How to build a bar that discusses chicago history? thoughtfully, with cocktail in hand.
Everything about Billy Sunday is a joke, except the quality of its craft. That’s serious.
Named after Chicago Enemy #1, the Reverend Billy Sunday, who criticized the city’s drinking endlessly (never mind his own publicly-known adultery). Billy Sunday is on Logan Square, and is known for pre-Prohibition cocktail recipes.
Billy Sunday’s branding, sales materials, menus, site, advertising and social media are all based on Prohibition-era typography and pretend-serious Midwest Protestant morality.
I developed the bar’s voice to be flip, but knowledgeable. Professionals with a sense of mischief. It’s a great backdrop for the bar’s archival cocktail recipes, celebrating Chicago’s reputation as a city for drinking.
Everything about Billy Sunday is said with a wink and a nod; kind of like how nobody in Chicago drank during Prohibition.
