There is nothing like a great martini glass.
I firmly believe that 50% of having a martini is entirely dependent in the glass. I once went to a casino where I was served a cosmopolitan over ice in a small plastic cup. Trust me, it’s not the same thing.
When I decided that I was going to serve a Birthday Martini at the upcoming Unicorn Brunch, I knew that I had to get a good martini glass. Something with the right weight. A glass that felt comfortable to hold and sip from. Unfortunately, I also wanted 24 of them and most consumer stores seemed to want between $7-9 per glass. Which quickly adds up when you need so many.
I headed over to Webstaurant, a website that sells to restaurants and commercial vendors, to see what I could see over there.
I found they sold a classic martini glasses in quantities of 12 for $3.70 per glass and was absolutely delighted. However, I was slightly less delighted when the box arrived and the second I touched it, I heard broken glass shift.
Four of the glasses were broken. Which I was willing to bet was due to the fact there was absolutely no attempt made to protect the boxes beyond the original packaging. The large box they were shipped in didn’t even have a FRAGILE sticker on the outside. I might have more knowledge than most about shipping breakables due to working at the Waterford Wedgwood outlet in 2005, shipping china and crystal all over the US, but come on.
I hopped on live chat to ask for four more glasses to be sent out. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered it would not be possible for them to just replace the four broken glasses. At first they wanted to simply give me a partial refund, but when I pointed out that left me reordering 12 glasses for the sake of getting four more or having four less than I wanted when the glasses only arrived broken because they weren’t shipped properly, they relented and said they would send me another box of 12 at no cost.
Which wasn’t what I wanted at all. Because then I would have 32 martini glasses and that was entirely too many as they are rather large to store and I don’t have unlimited cabinet space. In the end, I accepted that this is as good as the offer was going to get, so I took it. And then found a friend who didn’t have martini glasses to take the excess.
I also found another company to order barware from as I also want to get wine glasses soon.
Update:
My replacement glasses arrived today and guess what! One was broken. At least they had wrapped the inner box in bubble wrap to attempt to cushion it. But it didn’t work as well as they would have hoped.
Sometimes you have to laugh.
