Black Lagoon's Erin Hayes and Kelsey Ramage on Spooky Cocktails

They rented a cursed venue in Toronto with a leak and a fire alarm. They put everything they had into it. And by the end of the first week, there was a line around the block.

Erin Hayes and Kelsey Ramage are the co-founders of Black Lagoon, now in its sixth year, a Halloween-themed immersive cocktail pop-up experience running across 34 locations in North America every October. Erin came from the Chicago cocktail scene, where she led the programs at J. Parker, Three Dots and a Dash, and Lost Lake as the city became the cocktail destination it is today. Kelsey came from Vancouver and London, where she became a sommelier, helped build the award-winning bar program at Dandelion on London's South Bank, and launched Trash Collective, a sustainability-focused pop-up concept that was doing pop-ups before anyone else was doing pop-ups.

They became best friends through shared circles, shared aesthetics, shared music taste, and a shared obsession with Halloween. When Kelsey pulled the ripcord in 2021 and said "I rented a venue, we're doing this," they had no idea what they were building. Six years later, Black Lagoon is a handpicked network of 34 award-winning bars across North America, with custom glassware designed by Chicago artist Kisira Hill, a strong non-alcoholic menu that has been there from the beginning, and a community of cocktail enthusiasts, goth kids, fashion kids, and spooky community members who come back year after year.

In this special Halloween-themed episode of The Perfect Bite, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Erin and Kelsey for one of the most joyful and genuinely fun conversations of the season. From growing up in households without wine to bartending at Disney World, to building the Chicago and London cocktail scenes in their formative years. From a cease and desist from Dolly Parton's lawyers on Kelsey's COVID delivery service Dolly Trolley, to The Dungeon bar in New Orleans where they threw their first party together at Tales of the Cocktail and knew they were going to work together forever. From the year they hand-picked their first bar operators to a portfolio of events that now runs year-round including Krampus Cove, Goth Girl Summer, Sad Girl Swim Club, and Y2K Splash Zone.

The chaos is the fun. That is their new motto. And after hearing this episode you will understand exactly why.

In this episode, we cover:

Erin growing up without a food or drink family and discovering hospitality at age 14 working at a cafe called Grumpy'sKelse