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Bartenders! Lend me your experiences
cogell
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Registered User regular
I'm looking to land a job as a bartender to help pay for school, rent, toys, whatever. I'm 20 years old, and currently reside in north texas, so age is not an issue here. Basically, I'm looking for interview tips, some drinks I should know how to make (I'm making flash cards right now) what to expect in a bar environment, and so on. The only obstacle I have is no experience in a restaurant, or bartending. I have plenty of drinking experience though, and I'm a friendly, outgoing guy. So basically, I'm looking for help and advice on how to land this job, and keep it once I do. Thanks!
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As a bartender with six years of experience, I can tell you right now you're not going to get a job as a bartender.
With no bartending experience (and especially no service industry experience) you have no chance in Hell. The only way you can step right into a bartending position is if you're an incredibly attractive woman or you're friends with the person who owns/manages the bar/restaurant. Either of those two methods are horrible ways to learn to bartend.
Let me stress this. Tending bar is NOT an entry level postion. It actually frustrates me that people seem to think that it is. Your best bet is to start at the bottom and work your way up. Try and find a barback postion. That's probably the best way to get there. Though really, with no experience, you're going to want to start WAY at the bottom. Like dishwasher or something...
Also, bartending school is a complete waste of money. When I'm hiring other bartenders, if the resume says anything about bartending school, it goes right in the trash.
Memorizing drinks is such a tiny aspect of the job.
Sorry to break all this to you.
EDIT: Oh, and age IS an issue. No one is going to hire a 20 year old who wants to bartend. No one.
Don't worry about it. I figured I wouldn't be able to just waltz in and get started. I'll look into barbacking and whatnot.
I'd still like interview tips and such though.
Edit: Age isn't so much an issue where I live. I've seen plenty of 18-20 year old bartenders.
or if you're an incredibly jacked dude that wouldn't mind working at a gay bar.
Interview tips for what? Barbacking? Just tell them you'll do whatever it takes. It's grunt work.
I don't mean to be harsh, but the service industry is a harsh business. Keep your head down, don't argue with your superiors, and maybe you'll get to be a bartender someday.
I highly doubt that. Were they girls?
Or this. Also, gay men are the best tippers. Ever.
Interview tips for a service job: Be clean and speak clearly.
And I have no problem working at a gay bar
OT True story: Went to a gay bar back in October for a friend's birthday happy hour. After 2 hours of chugging down buy one get one jack & cokes, I give the chip to the bartender and ask him if I could just get a neat Makers Mark as I had to slow the fuck down. He told me I could only get a "get one" for the same drink that I got. Okay, I get that. So I ask him to just give me a neat Jack Daniels. He looks confused so I further explained, "Make me a jack and coke, but when you get to the part where you put the coke in, stop!" He nods that this is okay for some reason handed me a highball glass filled to the motherfucking brim with jack daniels. I don't remember much after that point.
I'm 32 and I've never met a bartender under the age of 25. So, I'm finding this a little odd. Why don't you ask them how they got their jobs?
One thing I can tell you though, I doubt they can make anything past a rum and Coke. They are shitty bartenders, guaranteed.
Where do you bartend?
Because when I was in NYC this was true everywhere. Like the bar selection was trashy with older bartenders, gay bar with older bartenders, classy with older bartenders, and college bar with older bartenders. Around a town that pretty much only exists as a college town? We've got about a billion bars in town and there are bartenders of every age and sex.
Portland, Oregon and I spent some time in Providence, RI. I can MAYBE understand a 21 year old bartender? But an 18 year old one? Not unless she looks like a model and the place has no standards.
Portland being one of the cities at the forefront of the craft cocktail movement, we're quite a bit pickier. We also have a draconian liquor control commission. No way is any owner going to trust his bar to a kid.
I'm also not sure why you're bringing up sex when I was merely talking about age.
right. So you're in picky drinkistan. It's not that way everywhere. We have super-restrictive drink controls in PA, but I still see the 21 year old bartender with a rack as a matter of course. There's a bar I go to often because two members of my band play in a bar band at the bar, and I go with the guitarist and bassist(my bands frontman)s girlfriends, as well as sometimes their other friends. The bartenders there are, after many weeks of getting to know them: Blonde Rack, Brunette rack, Other brunette rack, old dude who actually knows drinks, two bouncer dudes who don't serve drinks, and other girl who was filling in for blonde girl with a rack. With the exception of old dude who actually knows drinks, none of them are over 23, or are pretty awesome at looking super-young.
Also, there are plenty of times I see ads looking for bartenders in the local and student paper.
Also, the reason I brought up sex? Look at the list of bartenders at the bar. Having ample boobs helps hiring at bars unless the bar at least pretends to a modicum of taste and class.
In my first post I mentioned being able to get a bartending job with no experience because you might have "assets". Female assets. Some 18 year old boy is not going to get a job bartending.
Not where you are, no. I know a few 18 year old male bartenders who work in denton on the weekends. It's probably a regional thing, because there's more than you think.
But this isn't what I asked for. Put my lack of experience and age aside, and let me know about the interview process. Am I going to have to make drinks in the interview? What kind of questions will the owner/manager ask?
Well, you're not going to get an interview, but I'll humor you.
I've never been asked to make drinks in an interview. But if you go behind the bar with no experience it will show IMMEDIATELY. It's one thing to memorize some recipes, it's another to put those to work when you've got twenty people all asking for drinks and you're trying to make six completely different cocktails at the same time. You WILL go down in flames. Let me stress, it is not an entry level position.
The interviews I've had are just like any other. It'll just be in relation to bartending. You don't really seem to have much of a grasp on how the service industry works. Have you ever had a job in any industry?
EDIT: Let me also stress that those 18 year old kids are not bartenders. They're trained monkeys who can hold a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a soda gun in another. Hell, I'd barely trust them to get that right.
Retail/customer service for a year, program coordinator for a year and a half.
Not going to help you one bit in the service industry. Have fun getting dishpan hands.
EDIT: I'm really not trying to be mean. Just realistic. What you're asking though is like saying "I've made a few grilled cheese sandwiches. I want to get a job as a cook!". It just doesn't work that way.
If you're serious about becoming a bartender, like I said, keep an eye out for barbacking jobs. Find a place you want to work and frequent it. Get to know the bartenders, let them know you're looking for work, tip the bejeezus out of them, and maybe someone will throw you some sort of break. As well as being skill dependent, it's very network dependent as well.
In a college town, youngish "bartenders" seem a lot more common. Though its not like they cater to the most sophisticated crowd.
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
Yeah, but 18-19-20? Unless you've got a pair of beachballs strapped to your chest...
Ah, by "youngish" I would guess about 24-25, but I don't know for sure.
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
Here in DC, bartending is a standard weekend job, and just about anyone can land the position. No one wants anything more complicated than a jack and coke, etc., so you don't have to worry about anything else. The main trick is just being friends with someone who already works in the bar you're applying at. It's a standard "friends hire friends" situation. Part of this is that we're up to our ears in bars, since nearly the whole city is single 20-somethings.
You don't have to be female here, you just have to be decent looking and obviously capable of socializing/grooming yourself. Although most bars seem to try to have a male and a female on duty at the same time. This could also be a regional thing, as DC has more single women than men. Perhaps cities with the ratio the other way feel differently.
I'm a bit curious about you mentioning 18-20 year olds working the job, though. I'm fairly certain that federal law states under-21's can't serve alcohol, unless they're working a position which is primarily food service with just occassional drink orders. (i.e. waiting tables) Maybe you guys just have lax enforcement in the area?
This is anecdotal and won't likely be relevant as I am in the UK but bar/pub work is entry level work unless you are a manager. At a high end bar this may not be the case but most everyone and anyone can get a bar job if they are not hideously grotesque, can communicate semi-effectively and have at least a couple of brain cells.
I'm not dissing bartenders and professionals in that field but pulling pints and mixing drinks isn't that tough. I don't know what it's like in the bars you will be applying to cogell but in my experience most drinks that people order are not complex unless you work in a cocktail bar. It's just beer, wine and simple mixers.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
The local bar I go to to watch football/baseball and eat crappy food has a constantly revolving cast of people behind the bar, and as you would imagine are incapable of mixing stuff more complicated than "and coke" or "x shot".
I'm sure cogell can find something on the lower end or somewhere in between, especially if he's doing it at OU.
As an American who has been in London for a couple of months, this explains a lot. Every pub I have gone to here, it seemed like it was the bartender's very first job. Most of them were 20 and a couple didn't even know how to run the till or swipe my VISA card.
When I asked for a Sapphire and tonic, I got blank looks. More than once. I had to point to the bright blue bottle on the shelf and teach them how to make a gin and tonic. Several places made me a shot of gin and gave me a bottle of tonic. They didn't know to put the two things into the same glass with ice. Lots of fail ensued.
At one bar, I asked what wheat beers they had. She pointed to all of her taps, including Guinness and Heineken. I asked her again if she knew if she had any actual wheat beers. She said no this time and seemed put out. *facepalm*
I experienced a bunch bar staff here in London that seemed to be really confused. The only people who seemed to know what they were doing were the nice people at Belgo Central but those pitiful men had to dress like monks in brown robes.
Oh, just as a data point, I did notice that almost every bartender I've encountered here had breasts except for an old guy who worked at a hotel bar.
Buffalo Wild Wings, TGI Fridays, Dave & Busters, 99% of college bars, Applebees.
Bar Tenders
Classy hotels, martini lounges, old-school restaurants (Chop House, Lawry's)
You could possibly get a job at one of the first, but probably not the second. Ideally if you're really committed, you'd work as a barback at Fridays or whatever to learn the operations and learn the drinks on your own - practicing whatever isn't ordered at BWW.
While Esh's advice is valuable and apt for anyone seriously interested in the service industry as a career, in this thread it's akin to someone saying "don't bother trying to get a job as the head chef at a five-star restaurant, you need years and years of experience" when the original statement was "I wanna be a fry cook at McDonalds".
I spent over 10 years in the service industry, alternatively bartending, barbacking, working security, etc. My first bartending gig I got by lieing in the interview that I was an experienced bartender. I got away with it because the bar was a beer and shot bar. Simple beers and mixers, all you had to do was move fast to keep the boss happy.
If you're going for an interview, unless it's a fancy smanchy place, don't wear a suit. I never wear suits to service gig interviews. Rock a nice collared shirt and a pair of jeans. Something you would actually wear to work at this place. If you want to fast track to the bar, avoid the TGI Fridays, etc. Those places make you wait tables for a while and "prove" you're "worthy" of a bartending spot. Well, at least the couple of places like that I have worked at or my friends have worked at.
Best bet for getting behind the bar is finding a good dive bar or slightly slow college bar. Nothing fancy, not all that busy. Apply for the bartending gig and tell him your fresh. Offer to barback and learn the position his way while you do it. Be prepared for people to tell you no a lot. Most places have no desire to train someone fresh. Barbacking is not a bad spot to be in. At the couple of bars I did that at, I would average $100+ a night. By going to a slower place, what will hopefully happen is you'll be able to learn about the job, and the bartender's won't make as much as they would at other bars and they will leave. Trying to find a bar with high turnover is key. Super busy bars are great to work at, but it also means the bartenders rarely leave. Who wants to leave a gig paying a couple hundy a night?
as for the g&t thing, it's just so you can make it as strong as you like and just the way it's always been done over here.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
As far as actual advice to the OP - having a knowledge of drinks is a definite plus but you also need to recognize your audience. If you're tending bar at TGI Fridays the vast majority of your work will be stuff that's on the menu, like electric lemonade, or stuff that pours from the tap. The hardest part of the work is the volume as opposed to the actual drink making memory. You're going to serve 100 beers for every gin and tonic you make.
Some of what Esh says is true in that places are not often willing to give a high profile spot to a person without experience, but it's because they know that a crowd that has a bad time at a bar will remember it and not come back. This is immensely important to a place that is a bar first and a place to eat second. Fridays wants a good bar crowd but volume-wise they're a restaurant. People are going there to eat and Friday's wants to painlessly separate them from MORE of their paycheck.
Anyway, if you know how to make drinks that's a plus but what you want to impress most on your boss is that you're trustworthy, hungry for work, and willing to learn. While this is true more or less for many interviews, it's especially vital in the service industry where there are many alternatives to bad service.
I got a job as a bartender at the age of 19 at a place that was in no way considered to be shitty with nothing more than 4 months experience waiting tables. It was in fact the most popular bar in town and I made a lot of money working there.
Bartending is not as hard as Esh is making it out to be. Know your drinks, know your clientelle, be personable and be willing to work and you'll have a decent chance. Be professional above all else. If your maturity shines you'll have far better chances.
Granted, things probably vary around the world in terms of necessary experience etc., but Esh is making it sound like bartending is tougher than brain surgery for some reason. My experience has been quite different from that.
Unrelated to the OP: I appreciate Esh's responses on this thread. As a person who was really immersed in the coffee industry for several years, it would always irritate me when people would ask me how they could be a barista, because they don't want to do a lot of work and they love frappuccinos. America, Canada, and the UK right right now are beginning to go through changes right now in how we dine and drink. It's a slow movement, but more and more people are beginning to say "we want quality culinary experiences in our everyday life." Our chefs and bartenders aspire to be more than what you can find at Chili's, and our baristas and roasters more than what you can get at Starbucks. There is nothing wrong with someone taking pride in one of these positions and treating it as something more than a job, because it is, it is a trade.
I came here to watch Esh flip out, 'cause he is so predictable.
Anyways, they don't make much in the way of wheat beers in the UK. The few I had were awful.
Britons don't drink them because they aren't crystal clear. That's the sign of quality over there, however misguided it is. Not filtering a wheat beer is what makes them so great. Someone posted in a beer thread that a British brewer actually filters its wheat beer just to make it sell.
Case in point: Sports bar in town that I like to frequent for my football-watching needs tends to hire the dumb-as-a-post, fresh-out-of-boob-job-surgery blondes. These girls can flirt just fine, and the amount they make in tips will be ok because they have nice tits, but this bar suffered for a while because these girls were incapable of holding more than one order in their head at a time. Grabbing a waitress as she walked past and asking for a pitcher of, say, Hoegaarden, would guarantee that you were getting a Miller Lite pitcher in 20 minutes or so. They had the memory abilities of goldfish. It got to the point where I could not convince any of my friends to go there because they'd all had bad experiences with the service. And thus does a bar begin to die.
And as someone who worked in the service industry through high school and used it for tuition money during college (I've waitressed everywhere from Pizza Hut to 5-star restaurants) I can tell you that how you're looking at this situation is like a waitress assuming she'll understand the job because she memorized the menu. It doesn't work that way. The hardest thing about the service industry is having the memory that can handle 5 things at once, the decision skills to decide what order they need to be done in, and the interpersonal skills to handle pissed off people if your decision skills interrupted their experience in ANY way.
Also, in my experience, I NEVER see younger guys bartending, ESPECIALLY not 20-year-olds. The only guy bartenders I see are either absolutely huge because they double as bouncers, or guys who are actually managers but come out to help serve drinks when the bar is getting slammed. Otherwise I ONLY see female bartenders, and about 1 in 50 of those has boobs smaller than a C-cup. Granted, Houston is definitely not a college town, but I think you will be lucky if you graduate past a barback or dishwashing position to bartender in less than a few years. Just my 2 cents.
All that said: Good luck! Maybe you can break the mold.
Experience is, in my experience, the number one thing employers look for in potential candidates. Whoever said the main thing at Friday's being drinks on the menu? You're right. We had a drink book ((~40 pages)) filled with recipies that we had to have memorized before we even set foot behind the bar. However, that can probably be attributed to Friday's being all about "working flair" and being known for their specialty drinks. The thing I cannot stress enough about restaurant bartending? You absolutely, 100%, no-questions-asked have to have the menu memorized. When you're behind the bar at a restaurant, you're not just making drinks. People are ordering food, wanting it a certain way, and asking tons of questions. If you're unsure how to make a drink and the bar is packed, the gears will grind to a halt if someone asks you a question about food you don't know the answer to.
Don't let what anyone says deter you, though. I have a very outgoing personality and waiting tables/bartending is probably one of the best jobs I've ever had. It's long, grueling hours on your feet, listening to everyone's problems, ((fellow bartenders: I think we should get PhDs in Psychology after bartending for 2-3 years.)) and dealing with cranky servers, cooks, and managers. There's nothing like the feeling of having cash in your pocket at the end of the night, though. Instant gratification for busting your butt.
The above, of course, is all related to restaurant gigs. Actual bars are a different beast altogether. Whereas in a restaurant it's slightly more laid back, in an actual bar it's all about speed and efficiency. I would definitely recommend to the OP that he get a job at a restaurant first, get bumped up to bartending, and THEN look for a job at an actual bar. Something tells me you'd get eaten alive if you just jumped right in to a bar in Norman.
If you have any more questions feel free to send me a PM or find me on Facebook. I'd be more than happy to answer anything else you might ask about.
Maybe you guys are talking about really shitty bars, but have you ever actually been behind a bar? As someone who was put behind a bar a few times with no experience, it is way more confusing than you think. What bottles to keep in the well (is that what it's called?), ice, mixing correct ratios (not like mixing drinks at home), knowing what goes in what, different glasses (god damn this was hard) and then oh shit I have to deal with money also. You also have to know what to ask them, try to get them to name a brand so they pay more, etc.
That said, I have never been to an extremely shitty college bar (I go to school in NYC) so it is quite possible that absolutely none of this would apply to you. I'll admit it doesn't seem very likely you would need to be able to tell a white wine glass from a red wine glass in some college bar.
As someone who has two parents in the food service industry, what you want to stress during your interview is that you want to work, you are reliable, and you want to make money, so you want to make the house money. If you say that, they will see you as someone on their team, or at least someone they can use to make more money.
You mean it has job skills you aren't born with, like any job?
No one is shitting on Esh. It's just that Esh refuses to acknowledge that I expect a different level of service when I go to Arnold Palmer's on the Hill for cocktails with coworkers from when I go to Madame's Organ to get fucking plastered with random "bros."
No, what we're saying is that there are way too many people who think that bartending (hell, even bar-monkeying) is an easy job and that anyone can do it. <sarcasm>I mean, what are we doing except for putting some booze in a glass? How hard could that be? I mean, you get to have fun, and party, and hit on girls all night, and make hundreds and hundreds of dollars, and get wasted! Woooohooooo!</sarcasm>