Cocktail Glass Emoji

A V-shaped cocktail glass with an olive. Approved in Unicode 6.0 in 2010 as U+1F378U+1F378 COCKTAIL GLASS, though the shape in every rendering is unmistakably the classic martini.

The glass is actually the code. That iconic V-stemmed silhouette means 'cocktails' in general, not just martinis: it represents going out, bar culture, happy hour, nightlife, and a kind of sophistication that doesn't quite belong to 🍷 or 🍺. Where wine is intimate and beer is casual, 🍸 is dressed up. The global cocktail market hit $14.23 billion in 2024 and is on track to nearly double by 2032.

The martini glass became shorthand for elegance largely thanks to James Bond, whose 'shaken, not stirred' order first appeared on screen in 1962's *Dr. No*. Every time you see 🍸, Bond is lurking somewhere behind the design.

🍸 lives in three distinct social contexts. First, the going-out announcement: 'Out tonight 🍸' is the minimum-viable nightlife post. Second, girls' night / group dinner content: 🍸 + 👯‍♀️ or 💄 reads as 'we're getting ready to be fabulous.' Third, the cocktail-recipe TikTok genre, which exploded in 2022-2023 when espresso martini content went viral and pushed the drink to #3 in US on-premise sales by the end of 2023.

Platform-wise: Instagram skews aesthetic (bar shots, outfit-of-the-night), TikTok is recipes and tutorials, X leans 'grown-up after-work drink' tweets, and LinkedIn uses it sparingly for 'celebrating a promotion' posts. Brand usage is heavy in hospitality marketing — the cocktail emoji delivers 57% more likes on Instagram posts for bars and restaurants.

In dating, 🍸 sits above ☕ and below 🍷 on the flirt scale. 'Drinks?' with 🍸 signals interest without being intense; it suggests a bar rather than a walk-to-grab-coffee.

🍸 was part of the 2010 Unicode 6.0 release. It's officially named 'Cocktail Glass', but every major vendor renders the Martini-style V-stemmed glass — probably because that silhouette is the most instantly-readable 'cocktail' shape at small sizes. Apple draws a glossy liquid with one olive. Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and Meta all follow suit with minor styling differences.

The martini glass itself became cocktail-shorthand in the Prohibition era (1920-33), when speakeasies needed a drink that looked sophisticated at a table. The 'V' geometry was popularized in the 1920s and cemented by mid-century design — it photographs well, balances visually, and signals 'adult' at a glance. Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, *Casino Royale* (1953), described the drink order that would eventually become 'shaken, not stirred' in 1962's Dr. No. Bond single-handedly made the vodka martini famous, and the emoji carries that halo.

Ironically, bartenders generally consider shaking a gin or vodka martini worse for the drink — shaking over-dilutes and bruises the gin. But the emoji, like Bond, doesn't care about execution. It cares about the image.

1. 2010Approved in Unicode 6.0 as U+1F378 COCKTAIL GLASS↗
2. 2015Emoji 1.0 standardizes rendering; V-stemmed martini shape becomes the universal design
3. 2018The 'Espresso Martini' starts its modern TikTok-era rise; 🍸 begins appearing in coffee-cocktail content
4. 2022Espresso martini content explodes on TikTok, pushing 🍸 into a second social-media prime↗
5. 2023Parmesan Espresso Martini goes viral (280K TikTok views for the original Jordan Hughes video); 🍸 becomes part of that specific content cluster↗
6. 2024Espresso Martini hits #3 top-selling on-premise cocktail in the US, behind only Margarita and Old Fashioned↗
7. 202558% of Millennials and 66% of Gen Z actively seek low/no-alcohol cocktails; 🍸 starts appearing in 'NA cocktail' content more often↗

• •James Bond's 'shaken, not stirred' order first appeared in print in 1953 (Casino Royale) and on screen in 1962 (Dr. No). It's the single most influential fictional drink order in bartending history.
• •Bartenders largely agree that shaking a gin or vodka martini actually hurts the drink — it over-dilutes and bruises the gin. Bond's order is cinematically iconic but technically bad. The emoji doesn't care; it inherited the cool, not the chemistry.
• •The global cocktail market was worth $14.23 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $26.24 billion by 2032. 🍸 is hitched to real money, not just vibes.
• •Ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktails are the fastest-growing category — +11.8% CAGR projected through 2033. Cans are eating cocktail bars' lunch, especially among Gen Z.
• •The Espresso Martini sold out its renaissance in 2023-24, jumping to #3 in US on-premise sales behind only Margarita and Old Fashioned. It was invented in London in the 1980s by bartender Dick Bradsell.
• •The Margarita is the most-searched cocktail in the world with 1.5 million monthly Google searches. Mojito is second (1.2M). If the emoji had a search-volume soul, it would be a Margarita.
• •Jordan Hughes's 2023 Parmesan Espresso Martini TikTok hit 280K views on its own and spawned dozens of bartender response videos, crossing onto national morning TV. The emoji 🍸 was the thumbnail-level signal for that entire genre.
• •58% of Millennials and 66% of Gen Z actively seek low or no-alcohol cocktails. The emoji is increasingly used for mocktails, quietly decoupling from literal booze.
• •Instagram posts with cocktail emojis get 57% more likes on average for hospitality brands. 🍸 is measurably effective ad copy for bars and restaurants.

• •James Bond's 'shaken, not stirred' martini, introduced in Ian Fleming's 1953 *Casino Royale* and first on screen in 1962's Dr. No. The single biggest cultural source of the emoji's sophistication cred.
• •Sex and the City: the Cosmopolitan is inseparable from the show's 1998-2004 run. Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda made the V-stemmed cocktail glass an icon of single-in-the-city femininity.
• •Mad Men (2007-15): Don Draper's Old Fashioned lives in a tumbler, but the 1960s office-cocktail aesthetic made 🍸 a visual shorthand for mid-century masculine sophistication.
• •Anthony Bourdain's cocktail segments, especially in Parts Unknown, drove craft-cocktail culture into mainstream media and pulled 🍸 toward 'culinary' content, not just nightlife.
• •Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Rosa Diaz's 'I'm just here for the cocktails' vibe made 🍸 a subtle character signal on the show and in fan-edits online.

• •🍸 is U+1F378U+1F378. Common shortcodes: :cocktail::cocktail: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).
• •Emoji 1.0 / Unicode 6.0 — universally supported since 2010. No FE0F variant selector needed.
• •Consider it the 'generic cocktail' icon for UI purposes: bar apps, menu filters, and nightlife categories typically use 🍸 rather than 🍹 to signal 'mixed drinks' broadly. 🍹 is more specifically tropical/beach-coded.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.