Greenbar Collective's Bitters Challenge: Enter Your Bitters, Win Your Own Brand

Greenbar Collective

Need a little spare cocktail change? If you've got a good bitters recipe, Greenbar Collective wants to (potentially) pay you for it. There is, of course, plenty of fine print. You must be a bartender - one with an actual job in the hospitality industry - and you must live in California or Texas. Oh, and your formula has to actually win in order to share in the profits.

Last we checked in with the Monrovia-based spirits company, owner Melkon Khosrovian was releasing his new Bar Keep Bitters line, the three winning bitters formulas chosen after a nation-wide call to bartenders to submit their best formulas. The winning formulas, a baked apple, Swedish herb and lavender spice bitters, were released in August. The new contest is a result of those bitters selling so well.

"We almost didn't think much of anything would come of [the bitters] when we did the contest two years ago," said Khosrovian when we spoke with him earlier this week. "But it proved to be a runaway success, so we decided to do another with California and Texas bartenders." Why only those two states, after the first competition was nationwide, you ask? We wondered, too.

"The bar scene in California is so great, we were flabbergasted no one won here," he says of the first contest. Khosrovian says initial batch of Bar Keep, released in August, sold out in a month. "We thought it would last the rest of the year," he says. The next batch sold out before they finished making it. The most recent, the 4th batch, is also almost depleted.

Which gets us to the not-quite-nationwide contest. "Texas, like California, has some of the best things going on right now," says Khosrovian. "The bar scene in Austin and Houston particularly is filled with great bartenders."

That they also happen to be the two most populated states, with several million more potential imbibers than most, might have had something to do with it. Good news for you, if you happen to submit the winning recipe (entries deadline is March 15, get the rules here). "The prize is your face on the bottle, and part of the proceeds goes in your pocket," says Khosrovian. His pocket, too, of course. Which, come to think of it, makes this a bit like splitting the bar tab, only in this case, the bartender is paying you. Let's hope it's a ridiculously expensive round.