Ohio Bar Serving Tampon Margaritas Absorbs Heavy Flow Of Online Hate

If you’re a lady reading this (or a rando who got drunk & went full Munchtown Bob even though she told you ‘it’s not a great time’) you know periods can be messy. That’s especially true in the suburbs of Cleveland where a bar is trying to pad its reputation against a heavy flow of online hate for their new margarita flavor:

From Fox News:

A restaurant/bar in Lakewood, OH, caused controversy online when they unveiled their new berry margarita that comes garnished with a tampon. According to the bar’s Facebook post, one dollar from every purchase will be donated to a nearby women’s shelter.

Yuzu, an izakaya (casual Japanese pub) inspired bar, promoted the new drink on Facebook by posting “it’s that time of the month, time for a new menu that is…” The drink, called the Even Can’t Literally, is a berry margarita that comes garnished with a tampon. According to one of the restaurant’s bartenders, however, the tampon is optional.

Fox 8 in Cleveland reports that Sarah Krueger, the drink’s creator, told them “we also decided if someone doesn’t want the actual tampon in their drink, they can donate that tampon as well. They can get the drink and say ‘donate the tampon, we just want the drink’ and we’ll still donate the dollar to the woman’s shelter.”

Here’s Yuzu’s initial post from May 2nd:

And the follow up that came yesterday after news outlets picked it up:

There’s a lot of gems in their explanation but my favorite is this:

It takes something impactful to cut above the noise to get people’s attention.

Apparently the local health department also reached out to the bar after seeing the news & there’s actually guidelines for this. In case you’re a bar owner considering hopping on board this trend, you can put a tampon applicator in a drink (must be unscented, fyi), but not the actual tampon. I’d also recommend you don’t leave the tampon in your drink for more than 8 hours.

Now that we’ve cleared that up let’s head out to the comments to see if people are really as mad as the headlines say they are…

These were just a few of hundreds & hundreds, but they’re all pretty nuts. Gripes include plastic waste, poking fun at women’s vernacular for the drink’s name, conning people into buying margs under the guise of a good cause, that their social media person is trying too hard to be ‘edgy’, and so on.

There’s just so many wacky things about this to me, too… The bar owner David Bumba’s lofty explanation of ‘dispelling archaic attitudes about women’s bodies’ via booze, that there’s written health code for how you can put tampons in drinks, that people are legit so angry… It’s definitely all cringey, but any real outrage here is overkill. It’s a small-town bar doing small-town bar things. We’re talking about a plastic feminine hygiene garnish bobbing in a glass like a buoy.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is a saying I’ve always loved. As delightfully misguided as the whole thing is, I don’t think there were ever any bad intentions and at least all this attention is highlighting a good cause…

But, ah. Maybe for this particular bar social media just isn’t their thing.

Either way, I’m glad this whole thing reminded me of my generation’s Tide Pod panic – headlines over teens allegedly putting vodka-soaked tampons in their butts.

Whatever the case, I’m simply happy to sit back, *enjoy a margarita (*through my mouth hole only), and watch the madness unfold online. This particular case isn’t that serious, period.

**Feel like I didn’t blow my full period pun load but please know an attempt was made.