged you anyway, and they put a rosemary sprig on top to distract you from the math.
I am not distracted. I have a watch that stopped in 2009 and it is still right twice a day, which is a better accuracy rate than most of the receipts I have been handed in this city. I have done the audit. I have reviewed the line items. I have issued the ruling.
Damn right.
Herb & Lou's canned THC cocktails contain 8mg hemp-derived THC per can. For adults 21 and older only. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please check your local laws before ordering.
← Back to all opinions