Kelsey Ramage has been in the hospitality industry for over 15 years. She moved to London after spending 3 years as General Manager and sommelier at the Oakwood in Vancouver to become a head bartender at Dandelyan, in London. On opening it won “Best New International Cocktail bar” for 2015 at the Spirited Awards, and in 2016 moving 47 places to No. 3 in the world and having their menu take the title of “World’s Best Cocktail Menu”. In the 2017 Spirited Awards, it won “Best International Hotel Bar”, “Best International Bar Team”, and “World’s Best Bar”. She went on to win the title of Global Champion for Olmeca Altos’ Tahona Society competition in 2016 and continues to work with the brand speaking about sustainability and tequila.
In January of 2017 she and partner Iain Griffiths launched Trash Tiki, an online platform and touring pop up that creates every ingredient and flavour from by-products and waste others would normally discard. The idea came as a way of showing the craft cocktail industry that would-be waste ingredients normally thrown away in a regular cocktail bar could still be used for flavour, in an open-forum community that was non-preachy and a lot of fun.
In March of 2017 the duo paired up as beverage directors for WastED, a pop-up led by chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill farms, which was created to change the way we think about food waste. The dishes, along with the drinks, were made from ingredients sourced from major producers and local farms alike that would normally be thrown out. The pop-up received much recognition for it’s innovation in sustainability.
Trash Tiki is toured to visit over 30 cities in 2017, and on into 2018, hoping to continue the important conversation about all that can be done to reduce the environmental impact of the food & drink industry. Through this year, Kelsey will be diving into ingredient locality, continuing to travel the globe doing pop-ups with her new platform, Common Sense, which aims to reconnect bars and cocktails with the indigenous ingredients grown in the surrounding landscape. Specifically, in her home city Toronto, Ontario where this year should see their first bar opening.
Find them: Instagram