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Looking to elevate your cocktail game, streamline your bar operations, or simply unlock the secrets of the perfect pour? You've come to the right place!
At Überbartools™, we're passionate about all things bar-related, and we're dedicated to sharing our knowledge and insights with you.
The Parody of Serving vs Skill
It’s ironic that some bars place greater emphasis on expensive baubles to serve wine and beer in versus providing quality bar tools for bartenders to make cocktails with.
Maybe this is the reason: pouring beer or wine into a glass requires a little skill... however if a bar wants to underpin a high asking price, presenting beer or wine in expensive serve ware adds value; creating some magic in the process!
Conversely bar tools provided to a bartender tends to be cheap, inaccurate, poorly made… making the bartender’s skill even more critical to crafting a successful cocktail.
Bars tend to invest in bartenders for their knowledge, skill and salesmanship… these attributes become the public hero in a cocktails crafting whereas the hidden knight are the tools used to guarantee the cocktail’s outcome?
When a bars goals is to make, serve and sell more than one high margin cocktail to each guest... it makes business sense to invest in the right tools to help the bartender get the job done; keeping the guest happy, thirsty and spending!
What do you think?
BarShido™ - The Way of the Bartender
Jiggering, shaking, stirring within a context of immaculately conceived ice execution, form the cartas in the new bar order! At Über™, we lovingly refer to this quest for attainment as BarShido™.
What’s the Brew ha-ha About?
Note: Today’s blog is dedicated to Geoff Ross former founder of 42 Below Vodka, now all “hopsed” up with New Zealand craft beer producer Moa.
Doesn't the answer depend on which side of the still you’re on!
The word Craft Distiller seems destined to become a sentence, as unrelenting Craft Brewers become the distillers of tomorrow... should this trend continue, small distillers beware... the Kings of Brew are looking to Mow(a) your lawn!
This type of disintermediation is not new and is being played out across many industries, as the lines between manufacturer, producer and consumer are blurring; shrinking barriers to entry, reducing margins, increasing competition to the chagrin of incumbents!
Over the last 5 years Craft Brewers have created quite a market for new consumers questing for quality, innovation, bespoke flavours, with arising experiences and exciting new expressions to match.
Craft Distillers by their own admission are now disadvantaged by the very positives that separated them from the big boys of distilling: namely speed to market, production, and volume. These issues when smashed over the net to a brewer become at best a marginal cost, with raw materials added quickly and cheaply, with excess production, distilled to create base spirit for barrelling (if required!).
Regrettably Craft Distillers mostly win loyalty slowly; brewers have established fans who’ll journey on to ciders and possibly newer categories with little or NO risk to the brewer making the segue!
Whilst the recent debate between Distiller and Craft Distillers has raged... a new killer has been lurking the depths ready to fight!
Now see what the brew ha-ha’s about!
Angel's Share v's Devil's Take
Sometimes polar opposites exist within the same continuum ... a practical example of this thought is Angel's Share, which receives reverence and respect whilst it’s polar opposite the Devil’s Take, is completely ignored by profit atheists!
Angel's Share affects Distillers costs…Devil’s Take destroys Bar profits!
The differences and outcomes are wide reaching and devastating!
Angel's Share is the evaporative process in alcohol barrelling whereby a certain amount of alcohol evaporates silently through a barrel’s staves to reach the heavens: Angel's Share or Bacchus’s Bounty can equate to 5-10% yearly by volume loss depending on climatic conditions such as heat or cold.
The Devil’s Take on the other hand occurs downstream and is the process of alcohol transfer loss from bottle to serving glass at the Point of Pour. The Devil’s Take is widely agreed by industry experts such as Barmetrix and Bevinco to represent losses on average of 3-5 mL (1/10-1/6 Oz) per 30 mL or 1 Oz serve!
So how does one account for Angel's Share and the Devil’s Take?
Distillers are a fairly canny lot... every production loss, irregularity, imperfection is quickly noted and accounted for. As spirit ages, Angel's Share accounts for increasing costs. The total costs to bottle (including storage, processing, bottling, and packaging) is then divided by total net volume produced, resulting in higher cost and wholesale/retail sales price... (Marketing, transport, taxes, and margins excluded)
Bar operators on the other hand receive a certain amount of bottled sprits and alcohol into stock ... depleting via sales an amount weekly… the difference between POS recorded sales and remaining stock on hand being the Devil’s Take. .representing alcohol drips, leaks, over pours, freebies, shrinkage! Bars do not charge more money to guests/consumers for the arising alcohol wastage/loss. Of course if Bar’s were to increase the price of every drink served by the comparable amount of alcohol over-poured or wasted, wouldn’t incensed consumers demand greater accountability in the way alcohol is dispensed?
The Devil’s Take is broadly explained away by bar management as “a cost of doing business” rather than the consequence of poor practice and execution at the Point of Pour.
If Distillers owned bars would they find ways to account and reverse engineer the Point of Pour process to reduce or eliminate a preventable loss…we believe they would!
Acceptance of the Devil’s Take is not futile; practical, cost effective solutions are available to overcome this large problem... to learn more enquire here!
Crowd Fund Your Bar... Don't wait, Just Do It Now!
It’s the dream of every bartender to own their own bar!
Taking the bar plunge is NOT easy: fear, uncertainty, inexperience, money, investors; are the largest obstacles to fulfilling the dream, right now!
Wait up! The news is now a whole lot better, in fact the landscape has changed thanks to crowd funding.
If you are now crunching the numbers for your new bar or restaurant… here’s a new way to get over the line... and it’s simple!
The steps:
- A vision
- Tell a great story
- Bucket loads of Passion
- A location
Now with these ingredients visit the Crowd Funding site Kickstarter to see how people ask for funding... You’ll get a sense what current best practice is and then scale it to your dream.
To make your adventure easier... check out how some passionate restaurateurs and bartenders from Perth, Australia did it with their new venture… Lucky Chan.
Great story, beautifully told in an inspiring, connective way...
Follow their blueprint and you too will be on the Über road to success... bye bye Mr boss man!.
Casting Shadows or Leaving Footprints
Creating or designing is the exception rather than the rule in a very crowded marketplace.
Bartenders, managers and brand owners struggle to create that special patch in the broader imagination that they or their business can own.
Ideally we all want to create footprints or make a lasting impression on our guests or customers rather than casting a shadow; which ultimately becomes a bystander to the main game!
If you’re struggling to make that footprint – you’ll find the Über 8 Step Design Process helpful in your journey.
1. Define the problem or opportunity
Understanding your business, talents, considering what needs to be fixed, done or moved is the prequel to creating opportunity.
2. Research and Brainstorm
Understanding the landscape creates parameters to brainstorm a bunch of ideas.
3. Identify the FAB’s
Features and Benefits or Pro’s and Con’s, this is where at Über we like to think we get very real – it’s about being critical and constructive simultaneously. Be the Jekyll and Hyde to every idea/thought and then pivot and turn it around again!
4. Concepts
One or two clear paths/options become evident. At this point based on instincts, research and de/reconstruction, someone needs to make the call!. If you work in a team, it’s about the resounding group YES rather than the best least option by consensus. As a potential team leader, it’s here where your talents to inspire and shine will create pace and path!
5. Prototype
Your first attempt to pre-test the idea, service, product for trialling.
6. Test and Evaluate
This is the point where X’s rise or hope fades based on research and feedback. Be open to an unexpected Y result. Remember nuance or possibly a pivot may be called for...
7. Inspect and Improve
You’ve finessed, pivoted, re-polished and ready to go unleash your thing onto a waiting world.
8. Create/Produce
The point of no return, the point where your shiny new product, business concept or service has been quality tested and you’ve hit the market running.
Now sit back and use this time to establish your new thing.
To your success!
Will we have too many Bartenders?
Bartending in particular or hospitality in general have had issues attracting and retaining talent.
The last 10 years have demonstrated demand for work exceeds supply – a healthy situation to maintain fair hourly rates!
Professional bartenders have prospered, achieving great careers, status and opportunity.
Could this change?
The answers regrettably is a resounding YES!
It’s a matter of supply… massive oversupply!
Why?
An ageing population!
The employment effect throughout the western world has always relied on one generation retiring, making room for the next.
So what’s changing?
People are either deferring or electing not to retire – impacting the next generation of graduating University students to secure positions within the area they’ve studied.
Multiply this worldwide, and successive generations of graduates are taking longer and longer to find a starting position.
Competition is Everywhere
Competition is not limited to the talent pool in just one country any more it’s anywhere... just need internet access.
So what happens to students who can’t find a chosen career job, will they do the next best thing and look for something in the meantime!
Here’s a thought: graduating Uni grads working in hospitality who can’t find work may need to hold on to what they’ve got until something better comes up… if it ever does!
Imagine for a moment, if more and more graduating students seek shelter in hospitality – what happens to the school leavers who normally drift towards hospitality as their last resort?
Will the very educated be more attractive to a prospective employer than a less educated school leaver, assuming similar pay levels?
As a prospective employer who would you choose to serve your business and your customers the best?
Whatever the outcome more people will look towards hospitality as their permanent income source –maybe the time will come when they’ll be more available talent than jobs to go around. The law of supply and demand will create downward pressure on everyone’s hourly rates! We see this now in many other industries... So hospitality is next!
An ageing population, a glut of educated unplaced talent is a reality right now.
Hold on tight as the future is being quietly typed – we’re just not hearing it………yet!
Bartender Injury... The Dukes of Hazards (Part 1)
Repetitive Strain Injury or Occupational Overuse Syndrome are injuries becoming increasingly common amongst bartenders.
Injuries involve... fingers, hands, wrists, elbows and shoulders.
Many of the underlying causes of workplace injury can be traced back to:
- Poor legacy tool design pre-dating Prohibition.
- Price!
Legacy design implies unquestioning continuation of bad design based on the weight of history (that’s the way it’s always been) rather than the evolution of human workplace reform centred around the physical and comfort requirements of bartenders. Funnily most all other areas in and around a working bar have improved... except the most obvious, the tools, bartenders use.
When hospitality experiences are centred around the guest, then the show, well, should it not come as a surprise whose last... the bartender!
The other significant contributing factor, NEVER spoken about is PRICE!
No sane manufacturer will innovate when its customers mandate cheaper and cheaper pricing; ease-of-use and comfort will always be sacrificed.
Sadly when these 2 factors combine the fate of countless generations of bartenders is set; suffering years of endless pain.
So what’s changing:
- More people making bartending their profession/lifelong commitment with injury accumulating progressively over time, rather than disappearing with the ins and outs of successive generations of bartenders.
- Workplace health and safety concerns morphing into accepted RIGHTS!
- Social networks acting as amplifiers to exchange ideas and discussion etc.
Industry leaders such as Dushan Zaric, Simon Ford, Jacob Briars, Angus Winchester and Simon Difford have introduced injury into the bartender lexicon... whilst they all highlight the issues and some physical relief... the long term solution of innovation, ease-of-use design is missed... Is it a case of why bother with things that aren’t valued?
This became the calling which became the point where Überbartools™ journey started years back! Now that’s a whole other discussion!
So then let’s look at the Consequences, Culprits and Changes of Work Place injury. (Part 2 to follow next week)
Modularity, The Next Big Thing for your Business & Environment
In a time where resources are limited, people are increasingly concerned with the environmental impact of each and every consumption decision!
To understand how we reached this point we first must revisit history.
Back in the 1940/50’s when mass manufacturing was first conceived the platform it was built around was based on planned obsolescence i.e. product failure.
Why has failure been so successful? We think the answer’s straightforward: when it breaks, wears out, fails, you’ve gotta buy a new one! Read, spend more money again!
Thankfully in the 21st century our thinking has evolved, in part due to disruption caused by innovation such as “the sharing economy” where services are shared/hired/leased... think of SAAS, Uber (taxis), Airbnb, Task Rabbit etc.
Whilst the examples just mentioned solve ownership issues, what’s not being addressed is the bigger issue attributed to legacy design... i.e. product failure/obsolescence.
At Über™ we have always believed in innovation... this process starts off by us asking one question: WHY?
Why, does a product need to be thrown away at the end of its life... is that really necessary? If the decision is not really necessary, then how then can this be re-imagined:
The answer we believe is MODULARITY!
Practically, modularity allows for the replacement of an individual part rather than being forced to buy an entire new unit. The cost of the individual part representing a fraction of the price of replacing the whole thing.
In an Über™ world we demonstrate this concept in many of our products i.e. (ProFlow™, ProCrush™).
Ironically the hospitality business is one about driving costs down, to do so, products must be made cheaper, to meet a buyers price expectation. Imagine on the other hand if we turned this thinking on its head and designed things to solve a user’s or businesses problem, short, long term and sustainably. What type of products would we see? Better ones, we suspect!
We believe the true consequences of product failure are in the main hidden, in the white space no-one wants to see... this by default becomes a form of blind acceptance: ultimately turning failure into it’s own unique trajectory towards more failure.
Failure is therefore a consequence representing a form of business disruption namely, increased costs: continual product replacement, lost productivity, service/delivery inconsistency, added admin/infrastructure costs to manage and overcome the arising failures created by making the initial decision... ultimately creating a savings/cost/consequences paradigm.
Businesses in the not too distant future will look for simpler, more practical solutions to solve on-going problems. Modularity will not be practical in some instances, however on a broader level it will become the practical, cost effective and environmental friendly solution to sustain our businesses!