Brief
NielsenIQ tasked Wilde Toast with serving as project lead on the Global Bartender Report study — the largest global research programme into hospitality professionals — underpinning the NIQ Global Bartender Report 2026.
The brief was straightforward in ambition, complex in execution: collect 1,750 high-quality responses from premium-plus bartenders across 14 countries, manage a network of global partners and associations, and deliver the strategic insight layer that would give the findings genuine commercial value for drinks brands.
Key objectives:
1. Recruit and oversee 1,750 premium-plus bartender responses across 14 markets
2. Manage all global partner relationships, logistics and payments
3. Ensure sample quality through bartender association partnerships
4. Deliver strategic insight consultancy on the report findings
Delivery
Wilde Toast operated as end-to-end project lead — coordinating across markets, managing partner relationships and ensuring every response met the quality threshold required for a study of this scale and credibility.
Leveraging our network across the global bartending community, we oversaw sample collection across 14 countries, working with bartender associations to secure committed, high-quality respondents rather than passive survey completions. All stakeholder management, partner payments and logistical coordination sat with Wilde Toast throughout.
Beyond the fieldwork, we delivered strategic insight consultancy on the findings — packaging the data into the sharp, actionable intelligence that sits at the heart of the published report. The result is a study that tells the on-trade something it can actually use. Example findings: 88% of bartenders make a drinks recommendation every shift, and 95% of the time the guest orders it.
