Justin Hazelton pours cocktails during a Soul Food Sessions dinner. Photo by Peter Taylor/Peter Taylor Photography.

Justin Hazelton, the longtime 5Church lead bartender, has taken a new role as beverage director at FS Food Group. The restaurant group owns Yafo Kitchen, Midwood Smokehouse, Paco’s Tacos & Tequila, and Mama Ricotta’s, and Hazelton will oversee the cocktail programs at all of them with the exception of Yafo Kitchen, as the concept doesn’t have a full bar. Hazelton will be rolling out new drink menus over the next few weeks.

“With FS Food Group, they’ve always focused on great products and food,” Hazelton says. “We want to make the drinks come up to the same quality of the food. That’s what I’m here to do.”

The new drink menus will have two parts, Hazelton explains. There will be a list of mainstays that fit with the restaurant’s cuisine; for example, Mama Ricotta’s will include sangria, Aperol spritz, a negroni, and limoncello, all Italian classics. There will also be speciality cocktails, such as the Rosemary Up (or maybe it’s the Rosemary UP, in our honor?). The drink is made with Conniption gin, Crude bitters, rosemary simple syrup, lemon juice, and dry vermouth, and Hazelton says it’s a good example of what he’s trying to do across the concepts.

“It has the flavors that go well with Italian cuisine and it is representing a lot of local North Carolina brands at the same time,” Hazelton says.

He took the job with FS Food Group in July, but spent six weeks observing the restaurants before starting in on the drink menus.

“You have to learn the culture,” he explains. “You can’t just walk into a place and say this is going to happen.”

As he works to implement the menus, you’ll likely spot Hazelton behind the bar himself, training staff. He says a priority is to get the bartenders and servers excited about the drinks and the brands they’re using in them, many of them North Carolina spirits.

The first restaurant to get a bar menu makeover is Mama Ricotta’s, and that should be taking place over the next couple of weeks. Paco’s Taco’s & Tequila will be a few weeks after that, and Midwood Smokehouse will be the last piece. With five locations, that one will take a bit longer. The menus will be seasonal; the first release will act as a fall/winter menu. —Kristen Wile