We spent an afternoon with the bar director of a hotel that serves several hundred cigars a month, and asked him a plain question: what do you want from a house cigar? His answer had very little to do with tobacco.
A hotel bar sells cigars the way it sells champagne: a few well-known names for the guest who wants no surprises, and one thing of its own for the guest who asks what the bar recommends. That second thing is the house cigar. It carries the bar's name, or sits next to it, and it is the cigar the staff reach for when a guest says, surprise me. Get it right and it becomes the most-ordered stick on the menu. Get it wrong and it sits in the humidor drying out, which is worse than not having one.
First: something the guest cannot get across the street
Every serious bar in the city carries the same Cuban and Nicaraguan names. A house cigar has to be a reason to stay. An origin the guest has not tasted does that job better than a private blend from an origin he knows, because it is a story before it is a cigar. Manila is a story: the galleon, the royal order, the cigarreras, the fifty years when it was the cigar of the London clubs. The director's words: give me something my sommelier can talk about for two minutes without reading a card.
Second: a cigar that works at the bar's hours
A hotel bar serves cigars from late afternoon to late night, to guests who have often had dinner and a drink or two. A cigar that overpowers the palate at that hour is sent back half-smoked. The Manila leaf's lighter body and long, sweet finish suit the room: it pairs with a whisky or an aged rum without competing, and a Toro gives the guest an hour and a quarter of company without asking for much. For an afternoon terrace, the Corona. For the guest who wants weight, the Robusto Maduro.
“I do not need another strong cigar. I need one my guests finish, and ask the name of.”Bar director · a hotel in Dubai
Third: the things around the cigar
A humidor that fits behind the bar and holds 69 % without a technician. Boxes that look right on the back bar. A card, a line on the menu, a photograph for the hotel's newsletter. A training hour for the staff, because the cigar is sold by the person who describes it. And a supplier who answers within the day when the humidor runs low before a conference. This is what the House Cigar programme is: the cigar, the bar's name on the band of one vitola, and everything around it, described on the Partners page.
What it changes
In the bar we visited, the house cigar went from a line at the bottom of the menu to the first thing the staff suggest, in one season. The number that mattered to the director was not the margin, though the margin is in line with the premium trade. It was the share of guests who ordered a second cigar. A cigar that is finished gets reordered. That is the whole argument.
If you run a bar or a lounge, the wholesale page explains the first order, the humidor and the training. Minimums are lower than a distributor's, and the tasting kit comes first.
