Finally, we have the news we have all been waiting for. Wakefield is set to be hotter than Hawaii and summer is here! Last year was the warmest summer on record, add to that the FIFA Men's World Cup and it will be a difficult summer to beat.

Fortunately, 2018 saw people fall back in love with the pub. Alcohol sales in the on-trade grew to more than £30 billion by the end of the year¹. Hopefully, the Great British public is poised and ready to repeat last summer, the popularity of gin and Spritz drinks may help. These serves have helped spirits to become even more relevant and popular this summer.

The human eye has three photoreceptors to process red, yellow and blue, but the number of combinations we can perceive is huge. Different colours can stimulate different reactions. Blue can be calming while one study showed red promotes winning in sports. Perhaps this why England's lionesses, kitted out in white, lost in the semi-finals?

Summer Pink Punch: For the coral coloured cocktail enthusiasts

With colour so vital to both our emotions and Instagram feeds, can colourful drinks inspire us to summer sales success? 'Living Coral' was announced as the 'Colour of 2019' by Pantone back in January. Take one look at the drinks being served this summer, and you'll see this colour resonating with the 5.1 million UK consumers now drinking pink gin brands. That number is up from 2.2 million drinkers in 2018².

Pantone's 'Colours of Summer 2019' includes the aptly named 'Fiesta', a celebratory orange-red. "Fiesta radiates energy, passion and excitement", now that does sound appealing³? Luckily the nation's bars have plenty of orange gins to keep us on-trend!

When we look at cocktails, consumers favourite flavours are refreshing, berry, and fruity. Their favourite ingredients are strawberry and raspberry⁴.These trends give us plenty of colours with which to paint a beautiful canvas of drinks. The Daiquiri is now the fifth best-selling cocktail in the UK⁴, helped by fruity, berry and frozen variants, which of course, are usually 'Fiesta' coloured!

Bloody Sgroppino: Highly visual serve for 'fiesta' fans

We must also bear in mind Vodka is still the most popular spirit in cocktails. The spirit gives us the perfect blank canvas to create vibrant, colourful drinks with. The vodka-based Pornstar Martini remains the nation's favourite cocktail with an impressive 15% of all cocktail sales⁴.

79% of guests always, or almost always, browse the cocktail menu to help make their choice⁴. This fact allows us to add a splash of colour to our lists. Highlighting the colour of a drink via a photo or sketch will provide guests with a clear indication of what they are going to receive. This is particularly useful when humans can process an image 60,000 times quicker than they can text⁵!

So, brighten your bar this summer with drinks to stimulate the senses. Let's keep our customer's social feeds filled with colour. Make your menu shine even when the sun doesn't and expand the colours of summer beyond my usual colour - a bright Lobster Red.