Bartending is a fun and exciting career, with plenty of opportunities to progress to management level if you are ambitious. While it is possible to find work as a bartender with no experience, it certainly helps to arm yourself with some knowledge if you want to maximise your chances and also to enjoy the work to the fullest.
Here are a few tips and suggestions to help you launch a successful bartending career!
What does bar work involve?
The first starting point is to research exactly what duties you will be expected to perform. It’s about a lot more than just serving drinks to customers. You will need to be familiar with a wide range of spirits, liqueurs, beers, and wines. This involves not just knowing them by name and sight, but also knowing the alcohol content, flavour, and serving temperature.
You will also need to be able to mix drinks, understand which ingredients to use, and how to prepare garnishes and select the appropriate glassware. Besides all this, you should know how to interact well with customers and make them feel comfortable and welcome.
Learn about the art of preparing drinks
In most bars, you will be required to do a lot more than pull pints. Cocktails are now at the heart of the bar industry, so it can be useful to take a course in preparing mixed alcoholic beverages. This will help you to feel comfortable with the tools of the trade, such as shakers, strainers, muddlers, juicers, and so on.
Studying cocktail creation will also give you a greater understanding of how different ingredients work together to create specific flavours and textures, so you will feel confident no matter what requests are thrown at you! As you go on, the various exotic sounding syrups and liqueurs will become familiar and you will be able to identify exactly what you need.
Work on your communication skills
Bartending is not just about mixing drinks of course. A great bartender also knows how to communicate with other team members and customers well, making them a pleasure to work with. This involves being able to ‘read the room’ and diffuse any potentially difficult situations as well as anticipating customers’ needs.
Bars are busy and lively workplaces where you will be interacting with people from all walks of life. It is not necessary to have previous bar experience to have these kinds of skills, as they can be learnt in other situations, whether through jobs in other customer service sectors, or through your outside interests and activities.
Talk to people in the industry
Getting to know people who already work in the industry is a great way to gain insight and to know exactly what to prepare yourself for. They may even know of potential job opportunities and may be prepared to provide you with a reference. It’s also important to draw up a CV to demonstrate any transferable skills that you may already have.
If you are interested in taking an online cocktail making class, please get in touch with us today.
