Common Spirits

Jami

We like to play up holidays. In the last couple of years, we have focused on doing pop-ups over holidays like Christmas and Spooky Spirits for Halloween.

Our holiday cheer pop-up is one of the most fun. People go insane — and also travel from South Bend and surrounding areas — just to come to our Christmas bar.

It starts the week of Thanksgiving and it goes all the way through December. All of the drinks are holiday- and Christmas-themed and come in, like, snowman mugs.

We’ll be bringing back a favorite drink from last year. It’s called “Yukon Cornelius.” I make a graham syrup — like a honey graham syrup — and it has gin and fresh lemon juice. Then I make a meringue and I put a little bit of Creme de Flora booze in it. So it’s like a toasty meringue on top of a drink. People just lose their minds for it, it’s so good.

One of our drinks — it sounds really ridiculous, and it is, but people love it — is called a “Gravy Back.” It’s a shot of whiskey with a chaser of warm gravy.

Ryan

Wild Turkey bourbon and then a chaser of gravy.

We actually have a storage unit where we store all of our Christmas decorations, basically. We store other stuff in there, but it’s mostly Christmas decorations so the whole place will be full.

We haven’t really had a normal holiday season since Covid, so we’re not sure what to expect, I guess. We’ve pretty much gotten back to pre-Covid levels, for sure.

Jami

We’re planning on being open that week of Thanksgiving — that biggest drinking day, the Wednesday before — and we’re typically closed Wednesday. We’re going to be open some special days in December, too, including a Christmas Eve brunch.

We’ll be serving drinks for Meraki’s art auction fundraiser in December, too. It’s going to be a great event, and I’m excited to be a part of it. We’ll just have some creative cocktails that can kind of pull in some of their art vibes.

Our drinks are delicious and we have good food, but hospitality is what we built this space on. I want everyone to be greeted when they walk in, and everyone to feel super-comfortable — whether they wanted a Miller Lite and we don’t have that and we can talk them into something different they might like, or they hate gin but walk out having drunk gin in a new way and they love it now.

I feel like that’s Goshen, though. We truly are a community. We deeply care about our friends at GBCo and at Constant Spring and Elephant Bar. And I think everyone feels that, whether it’s customers or people we’re collab-ing with as other business owners. It’s a great place to own a business.

Jami and Ryan Hawkins, owners, Common Spirits