Patchogue Business Starts Virtual Bar Crawl

PATCHOGUE, NY — In light of the new business regulations and social distancing guidelines due to the coronavirus, a local business found a new way to allow residents to still have fun. This past weekend, The Better Man Distillery in Patchogue hosted its first ever virtual bar crawl.

The event will take place on Saturday and the owner plans to keep it going once again this upcoming weekend. Guests were able to choose between a two or four person bar crawl package featuring several local businesses including The Meetball Place, Fulton's Gate, Perabell Food Bar, The Cheese Patch, Swell Taco and Village Idiot Pub. Residents within three miles of Main Street can participate in the "crawl," which would include deliveries from any of the local businesses listed.

According to Abby Gruppuso, Head of Operations for The Better Man Distilling Co., the first virtual bar crawl went great. The event reached cap of 40 groups quite quickly, with about 100 people total participating. After the successful first crawl on Saturday, Gruppuso told Patch organizers are actually changing up the format of the crawl moving forward, based on feedback from the restaurants and participants.

Now, there will be two sessions, one from 1 p.m. 5 p.m. and then from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. There will be 2 crawls (A&B), each with four different restaurants. The eight participating are The Better Man Distilling Co., The Cheese Patch, Fulton's Gate, That Meetball Place, Perabell Food Bar, Village Idiot Pub, Brickhouse Brewery, and Local Burger. Participants will choose day or night and A or B, and 2 or 4 people - or both sessions and both crawls.

Everyone will receive one delivery per hour, totaling in three appetizers, one dessert and eight or 16 alcoholic drinks.

Signups will be posted to thebettermandistillingco.com/bar-craw Tuesday afternoon.

There is a $5 fee to confirm a spot, but will be subtracted from your total with The Better Man Distilling Co. Participants will be contacted via text/email to confirm how many deliveries they would like and from which locations (minimum 4).

Soon, there might be even more changes coming.

"At this point we're only doing Saturdays, but as time goes on and we get in the rhythm of doing this, we may introduce it on another day - maybe Sunday Funday?" Gruppuso said.