Like any Kentucky restaurateur, Brian McCarty knows the value of bourbon to bars and restaurants. Yet the co-owner of Bluegrass Hospitality Group (whose restaurant brands include Sal’s, Malone’s, Meats BBQ Market and Drake’s) didn’t realize how much he’d taken the spirit for granted until a Seattle restaurateur told him Bulleit Distilling Co. founder Tom Bulleit was traveling there for a bourbon-centered dinner a few years ago.
“When he said that, I took notice; I knew that was significant,” McCarty said.
More compelling evidence soon confronted him: The number of barrel heads signed by restaurateurs and left on the walls at Woodford Reserve Distillery had grown exponentially since BHG made its first private barrel pick 12 years ago.
“A few years in you could draw a 200-mile radius around Versailles and that was it as far as who got those barrels,” he said. “Now when you look at them, you see people are coming from all over the country.”
Eager to learn about what they might have overlooked, McCarty, his BHG partner Bruce Drake and BHG Lexington market partner John McNamara hit the road for some research throughout the South. What they found were lots of bourbon restaurants and bourbon bars, but no blend of each.
“A good example is Husk restaurant [in Charleston, South Carolina] and The Bar at Husk,” McNamara said. “Totally separate operations. They never married the two.”
And that wasn’t good enough for McCarty.
“I love operating bars, but you won’t see me operating a bar without a restaurant,” he said. “We’re too passionate about the food side to not differentiate ourselves by hanging our hat on the culinary piece.
“At the end of the day, my Pappy Van Winkle tastes the same as others’ Pappy Van Winkle. We need food to go with that.”
Cooking Up Ideas for the Kitchen
The men launched into the creation OBC Kitchen, where whiskey would be the star and food would serve in an inseparable but supporting role. The bar would sport more than 400 bourbons, ryes, Scotches and whiskeys, be a creative playground for mixologists making craft cocktails and create an unparalleled spirits-centered experience.
It would be casual and tavern-like, but not in the beer-and-a-shot sense. It would seek to serve the whiskey wonk out for an unmatched range of options and an educational experience.
To make room for the new concept, BHG closed its Harry’s location in Lansdowne Shoppes on Tates Creek Road and divided the space between (what was then the future) Meats BBQ Market and “OBC,” which stands for Old Bourbon County.
Its owners believed they had to raise the service bar to “an individualized experience,” McCarty said. And to find servers who could achieve that, they asked managers at each of their restaurants to identify five people who demonstrated above average dedication to their work.
“We knew it was going to be [a server] with a different mindset about service and about whiskey,” said McCarty. “The bartender who’s slinging Bud Light all night long wasn’t going to be the mixologist creating a craft cocktail list.”
When the final service crew was selected, they spent three days of paid intensive training divided between whiskey study and learning to cook every dish on the menu.
“We wanted them to be knowledgeable about the ingredients, how they relate to the cocktails and spirits they were serving, and to know what the process was to put that together,” said Alan Lamoureux, BHG’s corporate chef, who instructed servers personally. “It gave them the confidence to talk to their tables about food and spirits.”
Since most BHG restaurants seat about 275 at each, OBC Kitchen’s 70 seats made it diminutive by comparison. But to provide the high level of service Drake and McCarty wanted, the guest count needed to be manageable. Its smaller footprint also helps the brand’s unit-level economics.
“This is a 16,000-square-foot building, yet OBC sits in less than 1,000 square feet of that,” McCarty said.
Sharing the space are Malone’s, Drake’s and Meats.
“And it can share the resources of its brothers and sisters and operate at a much lower cost,” he said.
The concept has done well since its December 2014 opening and, according to McCarty, it has exceeded expectations.
“We couldn’t be happier with it,” he said. “And it’s absolutely the perfect size. I think we’ve found the sweet spot where it has its own individuality.”
While still benefitting from the mother company, of course. Without the buying power of Bluegrass Hospitality, McCarty said, OBC Kitchen likely couldn’t get the vast array of rare whiskeys on offer.
“It’s a feather in our cap to have relationships with distributors that will source these hard-to-find bourbons for us,” McCarty said. “If you put this concept in another market right now, it’s likely they’ll only have access to about 30 percent of what Kentucky restaurateurs at our level have access to all the time.”
Even with a hit on their hands, McCarty and Drake believe OBC Kitchen will be hard to duplicate, partly for the aforementioned cost benefits enjoyed in the shadow of its sister brands. But as Lamoureux added, finding such a high-quality workforce will pose an equally large challenge.
“We handpicked these people, and we already had a history of what type of people they were,” Lamoureux said. “If it goes to another market, they’ll have a much harder time finding the kind of people that make this work.”
The front-of-the-house labor is exceptionally intensive, said general manager Michael Harper. The veteran bartender’s staff arrives at least three hours prior to opening to make scratch bitters, shrubs and syrups, and squeeze fresh juices for cocktails.
“Every step in our cocktail-making is hands on, like torching a zest of orange for a drink,” Harper said. “All those things added together make great cocktails, and to do that we have to cultivate a Bluegrass Hospitality frame of mind.”
Nearly all the bar’s liquid stock is lined up on lighted shelves for guests to peruse, while the opposite wall features an easy-to-read black and white letter-and-slot board featuring its entire list plus private barrel picks. If such views aren’t informative enough, guests can use a computer tablet to look up spirits descriptions.
And yet Harper says the whiskey wonks are still quick to employ their smartphones to get more information.
“Since everyone has a smartphone, if you don’t know the answer, your guest will,” Harper said.
Yet instead of staff and customers correcting each other, Harper said the information exchange is convivial.
“The experience is friendly and interactive, especially with the cocktails,” Harper said. “Our bartenders love to create one-off cocktail experiments if a guest can’t find what they want on our list.”
Should the opportunity arise to expand OBC Kitchen, McCarty said Louisville would be a natural option. (The city already is home to a pair of Drake’s.) In fact, he’s already fielded offers for licensing arrangements, but he said it’s far too early to consider any.
“I like to wait for a year to 18 months to let a brand settle in before I make a decision going forward,” he said. “But at the end of the day, this may be a one and done. I definitely don’t lay awake at night dreaming of how to build a bunch of OBCs.”