About Cheers

Cheers

Cheers is the business publication for the on-premise beverage alcohol industry — serving decision-makers within independent and chain restaurants, hotels, bars, and other on-premise establishments with the information they need to drive beverage revenue. Published from Norwalk, Connecticut, it has been described as the only beverage business publication devoted to full-service restaurants, bars, and hotels. Each issue is packed with ideas and best practices, from beer, wine, and spirits product news to bartending techniques, food pairings, staff training, and customer service — supported by exclusive data from its sister company, The Beverage Information & Insights Group. Its official website is https://www.cheersonline.com.

The On-Premise Beverage Authority

The beverage alcohol industry divides, roughly, into two worlds: off-premise (liquor stores, supermarkets, and other retailers) and on-premise (restaurants, bars, hotels, and clubs — everywhere drinks are served by the glass). Cheers is the trade press of the on-premise world. Its readers are the beverage managers, bar directors, owners, and operators who decide what gets poured, how it gets priced, and how the staff sells it.

That focus made the magazine unique in beverage trade publishing. While other titles covered retail or the supplier side, Cheers spoke directly to the operator — the person responsible for turning a bar program into profit. Its editorial promise was practical: ideas and best practices that working beverage managers could put to use the next shift.

The Bev-AL Communications Years

Cheers was published for years by Bev-AL Communications, Inc., the beverage-alcohol publishing company whose copyrights appear on the magazine's issues from the late 1990s through the mid-2000s. During this era, Robert Keane served as Co-Publisher and Editorial Director — signing the magazine's editorials and leading its coverage of an industry in transformation.

Keane's editorials captured the on-premise business at the turn of the millennium: consumers spending more on what they drank, trading up to imported and light beers, premium varietal wines, vodka, tequila, rum, and cocktails made with premium and super-premium spirits. The numbers told the story — case volumes recovering, dollar sales climbing — and Cheers was there to interpret what it meant for operators.

Adams, M2MEDIA360, and the Beverage Information Group

The magazine's corporate history tracks the consolidation of beverage trade media. By 2007, Cheers was published by The Beverage Information Group — formerly the Adams Beverage Group — a division of M2MEDIA360 that served all aspects of the beverage alcohol industry through Cheers, Beverage Dynamics, and StateWays magazines, plus the Beverage Information Group Handbooks and Adams Business Research.

The Adams name carried weight in the industry: the Adams Handbook Advance and the Adams Beverage Group's statistical publications were the industry's data bibles, and Cheers' access to that data operation gave its reporting an authoritative foundation. Jack Robertiello of the Adams Beverage Group was a familiar industry spokesman during this era, presenting beverage alcohol sales trends to the trade.

The Cheers Beverage Conference

Cheers extended its brand into live events with the Cheers Beverage Conference, the annual gathering of on-premise beverage operators. The 2000 conference set the template: two days of general sessions, business-building breakouts, and networking for restaurant and bar beverage professionals. The 2001 conference moved to Las Vegas — landing in the third week of April at one of the city's top hotels after a successful three-year run at the Westin Michigan Avenue in Chicago — following a direction suggested by the magazine's Editorial Advisory Board.

The 2004 conference, held January 25–26 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Miami, showed the event's stature. The keynote address came from Bill Allen, President and CEO of Fleming's Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar, who told a standing-room-only audience that future profitability depended on serving quality beverages that delivered unique experiences. Sessions covered 2003 beverage alcohol sales trends, wine training, liquor liability law, multicultural marketing opportunities, beer equipment, and merchandising — with speakers including master of ceremonies Steve Olson, Doug Frost (one of the few people certified as both a Master of Wine and Master Sommelier), and the Wine Market Council's John Gillespie.

The Cheers Beverage Excellence Awards

The conference culminated each year in the Cheers Beverage Excellence Awards — the on-premise industry's highest honors for chain beverage alcohol programs. The 2010 awards, presented at a gala ceremony before a packed house of close to 500 beverage executives, illustrated the program's prestige: Ruby Tuesday received the 2010 Beverage Excellence Award for Best Chain Overall Beverage Program, accepted by the company's director of quality beverage; New York restaurateur Danny Meyer, CEO of the Union Square Hospitality Group, was honored with the Raising the Bar Award for his role as an industry innovator, presented following his keynote address.

The awards recognized eleven operators and two individuals across categories including Best Chain Beverage Menu (Bar Louie, for its Passport Program), Best Chain Beverage Merchandising (Hilton, for its Tiki program), Best Chain Signature Drink (InterContinental Hotels Group), Best Chain Drink Program (Cheeseburger in Paradise), Best Chain Beer Program (Ram International), Best Chain Spirits Program (The Phoenician), and Best Chain Wine Program (Bellagio). Winners were chosen by former Beverage Excellence Award winners and a panel of operators serving on the Cheers editorial board — peer recognition from the industry's best.

The On-Premise Handbook and Growth Brands

Cheers' data operation produced the Cheers On-Premise Handbook — the first and only annual statistical report on trends in adult beverages served in hotels, bars, restaurants, and clubs. The 2007 edition contained beer, wine, and spirit consumption by category, state, and metro market, plus brand data, retail sales, consumer demographics, and industry statistics. It was the kind of expensive, indispensable reference ($3,000) that only a serious trade publisher could produce.

The magazine also published its Growth Brands lists, identifying the fastest-growing brands of wine and distilled spirits in the beverage alcohol industry — data-driven rankings (in thousands of 9-liter cases) that tracked winners from Jim Beam and Sutter Home to fast-rising challengers. For suppliers and operators alike, the lists were a scorecard of the market.

Editorial Leadership

Cheers' masthead over the years reflected the magazine's industry standing. Charlie Forman served as Vice President and Publisher — welcoming attendees to the 2004 Cheers Beverage Conference and later attending the magazine's roundtables as publisher. Liza B. Zimmerman served as Editor-in-Chief, moderating the magazine's roundtable at the National Restaurant Association's Wine, Spirits & Beer Event in Chicago, where operators from Balena, the Boozehound, Hyatt Hotels, and other leading companies debated what defines a great bar program.

The magazine's editorial board — the panel of operators who helped choose the Beverage Excellence Awards — kept the publication connected to working practitioners, ensuring its coverage stayed grounded in operational reality rather than supplier promotion.

The Digital Era

Cheers has evolved with the media business into a digital-first brand. Its online home, cheersonline.com, continues to serve the on-premise trade with news, ideas, and best practices. The magazine's exclusive data now comes from its sister company, The Beverage Information & Insights Group — the successor to the Adams data operation — keeping the brand's quantitative edge intact.

The Beverage Information Group's digital platforms continue to publish beverage trade journalism, and the broader EPG Media family — which undertook a major rebranding in 2022, renaming its media division EPG Brand Acceleration — carries the Cheers tradition of on-premise coverage forward.

The Magazine's Legacy

Across the Bev-AL Communications years, the Adams and M2MEDIA360 era, and the digital present, Cheers has remained what it set out to be: the business publication for the people who sell drinks by the glass. Its conferences convened the industry's operators, its awards honored its best programs, its handbook quantified its markets, and its pages delivered the ideas that filled registers.

For the on-premise beverage professional — the bar manager planning next quarter's menu, the chain beverage director rolling out a new cocktail program, the hotel operator training staff — Cheers has been the trade press that spoke their language. Its official website is https://www.cheersonline.com.