Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kristen Kreft and Mayalou Banatwala. Owners and Operators of Rocktails: An Amped Up Spin on
Mixology

Kristen and Mayalou, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

Mixologists seek to create a well balanced cocktail and often include tutorials on how to construct the cocktail partnered with bar training. Some also like to include cocktail history so that you can get a better idea of how mixology began and has transformed.. We like to take all of that and honor musicians as well. This creative approach sets us apart from the rest of the mixologists in our industry. By combining music history and appreciation we include a separate audio and visual affair to our craft. We want the entire experience to exist on its own, allowing it to exceed your usual cocktail journey. We often include live musical performances at our events where musicians perform the music that was inspired to create a unique cocktail. We are performers and therefore look at everything we create as such.

Kristen and Mayalou, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We are the owners and founders of Rocktails: An Amped Up Spin on Mixology. We have a combined 41 years of experience in the service industry working in establishments ranging form fine dining restaurants, high volume mixology bars, kitschy corner bars and music venues in the both the Cincinnati area and New York City. We are both musicians and teachers as well as authors of 2 books under the Rocktails Brand. Our mission is to honor music through the art of mixology, whether it be writing music history cocktail books, as bar consultants training bar staff to be “Rockstar Bartenders”, as creative menu designers, or excellent event beverage specialists.

We started our business in 2018 by documenting our year as a Pop Up Bar in the form of a coffee table cocktail book. We enjoyed turning one of our favorite bars into a fresh new environment once a month with a specialized cocktail menu 100% inspired by the music we booked for the evening. Through this experience, we wrote our next book “Cincinnati Rocktails” which was picked up by the publisher Praus Press. This book features 31 musical artists with a Cincinnati Connection (such as James Brown and Rosemary Clooney.) Each chapter celebrates the musician’s personal history, their Cincinnati Connection and a cocktail we designed in their honor. In order to promote our book, we produced events such as an immersive dinner theater with a full band playing songs form artists in our books, as well as fashion shows depicting cocktails, cocktail tutorials both online and in person, and many more small and large events. This promoting evolved by word of mouth into full fledged bar programs for weddings, corporate parties and interactive musical cocktail tutorials.

As word spread, we continued to grow and build, on our own, a beautiful website. With the combination of our unique book concept, and a growing online presence, Hard Rock Casino Cincinnati contacted us to help them as bar consultants to open the Casino. For the past year we have been training the Hard Rock bartenders and designing the cocktail menus for each bar under its roof.

We were also surprised when GoDaddy.com reached out to feature us in their “icons” series. We were invited to go through a lengthy, almost 6 month “audition/interview” and were one of 4 small businesses chosen to feature in the “Cincinnati Icons” edition.

We are always creating new drinks and recipes and collecting more histories on musical artists to honor. Our next book, “Libatious Ladies,” which we are writing currently, will feature musical ladies from all genres, eras, and regions. We are excited to incorporate both traditional cocktails and spirit free drinks for each chapter, and are lucky to be able to sell not only our books, but our cocktail kits at a few local stores such as Toko Baru, Originalitees, Hyde Park Gourmet, and Roebling Point Books and Coffee.

Right now we are growing our Event Beverage Services and have made great strides by creating clear cut packages to clients and providing a one of kind, memorable bar experience fitted to each customers specific needs. We are so proud to have done all of this on our own.

How’d you meet each other?

We met working side by side at a fast paced mixology bar back in 2011 that employed mainly musicians. We knew of each other peripherally from the music scene and our bands often played shows together. Each bartender at the bar had the luxury of creating and curating their own featured cocktail menu each week. As we continued to work with each other, we noticed that our personally designed menus often were constructed by paying homage to music one way or another, both local and global. As musicians, we were really interested in tying together our love of music and drinks. We always had a lot of fun working together and complemented each other behind the bar by belting out tunes, or just having a certain flow or ability to dance around our close bar quarters effortlessly. We started to playfully discuss writing a book honoring musicians through the art of mixology, and had a ridiculous list of titles for our yet-to be-written book. When we hit on “Rocktails” it was like we heard our first hit song playing on the radio! In order to create that book we began to host pop up bar nights booking musicians and honoring them with hand crafted cocktails that reflected their musicianship. After releasing our first book we were inspired to write our second, “Cincinnati Rocktails” which then catapulted us into the world of private events, bar consulting and cocktail infusion kits. We continue to push the bar on what we can accomplish.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

One might look at each aspect of our lives as “side hustles,” but our reality has never been that at all. We are artful people, both of us, with incredible drive to succeed and do the absolute best in every endeavor. Our attention to detail and desire to put 150% into each project has not allowed us to treat one thing with more value than another. Our combined education ranges from Musical Theater, Spanish, English, and Creative Writing. Our love of history makes us thirsty to learn and be able to then share our knowledge with the world. Our pride in performance both on the stage and behind the bar allows us to polish our skills to entertain whomever is in our “audience.” When we pulled together all of the facets of our personalities, we got Rocktails. We believe we have paved our own way bringing all of our passions and talents to the collective table. We continue to grow, create and learn, which is what makes our job so rewarding and fresh each day.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.AmericanRocktails.com
• Instagram: Www.Instagram.com/rocktailsbooks_events
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rocktails-An-Amped-Up-Spin-on-Mixology-1537500159673282/ rocktailsbooks

Image Credits
Photos by Sybilka Storie, Angie Lipscomb, and Annette Navaro. Book cover Design and Layout by Jeni Jenkins-Moore Rocktails Rendering Drawn by Dylan Speeg