Iain Griffiths Is Doing It for the Culture

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Any establishment that wins “best bar bathroom” has my attention. For this year’s Spill Awards, that winner was Bar Snack by a landslide — I think its name was mentioned the most of any other bar for any other award. But what nominators might not know about the bathroom in question — a floor-to-ceiling disco mirror fever dream — is that bar owner Iain Griffiths spent days tiling it themself. In fact, Griffiths designed the entire space, an aesthetic they dub “a Midwest bar with a Santa Fe color palette.”

“We built this so quickly,” Griffiths tells me at Bar Snack last month. “When I told the investors I’d have it open in six months, they were like, ‘fuck off.’ I said, ‘I can do it.’ Fancy architects will take six weeks to give you drawings, but we’re not using them.”

Bar Snack’s ethos is right there on the homepage of the website: “Dressed-up classics for dressed-down people.” It’s the kind of place where you can get an expertly made cocktail and one of the best Guinness pours in the city. But you’ll feel just as at home drinking something you’d easily find at the corner bodega. “We really love Twisted Tea so much,” Griffiths says as cases of it are wheeled through the bar during our interview.

From Family Pub to Globally Renowned Cocktail Bars

Griffiths is a third-generation bartender. “My grandfather used to run a pub and hired my dad as a bartender, and that’s how my parents met,” they say. “My mom, one of seven children, couldn’t cook when she got married but learned pretty quickly. She wound up becoming a caterer and still runs her own catering business at 74. So I was in kitchens and doing events from the time I was like eight. The day I turned 18, my mom said, ‘You’re going to spend every weekend in bars. Just go get paid for it instead.’ I’m one of the few people that got their parents’ blessing to work in hospitality.”

The Australian-born Griffiths eventually made their way to Edinburgh and then London, where they opened White Lyan with bartender Ryan Chetiyawardana. The bar — which had no perishables whatsoever, including fruit and ice — made an absolute splash, cleaning up in terms of awards and recognition. Since then, Lyan Group has opened eight concepts, four of which are still currently in operation. 

“Lyan Company always had this sustainability angle,” Griffiths says. “Ryan is still my best friend, we talk every day, but we got to a point on the topic of sustainability where we were diverging in our thought processes. He thought the best way forward was to keep it luxury so people aspire to be more sustainable. And I wanted to put all the information into everybody’s hands. And that led me to create Trash Tiki with Kelsey [Ramage].”

Griffiths started touring with Trash Tiki in 2017, which brought pop-up educational events to bartenders around the world, showing them how they could repurpose ingredients to make drinks with less waste. When it came time for Griffiths to strike out on their own, they and Chetiyawardana decided to do a “final burst of openings together.” Griffiths also opened Supernova Ballroom with Kelsey Rampage in Toronto around the same time. 

“Including Lyaness New York [a pop-up at Spring Studios in 2019], I wound up opening five bars in under 12 months between March 2019 and February 2020,” Griffiths says. “That led me to basically live in New York for four months while traveling down to D.C. to do Silver Lyan and up to Toronto. There were a lot of miles.”

Looking at this timeline, you all know what comes next. “The pandemic hit and we knew we were gonna lose Supernova Ballroom,” Griffiths says. “Without the bar in Toronto, I wasn’t feeling any urge to stay up there. I had sold out of the Lyan company and put all that money into Toronto and then lost all that money. So I looked at everything and said this must be a larger sign. I landed in New York the day of the shutdown.”

“And I just started from absolute scratch all over again.” 

It’s Up to You, New York

You can admit there’s some beauty in starting over, some appeal in deciding if you want to choose a different path. Obviously, it’s also really fucking hard. “There are so many different parts of it,” Griffiths says. “There’s a huge amount of accepting losing what you lost financially.”

For Griffiths, it did mean stepping away from running bars for a while. “My big thing for like three years was ‘I’m done with venues. I did them for eight years. I’m out,’” Griffiths says. “Even letting go of the idea of doing a bar again was really great for me mentally because it allowed me to switch off. I was the head of branded for Empirical for a year, and that helped me grow. I did the Doritos launch, which wound up getting a nomination for the Global Marketing Awards. I went and lived in Denver with my friends and helped them out at Yacht Club. Over three months we slowly put that bar together.”

After those few years off from owning a bar, the bug came back for Griffiths, and that’s when they opened Bar Snack. And it’s simply a joyful place to be. It’s a little bit cheeky, apparent in the objects and artwork decorating the bar, and also in the other bathroom, which is covered in googly eyes. And while the cocktails certainly aren’t stuffy (they once had a Martini seasoned with roast chicken, for goodness sake), it’s clear to see how Griffiths saw much success as part of the award-winning Lyan Group — the knack for cool, interesting, delicious drinks comes naturally to them.

But, thankfully for Bar Snack patrons, those cocktails don’t come with $25 price tags. Griffiths is committed to keeping the establishment affordable. “Our Big Tween Energy will always be $16,” they say. “But even that feels so crazy. No one who lives and works in New York in our industry can afford to drink. So part of it was wanting a bar that everybody wants to be in but where you don’t need to think whether or not you can afford to be there.” 

Even as the New Kid on the Block, Bar Snack Is Setting the Trends

When I met Griffiths for the first time at Tales of the Cocktail this year, their entire staff was wearing t-shirts that, from afar, could have been the Spice Girls logo from their debut album. But upon closer inspection, the quintet was removed from the “Spice” text, and the word “Girls” had been replaced with “bag.” So what the hell is a “spice bag”? Not only is it the main attraction on Bar Snack’s food menu, it’s also become a branding moment — and spawned a lot of copycats around the city. 

The spice bag was created at a Chinese takeout restaurant on the outskirts of Dublin in the early 2000s. The original was basically shredded chicken and fries with onions, peppers and Hunan dry spice, served with classic chip shop curry sauce on the side. “It’s like drunk, drunk, drunk food,” Griffiths says. “You never ate them for dinner. But we were missing our one bigger item on the menu, and I think it’s our number-one selling food item now. It’s what we’re known for, and we’re now seeing random places put it on their menus as well.”

The dish is so popular, in fact, that the bar is almost more recognizable by its Spice Bag tees than by its real name. “I printed those [t-shirts] and we printed it on the bag, so it almost feels like it is its own brand moment,” Griffiths says. “I hate bars that just repeat the name of the bar everywhere you look. Everybody knows they’re in fucking Bar Snack — you don’t need to have it on the coaster and the menu and the t-shirt.”

But perhaps my favorite thing Griffiths is doing with Bar Snack is normalizing the fancy afternoon cocktail. “The thing I’m loving specifically in this neighborhood is seeing more bars open earlier,” they say. “That was a big thing for us, as we open at 2 p.m. during the week and noon on the weekends. Now Superbueno opens up earlier. Will Wyatt gave me a call and said he’s going to start opening up El Camino earlier. He asked, ‘Is it worth it?’ I said, ‘It’s worth it for the culture.’ There are people out there who want to pull up for a good cocktail at 1 p.m. It’s not like you have to wait for the sun to go down to be all moody and serious about shit.”

When it comes to what’s next, Griffiths is focusing on Bar Snack, looking to make “more operational upgrades” and enjoying the creative side of things as a team. But if their drive and background is any indication, it’s safe to assume there’s more to come from the industry vet. 

“Long-term, there’s definitely more coming, but I’m a big believer that until the ink is dry, you don’t tell anyone anything.”

Photography: Images of Iain by Johanna Stickland for InsideHook
All other photos via Getty