This is a bar episode because you can make a ton of money behind the bar. You can also lose a ton of money behind the bar. Today I speak with Gui Jaroschy. He is the founder of Unfiltered Hospitality. He is a bar expert and this episode is all about . Best practices, we begin with crazy bar stories because we all have crazy stories that happen in our place that we just can’t believe happened.

But then we dive deep into how to maximize bar profit, how deep we go with liquor choices, what guests are looking for, the true meaning of leadership and establishing that foundation behind your bar. We talk about classic cocktails. Are they in? non-alcoholics It’s all the ins and outs of putting together a solid bar program, so you’re not going to want to miss it.

Speaking of bar profit, the academy at restaurantrockstars. com features a course on how to start a mug club, which is a huge potential profit center if you sell beer and wine. It also works for coffee shops, and that’s just one powerful piece in the academy. if people currently come into your place, couple times a month, two or three times.

Now they’ll come in several times a week. So it’s not only lucrative in terms of memberships, but they’re brand building people that get other people to join. And your increase of sales goes up every single week. It’s just one powerful piece of the Academy. In addition to other bar best practices. So check that out at restaurantrockstars.

com. Now on with the episode.

You’re tuned in to the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast. Powerful ideas to rock your restaurant. Here’s your host, Roger Beaudoin.

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Hey, welcome back, everyone. This is the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. So glad you are here with me today. Gui, how are you? Welcome to the show. Doing well. Thank you, Roger. Thanks for having me. We really haven’t done much on bar and bar episodes, and that is so needed because it’s such a huge profit center in any hospitality enterprise.

So I’m really stoked to have you here. But my first question, in your extensive experience, and we’re going to get into some of that. Do you have any crazy bar stories? I can’t believe that happened.

Man, it’s like hard to bring one up on the spot like that. There’s so many, right? Exactly. I’ve worked in Miami for the last 18 years in some capacity in the bar industry but I’ll say working at the Delano Hotel in the 2006 era before the financial crash, I had those stories on a pretty regular basis.

I remember my first full day coming in off training I’m going in to clock in and I see the Room service Gui come up with a huge bucket of champagne. He’s oh my god, thank god you’re here. Can you help me? And he calls me out to the bungalows. They were out by the pool There’s two story little apartment things, they go for 10, 000 a night at Super Bowl at that time in 2006 Anyway, I walk into the bungalow with him carrying like a bucket of five champagne bottles and stuff and there’s a 65, 70 year old Gui in his underwear with three or four scantily clad women running around this apartment.

And I’m like, man, this is going to be a crazy job and a crazy place to work. I can already tell.

No doubt. All right. That got your attention for sure. Excellent. Let’s shift gears because hospitality is a huge part. It is the foundational element of our business. Do you have a definition of what that means to you and your team?

 It’s about showing people a good time and caring for people as if they were in your home. And I think if you use that as the guiding starting point, you really can’t go wrong. Tell us about how you started your career. How did you get into the bar business? Background.

I grew up in Austin, Texas. My dad was the artistic director of a theater, and it was very, it was a community, local theater, 200 seats. My mom was a manager of convenience stores for the University of Texas. And High school. My first sort of serious girlfriend in high school, she, her parents owned restaurants and she worked as a hostess there.

And I remember going in to see her at work and immediately being captivated by this combination of the performative and the kind of cool the same type of restaurant people or kind of theater people in a sense, but then also that sort of rigorous structure that, I’d seen with my mom and the kids that she worked with.

’cause a lot of times it was their first job and you have to really implement a, a. And there is that in restaurants. And so the day I turned, or, maybe a week after I turned 18, I went and applied at my first restaurant and found my way behind the bar as a lot of people do, as just the more responsible, I’ve been picking up cues, learning the recipes from watching them be made.

And then you get thrown behind the bar when somebody calls out as bartenders often do, unfortunately. And I, I, my, my mom had put me in cooking classes when I was five years old and I was like the hosting part and I think the bar really called to me because I got to make things for people, but also have that really cool, hosting kind of service experience with them.

But when you combine the fact that it’s like the kitchen element, but onstage at the same time, and it just, you Really locked in for me that’s what I wanted to do.

I love the fact that you just mentioned stage because this is entertainment, hospitality really is entertainment, and it’s not just about serving drinks and food to people and, having a nice ambiance.

It’s really about the service and the flair and the showmanship and creating, creating relationships with guests using your unique personality. I’ve always believed in that. So it is a stage. And I guess there’s a reason that so many people like move to Hollywood or New York City because they ultimately want to be actors, but they work in restaurants and bars to refine that craft.

And I think everyone, whether you ever want to be an actor or not, you apply that approach to your operation because it really does build those relationships. I was just in Richmond, Virginia. two months ago And I was speaking at a bar conference, my very first bar conference, and I was really struck by the fact that these people weren’t considering themselves to be bartenders, they were considering themselves to be mixologists, and they were really passionate about, refining their craft and all that.

But there’s this stigma and I’d like to talk to you about that because they’re constantly asked, what’s your real job? As if mixology can’t take you around the world and you can’t rise to the top and own your own bars and clubs and restaurants and develop a career from it. It’s what’s your real job?

Yeah, that must be your side gig, and it is lucrative, but what are your thoughts on that?

It’s a tough one because they’re it’s, it comes from a certain place of where does this take you? And I think that’s a big part of what we’ve tried to do with unfiltered and also a big message I’ve tried to disseminate amongst people is that like there, there are real careers in hospitality and by learning, of what we’re short on sometimes is education.

As I mentioned, like sometimes the people are And I’m jumping ahead from your question, but, you, in hospitality, all too often, we get placed somewhere in new positions and move up just for being the most responsible person, the most reliable person. But there’s not always a ton of training and education on the subject.

And when I was managing the Broken Shaker bars here in Miami, I was I joined Sean Fenter’s mastermind group and hospitality group. I can’t remember the name of the Accelerate program it was called at the time, but it gave me such a crash course in education in actual bar management and hospitality management in general.

I had the opportunity to work with some really, truly great owners, operators, and managers. And it Change the course of my whole career because now I had the actual tools and best practices and other things to run a successful business and they’re always in demand in what we’re doing. So I know you asked about the mixologist thing and it’s true.

I think I stayed in bartending for as long as I could because I really enjoy it and have that same And I think it’s really important the way that, I would like to retain that sort of Japanese approach. So I want to get it. I want to do the perfect day. I want to keep doing this thing until I have this sort of mastery and do it in a way that makes me happy.

And the whole day never goes exactly according to plan. But I get a real joy in kind of an repetitive, doing repetitive tasks really well. Some other people I think really want to always be doing something new. And I think there’s way to ways to include that in your daily life. In any part of your career, but for whatever reason, I get a real joy of kind of doing something better and better just a little bit every day.

That’s

awesome. Now there’s a distinction, and I’m not sure how you go from bartender to mixologist. Is it a skill set? Is it education? Is it training? Is it winning competitions? Is it, having flair and all these skills, like that movie cocktail with Tom Cruise and you’re throwing shakers behind your back and you’re lighting things on fire.

It’s what is the difference?

I think it’s more of a personal, label preference and description. I think mix and mixologists, there’s obviously something about a creativity and a blending above just standard service, but I’ve always trained people to have the technique of a mixologist, but the manner of a bartender, because when we think about a bartender, we’re thinking about somebody.

Again, that’s like hosting a great experience and really, tending to people’s needs. The mixologist kind of got a bad rap as this was coming up or as that sort of movement was coming up because basically to get a great drink, you had to go through them almost instead of let me share what I’ve made for you.

It’s look what I made. Mark Murphy, who we work with Star Restaurants on a retainer with them and he said something in a training that’s really stuck with me, which is like the, there’s a huge difference in look what I made for you versus look what I made. And I think sometimes the mixologist label gets the look what I made.

Distinction, at least in most people’s minds. So it’s become like a dirty word in our, in amongst our people a little bit, but I think it ultimately comes down to being able to be creative, having a great range of knowledge about cocktails and different ways to give people great experiences around the product.

But I think ultimately, if you’re going to be a great bartender and have, or a great mixologist and have a long career, you have to come back to that hospitality Standpoint and that sort of experiential standpoint first, and then people really care about this great drink that you made them, but they don’t, if you don’t,

There’s a huge marketing aspect to these really creative cocktails that you see a bar, a mixologist or a bartender making them, and you look at it and it’s the.

It’s the color, and it’s the glassware, and it’s, the presentation is a huge part of something that can make your bar program really successful and really profitable because these drinks sell themselves. Crazy names on the menus, really unusual things that capture your attention are all ways of increasing that.

Is this something that you generally recommend and you promote that? Because that’s one of the things that Unfiltered does. Because it’s hugely into bar consulting and cocktail creation and all that.

Yeah. Absolutely. The cocktails have to captivate people’s imagination, the palate, everything.

And now, again, as the expectation for the bar continues to rise, when I got started in bartending in 2001 or something, again, at a Tex Mex restaurant in Austin, but as the expectation for a bar was not very high. And as the years have gone by, what were high level mixology in 2009 and 10 is now basically expected at a chain restaurant.

in 2024. Good point. So the details of things really have to be elevated. So glassware garnish a story because at the end of the day, one co a cocktail at the highest level is in perception. The gap is very wide, but in reality, the gap is pretty small. And so the better you can tell a story, the better you can give personality and identity to the things you made.

Just like in food, again, I think the, jose Andres version of a Cuban sandwich is is taking elements that people know, but playing with it so that they’re intrigued by it and they’re excited by it. And I think, that’s really become a big thing in cocktails now. And it’s very important if you want to make a marketable and you want to make a exciting cocktail program is that they tell a story alongside the restaurant or bar and that people are Generally excited about them.

And there’s so many different ways that you can do that. Like you said, it can be through names. It can be through presentation. It can be in flavors alone, but they need to act in unison.

Excellent. Okay. What would you consider to be the elements to creating a successful bar? Whether it’s a standalone bar or it’s a bar within a restaurant and someone just wants to optimize that opportunity.

And I know that your firm has four pillars that are. fundamental to making this work. Do you want to speak to that?

Sure. Absolutely. I think, before you get into the four pillars, you really start with what are you hoping to share with people? Because it, again, and there needs to be some sort of alignment in the concept and what you’re going to put out to begin with, that is congruent and is exciting to people.

And I’ve always said if you share love, share what you love with other people, they’ll love it back. And it might not be for every person, every time, but the people that really connect with that, it’s like a DJ. If you go all the hits, you’re like a wedding DJ, but there’s certain type, there’s certain ones that play songs where you’re like, Oh yeah, I can’t believe he’s playing my favorite song.

And then you’re with them for the next two hours, and going on that journey. So anyway, I think having a perspective and not thinking about. Oh, XYZ person and XYZ market is going to love this. If that’s your starting point, generally, it’s going to be tough. I think if I love this and I want to share this with people, and I think this is super cool, and I think other people would think it’s great, that’s where you start in framing the product standpoint, and then when you get into the four pillars, once you have that, and you want to share with people, now there’s a lot of other work to be done to make sure that it’s that it happens and it’s successful.

So as you mentioned with the pillars, The first one is process. So essentially daily checklists, operating procedures, standards that you enforce across the program. And they’re, it’s relatively simple, obviously the technology is there now to do it at a very high level, but just a checklist on a clipboard that.

is part of your daily process and that people believe and understand that it’s important is the biggest piece. Again, if it’s on an iPad, if it’s coming through an app, if it’s whatever, just the fact that someone ensures that the things that are supposed to be happening on a daily basis are happening.

The second one is people and very important one from my perspective. Yeah, do you have a cultural fit in your restaurant or bar that understands not just how to sell the products, but lives the brand a little bit as well and fits in the space and aligns with you? And then that they’re engaged and well trained.

And they go, those two things go very hand in hand. And we think of training as one of the most important elements, and it’s sometimes the most overlooked. Within training, you have three types and you, various places will split up the type, the amount of training that they invest in people, but it’s training for skills.

So that’s like practical drills and practical skills. Can they do the things and do them well? Are they improving at them? Training for knowledge. And this is the one that there are so many resources out there for. And I, again, I think we invest overly in the knowledge of our team. But again, I go back to the skills.

The application of that knowledge is what’s important because you can be an encyclopedia of whiskey facts and still not connect with the guest and not know how to make that knowledge work for the business.

That’s so interesting. I don’t mean yeah, you just struck a thought.

Take, I’m back at this bar conference and there was a before party that had an open bar at this club and stuff, and I showed up, and there’s a Gui wearing a chartreuse hat. The hat was green, but it said chartreuse across it. And I had just heard about this mysterious liqueur called chartreuse and the history of it, and it was believed to have hallucinogenic properties back in the day and all that kind of stuff.

And I just happened to ask him, and this person actually went to France where Chartreuse was actually made by these monks. And he was telling me the whole story. And I’m like, wow, it’s that’s just one story. And bartenders and mixologists can be filled with these stories, but it’s like to relate that to your guests and to bring something alive so that they try something, taste something, and then they.

Turn people on. The story is a big part of it because every brand has a story and there’s so many different brands. And we’re going to get into that too, because we’re talking about product here, but I just had to share that because this person was so passionate about going to France to explore chartreuse.

And they’re like, not a lot of people even know what chartreuse is because you just don’t see it. It’s not a common. Bar element, that it maybe it’s making a comeback, but wow.

Yeah. It’s very popular in the mixology set and it’s very popular worldwide. It’s an incredible, it’s an incredible product and it has an incredible story, but that’s exactly the point.

And I I tend to meander a little bit in my thinking and talking. So I, it brought me back to a point I was making before, which is that At the end of the day, something like a product like Chartreuse, you could just as soon drink that as another cordial on the back bar, but it’s the way that the staff is able to connect you with that product and connect it in a way that lands with you.

Because maybe if You have a breadth of experience and an interest in this subject, where if he went on a 30 minute, exposition about his trip to the Cartusian monks if you don’t see that’s landing and you don’t, and you’ve never really been taught the skills to understand where that goes, it might be as simple as being like, Hey, you’re an industry Gui.

When I get off work, I like to do a shot of chartreuse. It gets me there faster. You’re going to love it. And that might land with you better than like, all right, buddy, I don’t need the whole spiel. You’re absolutely right.

Yeah. That goes back to reading your guests, right? And seeing what really, impacts them and then picking up on that.

And that’s a necessary skill with your server or bartender or anyone really interacting with guests in the front of house. It’s like reading your guests and turning them onto things that they may not know about that delivers a great experience for them that brings them back again.

And that’s, and part of that sort of, and then the third part in that training piece is training for culture and understanding that.

So just to use the Broken Shaker example again, we opened in 2012, which was at least in Miami, it was passing in New York, but it was catching on around the rest of the country. That was the height of the handlebar mustache suspenders, mixologist, and we wanted to be this cool backyard, bar where mixology at the time was mostly pushing people away and saying you couldn’t possibly know as much as I know, and you couldn’t make these cool cocktails at home.

We were like, come on in we’ll tell you about it. We wanted to reduce the distance, bring people in and make it a really comfortable homey environment where you can get excellent cocktails that are made at a high level with really knowledgeable people. And You have to hire people that kind of fit that and agree with that, like live that mentality that, that philosophy.

And you also have to train it in. And so when I talk about training for culture, it can be as simple as take if in the case of Broken Shaker, we used to take people out to this local farm and spend a day there and have a brand kind of Sponsor lunch and kind of help us out with making it this really fun getaway, but that’s as much of a training as Having your local rep come in and tell you all about their newest whiskey and the barrel aging process and stuff Really making sure that they get it and understand like where we’re all coming from and what we love about what we’re doing It translates to guests and people, it’s an important part of the training process that maybe it’s 20 percent of the time, but you make sure that people are like getting it beyond just the knowledge and beyond just the practical skills.

Oh, wonderful.

Hit us with the last pillar.

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Oh, yeah. Product. So the product is pretty self explanatory, but ensuring that It’s great and that it’s profitable and that you’re tracking it correctly, et cetera. And then performance is, that’s the piece where it’s basically monitoring the first three.

How do you, what do you have in place to make sure that you can be sure that you’re delivering on all those? And what are you trying to, what metrics are you using to track it on a regular basis so you don’t get drug into the. Minutia that we can all get drug into on a daily basis in hospitality.

So there are new products on the market all the time, and it’s such a competitive space and there’s gotta be a thousand vodkas out there, and the flavored thing had its day, and it’s like when I owned restaurants, it’s like people just walk in the back door unannounced, Hey, try this new product and we want you to carry this product.

And it can be overwhelming for someone starting a beverage program. How deep do you go in any type of spirit when there’s literally, so many vodkas and so many brown liquors with their bourbons and whiskeys and Irish whiskeys and single malt scotches. And it’s you got to figure out what your concept is and who your customer is.

But where do you begin? Cause we’re talking about thousands of dollars in inventory, right? And not everything is going to move. Some stuff’s going to sit there forever and it looks good on the back bar, but no one pours it. Where’s the balance?

Yeah, I think you nailed it where you start with concept.

And so in certain cases you’re you don’t need to be everything to everybody and you don’t have to have every product that someone might order at one point, as long as you have something that you’re excited to have that fits and that your staff knows how to sell in case, they wanted Captain Morgan and you carried, Sailor Jerry or whatever the brand is.

Exactly. But I think that having Brands first that align with your brand and that, work in your cocktails and whatever, that’s where you can start for menu et cetera. And then on Backbar, I think there’s a few brands that you most likely in almost every market. Should carry because you would just be missing out if you didn’t have them.

We don’t have to go into names, but whatever. And I’ve worked at some bars where we intentionally didn’t carry some of those brands just to open up the conversation about we don’t have X, but we do have Y and Z and they’re amazing. And it was a way of selecting our guests a little bit as well, right?

Because you do want to select your guests. And if not having X brand is a deal breaker and they don’t come anymore, you’ve you’ve done your purpose, because if you’re trying to be this kind of, experimental, or you want to have the a hand sell, more like personal approach, you don’t want people who are just turned out that you don’t have crown royal, I’m leaving.

Okay, great. Then we’ve selected our guests.

Let’s take that a little further and let’s talk about N. A. Mocktails. Is that really trending now? And is that a real source of not losing out on a customer that may not want, either for health benefits or just doesn’t want the alcohol, but still wants to feel like they fit in?

And you’ve got a cocktail that looks like a cocktail, no one would know the difference. Like, where are we at with that? Is that becoming a real big movement now?

I believe it this year. And maybe, yeah, I think it’s really this year. It is a true movement now. It’s been something, if you’ve read all those like what’s next lists, everyone has been saying low and no ABV for 10 years, but I think it’s a combination of now enough quality products in the marketplace to actually make.

A decent number of offerings and give people something that they’re excited about. And also people, I, the amount of opportunity, like wellness and other things out there for people, like I’m wearing my little whoop strap and I see if I have three drinks, I don’t sleep the same. And I’m not really happy with my recovery number that it’s giving me.

And, I think people are so much more conscious and aware of their performance in day to day life that not every day is an alcohol day, but that the. The moment that kind of feeling of having something nice to drink besides a water or a, a soft drink is still there all the time.

And so you want something that gives you that cheers effect without necessarily losing the quality of sleep or the other things. But now all of our clients Whether they ask for it or not, or generally getting a non alcoholic offering. It’s a big opportunity, not just because I think guests are truly interested in, even we work with Joe Stonecrab in South Beach.

That’s old school institution. Vodka and gin martinis make up a huge part of their P mix. And I, we thought that the non alcoholic cocktails were there as just like a, yeah, let’s have it because that’s a, We’re doing an update. We’re doing a modern update to the cocktail menu and they’re selling far better than I would have ever expected.

So even in places like that, and no, I think it’s here to stay. And the interesting part will be just to see how far people can take the non alcoholic cocktail offerings, because it started as that’s a non alcoholic mojito, or it’s a, the juice and this. And now we’re getting really cool, really well thought out cocktails.

without alcohol and also the margins are there too. If you’re selling a cocktail at 15, but a really well done non alcoholic at 12, again, there’s still a great way to get a nice upsell, but also,

right. And it’s so cost effective to do so without the alcohol in it, for sure. And it’s the presentation, of course, and the wow factor and all that.

I’ve always believed in that. Our classic, they say that everything old is suddenly new again and that, and lots of things are retro and lots of things come back in other industries, automobiles, all that kind of stuff. But our classic cocktails in again, like sidecars and highballs, certainly, pink squirrels and all this stuff that my parents or, my grandmother used to drink when I was a kid growing up.

Do you see any of that?

For sure. For sure. Classics will never fully go out of style. I just think because if they’ve stood the test of 150 years and they’re still good to people that have one for the, I remember the first time I had a great Manhattan, I’d always had a shaken, like overly shaken Manhattan with a two year old bottle of vermouth on the back bar.

And I remember the first time in a nice cocktail bar, I had a great Manhattan. It was like, an eyeopening experience, and yeah, they’re they’ll be here for a long time. And I think what you are seeing the twists on classics had a huge kind of period in the last eight or so years, five years but I see more traditional old school classics coming back recently and people.

respond super well to them. So yeah they’re not going anywhere. They’re I compare them to like scales in music or something like that. It’s like you they just work for a reason. You have the right ratios there and they appeal to people. They harmonize.

Let’s talk about. Let’s go back to the

people piece, because training is so essential, and it’s about hospitality, and it’s about salesmanship, and it’s about product knowledge, and it’s about property knowledge, so that, people ask questions all the time, and you either put a product Positive impression forward by knowing the answer and going above and beyond that versus, Oh, let me go talk to my manager.

It’s a horrible impression. Like where does training fit in and in your consulting practice? How much of part does that play in the importance and foundational, your team and how well they’re trained.

Yeah. It’s, it, the, it’s importance cannot be understated or overstated, whichever it is.

It’s a, it’s, I think it’s the most important piece. And we, as much as we’ve tried and as much as we’ve worked to make our materials the best in the business and make them useful, It’s all, I think when you ask a lot of our clients, what was the most valuable part of the whole engagement, it’s almost always the in person training and that the getting the team revved and excited.

And so now we’ve really invested in trying to develop more materials to Provide more ongoing training materials and templates and practices for our clients afterward, because it keeps the momentum going. It’s something in my approximation that, once, once you’re up and running, like obviously you have a pre opening training that goes on for a while, or you’re doing a new menu, you’re doing additional training, but it has to be like a monthly.

And just about any bar or resteraunt in my mind even if its 30 minutes to an hour you know on a day when lunch is closed whatever the case may be you have to keep that engagement and that learning going. Or people get stagnant and they kind of tend to forget the things they’ve learned. And you know thats the worst thing you can have in a hospitality business is people who just come in, collect a paycheck, and get out.

We’ve talked about how profitable a bar operation can be, but it’s also a huge source of potential theft if you don’t know what you’re doing or what to look for.

Can you speak to that? How do you spot, minimize, even eliminate theft behind the bar? Because bartenders, they can be pretty crafty and there’s things that if you’re not watching, it’s like they can enrich themselves. What do you see? What would you suggest?

So this is an area where the tech part has really come a long way and can be very helpful.

We work a lot with BevSpot. That’s like our go to referral to clients that are looking for a sort of well integrated inventory system. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the platform, but it’s, it’s a, it’s, An inventory management system that you self run, but you have all your recipes in there as like cocktail recipes get more intricate.

You have all of your sort of builds and everything in there and it syncs directly to the POS system. So you’re getting much more up to the minute data on where you should be on stock levels, where things might be missing and flagging things that you sold 10 of these cocktails, but you’re missing 20 of these words of ingredients that you, so you’re a little more on the fly noticing when things like this come up.

There are services out there Barmetrics, if you’re familiar with them, they actually come and weigh and measure variants down to every single ingredient. And that’s obviously where they can take your. Your variants from the industry standard for variants in the U. S. is 20%. So of the product you bring in on an average bar in the U.

S., 20 percent of it goes unaccounted for. And some of that is overpouring. Some of that is, Misconfiguring in POS systems, et cetera. But let’s be real, a big percentage of it is passing drinks over the bar to friends or regulars. Correct. Just

to get a better tip or tabs, I’m running a tab and it’s I’m going to charge people, every drink and there’s so many different ways

and, but but whatever the case may be, and I think it, A lot of times it’s less nefarious than we might think as owners and operators. Having been a bartender for so many years, I was probably one of the worst. I was always comping a taste of this or comping a drink to this person.

And again, I felt I maybe took the being a host in my own home a little too literally sometimes. But it was never with intent to stuff my own pockets or do this or that. And I think that’s, I think that’s more common than the people who are, just throwing money in the register.

But either way, having a system like a Bedspot or a Barmetrics or a something allows you at least to figure out, hey, where are these issues happening? And just I’m a parent of two young kids now, like the lockdown method never totally seems to work, but having an honest dialogue.

Hey, are we. Not ringing our comps? Are we not being accurate about our recipes and we need to fix that? Are we overpouring? Do we need to train on that? Coming at it with a more like, how do we fix the situation versus they’re all stealing from me. Everybody’s getting fired. I think it gets a lot better results because it’s usually a bit of all of the above.

It’s interesting, I was at the NRA show last May, and now there are these automated bartenders these virtual reality automated bartenders that are pouring drinks, and it’s eliminating labor, but it’s, what do you think about that? There’s a point where technology is cool, and then there’s a point where the kind of hospitality personal touch is being lost, and it’s like, where’s the balance,

yeah, I think that they’re, it’s very cool what they’re doing with it. I’m, I, you, maybe you saw the Cecilia AI. I’ve been seeing them and we have some friends that work with them. Yeah, it’s pretty this second generation or maybe it’s third, is really impressive with what it can do and the interface and everything.

I think it will be a great value add where there was not. Before sort of an interaction like the, hotel grab and go’s or in terminals, airports or, whatever, certain places. I can’t imagine a day when it could truly replace the bartender or the server in that interaction, but I can see a lot of opportunities where it might’ve otherwise just been a, scan and buy an RTD can to have this kind of fun interaction where you get the cocktail and you get the goodness out of it,

that’s an interesting point also, because there’s this stereotype of the bartender being the conversationalist and listening to everybody’s problems at the bar. That’s an old stereotype. But there is this balance that a bartender and mixologist has to meet between being friendly, being personable, talking to people.

Yet, Not ignoring other people or speed of service. It’s like, where’s that balance? Depending on how busy the shift is. Yeah, if it’s slow, you can talk to people, but suddenly you’re hustling and it’s somebody wants your ear and you just want to keep pouring those drinks and maximizing, throughput, right?

Yeah. That’s one of the hardest skills to train because it is a skill. You can set them up a foundation and we do this a lot and we do like a well diagram for all wells and map everything so that the setup is the same so that they build muscle memory so that they can be making a drink and keep the energy or the attention and energy up here so that you can direct the room while you’re doing a bunch of other things and you can Be semi engaged in that conversation and give a little laugh and be like, Oh, I know that.

And even including in the training, the tendency to introduce guests who are nearby each other to get buy you that time to return to what you’re doing so that you’re not locked in with that, that one couple that like, the old married couple that’s looking for an excuse to have someone to talk to at the bar all night.

Oh, that’s a great story. Have you met him? He does something like that. Okay. You can go back to doing what you’re doing. But yeah, that’s a tough skill to, to get down, but it’s. An art to watch a bartender that’s very good at managing all that chaos.

Oh, for sure. For sure.

Yeah. What about free pouring, stiff drinks versus measured shots and all that? Because there’s a marketing aspect. People want a decent drink and they’re almost turned off if it’s watery or if it’s a standard drink. Shot. It’s and then there’s all this technology out there, like the largest resorts and hotels, below the scenes, it’s like everything is computer controlled and it’s they got the cost dialed in.

What are your thoughts on cost controls versus, enjoying the process of sharing that with your guests and giving them a decent drink, right? One that they can taste.

 It’s a perception issue and it’s another training issue where a bartender or server needs to be able to emphasize, Hey, I’m using the jigger to make sure you get your full shot.

Because actually when we go and pour test people, most people under pour versus over pour. And, it can go either way, but some form of testing and there are, have been, more what do you call it? There have been examples where they’ve tested, say, like Vegas bartenders free pouring versus mixologist types jiggering.

And the Vegas pre pours were more accurate than the jigger pouring. Because at Delano, and I used to come in every Friday, Saturday to get your bank. You had to pour test left hand, right hand, quarter ounce, half ounce, three quarter, one, one and a half, two. And then you hit all your marks, you get your bank, you do it again.

You miss regularly. We have to talk about your scheduling on the best nights, et cetera. So all of those Guis bored. Very accurately because they were tested regularly on how to do it. If we were in the cocktail era, we’d probably still have them use a jigger for cocktails. But if you want to pour a rum and Coke in a way that looks, appealing to guests and keeps the other hand free to grab that gun.

I’m not opposed to it, but you just have to ensure that you’re being accurate and then have something to check that against an inventory app or a, counting measurement. Fantastic. Unfiltered Hospitality. What’s your URL? It is www. unfilteredhospo. com.

Excellent. Fantastic. Gui, it’s been a breath of information all about bar operations and profitability and about people and processes and product and process and all that sort of thing. It’s been fascinating, so I really appreciate you being with us.

Thank you for having me.

It’s great. That was the Restaurant Rockstars podcast.

Thank you so much audience for tuning in. Thanks to our sponsors this week. Can’t wait to see y’all in the next episode. So stay well, stay tuned and we will see you then.

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