Q&A with Copper Spoon beverage director on The Pinnacle Guide inclusion
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Earlier this month, Fort Wayne restaurant and bar Copper Spoon earned international recognition by being selected by The Pinnacle Guide, which has been described by Forbes as similar to the Michelin Guide but for bars.
Copper Spoon, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, received the Pin of Excellence, making it the only Indiana bar to receive such a distinction.
Chandler Vanous, beverage director for Copper Spoon, spoke to Inside INdiana Business about the process of earning the distinction, what it means for the bar, and plans for future growth.
This article has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you get started with Copper Spoon?
I’ve been here about two years now. The same owners have a bar outside that’s like a seasonal pop-up bar, so I worked there maybe four years ago. I left and managed another bar until their previous beverage director was ready to move onto other things, and then I took over this program about a year and a half ago.
I imagine there’s a specific way of doing things at Copper Spoon. What is the process like for developing cocktails for the menu and training employees?
As far as the menu goes, we just finished working on our spring and summer menu. We do two-season cycles, so we do a warm weather and a cold weather menu. For this one, we took about, I’d say, four and a half months to do development. So from start to finish, we talk about a theme for the menu. We get concepts going of what we’d like to work on within that. And then from there, it’s a lot of, “Can I get this product, trying to find new and unique things that fit into the style that we’re trying to do?” And then just sort of coordinating with one another throughout the whole team, so that we have a cohesive menu that sort of checks all the boxes that we’re typically trying to do.
A lot of it for us personally is sourcing extremely unique ingredients or creating extremely unique ingredients. I’m really fortunate that my entire team is extremely educated in their field. They go out of their way to find and create new products; they’re constantly looking for new flavors that they haven’t had before. Our goal with our menus is almost always to sort of give you this one-off, unique experience that you couldn’t have anywhere else.
What was the application process like for The Pinnacle Guide?
Pretty lengthy, honestly. They do six modules. They talk a lot about, obviously, our cocktail program and our spirit selection, but they also focus on the way that we hire and train and maintain our staff, how well that we treat them, the benefits that we provide to them, how we interact with our community, any like social services that we may provide, or charities that we work with. It’s a really comprehensive sort of judgment on our structure as a whole.
We went into this award in particular knowing that this was really important to us, because a lot of the premise for Pinnacle is that it’s all inclusive and all encompassing. So for some programs, it’s just about what does your bar look like? For some programs, it’s about who you know. For some programs, it’s just about your cocktails that you’re putting out on a day basis. We felt like Pinnacle was so important to us to really put the time and energy into, because it was sort of a judgment of all the things that we maintain on a day-to-day basis, and the things we’re really proud of.
What does it mean to be included in The Pinnacle Guide?
I think, for our team especially, it mostly just means a validation of the work that they put in. We’re really grateful that we have the people that we do and that they’re really committed to this program. We have one of the best retention rates in the area, as far as long-term committed hospitality workers; we have really low turnover. We have people that are going out across the country and internationally to go see other bars, that are making lists like this, so that they can push themselves in our area into that same market and up to that same caliber.
Especially because we’re in Fort Wayne, we get a lot of travelers going back and forth between all of the bigger cities that are around us. We’re very centralized to them, so it helps sort of meet that expectation of experiences they’ve had in Chicago or New York or Pittsburgh or Detroit. They can have that same thing here, and we feel like there’s no reason we can’t provide that.
What has the response been from the community since the award was announced?
Really great. At the end of the day, our local customers and our regulars are obviously what’s going to keep our restaurant afloat. That’s who is here for us every day and have been here for us for the last 10 years while we’ve been going through this process of getting to this point in the first place. So they’ve been really supportive. A lot of them are regulars that are in every week, if not every other day, and they’re just there to sort of see us shine and support us and say, “We already knew you were great. We’re so glad other people see it, too.”
How does Copper Spoon plan to build on this distinction and grow?
We’re talking a lot right now about what the next step sort of is. Pinnacle does a really good job of connecting other bars with each other, so they can potentially do like some cross promotion stuff, or they can work with other bartenders and learn from each other. So maybe something like that. A lot of our program is just continued education. We send our bartenders off to large bar conferences, to large events, to bartender camps or training courses or classes or competitions. So I think for the team, that’s probably the next big thing is finding what the next big thing is; what’s the next thing that’s really worth the time and commitment.