What you can learn from the world’s best cocktails

Posted by ianmara on Aug 4, 2011 in Bar Marketing | 0 comments

Yeah, okay. We know you make the “Best Margarita in Town.” Your rum punch is soon-to-be famous and your selection of craft beer is more eclectic than college radio. Blah, blah.

But let’s be serious. Does your drink menu have anything that will get a customer (and his or her friends) in the door for a night out? A top-notch signature drink can build word of mouth of mouth and drive promotion. Here are a few examples of drinks that can draw a crowd all by themselves.

You may want to take notes.

Cocktail: The Terminator

Where: The Brick; Shuangjing, Beijing

What makes it special: The booze factor. The red color is an homage to the establishment where it’s sold and what’s inside should end up bringing you closer to the pavement. The Terminator is essentially a quad-Long Island Iced Tea, mixed with cider, beer and blackcurrant. As the Beijinger bar and club awards said of the concoction: “It’s probably the last thing you’ll see before passing out.”

Read more..

Bartender sues Bacardi after burning herself….

Posted by barblog on Jun 10, 2010 in Bar Management | 3 comments

As the lines between reality and fantasy become more and more blurred, the following story breaks:

A woman who claims she was severely burned when a bottle of Bacardi 151 rum caught fire during a restaurant bartender’s pyrotechnic display has won her attempt to proceed with a personal injury and products liability action against Bacardi and the restaurant.

Lauren Sclafani alleged that Bacardi knew or should have foreseen that its high-proof rum was being widely used for a variety of dangerous, flammable displays. She accused the company of employing a poorly designed flame arrester on top of its bottle that could be easily removed by bartenders.

It’s hard to know where to begin with this one so I’ll just let you read the full story here!

Co-Worker Scams To Look Out For Behind The Bar

Posted by barblog on May 20, 2010 in Bar Management | 1 comment

Today we’re bringing you another great guest post. This post is by Doug Fisher, a highly sought after management consultant based in Canada who we’re delighted to showcase on TheBarBlogger.com. You can find out more about Doug at http://www.fhgi.com

Co-Worker Scams To Look Out For Behind The Bar

Bartenders not only steal from their employers and customers, but have also been known to steal from their coworkers as well. Here are the four top ways:

1. Straight theft from the cash till is undetectable until the cash out is completed at the end of the night. If three bartenders are working and one steals $45 from the till prior to cashing out, management will ask all three to make it up. Each will put in $15, leaving the one who took the money $30 ahead. Read more..

Video: Should Bartenders Be Assigned To A Certain Section of The Bar?

Posted by barblog on Feb 23, 2010 in Bar Management, Bar Marketing, Bar Videos | 14 comments

I received this question this week at http://thebarblogger.com/askbarry:

We run a very popular restaurant w/an 20 seat L-shaped bar and a service area at the end for servers lets the 3 bar tenders working any shift roam up & down with no assigned section nor one of the 3 designated for service exclusively.Sometimes the wait is long for servers and bar patrons/customers.Is it not sound business to assign them a section of the bar with responsibility for that area primarily?

Here are my thoughts on this: Read more..

Should Bars Be Stopped Using Raw Eggs?

Posted by barblog on Feb 8, 2010 in Bar Management | 0 comments

A recent crackdown on the use of raw eggs in a bar in New York by a local health inspector opened a can of worms in the bar world. The thought of removing such favorites as Pisco Sours, Eggnog and Flips from the Cocktail Lists of the city’s bars was almost too much to handle.

Fortunately it looks as if the crackdown is being scaled back (for now at least), no doubt in part due to the backlash,  however the victim of a recent bust, Pegu Club in SoHo, has stopped serving its MarTEAni, a drink featuring egg whites to balance out tannin-infused gin, after a health inspector issued the bar a citation and summons to court for serving the drink without checking to make sure the patron knew he was exposing himself to salmonella.

Is this really the worst thing that a customer is being exposed to when they dine out? Having worked on both sides of the bar and kitchen, I’d be less worried about the contents of a sealed shell, than the food handling procedures in some of the kitchens I’ve seen.

It would be a shame for this age-old ingredient to be removed from use due to a technicality. It appears that the bar in question listed egg as an ingredient on the menu but because the patron had ordered without seeing the menu, the inspector pounced…!

Let’s worry about more serious health concerns. It ain’t the egg that will kill us.