Feature: Sippin’ Santa Pop-Up

Christmas vacation in a winter wonderland, or a tropical island getaway? Why choose just one? That’s the idea behind “Sippin’ Santa,” Cocktail Kingdom’s tiki and tinsel pop-up, a spinoff of their wildly popular “Miracle” Christmas pop-up.

My New Orleans bar-restaurant, Latitude 29, opened in November 2014 with a roar, but by December we felt a creeping maiaise: The Crescent City can be damp and gloomy in the winter, and everyone’s desperate for a bit of cheer. So when Cocktail Kingdom CEO Greg Boehm asked Latitude 29 to participate in a tropical test-drive of his “Miracle” follow-up, “Sippin’ Santa’s Surf Shack,” which was only being featured in two other bars, all I asked was “Where do I sign?”

Over the next nine years, the pop-up had a name change and a growth spurt: There are now 55 bars across the U.S. and Canada participating in “Beachbum Berry Presents Sippin’ Santa,” rebranded by Greg when I took over the cocktail program, creating new drinks with my bar team every year like the Jingle Bird, Sugar Plum Mai Tai, and a Christmas stocking full of North Pole meets South Seas mashups. In fact, only one of the first season’s cocktails, the Sippin’ Santa, has yet to be replaced by something new (see sidebar).

Besides this ever-evolving drink menu, Cocktail Kingdom offers partner bars exclusive Tiki mugs and glassware both for service and retail merch, over-the-top transportive decor, coordinated social media, and national print and TV publicity. The upshot? Latitude 29’s customers now start asking about “Sippin’ Santa” in June, and they don’t stop until the pop-up starts just after Thanksgiving. Talk about a Christmas miracle!

 — Jeff “Beachbum” Berry