"I thought, why don't we build an app, like the bartending app that I wish I had when I started bartending?" recalls Menkal. Cocktail Copilot is a first-of-its-kind interactive encyclopedia of cocktails with around 420 recipes, about a hundred of which come straight from the creative minds at Williams & Graham. The app's sleek design features an orange slice logo and cocktail profile pages that provide guidance on ingredients, appropriate glassware, garnishes and ice, preparation methods, and a handful of in-depth history blurbs where necessary.
"I wanted to make a place that had all the accurate information of the current canon of classic cocktails and modern classic cocktails that was all in one place," says Menkal. Ironically, Menkal has been gearing up to leave the bartending business and pursue a career in the IOS development industry, spending his free time studying. For his first full-fledged project, he enlisted the help of his close friend and previous coworker, Matt Hunt, who taught himself to code during the pandemic and now works in the tech industry.
"There's not a third party that you're playing this game of telephone with, saying 'I'm a bartender, here's what I want. Now as a programmer, try to understand me the best you can and give me that product,'" says Menkal. "There's no middle man [like] that, it's just the user is the builder." Hunt had worked at Death & Co as well as Williams & Graham, so between the two friends, the app is a definite ode to the bartending industry.
Menkal gives credit to Hunt's knowledge of programming and coding for making the process possible. "That's the benefit that you get of the bartender being the coder is we're the ones using it, and we're the ones that know how to build out the functionality," he says.
Menkal himself has been in the service industry for the past 25 years and the bartending industry for the past thirteen. Having two such seasoned professionals familiar with the intricacies of the job work on the project ensured a level of nuance that an outsider simply couldn't achieve, down to the permanent dark mode feature that makes it ideal for a subtle refresher behind the bar during service.
"It'll tell you the exact math for the batch based on the bottles that you have on hand," says Menkal. "Depending on the vessels that you have at your bar, you can split up the batch however you want, and it'll tell you exactly how much to put in each batch." The built-in batch calculator also allows you to translate measurement units and specify the dilution percentage.
"The search functionality is much broader than anything else that exists in the app space," says Menkal. The app also offers a filtered search bar that allows users to specify liquors, syrups — virtually any ingredient — and find cocktails that do or don't include them, categorized by a "perfect match" or "partial match." Users can also create their own cocktail profiles to add to the database or search any existing cocktail and tweak the ingredients to create a personalized riff on a recipe.
"Now you have a resource that gives you that confidence of, when I'm behind the bar, I don't really have to say no to anything. I have all the classics in my pocket," says Menkal.
Much of the inspiration for the app came from the dedication to innovative mixology at Williams & Graham. Menkal notes that the bar changes its drink menu every three months — and after more than thirteen years in business, you don't need a batching calculator to know that's a lot of cocktails. "The more we progressed as a team, the more intense and kind of gastronomically focused they became," says Menkal. "Now we're doing a lot of different kinds of clarifications, with citrus, milk punches, different fat washes and infusions, and all of these things that are really increasingly becoming more difficult."
A decent portion of the compiled beverages on the app serves as a virtual Williams & Graham Hall of Fame, with riffs on classics and fresh inventions dotting the list. "It's a Denver home-grown thing and it's got Williams & Graham all over it, which I'm really proud of," says Menkal. Of course, some secrets and recipes still remain in-house privileges.
Menkal also gleaned inspiration from a desire to revive a lost history of the cocktail. "What a lot of people don't realize is the cocktail bar is an inherently American invention," he says. "It stemmed from making medicine taste better, and then during our Prohibition from 1920 to 1933, it was making poorly made spirits taste better."
Menkal wistfully recounts an American alcohol culture that was lost during and after Prohibition, and only restored to its full scope in the 1990s and early 2000s, when intricate cocktail creations and snazzy cocktail bars rose in popularity. "Then there [were] James Beard award-winning authors like Dave Wondrich, Dave Arnold and Jeff Berry who unearthed all these esoteric recipes so that we could recreate them as bartenders," he says.
To sum up the intention behind Cocktail Copilot, Menkal shares the story of The Real Book, a near mythical collection of jazz sheet music that passed through the hands of jazz icons in the 1970s as "a way for jazz musicians to connect with each other and share this kind of music that was like, 'If you're cool, we're gonna give you this manual for our language,'" he says.
James Menkal designed the Cocktail Copilot app to be perfect for a bartender to take a peek at recipes during service.
John Schramm
Breaking into the bartending industry is a tough game, and just googling cocktail recipes isn't enough to acquire the vast amount of knowledge and nuanced trade secrets that candidates are expected to know. "This is just a distillation of all that information into one place that is really the stuff that high-end cocktails bars are looking for from the bartender, in a format that's at your fingertips and super, super fast, incredibly responsive," says Menkal.
The app incorporates what Menkal is confident is the most future-proof and modern of syntax, the Apple brand developer Swift Data. He intends to continue adding to the app alongside Hunt, with aspirations to create a social feature so that others can view your cocktail creation profiles, including over AirDrop.
"It's amazing for a home bartender. It's giving away all of our secrets: all the syrups are on there, all the build orders are on there," says Menkal. "They get to feel like, 'This is what it's like behind the bar.'"
Menkal is committed to keeping the app free, so that it can continue to serve as an accessible tool, both for the busy bartender and the curious at-home mixologist. "It's just a really cool, clear and concise manual for bartenders," he concludes.
Cocktail Copilot is available for free to download on the App Store. Williams & Graham is located at 3160 Tejon Street and is open daily from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.
