Meet the Founder

15+ Years in Hospitality · New York & Philadelphia · Beverage Development · Hospitality Consulting · Events & Experiences · Staff Training

Matt Burkhardt founded Manhattan Mixology to make exceptional cocktail experiences more accessible, more memorable, and more widely shared.

For more than 15 years, Burkhardt has built a career across hospitality, beverage, events, marketing, and building businesses—an unconventional combination that ultimately became the foundation for Manhattan Mixology.

His hospitality education began in Philadelphia, where he worked in restaurants including Smith & Wollensky and the James Beard Award-winning Fork, developing an early appreciation for the details that distinguish good service from truly memorable hospitality. His career eventually brought him to New York City and establishments such as Scarlet and Laziza, where years spent behind the bar became an education in much more than cocktails.

There, and throughout the years that followed, Burkhardt became fascinated by everything happening around the drink itself: the choreography of a busy room, the relationship between the bar and kitchen, the importance of consistency, the way a menu communicates identity, and the countless small decisions that shape how a guest remembers an experience.

As his career evolved, so did his responsibilities. He moved beyond bartending into beverage development, bar leadership, staff training, restaurant openings, operations, and consulting. His work with hospitality concepts including Scarlet and Laziza gave him opportunities to help develop beverage programs from both the creative and operational sides—building menus and experiences that needed to be distinctive enough to attract guests and practical enough for teams to execute night after night.

Beyond the Bar

Burkhardt's professional experience has never existed entirely within hospitality.

He also spent several years in the corporate world, including managing a global talent-attraction marketing program for a major technology organization. The work required a very different set of skills: developing strategy across markets, managing projects and stakeholders, communicating within a large organization, interpreting performance, and understanding how a brand needs to show up consistently across different audiences.

Rather than existing separately from his hospitality career, that experience ultimately shaped the way he approaches Manhattan Mixology.

It provided an understanding of how corporate clients think, how marketing teams work, how projects move through organizations, and why creativity needs to be supported by strategy, communication, and reliable execution. Later marketing and partnership work with Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC) further connected those worlds—hospitality, culture, events, partnerships, and audience experience.

It's a combination that has become particularly valuable as Manhattan Mixology has expanded its work with corporate teams, brands, agencies, restaurants, caterers, venues, and hospitality partners.

Building Manhattan Mixology

Burkhardt founded Manhattan Mixology in 2023 with a straightforward ambition: find new ways to share exceptional cocktail experiences with more people.

The idea was intentionally broader than managing or opening another bar.

Cocktails could become an interactive class. A corporate team-building experience. A private dinner. A brand activation. A restaurant beverage program. A large-scale reception. A collaboration between a chef and bartender. An opportunity to teach someone something new.

Manhattan Mixology became the vehicle for exploring all of those possibilities.

Since then, the company has continued to expand beyond its earliest private events and classes into corporate experiences, cocktail catering, beverage consulting, hospitality partnerships, restaurant projects, brand activations, and education—while maintaining cocktails and hospitality as the common thread connecting the work.

Burkhardt's experience behind the bar remains central to how the company operates. He understands that an ambitious cocktail is only successful if a bartender can execute it consistently during service. An event isn't successful simply because it photographs well; it needs to work for the host and feel effortless to the guest. And a creative idea only becomes valuable when it can actually be delivered.

Expertise, Shared

Over the course of his career, Burkhardt has trained and worked alongside hospitality professionals, developed beverage programs, supported restaurant openings, created experiences for private and corporate clients, and collaborated across New York's food, beverage, and events community.

His expertise has also brought him in front of national audiences through television, podcast, and media appearances as a cocktail and hospitality expert, extending Manhattan Mixology's educational mission beyond the events themselves.

Yet the philosophy remains rooted in the same curiosity that first drew him deeper into cocktails years ago: there is always another technique to learn, another ingredient to explore, another person to teach, and another way to create an experience around a drink.

Today, Manhattan Mixology brings those different chapters together—hospitality and business, creativity and operations, education and entertainment, intimate gatherings and large-scale experiences.

The settings continue to change.

The goal remains remarkably similar:

Create exceptional cocktail experiences and find meaningful new ways to share them.