Twenty years ago, a handful of roommates and Dale DeGroff disciples bound together to turn their hospitality-forward house parties into their life’s work. Employees Only (EO) came into the world on Nov. 15, 2004 (though Repeal Day, Dec, 5, marked its official grand opening), and it’s no exaggeration to say that the then nascent cocktail world would never be the same.
When Igor Hadzismajlovic, Jason Kosmas, and Dushan Zaric joined forces with the late Henry LaFargue, who passed in January, and then brought in the bar business acumen of BillGilroy, a new era of cocktail bars came into existence.
Here in one place was everything the early aughts bar-goer used to need three or four different venues to experience. Excellent craft drinks, yes, but ones that were free-poured, doled out with haste, and in high volume. Guests could socialize, be loud, enjoy a few tasty bites to pair with the booze, and let loose while doing so. And they could do it all from after work until the early morning, or in what would come to be an unofficial motto for all-night EO revelers, from “six to soup.”
Now two decades strong and counting, EO remains ahead of its time for many of the cocktail world’s biggest trends, from expanding into a global enterprise to putting an emphasis first and foremost on fun rather than rules and regulations. The industry has yo-yoed in the past two decades, but as Employees Only has stayed true to itself, its ideology has become
