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2. Chris Cardone Crafts Winning Cocktails, Alcohol Optional

For Chris Cardone '02, an award-winning mixologist, a fine cocktail is about creating an experience. Alcohol is strictly optional.

A 26-year veteran bartender and managing partner at the 18 Bay restaurant in Jamesport, Long Island, Cardone was named Bartender of the Year in 2017 after winning the Diageo World Class Bartending U.S. Competition, the world's largest global mixology competition.

And he won the competition while abstaining from alcohol himself.

That year, he also placed 5th overall in the Diageo World Class Global and was a two-time Top 5 national finalist in 2014 and 2016. Cardone has also trained multiple celebrities in the art of flair bartending, including Neil Patrick Harris, Tom Holland, and Josh Elliott. He's appeared on the Epicurious "12 Bartenders" series, where he explored classic cocktails and demonstrated how bartenders with different styles approach recipes and execution. He is also a partner and consultant on the Astraeus Single Malt Gin project and served as a "healthy mixology" educator with Exubrancy. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Newsday, New York Magazine, Chilled Magazine, and The Beverage Journal.

At Bloomsburg, Cardone was a public relations major who viewed bartending simply as a means to pay the bills. "I fully intended to go into advertising or public relations," Cardone recalls. "I thought bartending would just be a way to pay my debt for college. And then it just sort of swallowed me up. It's the whirlwind of the restaurant industry-it's hard to get out once you're in it."
For Cardone, being named Bartender of the Year validated the decision he'd made a year before to take a break from alcohol, which had become "a lifestyle," and signaled that he still had a career as a mixologist.

"I truly intended that it would be a one-year break and I would get right back to drinking the next day," says Cardone. "And I got to maybe six or seven months, and I started to evaluate my life, and every single aspect of my life was better because I wasn't a go out and have a glass of wine person. I was a go out and have two bottles of wine person. There was no aspect-from fatherhood to relationship, to coworker, to friend, to person, to internal feelings-nothing about my life was not getting better because of this choice."

"Everything was improving around me. I had this moment where I realized, I said, 'why would I ever go back to this?'" says Cardone. "There was a navigation of trying to figure out what I was going to do with my career, what I was going to do with my life, how I was going to be able to go out to bars or restaurants and feel comfortable. Now I've just crossed 10 years. I don't even remember that life anymore, and I can't imagine going back to it."

"The thing I miss is the emotional or social connection. And with the advancement of non-alcoholic products, I don't need the alcohol," says Cardone, who recently hosted a virtual cocktail-making class for alumni featuring both alcoholic and non-alcoholic recipes. "I can go out to a restaurant and have a good cocktail to start my meal, which just doesn't have alcohol in it. Or if I'm making a toast, I can have a non-alcoholic sparkling beverage to still be involved in that toast. There's an emotional attachment to certain things that alcohol brings to you, but that's the catch: it doesn't have to do with alcohol; it has to do with the experience. For me, the non-alcoholic version of that easily satisfies that emotional connection need."

Providing those non-alcoholic options is also good business.

"The majority of people who drink non-alcoholic cocktails are not abstainers," says Cardone, who recently hosted an online cocktail class for Bloomsburg alumni. "They're taking a night off or just wanting to go back and forth. You want to make sure everybody has the option to have the same experience regardless of whether there's alcohol in the drink or not."
For Cardone, a non-alcoholic drink isn't a "mocktail" - it's a proper cocktail. "If the drink is delicious and it's made properly, with the same attention to freshness and manipulation of ingredients," Cardone says, "it really doesn't matter what the ABV is."

"Sprite is cheaper than a cocktail. For the business owner, you're making more money if you have non-alcoholic cocktail options. The server makes more tips because their check average went up."

"Service is black and white; hospitality is color. I tell my staff, don't look at your sales and don't look at your tips, just make sure that everyone leaves the restaurant happier than when they came in. If the guests leave happy, then we made a difference and the money will take care of itself."

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