Marketing 101: The Grog Log at the Tonga Hut
The Drooling Bastard idol at the Tonga Hut in front of the many plaques from the Loyal Order
One of the most genius marketing ideas I’ve ever come across for a bar or restaurant exists in North Hollywood at the Tonga Hut—the oldest tiki bar still standing in Los Angeles. It’s the epitome of the community and curation ethos I’ve been harping about for the past week.
At any point in time, you can walk into the Tonga Hut, fill out a xeroxed tasting sheet of every cocktail featured in Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s Grog Log—a breakdown of nearly 80 classic tiki cocktails over the past century—and from that point on you have exactly one year to drink all of them. It may not seem like a herculean task to the experienced drinker, which is exactly why hundreds of tiki fans across Southern California attempt the challenge every few months, but it’s harder than you might expect.
What becomes clear relatively quickly is that 80 high-octane tiki drinks hit your liver quite a bit harder than the avarage cocktail. Three drinks at the Tonga Hut can be like five drinks at a regular bar. My wife and I finished the Grog Log challenge this past March and we purposely took our time, making sure we checked off a requisite number of cocktails each month, while getting to know the bartenders and the local patrons. That was part of the charm for us, personally. Over the last nine months we’ve become close with more than a dozen new friends from the greater Tonga Hut community, which is still our favorite hangout even with the Grog Log now behind us.
A marketing idea that increases revenue through careful curation while simultaneously building community? It’s what every bar and restaurant in America should be focused on right now. Here’s how the Tonga Hut version works.
My actual Grog Log checklist from right before I finished up last March
When you arrive at the Tonga Hut to work on your Grog Log list, you’ll find a plastic filing box organized alphabetically where your list is held for safe keeping. Each time you come and show your ID, you can grab your list from the box and bring it to the bar. The bartender on duty will decide which drink you get, so you have no say in the process. You get what you get until the list is finally completed. Some of the drinks are wonderful. Some of them not so much (like the Volcano House Hot Buttered Rum).
When you start your Grog Log, you’ll put your name and date at the top along with your preferred tiki name. If you manage to complete the Grog Log, you’ll have the chance to create a 2 × 6 wooden plaque to hang on the wall behind the famed Drooling Bastard idol as part of the Loyal Order, adorned with your Tonga Hut nickname. I love a good Navy Grog, so my name became Davy Grog.
My finished plaque for the Loyal Order of the Drooling Bastard
Like many of the Drooling Bastards before me, I have no skill at creating a wooden 2 × 6 plaque fitting of such a heralded location on the Tonga Hut wall of fame. Luckily, my buddy Erick Martinez is extremely skilled at such endeavors and created this gorgeous Davy Grog plaque for me (you’ll see it on the wall in the first photo above the Drooling Bastard’s head).
Let’s talk about all the ways the Tonga Hut has boosted revenue from the Grog Log.
First, they got me to drink 80 cocktails regularly over the course of eight months, and now they get me to come back regularly to take pride in my accomplishment so that I can point to the wall, show my friends, and say, “yeah, that’s me.” It’s absolutely brilliant marketing.
It’s not all liver torture, however. Over the course of my Grog Log drinking, I learned about the history of tiki culture, how the drinks evolved over time, and which particular cocktails I had an affinity for. The Trade Wind, for example, was one my personal favorites: basically, a Corpse Reviver #2 with egg white instead of absinthe.
My good friend Andrea to the left of me and my wife to the right, sporting our new Drooling Bastard jackets
But if you think the marketing is just limited to plaques and prestige, think again!
Tonga Hut’s amazing manager Liz dreamt up this outstanding idea to create special jackets for the Drooling Bastard members, embroidered with the Tonga Hut logo on the back and your tiki name on the front. That’s another $250 I couldn’t wait to hand over.
Basically, any merch they create for the Loyal Order moving forward we will likely purchase, which only encourages us to head over to the Tonga Hut in order to show it all off. At this point, hardly a week goes by without at least one reservation at the bar (yes, you can reserve your bar spot online before you go).
In any case, if I owned my own bar, I’d be copying everything these guys are doing. They’ve built an incredible following based on consumer recognition, aspirational adventure, community events, amazing merch, and historical precedent. It’s rare that you see it executed this well. As a result, you can consider me a Tonga Hut local for life.
-David Driscoll