29/03/2024
Last year on this day March 29th 2023 we, Kristen Kreft and MayaLou Banatwala, bought our 2nd business, Bars On Wheels, a full scale beverage catering company, and our lives have been rocked into a dramatic change for the better!
We began six years ago as Rocktails: An Amped Up Spin on Mixology with just the two of us and now we have 30 employees, several commercial vans and clients all over the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area! Let us tell you about our ongoing journey!
We are writing this right now over lunch as we prepare to provide full scale bar service for two corporate events this afternoon. If you know us, you know that we have been building our company Rocktails: An Amped Up Spin on Mixology since 2018. We began our journey hosting pop-up events at Listing Loon, and through that experience we were able to publish our first book honoring musicians through the art of mixology. We were thrilled to catch the eye of Richard Hunt, owner of Roebling Books & Coffee! He took a chance and helped us to publish our second book, Cincinnati Rocktails, which is a music history cocktail book featuring iconic bands and musical artists that have a connection to the Greater Cincinnati area designed by Jeni Jenkins, illustrated by Dylan Speeg, and cocktail photos by Angie Lipscomb.
The publishing and promotion of our book led us on an unexpected journey of curating cocktail menus for friends and family and providing bar services for their weddings and gatherings. Kristen and I are always looking for fun ways to spread not only the good word of music history in general, but Cincinnati music history, as well as the art of a well constructed cocktail.
We collaborated with artists such as Doc Gallahan to design a drink inspired by his fictional character, Queen City Cabaret Cincy for a musical cocktail experience and Kintimit for a Rocktails inspired fashion show at Urban Artifact. We put on interactive dinner theater events with ArtsConnect Springfield Township and have performed countless musical cocktail tutorials for corporate events. All of this fun work caught the eye of Hard Rock Casino Cincinnati Hard Rock Cincinnati who hired us as bar consultants to design cocktail menus for every bar under their roof and train their bartenders for 2 years. We ended our residency at Hard Rock with an amazing Candy Shop Pop Up immersive event, where we designed all of the cocktails and were involved with introducing East to Vest Productions to their marketing team to take the Candy Shop to the next level.
Opportunities continued to knock on our door as our tenure at Hard Rock was coming to a close, the chance to purchase a full scale beverage catering company came to our attention. We met Bruce Kennedy, the founder of Bars on Wheels when he was transitioning out of running his company. He was looking for someone to take over Bars on Wheels with fresh energy and keep the momentum moving forward, maintaining lifetime relationships with clients, and the desire to take what he built to the next level. We took a giant leap of faith, raised our hands and decided we are the women for the job! We purchased Bars on Wheels on March 29, 2023. In the past year we have serviced over 150 events ranging from private in-home functions, weddings, corporate events and special events with guests counts starting at 25 all the way up to 750. We started with only the two of us and now we have 30 fantastic and highly trained employees that make our team remarkable. Some of our clients include Viral Nation, Vitamin water, Cincinnati Magazine, Cincinnati Compass, Christ Hospital, Mercy Hospital, 5/3 Bank, PNC Bank, Kettering Rotary Club, Paycor, Turpin Swim Club, Times Equities, Strauss Troy, Public Library Of Cincinati Downtown, and several other organizations and private individuals.
So if you haven’t seen us regularly behind your favorite bars, or out and about as much as you were used to, it is because we were too busy to tell you what we have been up to! We are looking forward to what the future holds and are currently combining our businesses into one unified company called Rocktails Brands.
We want to express our gratitude to every single friend, family member and supporter who has helped us along the way, and those who continue to support us on our growing journey. We truly wouldn’t be where we are today without you!
We have more exciting news to come, but will wait to drop that bombshell a little later! Please take a look at our Bars on Wheels website and if you have an event that needs a bar, or you know someone who does, we are your girls!
