Training: Flavour Professional Bar Academies

Professional Bar Academies highlight potential career opportunities for barstaff.Slowly but surely the licensed trade is coming around to the idea...

Professional Bar Academies highlight potential career opportunities for barstaff.

Slowly but surely the licensed trade is coming around to the idea that serving behind a bar can be more than just a way of earning a few extra quid and can really become a professional career.

Scores of bartenders around the country are currently being made sharply aware of that fact in a series of Professional Bar Academies organised by The Publican's sister magazine for the style bar sector, Flavour.

The one-day events, sponsored by Bacardi Brown-Forman, Heineken and Coca-Cola Enterprises, have already visited Nottingham, Leeds, Glasgow and, most recently, Brighton, and future dates will take the tour to London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Bristol.

Training, carried out by experts in the field, covers basic and advanced bartending plus a tutored spirits tasting and a session on beer.

While the Academy is targeted at the top end of the bar market and there is a definite focus on cocktails, many of the issues raised are relevant to the need to raise customer service standards across the whole pub industry.

In Brighton's Sumo bar a dozen young barstaff from the city attended the advanced bartending course led by Angus Winchester, international bartending consultant and columnist for Flavour.

It was soon clear that this session was to be not only instructive, but inspirational.

"Most people get a job in a bar because it's short-staffed, but bartending is a profession, a career," he began by saying. "That means there are ways you can develop, become better at what you do - and earn more money.

"A professional bartender is worth money to a bar and the skills are universal, you can take them all over the planet.

"In any case, if you are going to work eight hours a day behind a bar, you might as well get good at it."

Angus asked the students what they thought makes a good bartender. Confidence, personality and presentation, the reply came back.

"That's a question I ask all around the world, and the answers are usually the same. Confidence is attractive and the way you look and move behind the bar is important, but I can't teach you personality. All we can do is try to develop your skills, then the confidence and personality will come out."

Four skills are required, he explained: knowledge, speed, style and etiquette. Then there are the tools of the trade.

Angus always carries a red doctor's bag around with him containing things like ice scoops, cocktail shakers, spoons and an exceptionally large muddler, always good for catching a customer's eye.

"Any muppety chef will own all their own knives but you hardly ever see a bartender with their own tools," he said. "The bag makes people think I'm a professional."

Bartender tips

Make the people you are serving feel like guests, not customers. Then they'll come back to you time and time again.
Develop your "shaker face" when mixing a cocktail. "It shows you're concentrating on what you're doing. It's like the face you make when you're having sex," says Angus.
Know your physics. The more ice you put in a glass, the less it melts and the stronger the drink.
Think about your body language - if you touch your head when you speak to people it means you're lying or not sure what you're talking about.
Never gossip about your customers, no matter what they've been up to the night before!

Angus on:

Knowledge

A bartender needs to know:

the alcohol content of a drink
where it comes from
what it's made from
whether, and how, it is aged
what it tastes like.

You sell a lot of Jack Daniel's but 90 per cent of bartenders don't know that it's not a bourbon. We're drinks sales people. We need to know more about it on this side of the bar than they do on that side.

You don't go into a newsagent and ask for any old newspaper, but people who go into bars are uneducated. You are the one who knows the difference between drinks and you need to assure them you can be trusted.

Try to attract a customer to your knowledge with a question. "Have you tried it this way?" for instance. That not only demonstrates your knowledge but makes the experience more personal to the drinker. Make the space between you seem as small as possible.

Speed

Customer time is five times quicker than normal time. We all know what it's like when you're waiting in a queue.

Practise will improve your speed and every customer you serve is a chance to practise. It's about determination, perspiration and common sense. Think about the fact you've got two hands and make use of them.

I can make any drink in 45 seconds which means in eight hours I can impress 640 people - it's fun to see people do things at top speed.

Style

You're on stage when you're behind a bar. Use tricks to make people say things like "what's he doing with that?".

Always ask yourself whether there's a better way of doing something, know the most efficient way of doing things and know why they are done that way.

You won't find out about this watching TV. Read magazines like Flavour and your training manual.

Etiquette

Remember you're representing bartenders everywhere, you must be the perfect ambassador for the profession.

You should know the right time to serve certain drinks, what makes a good aperitif, for instance, and be aware that you are working in a regulated industry. You aren't allowed to serve underage people, police in uniform, drunks or prostitutes.

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