Best Signature Drink: OVG Hospitality’s First Serve Cocktail (Excellence In Concessions Awards 2026)

The competitive hospitality business not only breeds creativity and innovation but requires it, as exemplified by the team behind food and beverage at Credit One Stadium in Charleston, South Carolina, where OVG Hospitality crafted a drink worthy of the stadium’s marquee event: the Credit One Charleston Open, the largest and oldest women’s professional tennis event in North America.

Introduced in 2022, the First Serve Cocktail has become a favorite among tennis fans, with its mixture of butterfly pea flower-infused Lowcountry Lemonade, Grey Goose vodka and club soda garnished with a lemon wheel refreshing fans as they trek through the LTP Daniel Island tennis complex, which includes Credit One Stadium.

“We really wanted to show our creativity here in all aspects of hospitality, really thinking about the guest experience for all of our events,” said Travis Maynard, general manager for OVG Hospitality at Credit One Stadium. “I knew that a vodka lemonade during the spring in Charleston would be an easy target. We worked with our partners, with the client and with the stadium tournament colors.”

It took a few years to catch on, but OVG, parent company to Pollstar, found the right mix this year, selling over 25,000 drinks in just nine days.

Part of that success came from the introduction of canned versions of the beverage exclusive to the tennis tournament, seeing it placed at grab-and-go markets and on-site vending machines.

Drink presentation was just as important to Maynard, who didn’t want to “go over the top” when it came to the cup but also didn’t want to make it look disposable.

“We started with a plant-based mason jar, and that was cool, but it didn’t have any uniqueness to it,” Maynard says of the choice of drink vessel. “So we added nice artwork with our brands, and it was a few years ago when I saw people starting to gather them up with this new iteration of the cup.”

Maynard recalls seeing a woman in her mid-60s going around collecting cups as people left the venue.

“She had like a stack of 12, and I was like, ‘We did it. We finally got the right recipe for the actual cup,’” says Maynard.

The drink is such a hit that OVG Hospitality’s tournament partners developed a candle inspired by the cocktail, expanding its brand through merchandise.

That creativity goes beyond the Credit One Charleston Open. The stadium also hosts dozens of concerts and other sporting events every year, and OVG Hospitality develops signature drinks for events like The Opener, a peach lemonade vodka with another branded cup that is sold during shows.

“We’ll do signature cocktails directed at a specific show,” Maynard says. “We’ll find something about the artist or one of their songs and tie it all together, and concertgoers love that stuff.”