Harry Yee

At times during his career he was a teetotaler who relied on his customers for feedback on his drinks. He did not drink rum, preferring cognac. After retiring, he taught for several years at the Bartending Training Institute in Honolulu. On December 7, 2022, Yee died at the age of 104. His death was reported the following day on social media by bar manager and cocktail book author Cheryl Charming.

Harry K. Yee (September 26, 1918 – December 7, 2022) was an American bartender from Honolulu, Hawaii, who was credited with having helped to spread tiki culture during the mid-twentieth century, both in Hawaii and in the continental United States. He invented the Blue Hawaii cocktail, and is attributed with being the first bartender to use paper parasols and vanda orchids in tiki drinks.

Born on September 26, 1918, Yee began bartending in 1952, before the advent of jet airliners and seven years before Hawaiian statehood. He soon joined Henry Kaiser's Hawaiian Village Hotel, where he served as head bartender for more than thirty years. Along with Ernest Gantt ("Donn Beach") and Victor Jules Bergeron ("Trader Vic"), Yee did much to popularize a faux version of the tropics consisting of rum drinks, hula girls, and tourism. Yee's time at the bar spanned statehood and the rise of Hawaii as a major international travel and retirement destination. When he began, Hawaii hosted approximately 100,000 visitors per year, mostly around Waikiki. By the time he retired tourism exceeded five million visitors, compared to seven million today.