LIQUIDS

By Annie Post

The bar stands alone as the last low-carb frontier. There are a zillion active low-carbers--32 million to be exact--with nary a bar to call home... except maybe yours.

The most serious, first-to-market, competitive weapon you have right now is to market your bar as not just low-carbohydrate friendly but low- carb fired up. Almost no one is doing it, despite astonishing demand. The Harris Poll people say one out of every seven adult Americans are active low-carbers. While all the chains are methodically perfecting their soon-to-be-released low-carb cocktails--and they are--you can make it happen tomorrow. Here's why you should and how you can.

What's Up with Low-Carb
While every other food service sector has been ramping up, the bar has been relatively unresponsive to the low-carb craze. That is about to change very fast. The Globe and Mail's Beppi Crosariol summarizes the bar's near future by predicting that 2004 will be the year that "clean and lean will finally belly up to the bar."

Look at spirit and beer producers with all their low-carb product launches and market repositioning. They don't do that stuff on a whim. They've got the research. They've got Goldman Sachs telling them that 20 percent of consumers consider carbohydrate content in beer to be "very" or "extremely" important. READ THAT AGAIN. And that number is even higher for premium light beer drinkers. Look at Michelob Ultra, the first to test the low-carb waters. It's been called the most successful new beer launch since Miller Lite (which has recently repositioned advertising to trumpet that it's always been low-carb). So, no surprise, now we have Rolling Rock's Green Light and any minute Coor's Aspen Edge, and ...

Spirits?   Notice Diageo's holiday ad campaign with an upside-down bottle of "Zero Carbs" Smirnoff and its lowcarbparties.com that has enlisted Queer Eye for the Straight Guy F&B expert Ted Allen to help promote. UV Vodka and Bacardi are onboard as well.   And if you aren't convinced by the research, take it from Bill Lombardo, CEO of Monin Gourmet Flavorings. He was brought in to discuss creating custom low-carb coffee house drinks for one of those bookstores that starts with a "B" as in "big." Lombardo asked why, and was told that of its 22,000 titles, one out of seven being sold is The South Beach Diet. Torani, another gourmet syrup company, has seen four of its sugar-free flavorings shoot up into their top 10 selling list in the last six months.

Low-carb matters very much to consumers, to spirit and beer companies, and very soon to bars. Who ever gets there first, wins.

Carbing Out a Niche for Dieters
Sound like an idea? OK, how do you get started? A couple of low-carb caveats, some nutritional info, a few recipes and you'll be daydreaming about this stuff. Once you've got your menu figured out, promote the heck out of it. These low-carbers are cultish, so have a low-carb cocktail hour and let the back of the house get low-carb creative as well. Low-carbers message board each other to death. They talk up restaurants that cater to them. Get on the boards and get your word out. Hand low-carbing customers (the ones who order vodka and soda or a low-carb beer) "Laminate This!" (opposite page) and let them mix and match their own from the ingredients list. Create a "Customers'-Best Low-Carb Cocktails" list, with drink creations named after their creator. You get the idea. Finally, we have a drinking person's diet. Celebrate.