Manchester’s TGI Fridays took the cocktail world into some weird and wonderful new territory yesterday, with artists showcasing a very different take on promoting drinks.
The ‘100 hundred cocktails as 100 works of art’ event promoted new additions to the cocktail menu on offer and succeeded in capturing that Friday feeling with some quirky unexpected twists.
Local illustrator Erin Echo was on hand to turn the Twitter profile pictures of attendees into beautiful, textured Polaroid-style snapshots, while artist Millie Connors staged a masterclass in making your very own lemon meringue pie… entirely from felt.
Painter Caroline Dowsett, meanwhile, was hard at work on a romantic portrait inspired by one of the new beverages.
Tom Harvey, Project Producer at Telegraph Hill, said: “We didn’t just want to stage another blogger event, where people turn up and may not write about what they’ve seen. We wanted to really engage our attendees and representing the cocktails as pieces of art is how we decided to do it.
“We’re very interested in collaborating with artists to really showcase the personality of the product; in this case, cocktails.
“We’re passionate about working with bloggers too, because they’re the ones who write about things as an outlet for their creativity, not just because they have to!”
The cocktails in the spotlight were the Popping Candy Strawberry Margherita, Passionate Rose and Lemon Meringue Pie, although Tom was keen to point out that between them, TGI Fridays’ bartenders know how to mix approximately 700 cocktails.
Guests were invited to challenge the staff to create a personalised drink based on a theme of their choice, resulting in some unique, brightly-coloured concoctions and a very lively crowd.
Also coinciding with the cocktail launch is TGI Fridays’ expansion of its social presence onto Instragram, which will also be handled by Telegraph Hill.
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