Last week we featured our first interview clip with Shaun McGuire, a 20-year industry vet and bartender coach. In that clip we covered some surprising data he's uncovered about bartenders.
This week's clip focuses on Shaun's coaching. For years Shaun's co-workers and other bartenders have come to him for advice on all manner of things. Throughout the many conversations that followed he's realized that the biggest problems bartenders face almost always fall into these 5 categories:
Shaun McGuire owned a bar before he graduated college. At this point he's been bartending for about 20 years and now works at 3 places in upstate NY, in and near Peekskill.
About a decade ago he was living the industry high life: making great money, buying a new truck, being the local celebrity. But he soon found himself in a tough spot. He got divorced, he struggled, and generally felt like he wasn't taking his professional life—or his life life—seriously enough.
Bit by bit he climbed out of that nadir, and eventually got to where he is today: a curious expert who now coaches bartenders on work/life balance, finances, etc. (You can learn more about that part of his life on his website, philosophicallydrunk.com, and we'll also be diving into more of that stuff in the newsletter later this summer.)
For this week, I wanted to highlight some stats Shaun got from the multiple surveys he's run on Reddit's bartender forum (he just did so because he was curious). Very interesting stuff.
Gerard Leary has run two very different concepts in two very different parts of NYC.
On one hand there's One Mile House, an awesome (but now closed) bar/restaurant with a ton of top-level taps in bustling downtown Manhattan. On the other hand is his current venture, a small neighborhood spot in Sunnyside, Queens called Sweet Avenue.
Gerard used Covid as an opportunity to take a step back and re-evaluate: did he want to keep up the same kind of life he had before, which included a commute over an hour to his bar in Manhattan? Did he have to keep that pedal way down to the metal?
Or was there a way he could pair his love of craft beer and the industry with a life actually lived in his home neighborhood? Could he open up an awesome bottle shop in walking distance from his home (and family) that allowed him to spend more time with his family and his neighbors?
The last two weeks we picked Rob Austin's brain about the proven goal and process he uses for social media and 6 simple marketing efforts he's recently used at Leader Bar, a neighborhood pub in Irving Park, CHI.
This week, still thirsty, we're returning to Rob's knowledge well to talk about social media strategy—what to post, when/how often to post, how to post about events, etc. In our conversation we sort of coalesced around 6 points that a bar, restaurant, and brewery can use to develop their social media strategy:
Last week we picked Rob Austin's brain about the proven goal and process he uses for social media at Leader Bar, a neighborhood pub in Irving Park, CHI. High level stuff.
This week I intended to zoom out even more by talking with Rob about which channels bars and restaurants should focus on. There's social media, but what about print? Radio ads? Email marketing? And so on.
His answer came quickly: you can't be using too many channels; use as many as you can.
That short answer is also paralyzing: "OK, so then what should I do now? How do I decide where to start if I'm supposed to be doing everything?"
Sensing that hesitation, Rob quickly turned the conversation to tactics and examples, and proceeded to reel off a list of marketing irons he's currently got in the fire at Leader Bar, and they're things almost anyone can do in just a few simple steps:
Doing social media for a bar or restaurant can feel daunting, especially if you've got a million other things going on. Many folks just don't really commit to it.
It's easy to see why because questions abound: What should you post? When should you post? How often should you post? And on which platforms? And what if you're not a talented photographer?
We'll dive into all those things in detail over the summer. But today we're sharing high level advice from marketing expert Rob Austin, who runs marketing for Leader Bar in Chicago. His advice is this: your only goal with social media—and any visual marketing—is to show prospective guests what they can do at your bar, restaurant, or brewery.
The last couple weeks Beth Hussey, staff training expert and founder of staff training app Shifty, walked us through both the mistakes most bars and restaurants make when doing training and also the proven staff training process she's used for decades with thousands of servers and bartenders.
This week Beth just offers some quick, general words of wisdom about how to treat staff—a simple turn of phrase that will make staff training easier and will make staff retention a reality for your business: treat your staff like you would your customers.
Check out the short interview clip to learn more about what Beth means:
Last week we talked with staff training expert Beth Hussey about what most bar/restaurant staff training looks like and why it doesn't work. This week we're talking about what does work.
Staff training is in Beth Hussey's bones. She started figuring it out at her family's restaurant in the 80s, and it became a professional focus as she moved up the service industry ladder from busser (where her brother stuck her when she first started) to owner. All in all she's opened 17 full service restaurants in her career and has trained up the staff at each of them.
In next week's post Beth will walk us through the unique training approach she's honed over her career (and also talk about Shifty, the staff training app she created), but this week we went over what most—we're talking at least 90%—of bars and restaurants get wrong when training their staff.
Here's the typical staff training Beth sees bars and restaurants using:
This week we've got short interview clips with two NYC bar owners that describe two different aspects of the craft beer customer pool. Keep on reading to learn more about their points of view.