Bartender Best Practices

If I am your first customer at midday on a Saturday, please do me the honour of pulling through, so i get a pint from the cellar, rather than one that has been sitting in the pipes overnight.

A pint is a pint!

Grant you, there aren't any schooners or tea cups or whatever.

Most of the time, your choices are draught (maybe even a draft) or a bottle anyway

If I am your first customer at midday on a Saturday, please do me the honour of pulling through, so i get a pint from the cellar, rather than one that has been sitting in the pipes overnight.

If a suspected lush lays a big bill on the bar for a cheap drink, let it sit. It’ll cause the barfly anxiety and implies the purchase of a second drink.

Ime people paying in cash are mostly having one drink, or intending to use the pay-as-you-go model. People who will be staying a while are either providing a card to run a tab, or operating on a "trust me, I'm good for it" model. which one may be dependent on bar policy, crowdedness, etc.

The "leave bills on the bar" model is increasingly rare these days, at least in the places I hang out. Perhaps it is regional?

I mean, I understand calstars's logic but I am not sure I would classify "make your customers anxious on purpose to get them to drink more" as a "best practice," you know?

I almost always go vodka if I'm having a mixed drink at a bar. And if it's a nice bar or special occasion, I'll go with a premium vodka, be it a vodkatini or vodka-soda. But after hearing a few times from ppl in the service industry how often grey goose bottle are filled with McCormick or whatever, I'm now too suspicious that i'll get swindled to order call drinks.

What say you, calstars?

Not calstars but for most mixed drinks I am fine with cheap booze or rail. Call me a heathen but I I don't really care if a bourbon & ginger is made with Jim Beam or Maker's or Bulleit or whatever. Once it's mixed with a sugary soda it's hard to notice or care about the difference between bourbons.

In a Martini I might care. On vodka I have basically no opinion, so might as well go with rail (or cheap) vodka in a vodka tonic or whatever

oh i am very much a vodka truther, but in more upscale settings it just seems appropriate to splurge, but i don't bother anymore

Hard to research this without an inside source ‘cause every server will deny it or say yes at a past job, but not THIS one wink wink. This job is someone else’s past job five years from now though, so probably. But servers may not even know, it’s to the owner’s advantage that they don’t, so they can honestly claim ignorance. From the bartender’s perspective, yes, that’s top shelf shit, and thanks for the tip.

I've never heard of a bar swapping out call or premium for cheap shit. It wouldn't make sense - bars are generally open, you can watch them open up a new one and scratch the tax sticker (in Texas).
Liquor margins are very high, there's no real reason for them to risk it anyway - even a strong rumor of it happening would kill business and you don't think a disgruntled employee would narc them out to the state/social media?

You shouldn't bother with premium vodka because it's vodka - anything past Tito's and you're setting money on fire.

i don't know how popular Tito's is outside of TX but they have a lock on the market here, must be rolling in it

good bars don't do that. it's a thing that a bar on Bar Rescue might do but liquor-heads would often know the difference between what they were being served and what it was supposed to be.

like one of my besties is a whiskey expert to even knowing the well whiskeys by taste and which ones are good, if all the bars were doing this shit, she'd Karen it up with the manager

any “disgruntled employee” would be committing career suicide by “narcing out” their employer to “the state.”

yeah but fuck, sure the average people who just drink to be Brick from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, there are a ton of customers who can taste the diff between well and premium liquor. I am not one of those people, but if anybody sold out the owners, it wouldn't be an employee.

though there was this: https://www.nj.com/politics/2013/05/rubbing_alcohol_as_scotch_nj_o.html

A bartender who gets shitcanned or fucked over isn't worried about "career suicide." If you're a competent bartender, you can get work after being fired for theft, much less an anonymous call to the state.

lol at "Karen it up"

Invest the time to create a mental Rolodex of the little things you can do to send a subtle acknowledgment to a regular who under tips. This can include failing to top off a sloppily poured pint

Dad of a friend was a pub landlord and was found by the authorities (cant remember how) to be watering down his spirits and beer. Received a fine

If you have a regular who’s established himself as someone who will come to your bar no matter how he’s treated, you can safely take some of your aggression resultant from other dumb customers out on him safely in a plausibly deniable, passively aggressive way

if you own a bar, close it. right now.

If you have a customer you know the name of that is about to pass out or is otherwise excessively self-engaged, and that has finished their current drink, discern whether they want another by maintaining your distance and waking them from their reveries by shouting their name at them

When taking an initial order for which the customer pays with a credit card, say “keep it open?” (instead of “close it out?”). It’s easy for the customer to just say “yes,” and puts the burden them to affirm that they are leaving after one drink. Bummer

If you’d like to engage with a customer but don’t want to disrupt them if they’re on a solo mish, approach slowly and put it in neutral just incrementally within their range of spatial awareness.

If you have a customer who’s alone but you think might not want to give that impression, serve a glass of water next to them at the bar or across from them at their table.

Lol what

"Bartender duty #2: make sure yet customers don't appear to be saddos"

much obliged. my friend stepped out to take a call, but I just received a text (after talking to someone wanting to take that seat) that they had to head home after an emergency popped up at home.

I am sure they will be fine. How you doing?

This more a tip for bar owners, but if your establishment brands its own glasses with its name or logo, instruct the servers to serve the customers with the name on the glass facing them. This will augment brand / establishment exposure in case the customer takes a photo and posts it on their MyFace

Never tell customers the tip is included

In the summer, set up a water station on the side, so patrons can serve themselves

When you have a customer that leaves borromean condensation rings in their wake, assume they’re a pro

Diarrhea

Aim for an inch of foam on draft beer orders. Assuming you own the place

File under bar owner best practices:
Regarding the selection of an initial seating arrangement during construction or renovation, eschew chairs with backs. Instead, choose benches or bar stools to prevent the customer from getting too comfortable — an uncomfortable customer is one eager for a drink. An adjunct benefit to this arrangement is that it discourages extended lingering.

When it’s time for another round for the group, be direct and ask the alpha first. They are the most likely to order another, and chances are the others will follow suit. In any case, do not ask the group as a unit (“can I get anyone here another?”) which makes it easier for all to decline and not be identified singularly as the buzzkill.

If a barfly asks your name it’s a fair bet to assume they want to be remembered by theirs

If a customer says “thank you so much” or is otherwise overly verbally gratuitous, you can probably safely tack on a couple extra bills to the bill

If your establishment doesn’t serve food but is takeout-friendly, keep a leather- or otherwise nicely bound book of delivery menus handy to keep the customers in-house

A friendly bartender showed me this beautiful old book - Bartender’s Guide by Trader Vic — which they keep for reference (4/5 of the book is recipes), but the first section is comprised of salty best practices.

https://i.imgur.com/Gez9xRo.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ykcFhfd.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/loqM0gL.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/A12JkJ0.jpg

I was just looking up used prices for that book this afternoon; out of my range. I would like to find a PDF of it until I'm rich enough to buy one.

https://bookos-z1.org/book/5308150/5dd96d

I don't know if this link will work for you, but hey ho!

Also here, but this is revised version from ‘72. Original was published in ‘46 iirc. From what I can tell it looks like the recipes were “updated” but the short essays in the front are the same. The writing is dated in a humorous way … “ Later on, we had a guy who could mix drinks like hallelujah holy toledo. This fellow was hot and a good friend of mine before I went into the saloon business. His name was Frank Pult.”

https://www.scribd.com/document/467774673/1972-TRADER-VICS-BARTENDERS-GUIDE-REVISED-US-pdf

Nice, thanks!

When a customer orders a subsequent drink, take care to place it in the exact spot where their last was

A lot of my customers carefully get a cocktail napkin ready while I'm working on their drink and slide it forward for me to finish the operation.

Bar pros

i went to a bar by myself yesterday, first time in forever. i was killing an hour and a half waiting for my car to be inspected down the street. i went to an irish sportsbar, and was definitely the most awkward weirdo in the room. my instincts are horrible. in this giant sportsbar, there were about 8 customers. 4 were sitting at the bar, and the remaining 4 were sitting at a pair of tables a few feet away. but this room was huge, and i had a headache, so i thought i'd just go sit at a table by myself about 100 feet away. but i had to order a drink first. 3 of the 4 people sitting at the bar were old guys, and they were all staring at me. i made eye contact with one of them and he immediately looked away, and then the bartender asked me what i wanted. she called me honey and then turned away and her jean shorts exposed like half of her ass-cheek, and then i made eye contact with another old guy and he immediately looked away. i realized i didn't know what kind of draft beers they had, so i marched around to the other side of the horseshoe-shaped bar to take a look at the little knobs. i ordered a shocktop and was immediately disappointed with what i had done, and then i asked if it was ok to sit in the other, completely empty, part of the room. it looked like it might be closed off due to no customers entering it for the past 5 years. she said you got it to my beer request and of course to my question about sitting alone. i walked back around to the other side of the bar, waiting for my beer, and then realized i needed to sit down at the bar instead of walking 100 feet away. so i sat down. it got worse from there, i assume when i left they were like wtf

i’m sure it was fine, if there are just old dudes at a bar mid-day they’re either locked in to their own thing or desperate for conversation. probably with their own kind, but you sit three seats away and they start making small comments at the tv or grunting noises to try to lure you in