Covid sucked for Alicia Rogers, bar manager at Jeremiah’s Tavern. Of course it did. The experience totally sucked for everybody in the industry.
But there was an interesting silver lining that came out of it for her and her team: their camaraderie increased because of the shitty experience they went through, and it's maintained ever since. In a sense, they trauma bonded.
Read on for how and why it happened.
This isn't an extremely long post, but it's an important one.
Alicia Rogers, who's been featured in a few other recent posts, follows one simple rule for how to build a cocktail menu. It helps ensure her regulars are happy and that she sells more drinks.
So what's the rule?
When Alicia Rogers was serving at age 20, a table asked her what White Zinfandel they served. She froze—she had no idea.
That moment of freezing was critical because it was right then that the guest lost trust in Alicia.
That trust is so important—if you feel like you're in capable hands while dining at a bar or restaurant, you can relax and let the drink/meal sort of wash over you. You can focus on your friends and family. But if you don't have that trust, you've just got more work to do.
In the years since that moment, Alicia—now a manager—developed a number of tricks and strategies to make sure guests would trust her and her staff. Read on to see what they are.
We recently sat down with Alicia Rogers, bar manager at Jeremiah’s Tavern, to hear how she creates her specialty cocktail menu.
Here are 4 takeaways from her process:
Alicia Rogers works as bar manager at Jeremiah’s Tavern in the Rochester, NY area.
She’s got plenty of experience relating to cocktail menu-making, staff building, and all the things a successful bar manager needs to ace, and we'll feature tips about all those in other blog posts.
But in this post we thought it'd be fun to relay Alicia's service industry history—how she got started, why she got started, how she learned different aspects in the industry, and so on.
Last week Megan Rickerson of Someday Bar spoke about how she first got involved in advocacy for the hospitality industry. (Spoiler: Covid kicked it off.)
This week Megan covers the next step of her evolution: getting involved in local politics, an effort which has now landed her on the executive board of the NYC Hospitality Alliance and a part of the NYC Mayor's Small Business Council.
Last week we talked to Someday Bar's Megan Rickerson about her background and experience with Covid.
This week Megan's back and we're talking Covid again, but this time through the lens of how Covid and its aftermath directly led her to get super involved in advocacy for the hospitality industry.
The next few weeks we'll be including interviews with Megan Rickerson, a FL native who owns Someday Bar in Brooklyn, NY. Most of that content will involve how members of the service industry can—and absolutely should—get involved in local politics.
But this week I wanted to provide Megan the opportunity to provide some personal background and also talk about what Covid and its aftermath were like at Someday Bar, since it's that experience that set her on the track to become so involved with NYC politics.
Here are some takeaways from the convo, and please tune in next week for some tactical advice on how to get involved in your neighborhood, city, county, and state:
Shaun McGuire is a 20-year industry vet and bartender coach. In previous newsletters we've covered a lot of territory with him:
Here's how I'd sum up our conversations to this point: advice from Shaun on how, in general, service industry folks can overcome challenges and set themselves up for success.
All that focus on advising others got me wondering: what is Shaun hoping for in his life? What does he want 10 years from now?
The result was more great advice for career bartenders:
Nick Wendowski and his wife own Stone's Beer & Beverage in Philly. PA liquor laws are weird (more on that below), and Nick's license allows him to serve 3 rungs in the booze ladder:
Given this, it was interesting to talk with him about the trends he's noticed over the last 6 months or so. (We also touched on some crazy PA liquor limitations). Here are takeaways from the conversation: