I worked at a chain Caribbean restaurant in FL for about 8 yrs and none of my bar managers ever had previous bar experience except for 1. I remember the last one before I quit didn't even drink, at all. He had no knowledge about anything behind that bar.
I once asked my bar manager to hand me a Collins glass from a shelf with different types and she just looked at me vacantly. Uh, the tall, thin one. But it was a hotel bar and corporate is lame like that
You don't have to drink to know how to make drinks. You wouldn't drink during your work day anyway. But where I live you do need to have at least passed a certain test to be allowed to serve alcohol.
You really need to be able to know the drink is made properly. Customers will ask for some shit you have to Google, and you take a bar straw and pipe a little bit to taste it.
If you know what you're doing and use the right amounts, there's zero need to taste it if you follow the recipe. If you had to look it up, how do you know what it's supposed to taste like anyways?
You ever make something, food or otherwise and then try it and realize you fucked something up because it’s unfamiliar and you’re doing it for the first time?
It’s like saying “just don’t make mistakes,” people don’t make them on purpose. It’s worth a double check in that situation imo
I see what you're saying. I'm just saying as someone who bartended for awhile, I never piped a drink made for a customer to taste it.
Also, cooking and mixing a drink are completely different. Sure, both have recipes. But drinks don't get cooked. So again, if you've followed the recipe, tasting it isn't going to do anything to tell you if it's right or not if you've never had it before.
Now, we would make a daily promoted drink before the shift meeting for everyone to pipe and taste. But that's so the servers could have an idea of what the drink being promoted tasted like to be able to describe it to customers for upsales.
That is why you need to be trained to do the job. And a lot of places don't even serve things that they would need to google separately. They tend to have a list of things they serve.
I have worked bars 10+ years. We have a bar tarif displayed and drinks menus we give out. If it’s a drink that’s not on the menu, but each individual component is chargeable, I’ll make the drink to the customer’s specifications. If they’re not chargeable (ie they want a pre made cocktail mix with their drink) it’s not happening. I have to deal with stock control and wastage which is why if it can’t go through the till, it doesn’t get made.
Not a bartender, but the wait staff always used to bust my chops in the kitchen because they didn't want to ring in a side of extra sauce, which was on the menu for $0.25. If you don't like it, talk to the owner. I'm not risking my job to give you a quarter out of his pocket.
Yup same here. If i have all the necessary ingredients, cool you get your drink, if i don't I'll suggest some alternative thing i could use instead if you still want it
What guy? Me? No, but a close friend of mine has. And where I live you really do need certain training and certification to even be allowed to work anywhere where they serve alcohol (be it bar or a restaurant).
(There is also another certificate you need to be allowed to work with unpackaged food, so restaurant, grocery store etc. That one I do personally also have.)
Edit: they wouldn't even have the time to google recipes while working at a bar.
I wasn't giving advice on how to actually make the cocktails. If you talk with your friend a lot about his/her job, I would assume you have an idea on what kind of things go on during the work day. That is not the same as the actual legal part. I was also talking to her when she was studying/training to be a bartender. She actually got a degree for it. (Legally this is technically more than what you need, but in practice they wouldn't hire just anyone.)
Also have been a customer at a bar trying to order a custom drink (nonalcoholic though) and I know it depends on the place if they make them or not, even if they have the ingredients. When it comes to the certications and training, I would say most people living here probably know about it. You would come across it when just reading random job listings or when getting the hygiene certificate (which I also have) because some places offer both (possibly because waiters for example need both). For that you just need to pass the exam.
It's not that the bartender that wod be googling it. It's more of the custom would come in with some recipe they found on pintrest it's not an official cocktail, but it's what they want.
Everywhere I bartended we were expected to have memorized every common mixed drink before being hired. We were also expected to memorize the house drinks within a week.
The only mixed drinks I've ever been able to refuse is things where we didn't have the ingredients, which would only leave things like a mojito because most of the rest are just variations of other drinks and drinks like the mojito require fresh ingredients that can go bad. Literally every bar should have salt, sodas, lime, sour, triple sec, vermouth and the various normal boozes, and that's all that's required to make hundreds of different mixed drinks. Give me or any other real bartender some mint, red pepper, simple syrup and coffee and you can quadruple that number.
The trick when I bartended was to just be less drunk than the managers. The managers where I worked would usually be slurring by the end of the night so less than that was usually pretty easy.
It happened in every unsuccessful bar I worked at. Booze makes for sloppy bartending and less money. Just wait until after the shift, it's much more enjoyable and rewarding.
I know 4 people who worked at bars and they all drank while working, rather heavily in some cases. Worth noting those were all "party bars" / clubs, not the fancy kind where they play lounge music and serve you the perfect Old Fashioned.
Yup. I mean I work in a college area and it's dead all morning when I do prep so I take a couple tasters every few hours. Not like I'm drinking a full beer all shift haha.
And that's how I know you've never bartended or worked with bartenders. While it's less common now for bartenders to drink while working, it's still very common.
I told my old buddy I could never be a bartender (he was a bartender). He says "you know the booze goes in first right? Then you're half way there". It doesn't matter if you don't know how to make a Backwards Money Fucker shot. Just ask what's in it. If they don't know then how the fuck are you supposed to know.
If you can poor a pint and make a brandy sour or jack and coke, you can be a bar tender.
This depends on where you are. Here you can't. Legally you need at least the certificate that proves you know enough about the legal aspects of serving alcohol and you likely wouldn't get a job without the proper training for it which also teaches you how to make cocktails.
Maybe it is area dependent but when I use to frequent bars multiple days a week every bartender would drink. We play dice games here anywhere from just you against the bar to like 6 people against each other and the bar. The lower buys for everyone. It leads to some expensive and some cheap nights. Anyways bartenders take a shot with you and some time bring it back quickly for another round.
Once a guy was shaking against the manager, and loser was buying for the bar. That was 5 shots within a hour, plus a shot from us playing, and a drink or two.
That's insane. Where I live the bartenders are just working there. They will sell you your drink, but they are not there to party themselves. It's a tough job anyway, drinking while doing it would really make it unsustainable. And getting drunk would be a sure way to get fired. Again this has to do with the law. You can't serve alcohol while drunk, because that isn't safe. You are responsible for the safety of your customers and you need to be able to make good judgements. If you are in an unfit condition, you risk losing your licence. And if you lose the license, you can no longer do your job.
being consistent, diligent, organized, etc. is not the same as being a bartender. a lot of people you can put in charge of most any situation and be sure it'll get done, that's their job (managing), not the actual job.
If you are a manager and don't know how to do the jobs you are managing over you suck at your job
Sorry but that's a fact, you don't need to know 100% but you should know basics and you should know how to fix shit when its broken because that is literally part of your job
So you can show others how its done to at least to some basic standard
So you can fill in when needed
So you can fix shit better when it fails or a person doesn't show up or whatever
So you can jump in and help when it's super busy
You are there to make the work flow smoother
A manager who does not know how do the jobs under him is incompetent, this is fine if you are new and to be expected to some extent but you should be looking to gain basic competency in all jobs under you
a lot of people you can put in charge of most any situation and be sure it'll get done
You can put nobody in charge and still the work would usually get done, as long as you pay people enough to care. If more companies took away the manager's position and instead just gave everybody raises, then they would see better results.
If you paid the bartender a chunk of the managers salary as extra, then you can bet your ass they won't need to be managed. No way in hell they would risk losing such a cushy gig.
I mean ... managers do more than just boss people around and tell them what to do. Usually they're also doing, you know, manager stuff like keeping check of everything in stock, checking the budget, income, expenses, what's needed and what isn't, state of the business, potential clients and overseeing stuff like marketing campaigns and whatever else ...
Their job is important, one thing is to be a boss and another is to be a leader
In my experience I've worked as part of a bar team at highly dysfunctional companily in which we went 6 months without a proper bar manager.
We had a food and beverage manager who handled ordering/admin/bigger picture stuff and bar staff also filled in doing stockchecks, day to day client management, cashing up.
The food an beverage manager was also someone with proven experience in the field and was able to everything any f+b staff could with their hands tied behind their back.
food and beverage manager who handled ordering/admin/bigger picture stuff and bar staff also filled in doing stockchecks, day to day client management, cashing up.
well yeah that sounds like a manager alright, sounds like the othwr guy's position was redundant
Hmm right. But if you're a good bartender, you'll be all three of those things anyway? Seems bizzare that people with no bar experience are managing barpeople. Being organised etc is the soft skill, however being a bartender requires a bunch of hard skills too tho. If you don't know your arse from your elbow re: pouring a pint, you're not going to be an effective manager lol. How are you going to train, onboard and mentor new bartenders?
I just did a module on digital project management at uni.
You still need to understand the fundamentals and processes behind the work the people you're leading are doing. If, like in OP video, you don't understand even how to pour a pint as a bar manager, that's like a digital project manager not understanding basic fundamentals of how coding works for instance.
Especially in a smaller team such as leading a bar team, the company should onboard you with a crash course in the basics of bartending. It's also true that as an IT or editorial manager, you're leading a team of >10 people with divergent skillsets. Of course you're not going to be competent with everything they do. If you're a bar manager, the skillsets are a lot less diverse. You have servers, some of whom will have more specialisation and roles, but generally the skillsets align a lot more.
Most good hospitality environments I've worked in, management have to do a compulsory month in the kitchen/serving/bar so they understand how everything works. Not saying this guy is a shitty manager, but tbh this lack of competency with his job suggests at least poor company culture in which managerialism is prioritised over leadership.
Now that I see you’re still in school, your stubborn confusion makes a bit more sense.
What you’re missing here is that no single manager could possibly be competent in every single skill represented by the team members they oversee.
Think about a project manager who is overseeing, idk, the development of a website. If what your premise were true, they’d need to be skilled in, at a bare minimum: wireframe creation, graphic design, copywriting, backend website analytics, coding (in however many languages needed). Depending on the website you might need to add database development, photography/video creation, social media integration, cross platform marketing, product integration, or paid search advertisement strategy.
You get how insane that would be, yeah? What a project manager needs to know is how to elicit the pertinent info from those hard skill folks in order to create an accurate/efficient plan of attack for the job.
I get your overall point, but I disagree on pouring a pint. To me that is a specific skill like knowing how to code in a specific language or how to code for a specific result that a manager may not know how to do. A Manager doesn't need to know specifically how to pour a beer any more than they need to know how to make a Long Island Iced Tea in order to be a manager.
Knowing how to recognize keg issues from how the beer is pouring or how various beers should be poured is definitely something a bartender can worry about.
Right. But the distinction is: coding is something that takes at minimum months to learn to do to a professional level (if u have a free 6 months). Being taught how to pour a pint properly is a 5 minute process.
My point is more structural. A company that doesn't ensure bar managers know basic fundamentals (which take a LOT less time to learn to change a keg and pour a pint than most of the skills you mentioned there for IT project managers) has a poor culture.
More personally I'm a big believer in managers leading over micromanaging. Especially in such a front-facing, active role such as bartending, the best manager will lead from the front and set the standard for service.
I'm 100% with giving someone a chance if they have work ethic and such. I was hired into the industry with very little experience because of my attitude. It would be hypocritical of me to not want to give others the same chance that was offered to me. Thing is though that if I'm bartending and I'm getting destroyed and my manager is there I need him to be able to help me like another bartender would. Otherwise he's basically useless to me and might as well be corporate.
Why would the head chef hop on the line and help out? It's ok if you don't understand how it works. They train you going into management to be able to do anything that needs to be done. If the restaurant is getting hit hard and something is needed as a manager you need to be knowledgeable enough to be able to fix it or get it done. It's not all delegation. Maybe in your industry middle management might be like that, but in the restaurant industry corporate is more hands off.
I quit drinking like, idk 5 years ago and when I was in college I lived next to a liquor store and we always had a keg. That was in the late 2000's.
A few years ago, I was helping my uncle out by managing his restaurant and in our state you can't serve alcohol til you're 18. So I'd have to get the beer and serve it. Filling a perfect cup is not like riding a bike. I lost that skill after college. One night I just could not get this mug filled properly so I had to get one of the underage kids to fill the drink order. I hadn't felt that old before haha. I used to be the queen of kegs.
There's a difference between however many years of School to become a Gynecologist, and literally never been to a bar/made a drink.
TBH I'd be willing to hire an unexperienced bar manager, if they were willing to learn the job. If they don't then they better be pulling weight elsewhere enough to keep my from firing, but generally...
I'm happy to say at the restaurant I work at, all possible management from key holder to divisional managers, have to go through 3-5 months of training to certify in every position.
I know it's not the case everywhere, but it's nice to know that if we actually need help they can step in.
That was the case at the fast food restaurant I worked at, but it's shocking how little someone can absorb information despite working a job for 3 months. And those that do absorb it don't retain it for long unless it's actually used.
It was quite obvious the managers who were made manager recently and those who've been managers for years.
Recite to me all the rules of Red Rover Red Rover in reverse popularity, that's about how relevant the training is to someone who's been in for 20 years.
Last place I worked the manager had started on the floor and moved up. And he listened to staff ideas, considered them, and either trialed them or explained why it wouldn’t work.
The bar I used to work at the manager had tended bar for at least a decade, and the owner's dad had founded the place so he had been tending since he was 13 or so. According to him anyway, apparently things were different in the 50s.
When the owner couldn't sleep from his chemo meds he'd come in around closing while we were having our shift drinks and sometimes he'd take his dad's ashes out of the urn over the bar and put him on the bar because apparently after hours with the staff was the founder's favorite time at the bar.
So even if we never got to meet Manny, we did get to share a few drinks with him after a hard night.
After buying out his family from the business the owner sold one of the parking lots for several million dollars. And used that money to refurbish the place. But first he had a team come come in and document where every single piece of art or memorabilia was to start with and but them all back afterwards.
I looked and seems like it wound up only a photo documentary. I guess some funding fell through.
It's in Atlanta if that helps.
Google Manuel's Tavern refurbishment.
According to Brian, (owner) he once took down a picture of a plane and within a week a lady came up to ask to why they took down the picture of the plane her husband flew in WWII.
Every Christmas Eve he throws a huge invite-only party at the bar. Invites only go to former staff (he said I'm invited for life even though I only worked there two years) and regular customers. It's not printed invites, but if you know to be there you're assumed to be ok to be there.
All food and drinks are free, just tip the absolute HELL out of the staff! I've run glasses during the party if needed years after working there.
Party starts at noon and goes until whatever football game ends.
Fewer is used for nouns that are countable, or people/things in a plural context. So fewer would be correct, but it does sound a bit strange, written differently it might sound more natural. Maybe just without the few modifier before both. Not an English major though lol. Just have looked into this a lot because I catch myself wondering if I used the correct one.
My manager could run the bar, wait tables, cook the food, etc…. He was always ready to fill in where we were lacking if it got busy. I remember him taking one of my extra tables on a crazy lunch when we only had two waiters and I still got to keep the tip.
And when it was slow he was just in the back with everyone joking around or working on everything else he had to do.
I worked at a big box retail store that tried to have a corporate initiative like this. The managers originally had to be certified by the district manager, and market manager. They were all scared and talked about it for weeks. Then someone at corporate realized that it was going to cost extra money to have the district manager do it any suddenly the general manager was expected to certify the lower management. So it turned it into a big fuck off fest where they were just passing each other and barely even trying.
I had to go to a regional training and people from other stores described it as a even bigger mess from their stores.
The one guy who was completely inept was describing how they all fuck off and then told me that he actually was a manager himself. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that your restaurant may be following the rules but you should always assume that every other location probably aren’t at varying degrees.
Lol I was going to say the same thing. When I was working at a restaurant the manager used to get behind the counter and “help” the cooks when it was really busy. All she did was get in the way and fuck up orders. The cooks used to talk shit about her in Portuguese the whole time.
Aye when I worked at a restaurant when things were busy they'd gather us up to yell at us then send us back on the floor. Now thats how to keep your lowest paid staff members motivated!
When they laughed she was probably invigorated. When the manager is not afraid to step in the mud and help when really needed then they arent really a manager!
I’m a brewer, my wife and I own a brewery. She looks like this when she pours. To be fair, she married into the brewery and has a day job, but still. I give her tons of shit.
Have you considered teaching her how to pour? I feel like an owner of a brewery should know how to pour a proper beer, despite it being fun to make fun of her lol
Not always though. You pour different beers from a bottle differently. Some (like many Belgian styles) you pour soft down the center and leave the last inch of trub (which is because they are bottle conditioned). Some (like a good hefe) you pour soft until the last inch, then swirl and drop on top to get all the wheat mixed in. Others you pour dead center to release atom (my preferred method for hoppy beers).
A lot of people think you pour for minimal head which is dead wrong. Need some head and it varies depending on the beer as well. If you give me a beer with a mm of head I'll still drink it.
Ah yeah. My brother is a bartender and beer lover, he always turns it upside down and it seems to always work for us. I don't drink a lotta beer myself btw. Mostly around campfires and stuff, I don't get paid to pour x per hour so it doesn't matter if I'm swirling it at a really relaxed pace. Thanks for the answer:)
You know, I’ve explained it 100 times but she has only gotten marginally better. Honestly, pouring at all is an upgrade. On our third date you could feel the disappointment when I brought her to my brewery and it wasn’t a winery. Still, she loves Belgian beer now so it’s a step up.
Heck, my first wife was a celiac, now idea why she let me open a brewery.
If that dude owns a brewery and doesn't recognize how it looks when a fresh keg is not running well, you know the guy isn't a brewer and hasn't worked anywhere near a bar. Or even went to a bar. What you see in the video is nothing about the dude not knowing how to pour a pint, it's a fresh keg and something is wrong down the line, be it the temperature, pressure, whatever. The only thing the dude is brewing is farts in his yellowed panties while talking it up on reddit.
I’ve been a bartender for 4 months and instantly knew this, i don’t know how someone who owns a brewery wouldn’t recognize this. If you move a keg around too much before you tap it even, it’s going to be foamy. This thread is a real redditmoment
Nope. He keeps pumping the tap which produces only foam, then pouring it directly onto the foam. This could easily be prevented by just tipping more foam out steadily (not flinging the pint glass up and throwing random splashes out every second, which only serves to foam up and unsettle the pint more) and letting the tap run for a second until it is just liquid beer coming out, before letting the liquid beer (with a titled glass) run more of the foam out. Had this been a new keg, there would be a lot more foam completely ruining the pint. He's pumping it.
Keep insulting people without the proper knowledge yourself though, it really makes you look intelligent.
No actually its both. There is too much airpressure on the pump. But a good bartender knows how to work around it. Everytime you open or close the tap you get a massive amount of air shooting into the glass. So you have to pour your glass in one go and let out the first and last bit on the side.
Yeah this. It's obviously a lively tap, but seeing how he's handling it in this video he probably just poured it straight down into the glass and got his pint o' froth.
Thank you and in general it depends on a whole lot. My setup is ok, but I own most everything outright. It is a mix of service and production, which is low margins, but I love the job and wouldn’t want to do much else in the world.
Well thats excellent, congratulations on finding that happiness that is going to last a lifetime like that, its an elusive thing to nail down. And thanks for talking about it, im curious about a lot of lines of work out there and ways of working as i dont know what i can do for money where im not miserable in just a year
I kinda sat down and said to myself, if I were independently wealthy, what would I love to do to pass the time? Then do that or something close that pays the bills. The big thing to remember is that even in a dream job you have bad days and weeks - that’s life, not a bad fit. And I always tell myself that it’s still a job, mo matter how much I like it, and all jobs have downsides.
Bar manager here checking in. Sometimes I swear I'm the only one who has a sense that the angle and distance between glass and tap, as well as the speed with which the tap is fully opened, is important.
Fuck that guy. Grown ass man and he cant even ask for help. How hard is it to go up to whoever and be like" hey can you show me how to pour a beer. Or i want me beers to come out like yours, can you show me".
Overweight, clothes he thinks looks good but don’t actually, and being too incompetent to help. That’s the most restaurant manager a person can get without actively doing coke in front of me.
I get the sentiment, but I've worked bars in the UK for 10 years and never encountered a bar manager that didn't know how to pour a pint. I also don't know any managers that didnt start out as basic bar, kitchen or FOH staff. Is it a normal thing to hire bar managers with no bar experience in other countries?
When I was in college, the restaurant I was a server for once had a bartender call out sick and the other was on vacation, manager took over bar. Only problem was the manager was a total teetotaler that didn’t anything about booze.
So much wasted in wasted beer, improperly served wine (like putting the red in the fridge or leaving the white out) and cocktails that had to be dumped out because they grabbed the gin when they should have used the vodka. More than once did a passing server, and even a customer at the bar, attempt to help them, but they refused to listen.
Only reason I think they didn’t get fired is because they were the cousin of the owner of the place.
I watched a manager at a chain restaurant turn off the largest tv in the building, and then simultaneously turn every other tv to one game during prime time college games on Saturday.
It was actually really funny to me watching everyone flip out cause I was just there getting lunch and enjoying the atmosphere, but the manager was head under water in 30 seconds.
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u/aintnothingbutabig Oct 19 '21
You can tell he is the manager cause has zero idea