How to make opening/closing checklists (+ template download)

Darian Everding manages London Underground, a craft beer and whisk(e)y bar in Ames, IA.

Post-pandemic London Underground has invested in staff systems to make sure everything runs smoothly—stuff like staff messaging apps, learning/training policies, and checklists.

That last one has been huge. Darian has created a robust checklist system that allows London Underground's staff to be more accountable to one another and the business as a whole, and it's also allowed them to be less frantic around shift changes, which has made a very big difference.

Here's how Darian thinks about checklists:

• Be incredibly specific about the items on the checklists. Spell out every little thing.
• Teach staff how to do each checklist item. Go through the exact process they need to use for each checklist item. This will take a long time, but it'll be worth it.
• Make the checklists public to the rest of the staff. If staff have to face the person who'll live with the consequences of whether or not they did what they were supposed to do, then they'll be more accountable to one another.
• Accountability is key. If there aren't consequences for not doing the stuff you're supposed to do, then there's no point in even using checklists.
• This means you need to review the checklists for completion. At London Underground, the checklists are turned in to Darian every week so that management can review them. This is especially helpful if something goes wrong.

Check out the full 9-min interview clip to get even more detail about how Darian and the London Underground team have found success through checklists:

The St. Patrick's Day quiz

Try your hand at the 6-question St. Patrick's Day Quiz below, then scroll to the bottom of the newsletter for the answers!

1. Where was the first St. Patrick's Day parade held?

2. What US city is famous for dying its river green every year to celebrate St. Patrick's Day?

3. For how long does the dyed river stay green?

4. What is the green dye made from?

5. Where was St. Patrick actually from?

6. Where did the classic St. Patrick's Day meal of corned beef and cabbage originate?

Reader-submitted palindrome

A few weeks back reader Sam from Brooklyn sent in this beer-based palindrome:

Xanax?! No set ale elates on Xanax.

And he recently submitted another:

We are at IPA pita era? Ew!

Does anyone else in the readership have anything beer-, booze-, or bar/restaurant-related (palindrome or otherwise) that you'd like to share with the audience?

If you've got a drawing, a song, a hot tip, or even a palindrome, please reply to this email and we'll include it in next week's edition, where you'll get it in front of the 10,000-strong Brave New Bar audience.

If not, then I'm afraid we'll have to sit through another palindrome from Brooklyn in the coming weeks.

Of course, St. Paddy's Day is tomorrow. We hope your beef is corning up nicely.

At this point we can't know for sure what beers are going to be trending this weekend. But we were curious what trended last year, so we took a look at BeerMenus.com data.

Here are the 10 most popular Irish(-y) beers from last year's St. Paddy's Day, starting with #1:

	Smithwick's Premium Irish Ale Irish Red Ale · 4.5% · Dundalk, County Louth
	Murphy's Irish Stout Dry Stout · 4.0% · Netherlands
	Guinness Dry Stout · 4.2% · Dublin, Ireland
	George Killians Irish Red Vienna Lager · 4.9% · Milwaukee, WI
	St. Francis Kilkenny Irish Cream Ale · 4.3% · Kilkenny
	Magners Irish Cider Cider · 4.5% · County of Herefordshire, UK
	Forge Irish Stout Dry Stout · 4.3% · Dekalb, IL
	O'Hara's Irish Stout Dry Stout · 4.3% · Co. Carlow, Ireland
	Beamish Irish Stout Stout · 4.1% · Netherlands
	Harp Irish Lager Pale Lager · 4.3% · Dublin, Ireland

1. The city that never sleeps: NYC!

2. Chicago. Or as my grandparents say, Chicargo.

3. For just a few hours the day of Chicago's St. Patrick's Day parade.

4. According to the city, it's vegetable based.

5. Britain. Yikes.

6. NYC, and specifically the slums of lower Manhattan in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Poor Irish immigrants made due with the meat they could afford, which was leftover beef from ships that had traded in China.