Creative Beverage Specialist Job at Hawthorn Innovations in Louisville

We’re Hiring! Creative Beverage Specialist at Hawthorn Innovations

If your creativity behind the bar goes beyond just making drinks—if you dream about how cocktails are presented, served, and experienced—then we want to talk.

At Hawthorn Innovations, we don’t just mix drinks, we reinvent how they’re delivered. 

We create game-changing beverage programs for the worlds largest national accounts, luxury hotels, and top-tier hospitality brands. From crafting the perfect flavor profiles to designing custom glassware, smoking vessels, and interactive drink rituals, our work blurs the lines between cocktail artistry, industrial design, and experiential marketing.

If you’re obsessed with keeping track of the latest cutting edge hospitality trends and pushing cocktail culture forward, this role is for you.

This is a full-time, on-site position based at our HQ in downtown Louisville, KY.

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What You’ll Do

🍸 Drink Architect: Develop next-level cocktail programs for global hospitality brands, balancing creativity with scalability. A strong base in classic and modern cocktail specs, and techniques is the pre-requisite for the role

🔥 Experience Innovator: Conceptualize and create new drink rituals, glassware, and service techniques that don’t exist yet.

🎨 Creative Collaborator: Work alongside our industrial design, build, and supply chain teams to bring your concepts to life—from smoking vessels to custom bar tools.

📸 Brand Storyteller: Partner with our photo, video, and marketing teams to style cocktails on set and to craft compelling launch assets that bring cocktails to life.

✈️ Industry Explorer: Stay ahead of trends, drawing inspiration from the world’s top 50 bars, culinary innovations, and emerging beverage tech.

🚀 Launch Strategist: Play a key role in bringing new cocktail experiences to market, working with national chains and luxury brands.

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Who You Are

🎭 A Creative Cocktail Mind: You don’t just make drinks—you design entire experiences around them.

🍹 Mixologist Meets Innovator: 5+ years of high-level bartending or beverage development experience, with a deep understanding of flavor, balance, and technique.

🛠 A Detail-Obsessed Builder: You think about how drinks are presented, served, and elevated through unique tools, vessels, and rituals.

📢 A Natural Collaborator: You thrive in a cross-functional team, working with designers, engineers, and marketers to bring ideas to life.

📈 Trend Spotter & Rule Breaker: You’re dialed into global cocktail culture and love innovating beyond what already exists.

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Why Hawthorn?

🔥 Not Just Another Bar Gig: This is a creative R&D role, not a service position. You’ll be building cocktail experiences that shape national and global beverage programs.

💡 Innovation Meets Execution: We don’t just dream up big ideas—we design, prototype, and launch them into the world with our in-house industrial design and build teams.

🏆 Work with the Best: You’ll collaborate with an amazing internal team and be working for top-tier brands, hotels, and hospitality groups, bringing bold concepts to life at scale.

📈 Room to Grow: This is an opportunity to build a career in cocktail innovation, shaping the future of drinks beyond the bar. Hawthorn is a fast growing company with good benefits and job growth opportunities, that are career focused.

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Pre-Requisites

✔️ 5+ years of experience in high-level bartending, beverage R&D, or cocktail program development at top-tier bars, hotels, or hospitality groups.

✔️ Deep knowledge of classic & modern techniques, including batching, clarification, infusion, and advanced cocktail methodologies.

✔️ Experience with menu development for high-volume service, luxury hospitality, or national beverage programs.

✔️ Strong understanding of glassware, bar tools, and cocktail presentation elements—bonus points if you’ve helped develop custom drinkware or serveware.

✔️ Comfortable working cross-functionally with designers, engineers, and supply chain teams to bring new beverage experiences to life.

✔️ A portfolio of innovative cocktail creations (or documented experience in beverage innovation) is highly preferred.

✔️ Willingness to travel for client presentations, training programs, and industry research.

✔️ Based in Louisville, KY, or willing to relocate.

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If this sounds like your kind of role, let’s talk. Apply now and help us redefine the future of cocktail culture. 🚀 Apply on LinkedIn and let’s make magic together. Of course all of our employees have generous PTO, 401k, and a health-care insurance allowance. 

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Meet Hawthorn : A dynamic cross functional innovation company !

Hawthorn Innovations is a multi-faceted powerhouse built on innovation and creative excellence in the beverage alcohol and NA space. We thrive on being dynamic and nimble, thanks to our vertically integrated creative departments that deliver a spectrum of services to clients—from dream to reality, concept to execution.

Hawthorn Supply :The supply chain arm of Hawthorn is where creativity meets logistics. With global partnerships, we execute the design, manufacturing, and delivery of custom food and beverage tools, small-wares, and activation elements for brands and restaurants. Managing millions of items annually and operating our own warehouse for distribution and packaging, this is one of our fastest-growing departments.

Hawthorn Build : Where artistry meets craftsmanship, Hawthorn Build specializes in luxury wood and metal creations. From high-end bar carts to custom brand activation tools, our artisan team—armed with lasers, 3D printers, and CNC capabilities—works with the world’s leading whiskey, wine, and spirits brands to craft one-of-a-kind, functional art pieces designed to wow.

Hawthorn Creative : Our creative services department is a hive of illustrators, designers, industrial experts, and web wizards. Whether it’s designing a full-scale ad campaign, crafting one-of-a-kind products for manufacturing, or building a website to launch it all, our multi-talented team brings client ideas (or their lack of ideas!) to life—in both digital and physical forms.

Hawthorn Studios : A creative playground spanning 15,000 sq. ft., Hawthorn Studios is where magic happens. With full-time photographers, videographers, editors, set builders, and stylists on board, we create everything from billboard ads to TV commercials and global product launches. Whether building custom sets or leveraging our pre-designed “set worlds,” we’re equipped with top-of-the-line gear and the creative synergy of an integrated agency-studio model.

Hawthorn Beverage : For over 20 years, our beverage division has been the secret ingredient behind some of the most iconic beverage programs. From menu strategy development and analysis to operational execution and training, we’ve helped independent, national, and global accounts achieve bar brilliance. Recognized as a leader in bar consulting, we’re proud to toast to countless client success stories.