SEATTLE — Around every corner of Stampede Cocktail Club in Fremont, you'll find the start of a good story – from the rotating menu of drinks to the dinosaur head attached to palm tree wallpaper.
"Currently the law is ending us at 10 pm, but the nightlife never ends in our head,” said General Manager Adam Aly.
Since the day they opened, their menus have also told stories. One included short stories attached to drink descriptions, and another featured a riddle that guests could solve to order a secret drink.
"We made it a hard rule, you had to solve that puzzle,” Aly said. “It wasn't like, 'Oh I don't want to solve it, just give me the drink.' It was like, no, you have to take part in this experience with us."
Those clever ways of connecting have extended into their "new normal."
Their first to-go cocktail program included a four-part comic series. Customers were given a new chapter each week they ordered.
Now that the bar is back open with limited capacity, they're offering single-serve cocktails to-go and house-made freeze pops with flavors like cantaloupe-infused mezcal and strawberry serrano-pepper infused tequila.
"That has been the most surprising thing we've done so far,” Aly said. “We posted about our freeze pop on Instagram and in the first hour, we sold half of them."
By law, customers must order food with to-go cocktails and Stampede serves dumplings. They take less than 10 minutes to make, so wait times are short.
For those who want to spend some time at the bar, there are outdoor seating areas in the front and back - where parking spaces were converted into a patio. Happy hour is currently from 1-4 pm, daily.
“We want everyone not to look back on this time as the worst time in their lives, but maybe the time where everyone came together,” Aly said.
For updates on the rotating to-go cocktail menu, follow Stampede on Instagram.
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