Rachel Cope, founder and CEO of 84 Hospitality, said her newest project, Coco's Cocktail Club, should open mid-January 2027. The location will be the Donnay Building, which is mostly famous as the home of the now defunct HiLo Club, and while there was once a plan to raze it and put a Braum's in the space (nothing wrong with Braum's, y'all), developers Nick Preftakes and Caleb Hill bought the building in 2022 and started redeveloping it, saving what they could and demoing what they couldn't.

In January of this year, we broke the news that Cope had signed on to bring a very different cocktail bar experience to the metro, and the more we learn about her plans the more we realize that Coco's has the potential to be an industry shifting concept. The 1900-square-foot space is on the 2nd floor of the Donnay Building (5100 N. Classen Cir.), roughly under the red-martini-glass sign and facing Edna's. Once again, as with Elisabetta, she'll be working with hospitality design genius Chris Pardo on the interior, and that alone makes it interesting.

This is the perfect time for a cute dog photo, so here is Coco, the late, great Frenchie for whom the club is named.

Inspired by the zero-waste, high-tech beverage programs at award-winning bars like Thunderbolt and Semiprecious, Coco's will feature near-freezing service with no shaking or stirring. Centrifugal clarification, force carbonation, and dilution hacking are the technical backbone of Coco's cocktails, offering high flavor without water dilution. Cope said there has been some misunderstanding about this component.

"That applies to our craft program," she said. "If a guest wants a cocktail that isn't on our list, we'll happily make it, so, yes, we'll still be stirring and shaking; it's still a full-service bar."

One of Pardo's interesting contributions is the transformative nature of the club's lighting. It's designed to be natural light during they day, with a calm, easy vibe, and then as the sun sets, the club gets darker, with warm lighting and what Cope called a "head-bobbing atmosphere." The idea is to not trap Coco's in on fixed vibe, but to be reflective of what's happening outside.

To build the beverage program, Cope recruited Mike Capoferri, whose Thunderbolt bar in Los Angeles made North America's 50 Best Bars list. Coco's will be only one of a few bars in the world running on his production method, and the first outside LA and Denver. A first-of-its-kind, world-class bar program in Oklahoma. There are only five bars in the U.S. using Capoferri's methods, and three are his, and the nearest to OKC is in Denver.

The nearly 360-degree bar will surround the heart of Coco's operations, an imported Italian pizza oven, but the bar itself is impressive in its own right. It's being built by Liquid Motion, a family owned Spanish company with 60-plus years of experience in stainless steel manufacturing. Cope said they wanted the pizza oven dead center "so the cooks can feel like they're part of the show, and to minimize the required back-of-house space." She showed us the plans, and the BOH, such as it is, is very difficult to find, and that because nearly everything that matters is happening in full view of guests.

Finally, the food menu -- yes, food -- is being developed by a multiple James Beard Award winning chef, and Cope isn't ready to disclose their identity yet. Clearly pizza will be on the menu, but the rest is still a mystery. We'll tell you more when we know more.