“Nutcrackers! Nutcrackers!” The cries echo through the air of Rockaway Beach and Coney Island. They echo through the parks and parade routes of New York City advertising the city’s unofficial summer beverage. Street vendors lug huge coolers filled to the brim with the colorful concoctions sometimes packaged in plastic juice bottles sometimes in tall deli containers. Everyone has their own recipe usually involving a combination of liquor and fruit juice but the end goal is the same. As the name “Nutcracker” suggests these drinks are a big hit.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 VICE | 2020-08-22 15:00:00 |  10,661,307 Views |
Side Income | Make $20000 a Month Selling Cocktails on the Street in NYC
Everything about Nutcrackers screams summer. They come in a variety of bright colors and are always sold ice cold often half-frozen to achieve a slush-like consistency. The drink has deep ties to the city particularly its black and Latino communities which have been a summer staple for decades. To many Nutcrackers are as much a part of New York as dirty water hot dogs or Brooklyn-style pizza albeit far more controversial.
While there are a few bars and restaurants in New York that sell nutcrackers the vast majority are sold by unlicensed street vendors. Police crackdowns on these vendors come and go (enforcement is generally lax) but the occasional crackdown inevitably attracts national news coverage. In a city whose views on takeout cocktails are in flux nutcrackers have been both vilified as a public health threat and hailed as a life-changing source of income for enterprising vendors.
The Nutcracker cocktail was invented in the mid-’90s at Chinese-Peruvian fusion restaurant Flor de Mayo a collaboration between restaurant manager José Chu and a local customer (and drug dealer) who happened to be known as Juice. Legend has it that they were watching basketball on the bar’s TV when Juice got thirsty leading the guys to mix and match bottles from the bar eventually creating a particularly potent concoction. All they needed now was a name and as fate would have it a commercial for the New York Ballet went on TV announcing an upcoming performance of The Nutcracker.
