Becoming a Great Bartender

Becoming a Great Bartender–An essential tip

June 1st, 2009

We recently finished interviewing a bartender who reached the top of his industry.  This is a guy who attended one of our bartending schools, later taught there, took a number of bartending gigs, worked his way up…and landed two of the best bartending spots at two of the hottest clubs in America. 

How hot?  He held down one of the busiest bar spots in a club rated among the top 20 clubs in the nation. From that position he moved to bar manager of a sleeker higher volume per person club, where he again handled one of the busiest bars in the venue. This guy knows how to ring up huge sales. With that, he generates enormous tips.

He gave us a list of the most important tips in becoming a great club bartender. We aren’t going to list them all here–but we will emphasize one of them.

BE FAST-AND EFFICIENT

This may seem like common sense, but in bartending there is a lot to being fast.  Nobody gets there automatically.  It takes time and practise.

Even more importantly than moving fast is moving efficiently.  Always use two hands.  That means pouring all drinks on the drip mat in front of you.  That allows using two hands for two different pours all the time.  Grab everything in front of you at one time and pour.  When you move to the back bar, grab two or more bottles at a time.  When setting up drinks grab as many glasses at one time as you can.  If you are pouring two drinks with the same vodka, set them up next to one another, so you can move the pour from one to the second in an instant.  Ice all your glasses at one time.  If your standard garnishes are set up next to one another, garnish everything at one time.  Above all don’t waste motion.

Working efficiently sets up bartenders to pour many many more drinks over the course of an evening than they could have otherwise.  Each action shaves milliseconds and they add up over the night.  Once you have this down, it becomes easy to pour an extra 50-100 drinks an hour, and easy to dramatically ring up additional sales and make dramatically more in tips.

Getting to that point is the hard part.  It does take practise.  Stop grabbing a glass in one hand, holding it up for show, and pouring from the other hand.  Get those glasses on the drip mat and pour pour pour.  Break every habit that slows you down.

There are three ways to get these habits down.

1.  Attend a bartending school that emphasizes these habits and practise, practise, practise.

2.  Pay attention to the fastest most efficient bartenders in your bar.  Watch what they do, ask them questions, and then practise, practise, practise.

3.  Some bartenders are smart enough and lucky enough to figure out how to be efficient.  They are very few and far between.  We strongly suggest you get training from someone who has already figured this out and knows exactly how to do this.

 

Good luck….and ring up big big money!!!!