Bartender's 10-year plan

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 should I do it?

Imagine this world: your customers order their beers as soon as the server/bartender arrives. No samples, no back-and-forth. Customers just order.

That’s the world you can have if your Print Menus include full beer info. It equips customers with all the info they need to make a decision, leading to much faster order times.

Time savings is always helpful in general, but speeding up order times helps in some key ways:

• Incrementally increase sales (more customers have more time for a 2nd round)
• Turn over tables more quickly
• Make life easier for staff

❓ How can I do it?

You could do this manually. Google the beers you serve, copy what you need, and drop it into your menu document.

• Beer and wine coming to MD grocery stores in 2025? Marylanders are optimistic 2025 will finally be the year they arrive, with the governor expressing support. The usual objections have arisen—mom and pop liquor stores, the fact that this will primarily benefit corporations, etc.—but it feels like it's inevitable, not just in MD, but everywhere eventually.
• OH bill: high-demand liquor bottles must be opened when sold. The goal is to eliminate the illegal secondary market for those fancier bottles, where flippers can take a bottle they bought for $100-$200 and sell it for thousands online. I'm into the goal of doing something about the secondary market—the current setup makes it tough for regular folks to get access. I'm not sure this is the right way to do it, but it's at least an interesting approach.
• Natural Light releases "Neighborator." It's a double sided fridge intended to be installed in your fence so that both you and your neighbor have access. It's a quirky product, designed to just get some attention, putting it clearly in line with Miller High Life's dive bar perfume, which I mentioned last week. But still: kudos Natural Light marketing team!