Things Could Be Better
At the best cocktail bar in New York[^1] you can get a cocktail for about $18.
At various other mediocre cocktail bars, you can get a mediocre cocktail for $16. (If you really care to you can go to a classy hotel and get a mediocre cocktail for $32).
My question is basically: why?
Surely, either:
1) better cocktail-making-technique should spread among bars, such that there isn't as big a quality-gap between the good ones and the bad ones,
or
2) the best cocktail bars could charge higher prices
This isn't (I think) unique to cocktails: the best croissants (etc) I can find are maybe 20% more expensive, which to me feels completely inadequate to the difference in quality. Why don't these better places either franchise themselves and out-compete everyone else, or charge 2x (or more) what the mediocre spots charge?
One answer is that the diffusion of quality does happen, it just takes time. I can't personally vouch for this but I'm told third-wave coffeeshops dragged up the average quality of coffee everywhere, it just took 20 years to do it.
Another answer is that the "product" component of the price of your vittles in big cities trends towards zero: if $14 of the price of your drink goes to rent and taxes, and only $2-4 goes to actually making drinks, then maybe the high-quality places are indeed charging twice as much on that component.
One more answer is that other people just like different stuff than I do. But I don't think that's an adequate explanation: I fully understand why there's a market for (say) watery American beer, which is completely detached from the market for high-end cocktails, and there's no reason why the ratio of these two prices should match my opinions about their relative merits.
And yet, I'm not sure I can truly believe that there are people who value (say) a badly-made Gin and Tonic equal to a well-made Last Word[^2], so I think the relative prices of those two things should vary accordingly. But perhaps this is one more of those taste-issues of which nothing can be said, and I'm just confusing my is and my ought.
The title of this blogpost is borrowed from Adam, whose Things Could Be Better you can read here .
[^1]: I believe it's Dutch Kills, and I believe $18 is correct, but maybe it's gone up again. I'm cheating slightly because Dutch Kills is in Queens and the best cocktail bars in Manhattan charge higher, but somewhere $18-22 is market as of summer 2025. I still don't think this is at all proportionate to the quality gap.
Incidentally, the funniest cocktail bar in New York is Sunken Harbor Club, which is pirate themed, and has a unique combination of Tiki Bar-level decoration with A-grade (though not A*) drinks. It's funniest if you don't know what you're in for, so I recommend taking someone and not-telling them about the theme beforehand. This is extra funny because it's on top of Gage & Tollner, a very classy oyster-bar-looking establishment which you walk into beforehand, such that going up the stairs to Sunken Harbor feels ridiculous.
[^2]: the best cocktail I ever had (in my memory, at least) was called Coffee & Cigarettes from The Violet Hour in Chicago. It is not the same as the Coffee & Cigarettes from Death & Co in New York, the cigarette came from tobacco bitters rather than smoky whisky. I can't for the life of me find a recipe online, if you know it (or how to find it) I beg you to contact me.