The Gospel of Cocktail Podcast-Laura Unterberg

00:00We absolutely love partnering with Sharpies Bakery. Erin Mosso has been selling bread, fresh baked bread to locally unoperated restaurants six days a week for 36 years. Yes, her father started the company 36 years ago and Erin took it over five years ago and it is doing amazing things. I have so many guests that come in the studio that are like, I love Sharpies, they save me so much time and the bread is so good. So we've got round buns, specialty round buns, dinner rolls, hoagies, baguettes, they do cheesecake, they do flourless chocolate, tortes, they do specialty loaf breads and regular loaf breads and bullies, bullies, B-O-U-L-E-S, sourdough, long tuscan, wheat, multigrain, they got everything. You should go check them out at sharpies.com. That is Sharpies, C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S.com or you should give them a call at 615-356-0872. Supporting local is so damn important and Erin Mosso and all of our friends over at Sharpies Bakery do that daily.

01:10Give her a call right now. I think one of the most overlooked things that you can do on a P&L, which is your profit and loss statement, is dish machine and chemicals. It's just one of those things you don't focus on until it's too late. Let Jason Ellis from SuperSource come in and do an audit of what you're currently doing and why you're doing it. His number is 771-337-1143. We believe here at Nash Restaurant Radio that every single thing that you do should be done intentionally in a restaurant. And allowing some company to come in and just fix your dish machine without you knowing what's really happening is exactly what we're talking about. The thing Jason does the best is he can help educate you on exactly what's going on with all of your dish machines and chemicals. He can do staff trainings to understand why you're using what you're using, again, to be intentional. They don't make you sign any type of contract. They are week to week and can get you a brand new dish machine with three free months of dish machine rental.

02:10You need to check them out. Go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com, click the Sponsors tab, and then you will see SuperSource. Click that tab for a special or give Jason Ellis a call at 770-337-1143. Welcome to the Gospel of Cocktail podcast. Now here's your host, Kayla Ellis. Hey everybody, welcome to the Gospel of Cocktail podcast on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Today, I'm gonna get to talk with Laura Untenberg. I don't know if it's Untenberg or Untenberg. She's an incredible bartender. Our conversation today was really dope. We get into some good stuff and I'm excited to kind of show you guys these inside views of what it means to run a bar.

03:13So she's running the Fox Bar and Cocktail Club. It's honestly one of my favorite bars in town. It's where I like to take people when they're coming into town to visit. It's kind of labeled as a speakeasy, but I guess technically you wouldn't consider it a speakeasy because it's not a secret. We want people to know about the Fox Bar, but they're doing really cool things. And Laura just has so much to offer in the way of knowledge and honestly a wonderful experience for her guests and for her team. So it's gonna be really good to get into this. I also want to let you guys know about this project that I've been getting into. They're called Just Dot Glass. So they're doing really cool things. They're choosing to sponsor us for one, which is very generous and kind, but number two, they are giving jobs to people in the community that have trouble getting jobs, whether it's class issues or dealing with coming out of difficult situations.

04:15It's really hard to find stability when let's say you're coming out of jail or coming out of a difficult situation. A lot of times it's hard to find opportunities, even if you want to make it and get back into the flow of things in society. So they've made a way for folks to have stability, folks to make money, make a living. You can find them on justiceindustries.org. So what they're doing is really cool. They can actually pick up your glass for you, all of your recycling. It's curbside pickup. I'm actually seeing if this is something we could be doing at Oku in Nashville and also Oak Steakhouse, because those are my two bars. But yeah, if you run a bar program or a restaurant, this is gonna be a really easy way for you to make the world a better place. So definitely consider it. Check out justiceindustries.org and you can sign up for their Just Dot Glass program. Okay, let's get into it with Laura. ["Just Dot Glass"] Hello, I'm Kayla and I'm with the Gospel of Podcast, Gospel of Cocktail Podcast.

05:33Both Brandon and I have done that several times of Gospel of Podcast. It's the Gospel of Cocktail Podcast. And I'm here with Laura from The Fox. And I'm really stoked to get to talk to you because The Fox is absolutely one of my favorite bars. Would you say hi to everybody? Hi, guys. First of all, I was absolutely fishing, thank you. That's really kind of you to say. It is one of my favorite bars too, which is gross to say. But I geeked out over that bar before I worked there and I think part of doing a good job, being a good steward of the brand is loving what you do every day and being a little bit obsessed with it. I love that. I've worked at a lot of places that I love the people, but maybe didn't love the place. Or had to get to the point where I felt excited to be there. And there's only been a handful of places that I've been where it was like, this is it. This represents me, this brand ties in with things that I care about. The Fox is dope.

06:35I've been there a couple of times. I bring people when they come to town. And I've known people over the years who have worked there. But it's just such a really cool intimate space. Your cocktails are phenomenal. I love your old fashions that kind of switch up. Is it weekly or monthly? Monthly, oh my gosh. I am crazy enough already doing monthly menu flips. Yeah. I've known bars that have done weekly things. But no, our kind of concept is we do one serious menu flip per month. Mostly just because the paper inside our menus needs to be reprinted. That's fair, yeah. Say nice and we'll change out a few. And then we do special drinks for like a day or a week, at least two or three times a month. So at bare minimum, I'm making five to six new drinks every month. That's sick. I mean, sometimes in crazier months, it's I think in maybe April or March, it was like 17 new drinks in one month.

07:41Wow. And my boss just kind of looked at me and was like, you know, take a couple of weeks, get out of town. I was like, thank you. Feel it for a while. That's reasonable. Especially because like you don't want anything. And I know you understand this. There are people that will come into your bar once. And that one drink is the only impression they're gonna have of you. So you never wanna phone it in. And it's for sure collaborative, but you understand this. Like you have bartenders at different levels and with different tastes and palates. They're pitching drinks, but it still needs, I mean, it's like an art teacher. You're gonna hone it and push it and tweak it to not only be its best, but to fit the concept of the bar better and to fit, I call it make it foxier, which is like gross, but it's also our name. No, I think that's adorable and lovely. I love that because so I've got most of the places that I do are places that change their menu kind of seasonally.

08:41So either it's typically it's twice a year. Oh, for sure. That's reasonable. That's absolutely sane. And that's a lot of normal places do that. I love the idea of doing a monthly flip because number one, your output of cocktails and creativity, it's just, that's so fun. You know, that's keeping people invested, keeping people fresh. But the other thing too is like you said, meeting bartenders kind of where they're at and seeing what everybody's skill set is. A lot of times I see good drinks on a drink menu. What I love about the Fox is that you guys have a good menu, not a couple of great drinks on a decent menu. You have created a full flow where that's like, there's something for every pallet, which is a complaint I have with other places and why I do the menus the way I do. We do like a workshop and everybody claims a territory of a type of cocktail. So you claim your base spirit and then you claim whether you want the most refreshing sweetest or if you wanna go a little bit more dry or spirit forward.

09:48And we break it down typically, depending on how many cocktails we wanna do per menu, there's like somebody picks every category. And so that way no one's bringing the same drink to the table or the same flavor profile. So we're trying to hit every guest. We're not just having multiples of the easy drinker or multiples of the spirit forward crazy cocktail. That's definitely the move. It's that, that is the same way to do it. One of the few benefits of changing the menu so frequently is I have a back stock at any given point of six to 12 drinks that are ready to go. So I have, I almost go the opposite and sometimes bartenders are like, well, what do you need? What do you, and I'll occasionally tell them but for the most part, I'm like, what are you excited about? Give me, I'm not gonna give you a category. I'm not gonna give you a spirit. If you, if all, if every single one of you pitches Aguardiente cocktails right now, dope. You are bringing what you're most excited about. You're bringing your best. You're coming correct.

10:49And it's my job to put them together and to- Fill in the holes. Yeah, and to fill in the holes and to space it out. It definitely is harder that way on my end but I think for us specifically, I get better stuff from it because they're not feeling forced. They're like, well, I'm not really, I'm not really feeling cognac right now but this is what it's gonna be. And also I'm sure everyone understands this complaint. Consumers are kind of starting to see it or well, they're seeing it well but like as buyers, we've been dealing with this for a year and a half. At minimum, you just can't get stuff anymore. It's not like, oh, it's hard to get or you didn't order on time. You just can't get it. And if you- It's so painful. Yeah, and if you have the space to store things or if you are, if the accountant is understanding enough of you not having an even ebb and flow of buying which sometimes for larger spots, if you're buying for a hotel, they won't hear that. You are limited with a budget every month and if you go under, you're kind of in trouble because they're gonna set that as your budget for the next year and you're like, well, Averna's in right now.

11:57I wanna buy four cases in stockpile but you're not allowed that. I have a little bit of flexibility because we're such a small spot but if something's out of stock, I mean, Bulls and Ynaver is a great example of a gorgeous historical product that I love working with. I love it. They stopped importing that mark to Tennessee. It just does not exist anymore. Let's tell them what that is. So Ynaver is the, to kind of at base level, the predecessor to gin. The OG gin. Yeah, like many things, the English do well. They stole it from someone else. It's honestly, colonizing is their greatest strength or worse strength, actually both. Yeah, yeah. But their only strength, let's just maybe say it that way. That and shepherd's pie, I love it. 10 out of 10. Actually, New Zealand does that better too. But really, I hope for you so many people listen to this and for my sake, I hope no one does. But there are several Dutch companies that are still making it.

13:02As a category, it is multi-er, a little bit more viscous, generally lower juniper content. So when the company I liked using stopped distributing to Tennessee, they also, they make their money, a lot of pretenders say Vodka pays the bills. Well, companies have to deal with that too. So for bowls, Ynaver doesn't really pay the bills. Their wide selection of neon colored kind of dive bar fruit liqueurs does. Every place on, actually, I think they might not even be good enough for Broadway. But if you can imagine an apple pucker, chocolate liqueur, whatever. High sugar, high preservatives, high everything. Oh yes. Like keep it alive longer. Every color of the rainbow, they make it. So they're still making those, but I think they just didn't have the space or money or staffing to continue making the Ynaver in the quantity. That's so heartbreaking, because I love bowls. So it really truly smells to me, like my nostalgic root for the aroma that comes out of that bottle is an Oh Charlie's yeast roll.

14:07It's like so bready and delicious and has like this like lemon oil undertone. And I love its connection to Jen because folks who are like, I can't do Jen. Jen is not for me. You may not wanna start off with the bowls, but it is a really cool thing to see like Jen is so diverse. There are so many different types in the market. It's not like biting into a Christmas tree. So it's really fun to kind of open people's minds up to the diversity and the history of where Jen comes from. So I love that that's a product that you can easily get, like build the intrigue for and kind of awaken some guests mind. But it is heartbreaking. Like I couldn't get Tito's for a while. I couldn't get Crown Royal for a while. So it's not even just the specialty brands. And a lot of Japanese product right now is crazy hard. And one of my restaurants is Oku in Germantown. And it's like, oh my Lord, I can't get sake. The entire portfolio. It was such a pain. And we're finally at a place where it's like, I've got like a worked in kind of rudimentary base for everything that we need.

15:11And we did stockpile sake for a while. We kind of had to, but we fully bought a storage unit for it. Yeah, so you're already paying more for these products and then you're paying more to store them. And it sounds, I mean, everybody's suffering, but I don't think people who aren't in the industry or I think even bartenders and servers and cooks who aren't buying don't fully understand. It's on so many levels. So the grain, the mash bill, if a good portion, especially for beer, is coming out of Eastern Europe right now, and a fair amount of it obviously is not making it out of Ukraine. And that's more modern stuff. But still, we had to stay at home and not work. Why should someone in a field have to work and put themselves at risk? And stuff was not being processed. And then distilleries saw fewer workers and many of them had to shut down. Or the ones in the states, people were like, well, they were making hand sanitizer.

16:12I'm like, yeah, that was a little bit of it. And then you're seeing import problems. No one can get glass. Red Bull was out in Nashville for a while because they couldn't get cans, which is such a crazy thing to say because it's so ubiquitous with Broadway. Jack Daniel, many of the larger brands switched their base level products to plastic so you can't get glass. And then when stuff is finally making it to markets and they're prioritizing major markets more, as well they should, that's where their money comes from, then our distributors don't have truck drivers. They don't have warehouse workers. It's slowing things down on every single angle. Every single level. And things are getting more expensive. And some of that is, there are a couple ways to handle inflation and the kind of dangerous way is a preemptive price raise because that's just kind of gonna be cyclical and go downhill. Did you know this was gonna be an economics podcast?

17:12I did. I'm so into it. And I think you're seeing some necessary price raises and then you're seeing some preemptive ones. So it's really gonna get worse before it gets better. And here in Nashville, because Tennessee does not have a state income tax, our sales taxes are higher because that money's gotta come from somewhere. They're breaking it down that way, yeah. Yeah, and so consumers get a lot of sticker shock. We, not we try, we do. We at the Fox factor that tax into our price. So when you see the price on the menu, that's. That's the exact price. Yeah, I mean there's, at least that factors in the liquor by the drink and Davidson County tax. So there's not, you're not getting that crazy surprise when you see the receipt. And that's kind of our thing. There's a bar I love that they're like motto is fair pours, honest prices. Maybe it's the opposite, fair price, honest pours. And obviously that's already taken. So we're not gonna steal that. But I do think about that a lot for like allocated things.

18:17We don't really hoard stuff. I will harass is a strong word, but kind of, I follow the TTB like labeling releases and I try and work really hard to know when products are coming to market. So I can start bugging my distributors to get stuff before it's even available. We'll get it out early. Kind of have to do that if you want to get it. Yeah, and we'll price things. I like to price things fairly. I'm not gonna, I don't understand the bars that price things crazy high just so it's sitting on the back bar. What's it doing there? There could be something else there, something new, something exciting. Well that's the pain that I deal with at one of our restaurants is a steakhouse. Whiskey-focused, that's what people look for. I hate this, but the reality is is that if I don't price it in a range that discourages people from buying it directly off the shelf, the guests that come to us regularly or the people who are regulars, they come hoping that they can find this product and it will have been bought by a business group that didn't even taste it or mixed it with Coke.

19:21They didn't care because it was priced in a range that they just bought through the whole bottle and they can just spend money like that. So unfortunately, if I don't price it at a more competitive range, the folks that really wanna get a taste of it and actually love and respect it and are hunters, they look for it, they won't get it. It'll be gone before they ever see it. So one of the reasons, because honestly at first we were marketing, we were cutting its poor cost the same as all of our other bottles because that's before, honestly before this particular year, we could get away with that. And then this last year that when allocated products came to market, and there's some allocated products I don't have to do this with because people aren't seeking it out the same. Some cool allocated products like in the rum families, things like that, I can absolutely keep it at a fair price. But if I don't do it with the pappies and the things like that, it's gonna be gone. And I hate it because the way that someone in a large party drinks that stuff is like, it almost makes me laugh because it's like they will buy pour after pour of this $200 whiskey because they don't care and they've got the money and to each his own.

20:36If you wanna celebrate, live your life up that way, cool. But there are people who have never tasted it before and have romanticized the experience and then they go out to treat themselves and they can't find it anywhere in the market. The level of business that we get at a steakhouse knowing that we have whiskey, they buy us out of whiskey immediately. So it's a little bit more challenging in that particular environment. For sure, and you definitely, I mean, how many seats is? 250, I believe, 250, 300. I mean, same, except by way less. I have 42 seats. You have that intimate, exactly. It's not quite the same. And the buying power comes with that. And because of that, I buy very differently. I spend a lot of time researching and trying to, I take a lot of pride in finding new products that haven't really blown up yet, but I have my faith in and are going to. We also have a different clientele and a lot of trust in us that if I'm like, oh, you guys, this is the shit. This is gonna be huge. You gotta try it.

21:36Yeah, and we have kind of the same, not focus on whiskey, because cocktails are king there, but people come in and if you haven't been to the Fox, first of all, come by. We're open seven days a week. We're on Gallatin, kind of behind Mickey's end. It's such a cool, intimate, fun way to go in. People think it's a speakeasy, and that's fine. It was never supposed to be that way. The door was planned on the other side, where it would have been super obvious, but it's attached to a small alley that people just jet down, and I'm like, someone's gonna die, someone's gonna run over, leaving this bar, so let's not. People come in, and they're velvet seats, and dark woods, and candles, and people are like, ah, whiskey, whiskey, yeah. So obviously, and I have almost 400 bottles in-house right now, and I'm always trying to restrain that a little, but the lion's share of that is whiskey, and I try with other products, especially at a more expansive price range, to find things that appeal to whiskey drinkers.

22:44So like, there's a gorgeous rum that, it's not particularly hard to find, but Plantation 20th Anniversary XO Rum. The barrels from that rum, when they are done, go to Angel's MD Rye, so there's that tie-in right there. Foursquare rum really markets themselves at whiskey collectors, when their releases are, how their labels are designed, their secondary finishing, things like that, and then American brandies that are drier and overproof, even Japanese whiskies that are American Apple brandy aged, finding those ways to tie in. X bourbon barrels, that kind of thing. Taking it back to your neighbor, because I know this was what we started this tangent on, that is one of the things I so love about it. Putting aside, and this is really gonna offend some Dutch people, putting aside everything else that's delicious about it, it is, if you had to have the sliding scale of every spirit ever, which I don't know how you would do, I do think it kind of, in some ways, fits between a malted whiskey and a New World gin.

23:53I have to agree with you, yeah, because you're getting the weight and the viscosity of a really beautiful aged spirit, because the congeners and the fatty acids and lipids that come in like a whiskey or an aged spirit, you're getting that mouth feel from, I always call it, I call it a genever. I've heard it pronounced many different ways, Geneva, genever. I also, I always debate back and forth with this, but it's, I realized I don't say quesadilla, I say quesadilla, so I'm sometimes more forgiving of myself. I'm like, you know what, I'm just, I'm gonna say it as the American lexicon is, because I feel too embarrassed to say it the proper way. I think it's funny, there's time, because I, that's a perfect example, because I speak Spanish, and so there's moments where I'm like, I read, I grew up in Arizona, and there's moments where I'll see a street name that's clearly in Spanish, and she'd be like, I don't, I can't even think of one off the top, but boy oh, whatever it is, just like, do I pronounce it fully in the accent that it is written in and look like a dumbass, because I'm like, yeah, take a right at La Luz, like.

25:06Well, and it's also the Tennessee and Kentucky, I loop us together so frequently, the Tennessee and Kentucky way, my favorite is Versailles, Kentucky, how dare, you would never say Versailles, how dare you. It would be so weird. Ugh, so we just, it is a Tennessee and Kentucky tradition to take a European name and just absolutely pronounce it the worst way possible. It is what it is now, that's our way, we've done it. Yeah, so I wanna get into this a little bit of your story getting into bartending. Sure, sure, sure. And so just really quickly, Laura does not drink, but you taste, is that right? Yeah, I think there's like a balance for sure, I'll have a little bit here and there, but I don't, kinda my thing is I don't finish cocktails. Same. And it is, I think you're seeing more bartenders and more industry people take a break and realize you don't have to drink to be credible or good at your job. Yeah. They're also, I think it's gone the other way, there are a lot of bartenders that wear their sobriety in whatever form it takes, almost as a badge to like, of like moral superiority over others.

26:16I don't think that's like fair or reasonable either, but it's such a personal thing. I mean, you can't, there's no pastry chefs that exclusively eat pie three times a day, like that's not sustainable. It's not, and we've talked about on the show so far that like, you know, on Brandon's episode, he's a sober bartender. I practice my sobriety where, for me, and this is something we talked about, is like, I can't believe I didn't know sooner that sobriety could look like different things. I thought I had to keep drinking the lifestyle that I was doing because I didn't realize that it was not an all or nothing thing. And for some people it is all or nothing, and I respect that, like everybody's got their, what they need and what they've got to figure out. I totally respect that, I think it's awesome. For me, I can taste, I can even feel the effects of it, but if I start to feel like that little buzzy feeling and get that sensation of like, we want more of this, don't we?

27:18That's when I have to be like, no, we're good. I actually like this right here, not more. I don't really talk about it at like work or to anybody because it's weirdly boring. It's like people who make jokes about vegans talk about being vegan. No one wants to talk about your diet or what you drink, no one cares, it's the most boring thing ever. I will say, most bartenders, and this is, we're always happy to talk to you about whatever, but I'm thrilled when someone comes up to the bar and they're like, do you guys wanna talk about the Predsfield playoff run last year? What's your favorite bands around town? What's the, I just, I think about drinks, I talk about drinks all day, and you're there to drink and I'm happy to talk to you about it, but it's just, it's the least exciting thing. We're a whole person, we're a whole person with all of these different experiences. The majority of them are drinking, but. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I don't know, it was definitely easier for me because I have many vices. Alcohol was a little bit easier to ease off from, but it for sure, I don't think anyone's gonna be like, yeah, and tout the health benefits of it.

28:25I mean, even liquor brands won't, they have it in all their marketing contracts, tons of brand work on the side, and you very carefully, you cannot say the word health, you cannot say anything like that. Because there was a history, I mean, for most of us in the spirits world, we didn't learn how to drink, we learned how to get drunk, and that's not even just in the spirits world, that's in every corner of the United States of America. We didn't learn how to drink, we learned how to get drunk, and that's absolutely something that came from prohibition, it's something that where the culture and the art of drinking was pushed underground, so really just the vices of drinking is what grew. And now we're born into this culture, this is what we live in, but the original reason and the creation of spirits was seen as medicinal, it was utilized for its medicinal benefits of like, specifically with the monks creating Benedictine and chartreuse are some of the most modern examples of an ancient spirit, and it was seen as medicinal originally.

29:32Obviously, it's got other ramifications, there's other consequences to drinking. As soon as you start drinking, y'all, I want you to notice, and you probably have taken a special awareness to this too, but as soon as you get a sip and that kind of heat goes back, your mouth starts watering, and a lot of people assume that your mouth is watering because of like, the heat of the alcohol or something like that. Really, all that's happening is your body knows that you're screwing yourself over. Your body's like, alcohol is here, let's start digesting this, let's get this show on the road, and so there's enzymes in your spit that help you digest. And so it's sending an immediate sense of your, like an awakening of your digestive system to get this show on the road. Like, everything in your body knows that alcohol is not right. So, we just have to respect it. We have to do it a little bit at a time, and. Yeah, I mean, I think like everything in life, like moderation, whatever that looks like for you, I just, I don't know. I guess I don't really think it's that big of a deal.

30:32My thing is, especially in bars, like you're there to have a good time. No one wants, it would be like if you were so excited and you were hanging with your friends, and you showed up to, you know, the dope burger spot to have like cheese fries and have a good time, and someone's like, do you know what that does to your restaurant? Like, that's the worst. So, I don't know, I. It's balanced. Yeah, it's balanced. It's also like, do what you wanna do. You can't take it with you. You can't take your body with you. If you wanna, you know, if there are people, everybody's body is different, and what works for them is different. You know, if you're sipping on alcohol to get drunk, if you're sipping it to taste the flavor, if you're sipping it because someone bought it for you, whatever, my kind of thing, as long as you are not putting yourself or other people in that bar in danger. Exactly. Then you're Gucci. At work, specifically, it is a no for me, and this one was a hard one, because like, guests wanna buy you shots all the time, and I, my kind of general rule is at max, I'll accept one a night, and it usually is from like a super, super regular or someone that I'm really close to, and I still won't drink all of it.

31:47Because I don't wanna make them feel bad, but it's also like, we, the people working are in charge of your safety, and this is a huge thing for me. I take, I mean, the Fox gives real first date vibes. It's kind of perfect for a first date. There's like not, there's a little bit of food, but it's not a whole meal. You're not obligated to a certain amount of time. We get, the lights are dim. It is a huge, I would say, probably, not Tinder. What's the other one? Like Hinge, I think? Hinge, it's a Hinge date spot, yeah. A lot of Hinge dates. It's elevated Tinder. Exactly, sure. But like, we are stewards of your safety. There's, you're drinking around strangers. So my staff is constantly, we're constantly watching, like everyone's like, oh, and we didn't hear what you said. We absolutely heard what you said. We're tuning it out. We're listening to make sure you're okay. Exactly. Make sure you're safe. Make sure you're happy. So if we are drinking, we can't really do that for you. Senses drop, yeah. Yeah, so that's my thing.

32:48Like I, the Nomad team had like, which is a great bar at 11 Madison Park in New York. And they had a saying that was, you should always be having more fun. Like you should always be having fun as a bartender, but never more fun than the guests. Like, and we kind of at the Fox have that. You should have fun at work, or you can make jokes at work, but not about work. What we do is very like, imagine being a kindergarten teacher. Like you're responsible for children. You are responsible. We, to be clear, we don't allow children on the Fox, but we're responsible for adults who have been drinking. We are stewards of their experience and their time and their safety. And that is not something to be taken lightly. You cannot take it lightly. It's an honor, really. Someone's trusting you with their time. Yeah, and it's like, we try and be like really apparent with allergens and make sure, you know, I have kind of a policy that I've enacted. Like you can't buy a stranger a drink. And I don't even really like when someone goes over and talks to a stranger at the Fox.

33:50There are plenty of bars for that. We're a seated room only. If you want to talk to a stranger, like I'll ask you and be like, hey, this person's kind of trying to suss out your vibe. Is that okay with you? But otherwise, like, nah. You're creating a safe space. You're creating safety. And it's doing those things intentionally are the ways that you can set yourself apart. You're right. Like there's a lot of places where there's bars. That's the goal. And that's cool. There's nothing wrong with that. If that's what you're into and that's the bar that you're seeking out, awesome. But by creating a safe space, by trying to like make it so that your guests feel comfortable, your team feels safe, your team feels comfortable, it's not an accident. You don't accidentally become a safe bar. You have to be intentional about it. We are super excited to introduce Maintain IQ for Restaurants. Maintain IQ is a modern digital checklist system that simplifies your operations. They are designed specifically for restaurants.

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38:07Everything from the way that you make their drink and help them feel seen through their cocktail, to not letting people get hit on, if they don't feel like getting hit on, if they just wanted to come out to a bar and have a good drink. And like, hey, I just wanted my space here, and now I've gotta talk to this stranger that I didn't know. That's really smart of you, I appreciate that. Yeah, and it's like, and it's the only rule the person that doesn't apply to is me and my staff working. And that's kind of, sometimes a lot of bartenders, or for chatty people, they can be surprising introverts and use that block of granite kind of as a safety barrier. But it also keeps you trapped there. And if someone's feeling chatty, if someone's like new in town and has no friends, or just wants to talk about their day or whatever, yep, that's what I'm here for. We are open from 5 p.m. to midnight. You can sit down at five, talk the entire time. And that's dope, sounds great, we'll do it, let's dive in. Last episode, our episode with Jennifer Arnold, we were talking about guests come to a bar for two reasons.

39:13One, to disappear and to kind of hide out. Two, to meet people and talk and have a conversation with their bartender. So you're either hiding or you're running to an energy. And I like the idea that guests have that. I mean, it can look like a lot of different things, and your night can change even as it goes along. But if a guest is clearly digging into their phone or bringing a book and a little bit quiet, dismissive, doesn't want that extra attention on them, absolutely I'm gonna give you that night. I'm gonna create a space where you're just like feeding off the vibes and the energy of the room, but in your own little space recouping and having a drink and treating yourself. And then there's other times where they just want to live vicariously through their bartender or live vicariously through the ambiance around them. And I love that, like I'm gonna create a space where that's doable. So what are, I think your listeners wanna know, what are you like at a bar? What's your, you go to a new city, what are you looking for and what do you show up as?

40:17Okay, well, I'm gonna make you answer the same question because I wanna hear from you. That seems fair. When it depends on, you know, different nights have different goals. There's a lot of times where I will straight up bring a cocktail book to study and just be in the ambiance of a bar. And I don't wanna talk to other people, but I would say now- You bring a cocktail book, oh, that's a hard play. That's cause they know you're into, oh, that's strong. That's an aggressive move, I like it. It's very aggressive. It definitely tells somebody something, but I don't really think about the message too much. It's more or less just like, I need to get this reading done and if I go home by myself, I'm gonna go find something else to do. So it kind of forces me to be like, you are in the cocktail world and you're surrounded by drinks and you're reading things about cocktails. It just is fully immersive for me. And it's kind of fun cause like, you know, depending on which bar you're at, the lights might be kind of dim. So I'm like reading very closely to the book and I'm a nerd, so I've got my highlighter and all that junk.

41:18Like I just, some really cool things have popped out to me that way. But I would say probably eight times out of 10, if not nine times out of 10, at some point in the night, the book is getting closed. I'm gonna start talking to the folks around me and either buying drinks for people close by. If I go with a friend, obviously, I'm all about my friend that night. But if I'm going to a bar alone, which happens all the time, that's kind of what I'm, like eventually I start off with the book and eventually I'm fully in someone's life story and they're telling me about their dog and their, you know, their great step aunt who left them when they were a child. And like, I'm just getting into the nitty gritty of life with other humans. That is, I wish I had that, the like ability to just meet a stranger and you're like, we're gonna be best friends. I'm gonna know everything about you. I think it's, I don't know, I think I had two wasp of an upbringing. Ask you a personal question.

42:19I would never dare. How could I? Yeah, when I traveled to other cities, obviously I think a lot of us have this. We have like, there are so many bartending communities and networks that like, you can go and ask, you know, where do you like in this city? Where do you like in that? And I'll look up the ones that also have been kind of internationally recognized by awards or groups that I value their opinion. So I'll try and go to those, like one or two of those bars and see what they do and kind of see, you know, what makes their program special and kind of learn a little bit. But to be honest, when I'm like looking for a place to go, I prioritize food. I love that. My favorite bars around town are the ones with the tastiest food, that's- I love that so much. That's it for me. And even like, if people are like, oh, the happy hour there, I'm like, yeah, they had great price snacks for happy hours. I grew up in Richmond, Virginia. And for Virginia, their liquor laws are such, well, there are a lot of other ones, but their liquor laws are such that over half of your sales had to be from food and not just food, like not just like snacks or whatever, it had to be entree food.

43:33And like, they would come in and like check and see if you were actually selling stuff, you can just lie about it. It was a whole thing. So there aren't really, there weren't really bars. There were bars, but they were also restaurants. Always gonna have food, yeah. Yeah, and it was, or they might like be a full service restaurant and then stop serving food to Levin and just be a bar after that. But the Fox was so foreign to me because we have snacks and they're great and they're awesome. They're fantastic. The deviled egg. She dirty dough, she real good. It changes all the time too, and that's what I love about it. That one we've actually, we found a favorite and we've kept that one pretty solid for a minute. That's the hardest part about a constantly changing menu with food or drinks. You have one that you're like, oh my God, I love this. Am I getting rid of this just because it's been on the menu for a minute? Because guests still love it. I still love it. Why, you know, yeah, this, I mean, we have drinks that are on there for three weeks and then we have drinks that have been on there for, I think the longest right now is like a year and a half.

44:34And it's one that is, I geek out, it's my absolute favorite. And- Which one is it? So we have 30 cocktails plus some spirit-free selections and shots and stuff, not to mention neat bores, but we've always had a selection of old fashions. And when I first started there, I didn't quite get it because I was like, what's really the point of this? But I think it's a great way to show, like one of them will always be our current barrel pick and just a pretty classic expression just to show that off. And then we try and have more experimental ones. So the first, we'll go super cocktail nerdy. The first published record of the old fashioned was not with bourbon or American whiskey at all. It was with gin. So I try and have like a gin one and some stuff like that, but there's one that is, it's supposed to emulate the flavor of champurado, which is a Mexican kind of hot chocolate sort of drink.

45:34It's done with maize to like thicken it and make it rich and sweet. So it's a blend of asparagus and baril mezcal and corn whiskey that's filtered through corn chocolate cereal, okay, cocoa puffs that have been slightly burnt. And then I do a house mole blend and then a little bit of Amarochi ocharo. So it smells- I'm truly drooling. This is amazing. It smells really chocolatey on the nose and it has a little bit of like a little bit more viscosity, but it's not particularly sweet. And it just, we first came on our menu as like a specialty menu for Halloween 2020, I think. I was actually doing it with Count Chocula cereal, which is surprisingly hard to find. Very hard to find. I had no idea. I'm not a big cereal person. So I was like, oh, I'll just go to Publix. Well, I guess Publix wasn't open then, but I was like, I'll just go to Kroger and buy this. I ended up going to six different grocery stores and took wait, spent way too much time on it when there are other more important things to do. But it's had real staying power. So it's kind of weird the way things, I mean, a great example is, I'm gonna drop another bar.

46:40There's a bar that's really reputable in Spain called Two Schmucks. And they, one of their signature drinks has, I believe it's with whipped, like ISI charged whipped mascarpone on top and cantaloupe below with gin. And it's such a showy drink and it's super tasty. And they, I don't know how long it's been on their menu, but for some time it's one of their signatures. And sometimes that just, that's how it goes. Something that's just boundary pushing enough, but still super comforting and familiar flavors. People just gravitate towards, and you're like, why should I change this for my own pride, for something new? That's kind of dumb. I'm glad you came back to this because when we were talking about changing the menu once a month, we do get guests all the time that are like, hey, do you guys have that drink? I had it last year, I had this and this and this in it. And most often I give the team a backup. Like if we've discontinued a syrup, we'll talk about mixology techniques.

47:43Mixology is just a tool in your pocket. It's not a dirty word. I do think that people who claim like, you have to call me a mixologist, I will be known by no other phrase. They're garbage, that's not a good way to be. But mixology is a tool in my pocket. So if I train the bartenders on how to use it, we can simulate the flavor or mouth feel of the original drink that they were looking for just by keeping record of all of our past drinks. And sometimes we have everything we need to make it. But there's plenty of times where like, okay, we no longer make this tamarind syrup. That's just not part of our prep list anymore. So creating tamarind flavor without the tamarind syrup, knowing enough about what you've got in house and all the different cheat codes, I will often use a little bit of Encho Reyes with a tamarind powder from the kitchen and like Demerara and then I get the same viscosity of the tamarind syrup. But those are the kinds of tricks and things that you keep in your pocket. I love it, that's the job. It's so much, it's being familiar with what you're selling and what you've sold in the past.

48:48It's being a steward and caretaker of the space and the people in it. Yeah, I know there's, it's one of those things that like the word mixology has gone through so many ebbs and flows and my kind of thing is like, my business card says head bartender because I'm a bartender and I am there the most hours. Yeah, there you go. But I don't, I also don't like the self, like I used to joke around and I'd be like, yeah, I'm head idiot or chief dum-dum. And I don't really love that like self-aggrandizing kind of thing that people do sometimes. They're like, oh, well, I'm just a barkeep. It's not just anything. Yeah. It doesn't really matter what you do as long as you're doing it to the best of your ability and you take joy from it and provide a service. That's what it is. If you wanna call yourself a mixologist, I know a lot of bartenders, myself included, probably if you're away from that phrase, but if someone's calling me that and it happens sometimes or they're asking us, is this what you do?

49:52I know it comes from a place of respect. And as much as like we care, as much as I care about cocktails, and I know you do too, it matters so little. Like it matters the most. It's what we do every day. It matters the most, but it also matters the absolute least. And for the vast majority of the drinking world cocktails, the kind of craft cocktails that you do and the Vox as well, don't really matter to them or they don't really know them. And if they want to, and if they're trying to find common ground, I'm like, yeah, that's really nice of you. Thank you, I'm glad you're excited. And that's kind of been a thing that I, I think there are a million one places to get a mediocre drink. And I think there are at least a million to get a good one. And they're probably close to that to get a great drink. But if you think about the last truly exceptional night you had in a bar, I don't even know, or even the last great drink you had, how was the ambiance?

51:01Like you, I don't think you can have a great drink if everything else about your night is miserable. I think you're not a good one. So being kind with people and letting them have a good time, it sounds super cheesy, but I just think that's so much more important. The drinks should be exceptional too. You can be the best spot in the world. And if the drinks are still, you know, crap, tighten up, do better. But yeah, if someone calls me a mixologist or a, I mean, to be honest, he even had bartender, we all do different things. Like for a lot of spots, that means that you, you bartend seven days a week, but you are, you know, the team lead, you are responsible at that hour. I bartend one day a week, but I'm there, you know, I try for it not to be 70 hours, but sometimes it comes closer to it. The vast majority of my time is inventory and cleaning up and staff management and working on brand collaborations and spreadsheets, the vast majority of my time is spreadsheets and expense accounts.

52:02It's not receipts, it's just a title. It doesn't, I think my thing is I take pride in what I do. I love what I do and I make enough money to live the lifestyle I want to. And that's kind of, that's everything. Well, I mean, a couple of things came up in my mind when you said this, like, for one, let the guests have the experience they're trying to have. So if they're like, wow, I'm getting drinks from a mixologist, let them have the experience that they're living up. What also comes to mind is this idea, like the value of our sphere of influence in this world, like you said at the beginning, we only have this one moment with a guest. Preston Denny on his episode, he used to work at Pinewood Social and he's worked at the Patterson House. He's an amazing bartender. I can't recall the name of his bar right now that he just went to, but he just started at a new bar and he's fantastic. But on his episode, he said, there's a lot of times you go into it and you're like, I'm the bartender taking care of you right now.

53:06And he says, there's a moment of separation from what you do and who you are. And so he says, there's moments where it's like, I'm no longer the bartender taking care of you. No, I'm Preston taking care of you. This is me taking care of this person in front of me. And I love that because by definition, I'm gonna get the job done. I'm a bartender. I love that that's part of what I do and definitely has woven itself into my identity. But there's a moment where you're taking care of other people where it's like, yeah, I'm fulfilling my role as a bartender, but I'm also myself, not just taking care of my guests, but taking care of my team. I just think that's so admirable and the heart of what it means to be a bartender, like in any sphere of community, any community that you develop around you, it's like you look out for those around you because we're the people we got. Oh yeah. Yep, that's it. I see your wheels turning in your head. Yeah, no, sorry, I'm a morning person, so around, not to divulge, but around 11.36 a.m.

54:09when we're filming this, I'm kind of hitting my slight slump and my poor two little remaining brain cells are clicking together. I see it. Yeah, I think it's so different what it can look like, what, and I think this is something everybody struggles with a lot, what success looks like and what a good job looks like. What doing a good job at the Fox looks like is so monumentally different than what doing a good job looks like at your bar or at, I'll name drop one of my favorite spots, Dino's. Their kind of version of me is, what she does is monumentally different and what she focuses on, monumentally different, but she does a great job there and they succeed. If she did those things at the Fox, it would not work out so well, and if I tried to do what I do over there, like it just, every spot is different. Different bars, different goals, nothing wrong with any of them. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I mean, before we wrap up, I do have something for us to taste.

55:12Yes, please. And I believe in the clinking of a glass. Let's do it. So even when you had mentioned with the, when a guest buys you a shot, I will often even just pour myself Coke, just because I believe in clinking the glass with a guest. So, or clinking glasses with like the pre-shift. I'll do, we do ginger shots a lot of times for our pre-shift quote unquote drink, because it burns like the zestiness of a spirit and it kind of still gets everybody amped up, but it's about the clinking of a glass. So, cheers to you, mama. Thank you. Thank you for having this time. That was a really nice resonance. It was gorgeous. I did like that a lot. I love drinking out of a coupe, because I'm like a nerd and it just, the alcohol breathes out, and so you're just getting a lot of the heart of the spirit and there's so much more room to smell the whole thing, but that clink, that was so worth drinking from a coupe. So tell me what we're tasting. We are drinking Bren, which is a beautiful French whiskey. It's coming out of France.

56:12It's made in a very, the style of a cognac. The lady that runs this is so dope. She used to be a ballerina. She decided to give up her life savings and went to France and got into this project with a local, a farmer in France. And out the back door, they had all of this beautiful product that was growing, and they were able to create this really lovely. I chose this one in particular for this because it's still pretty early, and it has like a blueberry scone kind of taste to it. Oh, I heard you, you said scone. I was gonna say scone. I like it. That's the proper way. Oh, that's different. I was actually gonna say sconce. I was gonna say a totally different word, so. I thought you were going very particular with that pronunciation. A scone. A scone. Well, I don't know if they're French, but the Scottish, they do say scone. Yeah, I like telling people all the time. I actually just came back from France a couple weeks ago, and I don't think people realize like for Petite Champagne and certain crew, wheat is the largest grown product.

57:14Like obviously some of the regions, you just financially have to grow grapes. Like the land is too expensive. Exactly. But for a lot of them, wheat is what's grown. And so a lot of these French whiskeys coming out are so few are making it to the States, but they're getting really, really high ratings, and they're super, super gorgeous, especially if you enjoy like, I would say more like Mi-Gi-Gio style. Mi-Gi-Gio, yeah, which is by Nica. Yeah, more mild, single malts. If you enjoy like Campelton whisky, like it's, you're not gonna, you're seldom, I shouldn't say you're not, you're seldom going to find that like deep, super Petite or super iodine forward. That ruddy kind of like. Yeah, but definitely a whisky that appeals to brandy drinkers for sure. Absolutely. And it does have that beautiful French blue box. I'm not mad about that. It is gorgeous, isn't it? I almost brought us the 10, but I honestly like their regular better.

58:17And especially for like a breakfast time, straight alcohol sipper. This is the way that I thought we should go, but cheers to you. Cheers. Yeah, that's super nice. It was, I was just at Tales of the Cocktail, which is a, I would say it is internationally the largest spirits and bartender conference. And I stopped by, I wasn't so busy and I wasn't planning to stop by the Cesarak house, but I did say hi to a friend and they're just releasing soon a pre-Feloxera style cognac made from, and you know, I love a backstory, I do. They're making it from a recipe found in like the granddaughter's attic just randomly, which sounds fake and it might be, but I still love it. It was super, super tasty. I was gonna ask you about your Tales visit, and just so, she said pre-Feloxera. Feloxera was a bug in France that wiped out so many different varietals and really knocked out Brandy from its top seeding as one of the spirits of choice internationally.

59:23But a pre-Feloxera, so before, so what, did you get to try this at the Cesarak house? Yeah, so some of those roots still exist. You'll find pre-Feloxera vines, especially in like higher elevation areas. So like Piedmont region and above for Italy and Switzerland and parts of France. It's also really interesting in the wine world and grape distillate world, how we're seeing those regions really, really change with global warming and climate change. It's long been a joke. The English love to say that their sparkling wine is even better than champagne. And while I don't know that that's true or that anyone's going to like switch, as their climates are changing, that is becoming more and more of a feasibility. For so long, it was you grow the grapes that do well in your region. Virginia, I know I'm from there, so I drop it, is a great example.

01:00:26Thomas Jefferson was a huge Francophile. He loved France, he was obsessed. He tried for years to grow French grapes, or well, he had his hundreds of enslaved people grow French grapes. Yeah, that's what happened. Famously, his wines were awful. He would not even drink them. It was like a running joke. His friends all made fun of him, as well they should have. And it wasn't until centuries later that people were like looking at the soil and looking at the terroir, and looking at where Virginia had been in Pangea, and they started growing more Piedmont region Italian grapes. That's cool. That's really cool. And while Virginia, I don't know, is the most famous Appalachian wine in the world. I have to be honest, I haven't tried any Virginian wine. There is some cool stuff coming from it. Now I'm really embarrassed, I can't think of any at the top of my head. That's how it always goes. I can never pull up a name when I need it. But the ones that are using the styles of growing and grapes that sounds weird, but what do better there, they taste good.

01:01:36It's definitely not just growing intelligently. Yeah. Well. I don't know why we started talking about this, but. Well, because we're tasting something delicious from France. So that's kind of what I love about talking with bartenders is I can go on just about any tangent and fully embrace all of that conversation. And this has been so much fun because we've gone on probably all the tangents that I love, like talking, whether it was the economics behind why things are priced the way they are at your bar, to why our grapes taste the way they do here in the States. I have loved talking with you. I've got one last, actually two last questions for you. I'll make it fast, I promise. No, you take your time, mama. You take your time, the floor is yours. But all of what you have accumulated through the years, I've got two questions for you in what you've experienced and they're not easy questions. So I'm gonna give that to you. It's not an easy question. The first one, what can bartenders be doing better? The second one is a little bit more complicated.

01:02:36What can the industry be doing better for you as a female bartender, as a bartender period, as a person growing in this industry? What could the industry be doing better from your perspective? I'm gonna go backwards. What the industry could be doing for me, to be honest, I see a lot of it, which is not gatekeeping. If you, everything at the Fox, actually there's an exception. There's one thing I've told my staff specifically. They know what it is, but I've told them specifically not to tell guests. And there's nothing wrong with it. It's we do a house Amari blend and I'm like, you can know what's in this, but if you tell anyone, I'll kill you. No, that's super threatening. And if I wasn't HR, I would yell at myself. I don't think anything's proprietary because for me at least, once it's on a menu, I've mentally moved on to the next thing. And to be honest, nothing occurs in a bubble. I stole that idea from someone else or was influenced by someone else. Even if it's house bitters or whatever, there's some cool shit that we worked really hard on. But if someone asks for it, I'm always a little sad when someone asks for our recipes because I'm like, I'm happy to give you every step of this.

01:03:43You're not gonna wanna make it. You won't achieve the same thing. It'll be different. It's not even that. I'm just like, I'm gonna see your eyes glaze over as I fill up this entire page of paper with the 14 steps to make this one ingredient in this and it steeps for three days. And then we take the spins all out. You can make this happen, but please just come in and let me make it for you. Just let me make it for you. I'm so sorry. Yeah, gatekeeping is something I think should stop and the people like any opportunity I've had, and I've had a lot that were handed to me or urged to me by people I either viewed as mentors or my big thing is, and a friend told me this, if you see somebody doing something cool, don't be shy, just be like, hey, I think this whiskey you're creating is cool. How'd you do this? I think the fact that you're a brand ambassador is cool. How'd you do that? Nine times out of 10, way more than that. People are like, oh, thanks, I'll absolutely tell you. I think not telling people how you got where you were and not being honest about it, just, oh, it was just hard work.

01:04:45It was just, absolutely not. I had a leg up. I came into a program that was looking for people like, how did you become the head bartender of the Fox? I came in at the right time. I worked myself absolutely to death. I get on well with our owners. I'm probably too passionate about it and the job was available. It was nothing, it wasn't dumb luck. It wasn't anything like that. So yeah, gatekeeping is the thing. I think the industry, and I think we're getting away from it, but I think we should get away from more. For female bartenders, I kind of hate that because I don't like being specified. The only way I like being divided is that the vast majority of natural born super tasters are women. And you can use that fact when you're talking about home decor too, I've decided. It is a fact, 100%. But yeah, there's no, and I don't think you see it as much anymore, but I think there used to be a lot of restaurant awards that they'd be best chef and best female chef. And that is so beyond condescending.

01:05:45It is. So yeah, I don't really like being divided up. I also don't like the girl power. Anything you can do. I'm happy to support men, I'm happy to support women. I do think there is a huge disparity of bartenders, especially in cocktail bars. Craft cocktails that are minorities in any way, women, LGBTQIA, plus people of color. And I think some of that is because that jump from server or host to bartender or bar back to bartender is one that a lot of them are not being given chances on. And I think mentoring staff is the biggest, best thing you can do, mentoring your staff, mentoring other people's staff, finding mentors for yourself and helping, if you are not the right mentor for someone, connecting them with someone who is. I think that's the biggest thing. I forget what your first question was.

01:06:46Well, we said that. No, you're great. That was awesome. Because we've said that in so far, all of our episodes of everybody who needs to have space, somebody has to make that space. And it doesn't mean, I don't wanna be divided as like, oh, you're the best female bartender I know. No, I wanna be the best bartender you know. I just wanna be the best that I can be. So I love that you said that. But that also means that the industry can do better making space. And that's as simple as that. I think we are responsible. I think it's really tempting to hire people. Like it's human instinct. You sit down at an interview with someone and you get on really well. And you're like, this is so natural and awesome. I wanna work with you. But some of that is because they're a good person and a good fit for your bar. And some of it is because you may have similar friends. You may have similar, says your economic backgrounds. And it lends itself towards hiring people that come from your background and look like you and grew up like you. And that's where it starts to get dangerous.

01:07:47And I don't think it is proactive hiring. I don't think it's trying to hire minorities. I don't think it's trying. I think it's hiring the best, you hire the best person for the job with that as the only stipulation. Well, I guess their availability. And you will be shocked what your staff looks like if you put aside preconceived notions of comfort and familiarity and what a bartender looks like. And I think people are getting better at that. You have to be intentional. It can't be on accident. It has to be intentional. You have to check yourself. Yeah, and also I think there is a little bit of, well, the guest is always right. And I don't view that as drinks. As soon as someone starts to make other people feel uncomfortable, whether that's guests or staff, they've gotta go. Exactly. Nowadays, especially our staff are our greatest assets. It is hard to hire if you have someone who is trained and you like protect them and make them feel happy and mentor them.

01:08:54Yeah, I love that. The other question was just what can bartenders be doing better? And I mean, some of that is answered in what you just said. Yeah, be a mentor, be a friend, take care of yourself, whatever that looks like. I hope the days of like, oh, you gotta rip shots with me. Oh, you gotta stay up this like competition of who's better, who's a bad girl. Yeah, who cares less about their wellbeing? Yeah, I think it's cool to care. It's cool to be a nerd and it's cool to take time away, see what other people are doing, push other people up. I hate when there was a, that's a Nashville restaurant too, that a lot of people like and on their Instagram, they were kind of making fun of other spots. You're like, that's not a good look, my dude. That's so shady. We're all human, there are definitely spots in this town and every other that I'm like, wow, I don't like what they're doing, I don't like their program, I don't like their drinks, but I'm not gonna tell anyone, that's super shitty.

01:09:55That's so gross. I think the nicest thing you can do is compliment people behind their backs and compliment other bars behind their backs and send your guests to spots that you like and to spots that they would like. Yeah, don't do good by yourself and do good by other people. I don't think that's a bartending rule. I think that's just a rule in general. Yeah, good humans make good bartenders though. So if you wanna be a good human, you'll be pretty good at bartending. And it's not being so precious about it. It's just drinks. It's like the most important and least important thing ever. Simultaneously, the most important and least important. I agree. It's both stupid and the least stupid. I love this so much. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for chatting with me. It's been such a pleasure. It has been such a joy, seriously. I love talking with you. I hope I can continue talking with you off the air. I would love to chat with you. We had some laughs, we had some drinks. I'm gonna go get a drink at your bar, but one more clink for me just for the sound effects.

01:10:57Cheers. That one was good, less good. Less good, the first was the best. It's, you know, we're chasing that high. Well, thank you so much. I love you. Thank you for joining me. And if you all are working tonight, I hope that you have a great shift, make some money, have some fun and cheers.