Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits (Southern Glazer’s) just announced that its six-city Liquid Insights Tour is returning in 2024. The extensive, coast-to-coast educational initiative, led by the company’s National Accounts on-premise team, explores and identifies the latest trends in mixology and wine, the company states.
The Tour is a follow-up from 2022 when Southern Glazer’s identified 10 key trends across cocktails and wine for concepts to consider within their beverage programs – and will look to see what trends are still strong, accelerating, fading or emerging. This year’s Tour will include visits to new markets including Tampa, FL, Austin, TX, Portland, OR, and Denver, CO and will return to the cities of Los Angeles, CA and New York City, NY which were visited during the original 2022 Tour, according to the company.
Liquid Insights Explores Innovations
During the Tour, Southern Glazer’s team will visit a wide variety of bars, hotels, restaurants and other on-premise locations that serve liquid libations to customers. They will explore innovations driven by a new generation of diverse bartenders, as well as on-premise operators post-COVID recovery, to offer unique insights to share with the company’s sales consultants and industry partners, the company states.
Leading the Tour once again is Brian Masilionis, Senior Director, Customer Development, National Accounts On Premise. “The Liquid Insights Tour is just one of the many ways Southern Glazer’s works to exceed expectations of our customers with outstanding sales and service, through innovative strategies, unmatched relationships, cutting edge technology and the industry’s best trained and most talented team,” he said in a news release.
“On-premise businesses have experienced unprecedented and lasting change in response to the pandemic and these changes are still evident today,” added Debra Cantu, Vice President Customer Development, National Accounts On Premise. “Now more than ever, bars and restaurants will be driven to rely on innovative insights and solutions to help distinguish their beverage programs, to regain and surpass profits lost since 2019, and to continue to improve their differentiation in a highly competitive industry.”
In each city, the team will observe a variety of aspects of the on-premise beverage experience. This includes not only what beverages are served and which wine and spirits categories are most popular, but also unique flavors or flavor combinations, execution and presentation experiences, and beverage operations practices that improve speed, quality and profitability, the company states.
Information gathered during the Tour will be compiled and reviewed for synergies across the U.S. and compared to trends identified in 2022. The key findings of the Liquid Insights Tour will be announced in the third quarter of 2024, according to the company.
