A career bartender's goal for 2033

Shaun McGuire is a 20-year industry vet and bartender coach. In previous newsletters we've covered a lot of territory with him:

• How service industry folks can retire early
• The biggest problems service industry folks face
• Surprising stats about the average bartender

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:

• There are a lot of unknowns of course, but Shaun's general goal 10 years from now is this: he wants to still be happy at bartending.
• We all know grumpy 50-year-old bartenders who, for lack of a better term, just gave up. He doesn't want that to be him.
• So he knows he needs to go into his job with the right mindset: he needs to consider himself lucky that this is what he gets to do.
• There are great perks—good people, steep discounts on food and bevs, friends that'll last the rest of his life, and so on.
• Plus, he thinks about his customers: these people are paying to be around him, sometimes for $20 or more per person per hour. When you put it that way, you have to look at it as a privilege.

Check out the interview clip for more color from Shaun about who he wants to be as a bartender, his plans for going back to school, and also his target bank account number that'll let him retire at 52:

And if you'd like to hear more from Shaun, check out this playlist on the Brave New Bar Youtube channel.

Why?

To instill confidence in customers that your menu is accurate, which can increase sales.

Beer drinkers have learned not to trust menus at places with rotating selections. We’ve been burned too many times by “oh, sorry, that keg kicked yesterday” to really trust the accuracy of the paper in front of us.

One way you can combat that jaded feeling is by time-stamping your menu with an “Updated on [date]” footer, header, or subheader. It’s a simple addition that can remove any of the negative feelings customers (and bartenders) get when a menu-listed beer isn’t actually available.

How?

First off, only do this if you’re actually providing an up-to-date menu (no "ask or server about rotating drafts" or similar) and your selection rotates regularly (at least a couple times per month). A time stamp from a month ago isn’t additive.

If you're providing an up-to-date menu and your selection regularly rotates, then just add a timestamp—e.g. "Updated August 17"—to your menu.

You could do this manually—drop it into the footer or subheader of your menu doc. Going forward, make sure editing the time stamp is a part of your menu updating process. (It's easy to forget when you're moving quickly.)

• Forbes Survey published findings about consumers' tipping habits. Really interesting stuff here, like how guests tip almost 15% more when tipping digitally, and that men are 2x more likely to tip between 20% and 25% than women.
• The ascendance of NA products continues: sales on NA beer, wine and spirits are up 30% vs. last year.
• If you live in PA and want a crack at buying some really elite spirits, make sure you enter the state's limited release lottery. There are a lot of bad things about the state running all PA's liquor stores, but this isn't one of them, since it gives the non-snobs a real crack at winning.
• And finally, an employee of China's Tsingtao was caught on camera peeing into an ingredient tank at the brewery. Gross. The company's stock initially fell upon the clip circulating, but it's since climbed back to normal.