Downtown Tuscaloosa bar Session Cocktails has partnered with nonprofit Tuscaloosa’s One Place to raise money during the month of December.
TOP is a local nonprofit that promotes and supports families in west Alabama. According to the organization’s website, the program promotes “self-sufficiency, strengthening families, and preventing child abuse and neglect to improve the quality of life for all members of our community.”
The bar selected TOP for this month’s Cocktail for a Cause, a monthly fundraiser where Session selects a local nonprofit to sponsor through the sale of a specialty cocktail.
Hunter Wiggins, owner of Session Cocktails, said C4C was born when he created a specialty charity cocktail for a friend whose parents died in a car wreck. He said people came in the next month asking what the new charity cocktail was, so the bar decided to keep sponsoring a new charity or nonprofit each month.
“We also want to be more than just a bar,” Wiggins said. “We want to be a very community-focused establishment.”
The bar teamed up with Tito’s Vodka to create a cocktail that benefited the Tuscaloosa Metro Animal Shelter in 2019, and it helped jumpstart the C4C initiative. Both Session Cocktails and Tito’s gave a percentage of the proceeds from the specialty drink to the shelter.
Wiggins said a dollar from every C4C drink goes back to that month’s sponsored organization.
Each holiday season, TOP sponsors the Tuscaloosa Tinsel Trail, a fundraiser where local businesses and organizations pay to decorate a Christmas tree on the trail downtown at Government Plaza. Since TOP hosts the Tinsel Trail, Session Cocktails has chosen to sponsor TOP each December as part of its C4C fundraiser since 2019.
Alison Reed, a senior majoring in advertising, is a server and marketing intern for Session. She said this month’s specialty cocktail is the “Yippee Chai Yay,” which consists of a chai-infused Old Forester 86 cream bourbon whiskey and spiced pecan demerara.
Instead of sponsoring or decorating a tree at the Tinsel Trail, Reed said the cocktail bar gives some of the proceeds from the C4C directly to TOP.
Reed pointed out that the short distance from Session Cocktails to Tinsel Trail — only a couple blocks, roughly a five-minute walk — means guests can visit the trail and walk over to the bar to purchase the holiday cocktail.
Wiggins said nonprofits can sign up online for a chance to be sponsored for C4C.
On the first Monday of each month, the cocktail bar has a release party to reveal the new specialty cocktail. Reed said the charitable proceeds are doubled during the party.
The C4C is $13 plus tax; however, it is $8 during the bar’s happy hour from 4 p.m.-7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and proceeds raised during the happy hour still benefit TOP.
“It’s [Tuscaloosa’s One Place is] just an absolutely great resource that really elevates and empowers Tuscaloosa families to achieve their full potential,” Reed said. “We really just like to work with organizations that have a clear impact on the community.”
