The Tales of the Cocktail Foundation has announced that its 2025 conference will once again take place at The Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans, Louisiana, from 20 to 25 July.
Marking the conference's 23rd annual instalment, next year's event will centre around the theme Evolve and will explore the global cocktail industry’s ongoing transformation and development, highlighting evolution as a catalyst for innovation and a necessity for growth.
"We're thrilled to bring Tales of the Cocktail 2025 to life with the theme Evolve," said Eileen Wayner, CEO of the TOTCF.
"This focus demonstrates our commitment to growth and innovation in the hospitality industry, and we look forward to exploring new ideas, fostering progress, and inspiring our community to continue evolving together."
The TOTCF has also unveiled key statistics from its 2024 conference, including a sizeable 10% uptake in attendees. Notably, international visitors accounted for 14% of the audience.
Two of the international attendees were Australians Chanel Melani and Sally Carter, Co-Founders of Birds of Isle Rum.
“We went over there as a learning experience. It’s known as one of the biggest and the best cocktail festivals in the world and we really just wanted to immerse ourselves in that and see what all the biggest brands around the world were doing,” Melani told Drinks Trade.
“The two key things they spoke about as being the growth drivers for spirits in the US over the next five years was premiumisation and moderation. I think premiumisation has probably had its challenges over the last 12 months with the economic challenges, but they're really seeing that as the main driver of growth over the next five years.
“Moderation was a big one too. The low and no basis is continually growing, and I think moving away from this binge drinking culture and moving towards less consumption of better quality spirits is one of the key trends that they spoke about.”
While a lot of the international coverage of the event tends to focus on the Spirited Awards, the results is only one component of the multi-day conference. In 2024, TOTC hosted more than 400 unique events and seminars, and has indicated that industry should expect a similar agenda for 2025.
“Probably the most interesting thing we learned about was around home advocacy,” said Melanie.
“[For example], they spoke about brands looking at investing equal parts into trade advocacy as they would into at-home advocacy, and potentially partnering with bartenders or people that are drinks influencers to be able to take these cocktail experiences into people's homes, which I thought was a really clever idea that I hadn't really heard before.”
The scale of the TOTC is clearly evidenced by its impact on New Orleans’ economy, with $24.8 million generated in 2023. The event also supported 215 jobs through visitor spending, participating businesses, and organizational investments.
The TOTC 2025 agenda, including seminar and presenter information, will be released in the coming months.
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