Fancy ice pushes cocktail prices ‘up by as much as $5’, bar director says

Big, beautiful blocks of hand-cut ice have become a standard addition to cocktails in bars and restaurants across Sydney, despite an estimate that a single cube can increase a drink’s price by up to $5.

In this new ice age, high demand has led four new manufacturers to open in Sydney over the past three years (up from one in 2020). Each meticulously freeze and hand-carve distilled frozen water into more than 25 varieties of crystalline blocks, rectangles and spheres. They supply hundreds of venues, from speciality coffee shops to award-winning cocktail bars, fulfilling single orders of up to 3000 cubes each week.

This month, Bare Bones Ice Company launched Sydney’s first at-home delivery service for high-quality ice through UberEats. Customers within a 20-minute drive of the Marrickville warehouse can order from a selection of cuts for their next barbecue or house party. The blocks could cost as much as $2.36 per cube with the additional service and delivery fees.

Sales indicate it’s a price Sydneysiders are willing to pay. This month, Bare Bones moved into a new factory in Marrickville. It’s nine times larger than their previous location, and production is estimated to multiply sixfold within the coming year.

Bare Bones now stocks nine retailers across Sydney, including BWS Crows Nest and P&V Wine and Liquor Merchants in Newtown. P&V co-owner Mike Bennie says it’s been surprising how many people want high-quality ice at home.

“We sell a lot, way more than most people would imagine. We restock weekly, if not more, to meet demand,” Bennie says.

High-quality ice is noticeably different from the cloudy cubes made in home freezers. It takes around four days of freezing clarified water to create cubes with such density and clarity, capable of keeping cocktails colder, fizzier (if applicable) and flavourful for longer. This ice is also beautiful, with sharp edges, complete transparency, and the option of embossed branding – ideal for the social media age.

“You can compare it to glassware. Drinking out of a beautiful glass is just a better experience than drinking out of a paper cup,” says Damien Liot, the former Baxter Inn bartender who launched Bare Bones in 2017.

“It’s so popular we’ve begun supplying mid-tier restaurants, cafes and pubs, from the city to the suburbs,” Liot says.

“People now expect it when they order a negroni or an old-fashioned.”

The labour-intensive method comes at a cost: around $1 per cube wholesale, and between $1.20 and $1.75 retail.

Jeremy Blackmore is the creative director at Mucho, the hospitality group behind multi award-winning Sydney bar Cantina OK! He says hospitality operators often work on an 80 per cent profit margin, “so if the price of what goes into the glass goes up by a dollar the final price to customers could go up by $5”.

“Considering the spirits going into a cocktail typically cost between $2 to $2.50, $1 for an ice cube is a whole heap,” Blackmore says, noting that the average cocktail in Sydney sets punters back between $20-30.

Stefano Catino, co-founder of The Rocks cocktail bar Maybe Sammy (named the world’s most influential bar in the Top 500 Bars awards in November) and head of hospitality operations at Public, says he doesn’t understand the $5 jump.

“If ice costs $1, and you charge three times [that amount] to make a profit at the most, [it would add] $3 maybe,” Catino says, adding he’d never charge three times the cost of ice at his bars.

At hatted Sydney venueThe Charles Grand Brasserie & Bar, the owners have taken the trend one step further by having their high-quality ice embossed with the restaurant’s logo, manufactured by Mr Iceman in Penrith.

Catino says high-quality ice isn’t needed at every venue, nor in every cocktail.

“A lot of our venues, like Maybe Frank [pizzeria in Randwick], are casual and customers would rather pay a couple of dollars less for their negroni and drink it with normal ice,” Catino says.

Mucho bars Tio’s (Surry Hills), Bar Planet (Enmore) and Cantina OK! offer alternatives to high-quality ice – partly due to rising costs, partly to go against the grain. But ice remains an integral part of the Cantina OK! experience: bartenders theatrically carve and crush ice from a giant block behind the bar, creating up to 500 margarita “snow cones” each week.

“We’re ice contrarians,” says Blackmore.

“We don’t need super-clear, beautiful ice to tell people we’ve done a good job.”