Goya Dmytryshchak
Footscray bar Trouble in Dreams has gotten into the COVIDSafe spirit by offering IKEA-style cocktails to prevent the possibility of people gathering outside for a drink.
The cocktail kits are called ‘Some Assembly Required’.
Bar owner Chad Parkhill said the move was in response to the infamous Richmond pub crawl.
Last month, a ‘Walk. Talk. Sip’ event advertised on social media became a takeaway pub crawl in Richmond, resulting in numerous fines for COVID-19 lockdown breaches.
Mr Parkhill said his bar subsequently moved away from offering takeaway cocktails in sealed coffee cups to offering deconstructed drinks that could be assembled at home.
“I was looking online and taking the temperature and it became pretty apparent that there was actually quite a lot of community anger being directed at these venues and the people organising the pub crawl,” he said.
“It pretty quickly became obvious that the way we’d been doing things would be untenable and that we had to make a call about whether or not we’d continue operating for takeaways, and if we did we’d have to pretty radically conceptualise what we do.”
With the cocktail packs, “all of the “hard work’s been done”.
“It’s just that last little step of putting everything together and getting it to the right temperature that you have to do at home,” Mr Parkhill said.
“It’s all based around IKEA and IKEA instructions.
“I think public health needs to come first.
“I certainly wouldn’t want to be contributing to an environment where people are transmitting the coronavirus.
“As a business owner, I’d much rather that we get the lockdown over with as soon as possible.
“I’d rather be able to operate as a normal drinking bar than have this extended lockdown scenario that we’re seeing up in New South Wales.”
Deliveries are currently within the local area but may be expanded.
