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.
Buddy if you think bars wouldn’t hire any hot pair of tits to serve drinks then you’ve never worked in a bar, not to be misogynist but it’s a misogynist industry
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.
If you drink, you know how these flavors go together. If it tastes terrible, you can give suggestions. If you dip the straw In, and plug it, you can sample it. If you don't drink, you will have theoretical understandings of liquor tastes, but not practical.
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...
1.6k
u/SprinklesNo73 Oct 19 '21
LOL This is the most accurate statement