The Bar Business Podcast: Smart Hospitality & Marketing Secrets For Bar & Pub Owners
Welcome to the Bar Business Podcast, where we help bar owners increase profits, attract loyal guests, and simplify operations without burnout so you can finally enjoy life outside the bar. Our host, Chris Schneider, draws on his over twenty years of experience in the industry to bring you valuable insights and practical advice every week. From creating a winning menu and designing a stylish bar, to effective marketing strategies and HR best practices, we've got you covered. Join us on the journey to bar business success and take the first step towards a brighter future for your establishment.
The Bar Business Podcast: Smart Hospitality & Marketing Secrets For Bar & Pub Owners
Democratizing Mixology: Chris Tunstall on Craft Cocktails, Profitability, and Bar Tools
What if the secret to mastering mixology was simply a matter of accessible education and the right tools? Join us this week on the Bar Business Podcast as we sit down with Chris Tunstall from A Bar Above, who shares his transformative journey from a bartender to a prominent figure in the mixology world. Chris opens up about his struggles with the early days of secretive and ego-driven bartending circles and how his move to San Francisco became a turning point. Learn how he embraced a philosophy of open knowledge-sharing, drawing on parallels between culinary and mixology trends to help democratize the craft cocktail movement.
Chris discusses his groundbreaking mixology course that launched in 2014, which examines every variable in cocktail construction. From understanding acids and sugars to innovating with uncommon ingredients, this course has made top-tier cocktail-making techniques accessible to all.
We also dive into bar profitability and efficiency strategies, revealing how to test high-quality cocktails, track essential data points, and optimize preparation processes. Chris shares his insights on turning data into profit and enhancing customer satisfaction, making this episode a goldmine for bar owners and aspiring mixologists.
Finally, we highlight the importance of durable bar tools and educating bar managers on the business side of the industry. Chris emphasizes the need for reliable tools and robust training to reduce frustration and improve service quality. He also underscores the value of community among bar owners, advocating for shared knowledge and mutual support to help everyone grow together. If you’re looking to elevate your bar business, this episode is packed with invaluable insights and practical tips that promise to inspire and empower. Don’t forget to subscribe and join our community for future episodes!
Get In Touch With Chris Tunstall:
A Bar Above Website
Chris's LinkedIn
Welcome to the Bar Business Podcast, where we help bar owners increase profits, attract loyal guests, and simplify operations without burnout so you can finally enjoy life outside the bar. Our podcast is packed with valuable insights, expert advice, and inspiring stories from successful bar owners and industry professionals.
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Learn More:
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Chris' Book 'How to Make Top-Shelf Profits in the Bar Business'
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You're listening to the Bar Business Podcast where every week, your host, chris Schneider, brings you information, strategies and news on the bar industry, giving you the competitive edge you need to start working on your bar rather than in your bar.
Chris Schneider:Hello and welcome to this week's edition of the Bar Business Podcast, your ultimate resource for bar owners. I'm your host, chris Schneider, and today I am joined by another Chris, chris Tunstall, of A Bar Above. He has decades of experience behind the bar and that's in bartending and management. He has a huge passion for mixology and he has moved from behind the bar and kind of working within the industry to supporting the industry by doing some really great courses on cocktails, putting out a fantastic amount of free information online, really great cocktail primers and how to do different cocktails, and then he also has great products that he sells as well to really support the bar industry and to make sure that we don't have well, quite frankly, cocktail shakers that fall apart, among other things. So, first of all, chris, thank you so much for being here and I know we kind of briefly talked about what you do, but I think it would be really great if everybody could learn a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today.
Chris Tunstall:Yeah, first of all, I appreciate being on your podcast and we talked a little bit before and I'm very excited about the topics that we're going to talk about today Because I'm very, very passionate about bar and bar education and training and all the things, especially when it comes to management training. So, yeah, so you kind of gave a great overview. So I startedending bar back in 2003 as I was going to school and I always knew I wanted to own my own company and I loved hunting. So I always thought I'm gonna open my own restaurant one day. So I got really excited about tending bar and fell in love with it.
Chris Tunstall:And back in 2003, there was this word coming up called mixology and I'm like whoa, that's weird, what's that? And so I started looking into it and was incorporating fresh juices and really taking a lot more culinary approach to cocktails versus the sweet and sour stuff that comes out of a gut. So that really caught my interest and I knew it was going to blow up. So I kind of leaned into it and really started learning all the advanced techniques that I could. And at that time in 2003, it was something I talked about before there was two places where this movement was happening. It started in New York and then it hit San Francisco and that was pretty much it. That's the only place it was happening in the world. From my understanding at the time, and the number of people that were in that movement if you count on your hands um, and you knew who they were, um, so it was a very, very tight-knit group. Um, and you know, I just I kind of fell in love with learning the culinary side of cocktails. Now, when we talk about mixology, there was kind of a negative stigma about that word and it was the reason why we had that negative stigma is because the focus was being put on the bartender and not on the guest, so it was kind of an ego trip at the time. So there was a super negative connotation with that. Not only that, but there was a lot of insulated environments where they weren't actively sharing information, and I found that incredibly frustrating.
Chris Tunstall:So when I moved to San Francisco gosh man, it must have been 2009. I figured I kind of knew what I was doing. I was up and about at the time and I moved to San Francisco and I'm like, okay, I've been learning a lot, I've been paying attention to this for a long time. I'm ready to make my movie in San Francisco, and when I got there I realized I didn't know anything. I didn't know the proper techniques on how to make a cocktail, I didn't know flavor combinations, I didn't know ratios. I didn't know anything, and so I was quickly educated on it. But during that time they would tell me I was making recipes wrong, like the old-fashioned, and they would generally rate me. And then I asked okay, great, well, how do you make it? And they wouldn't tell me. So I found this incredibly, incredibly incuriating.
Chris Tunstall:So I was like all right, cool, I'm going to learn everything I can learn here and then I'm going to share it with the rest of the world. And that's kind of how we started A Bar. Above was through YouTube channels, communicating these new techniques, these new pieces of equipment, these you know, everything that we can communicate out to the world in order to help people learn how to make these craft cocktails at a very, very high level. So that's kind of what started it. And then got into consulting, got into making our own tools, got into YouTube cocktail creation online, got into making our own courses, did our own podcasts, got into YouTube TalkTotal, createshale Online, got into making our own courses, did our own podcasts, had our own Facebook group you name it. We have been around the block a long time. We've probably dabbled in something, even what was it? Apple Clubhouse for a while.
Announcer:Yeah.
Chris Tunstall:So we've done a thing.
Chris Schneider:Sure. And so one thing that just occurred to me, and I've never thought about this before, but when you started talking about culinary, culinary and then mixology, you know it made me think about the old school fine dining, kitchen kind of chef, I'm a dick, it's my way, it's my recipe, screw you. And you know I mean that kind of died, of died out with a really high-end fine dining towards the end of the 1990s, early 2000s. But it's almost that same attitude then that went into mixology, that kind of I mean in some ways it makes sense, based on the industry culture, but to your point, it stopped the democratization of it as things were moving forward yeah, and I think there was a good purpose for it at the time too.
Chris Tunstall:Like when we think about what was happening that time. Um, you know, with the people that were innovating, they were spending a decent amount of time learning how to do this right. So that was their business component advantage it separated them from everybody else around them. So to keep that information in-house and to keep it kind of under lock and key made a ton of sense, but as a bartender trying to actively learn this information, it was incredibly frustrating. So I understand the business side of it. We saw the same thing with Tiki, you know, way back when they would keep all the recipes super, super secret. So I think we were going through that time, but it wasn't a great environment to be a guest and it definitely was not a great environment to be a bartender, unless you were on that inside. You know the popular crowd, the cool kids, but I was never a cool kid.
Chris Schneider:Well, you're an app, so it works, uh, right, but and and the other thing, too, about that that just popped into my head is that if you think about something as simple as a jigger the tooth, you know, 2000, 2005, if you used a jigger behind a bar, you were just weird, right? Mixology brought jiggers back and what's interesting is, while the the kind of attitude around mixology has gone away, in a lot of ways mixologists have won, because now most bars use jiggers where 20 years ago it was really kind of rare right and so it's.
Chris Tunstall:But no, I was going to say it and it was. It was a weird transition that happened with that too, because I was I was in the industry having this conversation though that time. I started tending bar in 2003 and I spent 15 years behind the bar at that point, mostly managing cocktail programs, uh, and a lot of it was the same conversations we're having now, but in reverse, you know, it was about a guest experience, like if you pull out a jigger, that's a terrible guest experience because they're they're. They assume you're going to short them. I'm like well, yeah, they're getting what they paid for right, they're. Whatever your house core is, if it's an ounce, ounce and a half, two ounces, whatever that is, they're getting exactly what they get right it it's not shortened which often happens, and it's not completely overboard, which is what the customer was hoping for.
Chris Tunstall:So I think it just kind of like level set it and then now we're seeing the opposite of like, oh, use a jigger, for you know as much as you possibly can in most restaurant bars and you know high-end bars and stuff like that, I think, neighborhood bars you know you're going gonna do whatever fits your environment right, and there's never gonna be any difference on that.
Chris Schneider:I mean, I I will, uh embarrassingly admit that I have served margaritas with sprite and orange juice in them, uh, because the neighborhood bar scene gets weird. Sometimes right like yeah, especially back, because I I bought that. The first bar I bought was in 2011, so that was right, as all this was changing. So in 2011, neighborhood bar margaritas right in orange juice made sense somehow. I I don't think today I would do that, but back then it worked well that's what your customers actually want.
Chris Tunstall:You know like figuring out what your customers want and you know testing and getting feedback. If that's what they want, that's what they want.
Chris Schneider:Right, as weird as it is. But so you had this. You came up in mixology, you learned it and then you said, okay, I want to democratize this information, I want to get it out to people and tell me if I'm wrong, but I believe that was the genesis of your mixology course that you have on a bar above, which has now been around for what like a decade and is is consistently named one of the top bartending courses available online so we launched the McSolidly certification in 2014 and it has been going ever since and, to your point, liggercom makes it the number one bartender training course I don't even know how many years in a row now and it is a deep dive into everything.
Chris Tunstall:It's not attending bar. It is about constructing titles from a culinary approach and a scientific approach and, like I said, it is a very, very deep course and for anybody that has any experiences, I'll kind of give a quick overview of it. But if you take it at a decent pace you try to really absorb the information. We recommend about a nine-week course, a timeline to get really saturated with the information. So we identify every single variable there is in the cocktail world that goes into making cocktails everything from fruit to alcohol to syrups and sugars to mixers to even a glass where any ice Like, if it's a variable, it goes in a glass. We identify it and we talk about it and I'll use one area as kind of a prime example of kind of how we built the entire core staff. So the very first module is all about acid and the biggest acids we use in bartending are going to be lemon, lime, pineapple, orange, cranberry. So we kind of talk about the flavor profiles, we talk about the pH levels and we talk about the sugar levels of all of the common mixer or juices. Then we go down into another level, like a lemon is in a lemon, there's a lot of different varieties of lemon. There's a lot of different varieties of lime. A key lime is very different from a Tahitian lime, which is very different from, you know, finger limes, and so we identify every variable that we can figure out on that level, talk about the sugar, talk about the flavor and talk about the pH. Then we go one step down and say, okay, that's cool, that's fruit. What about uncommon acid, like verjus, which is unripe grape juice, which has a super high, almost a vinegar, level of pH to it? And so we talked about all the uncommon acids that you would find in the world. And then you know pH, sugar content, all that. Then we talked about refined acids, malic acid, tartaric acid, citric acid. How do you combine all these ingredients in order to achieve balance in your final cocktail? Right, so then you can make a New York sour, but you're using red wine as your acidifying agent by adding citric acid and malic acid to have that presence of lime or lemon, but all the depth and all the flavor of red wine. So that is one portion of all the other variables that we go into the same level of detail on.
Chris Tunstall:So it's a very intense program to offer homework. So if you want to do additional learning, we also develop your palate along the way. So for that acid, it is taste water with a squeeze of lemon in it Great Taste it with just the oils expressed over the top of it. It's a different flavor profile While taste it with both of them combined. So we're really trying to hit all the marks of physical and also mental. For learning all this information and making it practical as well, I think it's a 75 question test at the end and then you have to take one cocktail and evolve it three different times through the techniques that we described, and then somebody on our team actually grades it in person. So it's a very, very, very intense course. But if you want to go from I make drinks to I create drinks, this is the only way that I've seen that really takes you to that step-by-step process.
Chris Schneider:Well, I think too that sometimes people they get in this mindset that if you're going to do mixology, you have to go all out, right? And if you think about the detail of what you're talking about, it's maybe, you know, in a neighborhood bar you're not going to serve some crazy cocktails, right? You probably don't have egg whites behind your bar you might nowadays, but a lot of neighborhood bars still don't. But the thing is that when you get to that level of detail, when you're talking about specific ways, acid works and different flavor profiles, that's applicable to everybody. So, you know, having the knowledge is fundamental, even at a lower level, if you will, because it allows you to play more and it gives you more ideas.
Chris Tunstall:And that's what it's all about. We provide a structure and then we identify the variables and watch the plumbing play.
Chris Tunstall:So you take a standard recipe and you can tweak two or three things and it's a completely different plateau. You don't have to go crazy like a lot of these high-end places. You can do really cool spins under our spot hills that separate you from everybody else around the area. And the thing I love about this the most, and what really got me excited about like really learning this, identifying and implementing it into bars and restaurants that I managed, was, um, back then, the profitability was high. It was huge. You know this was. This is how I'm going to make my numbers. It is I'm going to make all these craft scarabs, I'm going to do all this stuff in house and it's going to 100% move the needle from my cost of goods, like I never miss a bonus.
Chris Schneider:So you said back then it does. What about now? Is it less that way?
Chris Tunstall:Yeah, it's going to be different, because now it's kind of more level playing field, so it's not as much of a competitive advantage, but there are definitely ways of implementing this and that you can go upmarket on your menu pricing, depending on your bar and restaurant. You know, if you have a fantastic cocktail menu and you have all those kind of identifiers like we are truly a craft place, then that is where you can start to do a little bit more. Your checkout is going to go higher, there's no doubt about it, and the most important thing, though, is something that a lot of people don't talk about, but they probably do. But um, your bumper around should reflect your culinary side, right?
Chris Tunstall:so if there's a gap between those two. There's a disparity in your, in your program, and that is kind of a bit of an alarm bell. And you you won't get the return passports that you you would potentially get. From my experience. So it's more of like a positioning and how who you are as a company versus a competitive advantage these days. But there's also layers of craft cocktails and mixology as well.
Chris Schneider:So, thinking about layers, and just what popped into my head is that if you did New York City high-end mixology at a place in the South that served burgers to your point, that's never going to work.
Chris Tunstall:There's a huge disparity. It's on the other side right, the cocktail program way outshines the culinary side and it doesn't match the demographics, and that's something you really have to dial in.
Chris Schneider:Right. So at a place that does burgers, what do you think you could do something? Maybe if you wanted to do cool cocktails like a really interesting smoked, old-fashioned or something that's still placed that same group.
Chris Tunstall:Yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And you know you can do some really fun spins on classics and you know, think about all those things Like you can make a really cool boozy milkshake like burgers, and milkshakes are a thing, right? So, you can kind of lean in that direction and like really have some fun there. Like there's a ton of different directions, like even like high-end craft slushy machines, they're built for speed man. If you're a volume place and you don't have a slushy machine, you're probably leaving a lot of money on the table.
Chris Schneider:So, in that way, I mean, mixology really works for everybody, and I think, though, one of the things that stops folks from going down that road of mixology and for a lot of bar owners in a lot of cases, I think it's a lack of knowledge is part of it, but the other part of it is a fear of what that does to your costs, what that looks like, you know, when it comes down to PL, and you'll hear a lot of people say well, I'd love to do something nicer, but I can't get $15 for a cocktail. So how do you square the circle of I want to do maybe something nicer, but I'm not convinced that it's actually going to be beneficial for my business, and, on the data end of things, on the P&L side of things, I'm not going to see a positive result.
Chris Tunstall:Yeah, and that's a really good point, and I think it's not for everybody. We've kind of identified a couple different scenarios here. But if you are an owner or an operator and you know that you want to kind of go this direction, or at least you want to test it out, there's a couple different ways you can do it. First and foremost, run specials. You know, do highlight cocktails. Run it for a couple of weeks, see if there's an uptake on sales in that specific special, and if it is, then you might say, okay, cool, that was successful, let's add one element onto our content menu. Run another special right. And so you're slowly getting your customers kind of used to the idea of spending more for a quality grade. Obviously, you know you don't have to commit to this if the data comes back and you're like that was awful, I'm never going to do that again, cool. Or you test something different, or you do a different spin on it, or you go a little bit different angle. In that, I mean, it's not for everybody.
Chris Schneider:So I would highly recommend, you know, if, if you're a little nervous on it and you're not sure how your clientele is going to respond to it, that's, that's one way of doing it for sure all right, and I know that when it comes to data because we're kind of getting into that conversation there you are just as much of a data nerd as I am about measure everything, understand everything and really use that data to drive your business forward and to make smart decisions.
Announcer:drive your business forward and to make smart decisions.
Chris Schneider:So, when it comes to bartending behind the bar, a mixology program, what are kind of the key data points that you like to look at and track to say this is a good idea, this is working, or it's not quite working?
Chris Tunstall:Yeah, and I think a lot of it is obviously top level revenue. You know that's to be able to win the game indicator, no matter who you are. If you're a business owner, that's where you will look. And on the other side of that is what's the profitability of this look like? So my cost of goods, what's my wastage look like? There's a lot of different data points you can select.
Chris Tunstall:Um, the things that I always look at is what are my top movers? What are my top 10 cocktails? What are my top 10 pours? What am I doing out of my spirits side and figuring out what that looks like and get a really good customer profile on spirits. And if there's any way of incorporating my most call for spirits into a cocktail menu so I can leverage my sales reps to get me better pricing. That's one way I do it right. If Gringos, citron or, you know, orange or whatever flavor happens to be popular at the moment, if I see that uptick, I can incorporate that into a cocktail.
Chris Tunstall:Or one of the things I did was kettle was one of my most cultured spirits. I incorporated that into my cocktail. I got better pricing and I actually tried to get it in my well to get even better pricing, and so then you can do both buys, you can do a bunch of different stuff, combos all that stuff and combos are a great way of just maximizing your profitability behind the bar. I don't know if Hendrix is still doing it, but I know they were notorious for that. If you buy two bottles of Hendrix, you got a bottle of something for free I think it was Stoli for the longest time and so I milked that. I absolutely milked that, because I got a $30 bottle of spirit basically for free. I would run my top 10 menu off of those and really start to generate my my revenue based on that. So, like, if you're not talking to your reps and finding out what the best deals are, the best combos are, you're, you're not, you're leaving a lot of revenue on the earth, a lot of profitability, um, behind that um. So having a great relationship with your reps is another great way. So so I I need to have fun. See where your top sellers are, see if there's a way you can kind of leverage that into your beverage program. Talk to your rep, see if there's a way of negotiating better pricing, bulk buys and then combos. That's the best thing for profitability there. The other thing is volume. If your top talking cocktails that you have to hand make every single time, they take a ton of time to figure out ways of just compartmentalizing that build-out process, even if you want a little slush machine or if you want to do draft cocktails.
Chris Tunstall:Imagine if you're doing 50 old-fashions a night and it's taking you three minutes a cocktail. What happens if you can streamline that? So an old-fashioned a night and it's taking you three minutes a cocktail. What happens if you can stream on that? So a old-fashioned takes 15 seconds? The rip that your your margin is gonna sell the hell out of it. Your front end staff is gonna sell the hell out of it because they know the construction time is fast. Right, it's just a spiral. At that point it's a flag ofable effect. So the faster you can make these cocktails, you're just going to sell more of them.
Chris Schneider:Absolutely, and something you touched on in the middle there that I think is worth highlighting is using free goods, because I feel like a lot of bar owners right, and this also will tie back in the mixology piece as well Because a lot of bar owners they and this also will tie back in the mixology piece as well because a lot of bar owners they get these free goods, and we all pretty much know the free goods are things that the suppliers have to get distributed, that they can't sell a lot of the time, which means a lot of them are kind of random, right, you're getting this weird lemon liqueur or you're getting some vodka that has 15 different flavors in it, but if you just set that on the shelf and go, I don't know what the hell to do with it.
Chris Tunstall:You're missing a huge opportunity because pouring that bottle is 0% cost. It's huge, yeah, yeah, it's incredible. So, yeah, like, the first thing I always recommend for any new bar manager is first of all, don't change anything, just let information come in and gather your information, but actively start working through your back bar, the stuff in your back room that has been sitting there since they opened the restaurant. Start working through that inventory, because that's locked up cash, that's just sitting in the business and just getting as much product out of that backroom into specials to generate income on it and don't replace it, just get it out of your storage room.
Chris Schneider:Um, but yeah, like any of those promos, man, that is literally like liquid gold it is, and and if I mean it obviously varies a little bit state to state, but in most states if you do any real volume you can get a lot of them.
Chris Schneider:Yeah and it's, you know, obviously there's. If you tie the mixology into it and you understand flavor profiles. The weird vodka with 16 flavors that don't make sense, or the five vodkas you got that are sugar cookie and vanilla and sugar and all taste identical. Uh, you can at least come up with something for them that's going to be interesting to your guests. And even if you're selling a shot for four dollars, well if you have 10 cents in it, who really cares?
Chris Tunstall:Really yeah.
Chris Schneider:Yeah, and so it's a huge opportunity that a lot of people miss. The other thing that I wanted to go back to, that you had touched on earlier, was looking at your P-Mix to drive where your menu goes, because I feel like so often, whether it's a bar owner or a bar manager or a bartender that's writing cocktails, we all like to write what we like to drink, right, and we don't necessarily always go to our P mix and say, okay, what are we selling? What brands do our guests like? What type of weird liquor do our guests like? Because maybe you have a bunch of people that drink brandy. I don't know, it's plausible, right, it's not highly likely, but maybe you're that weird bar and so what is there anything in particular you look at in a P-Mix to say, okay, cool, maybe I should go this direction or maybe I should go that direction.
Chris Tunstall:Well, and I think that's a really good question I think it's all about frequency as well, like how long, how often are you pulling your p-max? Is it once every six months? I mean, I pull my p-max probably once a week, and so I really kind of scan through that um and look for things that are moving and like, once you start to incorporate all of this data together, you can do really interesting things with your product mix um, with your inventory, with your cash flow. It really is incredible once you start understanding how a business is structured and how revenue flows through your business. So the way I would use my PNICs is not in two words. I look at it as like okay, what am I selling and how much am I selling? Right, and this is why I did mine weekly. I need to know what I'm going to be ordering. So I already knew how many pours I'm getting out of a bottle. I did all that information. I've trained my front-end bartenders this is what it means. I want a standard one and a half ounce pour, because if you don't, then I don't have good data. On the other side, I should replenish the product. So I made that very clear to them so I could use it as a way of replenishing my parts, streamlining my inventory considerably and also predicting what's going to happen over the next month.
Chris Tunstall:So the way I would use my PMIX is I would look at what I sold last week, what I sold over the last 30 days and what I sold the same time period last year for as many years back as I could go right. Then I can get trending data based off of my PMAX and what I actually sold. And so the way I would use it, I would use that against revenue and covers and seats of okay. So over this last year, this last cycle, I'm up 10% from the year before and I'm up 15% overall. So I say, okay, cool, if I'm trending over 10% and you look at the last year's data, I'm going to adjust it up 10% to adjust my par levels so that I'm not holding a ton of inventory. I need to adjust my inventory up by 10% on my high-end movers. So that's how I would use my product mix as well.
Chris Tunstall:And then I would buy in cycles. So I'm lazy, I'm absolutely lazy. I like to be as efficient as possible. That's a better way of saying it. So what I would do is at the beginning of my inventory cycle I would buy everything. I would buy as much as I possibly could, right, I would buy everything I knew I would need for 30 days if I could do it, and then still leaving room to do the random orders every week if I needed to do those. But at the end of that month I wanted nothing in my back room at all. I wanted to be able to count my black bar and that's it. And for the most part I was pretty successful. So I got my standing inventory down to I don't need to know probably 25 000, maybe 30 000 um every inventory cycle. And that's because I was able to use the data and tell me what my customers were actually ordering and not over-purchase entire batch of cash in the business. And if you can just get that cash flow ball rolling, it really will transform businesses.
Chris Schneider:Absolutely. And one of the things that you touched on there is looking at trends, and so I remember the day that Dr McGillicuddy's cinnamon whiskey was suddenly fireball right and I went from selling cases of Jaeger a week to cases of fireball a week, and I will admit I wasn't watching my stuff close enough and I just got punched in the face by it. Yeah, because there was, there was a little tiny trend movement and then it was just off and if you missed that, you weren't aligned to the market and the people that were paying attention and caught it were far better, far better off than I was. Yeah, and that may be. I mean, at least in in my memory, that is the biggest individual shift that hit kind of the the neighborhood bar market.
Chris Schneider:Um, but to your point, it's why you have to pay attention to your PMAX, it's why you have to understand what's going on, otherwise you end up with, like you said, a bunch of stuff on the shelves that is just a waste of space and a waste of money at that point, Word yeah and so when we think about profitability right, because that's that's the the the reason you don't want money on the shelves is because you need cash to make a bar work.
Chris Schneider:Right, cash flow's highly important, and that's what last week's episode uh was actually on was cash flow. So this fits in very nicely. But with that cash flow, is there any single thing you can do when it comes to your liquor program outside of inventory and kind of the things we've discussed, but any other single thing that really promotes cash flow in your bar? And I know that's a hard one.
Chris Tunstall:Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, if you do happy hours, that's a good thing. I mean there's all different ways of adding revenue to your bar. There's a couple people I've seen that have done it really well, like guest bartending sessions, like if you're slow, if you have a slow day, reach out to the local businesses, see if they, if there's people that want to do a guest bartending shift, you know, you know, train them for an hour or two. They're gonna bring a ton of people in from their business. You're gonna get those people as regulars now hopefully, um, and so that's a really good way of just generating income on like slow days, um, and establishing yourself in the community, and I think it's a really good strategy.
Chris Tunstall:And when I saw it I was like that's, that's, that's genius, because everybody wants to be a bartender, um, especially in corporate amer. You know, they either want to own a bar or be a bartender, so it's a cool thing to do and so that's one way of doing it running specials. There was another one that I saw which was pretty interesting, where they would actually gamify a lot of things behind the bar. Like, you know, people like to gamble, people like to gamble, people like to be silly and do that kind of thing. So, um, this one bar that I consulted really embraced that.
Chris Tunstall:Um, and they did it in a very clever way where they had like a wheel of fortune board right big snare board and to do the wheel of fortune you had to stand by box. Um, so you gave the bartender by box and you got a sponge to the wheel and all the wheel were a lot of either cocktails or shots that they got for free for promo goods. So you're generating income on free stuff, or even swag. Like the amount of swag that you get as a bar owner is just incredible, right? So these are all. And then you had like one good prize, but the one good prize would be, you know, more than compensated by all the other stuff that you were able to generate, all the other cash that you were able to generate. But, yeah, there's so many creative ways of generating income and I think that's the thing is like don't rest on your laurels, keep testing. Like put some energy into the business. You know, testing things, you know and see what works, you know.
Chris Schneider:So as a business owner, you've always got to be testing, right absolutely, and one of the things when we were talking about data and pnls and all that is obviously the the best way to maintain your cash flow and your profits is to have consistency in how your cocktails are prepared and know what's going on. And in addition to doing the training and consulting, you're also in the bar products business and I know one of the things that I've heard you say multiple times before that just wasously um. Troubling to me when I heard it was that you've tested a lot of jiggers, because you sell jiggers and but you've tested a lot of your competitors and some of them are up to 20 off, and so if you're 20 off, I don't care how good your recipe is, you're never going to hit your costs right. So you can have the best data in the world, but it means nothing if the way you're doing things, if the products you have to do them, don't allow you to have that control.
Chris Tunstall:Yeah, and I mean, if you're talking about just you know, top of the global bottom line, that's a huge one, right? If every cocktail you pour is 20% over on cost, your numbers are screwed. I mean that's a huge, huge deficit. So having great calibrated tools, having good, proper training, is really, really key, and so that's one of the things that we're super fanatical about in our company when we produce tools is we want to make sure that they're right, because I know what it means if our jigger's rough.
Chris Tunstall:I know what it means if our stuff breaks on a Friday night, because it's happened to me. So you know our form of customer service and the bar above is making sure that those tools and that experience is flawless. If your tool breaks on a Friday night, that's bad customer service. I have designed that tool very, very wrong. So that's something that we always, always think about with every single thing that we create is will this last in a commercial environment? And if not, then we probably won't launch it. We always test everything. So we have a very, very, very tight haunt with all our jitters. So if they're over, I think it's like 5% we reject it, we just won't accept them.
Chris Tunstall:Um, but yeah, to your point if it's a 20 variance and this is where it gets really interesting is if all your bartenders have a different year let's say one is 20 over the other, one's 10 under the consistency with those cocktails, like there's no way like this person's cocktail versus that person's cocktail in the same bar are very different.
Chris Tunstall:So I think there's a whole other side of the consistency when we talk about different types of tools working in the same environment. So I'm a big proponent of one set of tools across all your bartenders, standard training and making sure everything's right. And I think there's one other thing I'd like to kind of highlight here, and it's something that I think everybody at the first thing in the talk can immediately implement and take away and put a spotlight on, and that is if you go to your bar right now and ask every single one of your bartenders what the standard pour is for beer, for wine and for your spirits or for your standard cocktails, I guarantee you everything's going to be different. There's not been a single bar I walked into where everybody knew what a standard pour was, what the correct standard pour was so if you could just do that today.
Chris Tunstall:That sets a whole different trend. Um as well, like, okay, now I'm watching you. This is any communication you train right. Like our standard for is this, and now we're going to test on that, we're going to drill it into you. It's the way everybody knows. So, yeah, I'm a big fan of training. I'm a big fan of consistency and fanatical about tools and everything else too.
Chris Schneider:Yeah, and I think it's important because so often we we ignore the tool side of it. Right. Right, we go on amazon, we buy cheap tools. We go online, we buy cheap tools and it's just kind of oh, this is what we have and it for most people they just go. Well, why would I buy a three dollar jigger? If I can buy a 50 cent jigger, right, god forbid why would I buy a 10 or $12 jigger? It just doesn't make sense. But in reality, that extra money is actually saving you money and helping your business in the long run due to your consistency. And another thing, too, about your jiggers that I found really interesting is that you have more measurement lines Because you want to talk about consistency. If you don't have the right measurement lines and you're eyeballing it, there's no way that cocktail is the same bartender to bartender.
Chris Tunstall:Right, exactly, and so that's one of the things that I always was frustrated on is, I would guess every cocktail recipe isn't the same, especially when you're doing high-end mixology, like the ratios are very different because you're splitting bases out. So you know, you may never use one and a quarter ounce measurement in your entire life as a bartender, but once you're doing high-end mixology those numbers can change very easily. So we did every quarter ounce measurement, starting at a quarter ounce all the way up to two ounces. It also included a barstone measurement, a universal standard barstone measurement, and our barstone is the same as our barstone measurement and our jigger, which is the universal standard. So tying all these things together, really creating an ecosystem for our tools to work, is really one of the other angles that we have that many other barstone companies don't.
Chris Tunstall:We focus on those elements that just get overlooked and one of the things I always tell people is like our barware may look like everybody else's barware, but I guarantee you there is a secret about our bar tools that you probably don't know. That makes them better and it just doesn't get. You can't see it on a listing online, so there's always something in it.
Chris Schneider:Well, and two other things about the tools that I've heard you talk about that I want to touch on real quick, no-transcript, and that's. I was listening to another podcast you were on where one of the guys that was hosting it shared a story of actually using a shaker that broke and hit a guest, which is never a good thing, and so talk a little bit about the difference between like your welds versus other people's welds, which sounds like a crazy thing to discuss, but I think it's really important.
Chris Tunstall:Yeah, and that's exactly the point we were talking about is when you see most Fato shakers at the bottom, where the weights are that kind of bulge that sits at the bottom of it. If you see most cocktail shakers at the bottom, where the weights are that kind of bulge that sits at the bottom of it, if you see three dots on the bottom, those are the three tachyfold that are holding the weight onto the shaker and usually that's where the cocktail shaker will fail. And so with modern mixology and a lot of bartending, now there's a kind of a trend where people will bang their tins together to seal them, increase the liability. It's part of the environment and all that stuff. But when you do that you're putting a tremendous amount of stress on those wells and eventually they're going to pop off. And this particular person I was talking to his popped off when he was shaking it and it hit a guest. I haven't had that happen to me, but I've to the person I was talking to his popped off when he was shaking it and it hit a guest. I haven't had that happen to me, but I've had my welds top and it ruins the copter so you can throw it away because it's unpolished metal and it's unusable at that point. So what we do on ours is our weights are welded all the way around. Liquid's not getting in there, so nothing's going to rust, nothing's going to happen.
Chris Tunstall:If you buy our shakers that are weighted weighted weights on both sides of a small shaker and a big shaker you can literally hand them down to your kids. They will never break. When we launched our first Yacht-O-Cocktail shakers we had a weighted unweighted, so the small tin was unweighted and there's a lot of reasons we did that. It creates a tighter seal for egg white cocktails so they don't break on you. But I handed a set to my friend a high-volume place in Miami or in Florida, and he sent it back to me about a year ago and he said that one shaker made 100,000 cocktails and because it was unweighted it didn't have that extra metal on it. And that's when I finally failed. If he had the weighted weighted he'd still be using it, and he told me that he bought seven more sets when they sent him mine and he's still using the seven other sets of the unweighted ones. So we take durability very seriously. Like I said, it's our form of customer service If it breaks on a Friday. We've done a terrible job.
Chris Schneider:I don't know that if it breaks on a Friday, that's we've done a terrible job. Yeah, well, it's just, it's uh, I don't know that there's anything, and I'm a I'm a full disclosure like the worst bartender ever, but sometimes I'd have somebody call out and have to do it. Um, and there is nothing more frustrating than the tools not working the way you need them when you're busy.
Chris Tunstall:Right, not working the way you need them when you're busy, right, I mean, and once you get, especially if you're a crappy bartender like me.
Chris Schneider:once you get a little bit frazzled and a little bit weeded, it just makes it so easy to spin out of control. Yeah, and so eliminating a failure point is huge, just kind of in general, but especially if you're a bad bartender not going to lie so with that, I'm sure a lot of people are interested in what you have going on and are going to want ways to learn more about your products, find your courses, uh, maybe get in contact with you. So what are the best avenues for the people listening today? Um, to be able to get in touch and learn more about what you do.
Chris Tunstall:Yeah, so our main site is going to be a bar abovecom. That's where we host all of our tools. We have a ton of education there, everything from bartender fundamentals, where all your bartenders can have the same language, as far as you know how to set a well, you know all the fundamentals of attending bar and not taco recipes. You know desk interactions, how to build regulators, how to make a well, all the fundamentals of a tending bar, not taco recipes, desk interactions, how to build regulators, how to make more money during a shift so they'll have that standard language there. And the Mixology certification and many other courses are at abarbocom, as well as all of our tools.
Chris Tunstall:If you're active on social media, if you look for Abarbo, you're going to find us. We're on pretty much every platform. There is um and as well as youtube, so we do some fun cocktail videos there where we take a standard cocktail and we kind of go to an extreme on what you can possibly do with that format um. So that's a little bit more education and entertainment, um. But yeah, if you went for a bar above, you're gonna find us. We've been around for a very long time and we kind of cornered the market on that name, which was very, very helpful.
Chris Schneider:Well, yeah, and it's one thing that's very true is you have had a longer online presence than almost anybody in the bar space. I mean, you guys were getting out there at kind of the infancy of all this and so, to your point, you're not. You're not terribly hard to find.
Chris Tunstall:No, no, we're, we're, we're kind of everywhere, um, and it took a long time to get there, but you know we're everywhere now, so it's great.
Chris Schneider:And we'll make sure that, for everybody listening in the show notes, we'll have, uh, the link to the website and all the social media for you there as well, so, if you're listening to the podcast, just go click at the show notes, and it's easy to get to all of that. Um with that, though, is there anything that we have not touched on today or anything that we have not discussed that you think it's really important? Um for bar owners and managers to know?
Chris Tunstall:yeah, I think there's one big thing and this is something I always harp on and always um extremely frustrated with um. If you are a bar owner or a bar manager, um, then I think there is almost a responsibility that you have to train your management staff, um, I think that's one of the biggest gaps we have in our industry, um, and I think it's after consulting you know about a hundred different places that I've walked into. I think that's the biggest point of frustration that many bar managers have. They don't have the education, they don't have the knowledge, they don't know the structure of the business, how money moves through the business and how they can actually affect change from a profitability perspective. And I understand where owners are, that they don't wanna to give that information away because they're creating their own competition and stuff like that.
Chris Tunstall:My kind of retort to that is well then, things aren't going to change. You could mentor people and you can create a really solid network of people that respect you and really hold you to a high standard because you've taken the time to nurture them and train them on how to make more money in your business. I think that's the biggest thing that needs to change in our industry is that gap from bartender to management. They have a very hard job and they're not getting paid nearly enough and that's a byproduct of the industry. That's not going to change anytime soon. But if we can provide people with the knowledge to really affect change, make more money in a business, maybe that will help to drive more revenue for them as well. Um, and it's the number one comment I've gotten from every bar manager I've ever talked to is I don't know how to succeed in my job and that's's incredibly frustrating and that will burn people out. And you're going to choose your managers so fast.
Chris Tunstall:So, give them the tools to succeed, train them, show them what it means to look at a P&L. How do I affect my P&L? What are my TTIs? What are my goals? What's a bonus structure? I'm going to hit my numbers. How do I hit my numbers? What's a bonus structure? I'm going to hit my numbers? How do I hit my numbers? Like, I think that is really, really critical, and I think that's something that I'm super passionate about, is training and giving them the tools they need and it's it's just good business. It really truly is. Every other industry in the world does it the restaurant stuff and I I don't understand why.
Chris Schneider:Well, no-transcript. But at the end of the day, a number that you pay attention to is a number you can manage, and a number you manage is a number you can improve right, and if no one tells these managers what's going on and how to read a pnl or anything like that, I don't know how they're ever supposed to make a bar better it's.
Chris Tunstall:It's the biggest thing, and and if you don't do it, you're going to be stuck. You're going to be doing the same thing you're doing now as 20 years from now right, you're never going to be able to escape your business, and it's almost like your tail in the middle of a throat. It's like you're tired of your business forever. That's my biggest gripe, and I will always tell people this. That is the one thing, though I would highly recommend Kind of change that mindset from a non-perspective. It's worth your time to do this. It's worth your money. It's worth everything that you're going to put into it. It's going to be so much worse at its own, and to your point just now.
Chris Schneider:better managers mean that you have to work less as an owner. It gives you a life and that should be obvious, right? If you own a bar, that should be. Your one goal in life is to have more of a life, because if it's not, you will work 90 hours a week.
Chris Tunstall:Right. When was the last time most people took a vacation that owned bars?
Chris Schneider:This is probably the reason why I took a vacation before I bought a bar and after I sold a bar.
Chris Tunstall:It's insane.
Chris Schneider:Seven years, I didn't really do it.
Chris Tunstall:Yeah, right, so it's. It's something I'm very passionate about and I have very strong feelings about, if you can tell Um and I think, one of the things I want to kind of highlight here um uh, and thank you for asking that question.
Chris Tunstall:Um, you know, I did a podcast for eight years. I know what it looks like. I know the amount of effort that goes into. So, if you're listening to this podcast, leave a review. It takes very little time out of your day and it means so much the algorithms will pick it up, you'll get more distribution and it costs you nothing. So, if you're enjoying this, chris is doing a phenomenal job. I've listened to quite a few of your podcasts and you're delivering gold for for bar owners. Um, so just take the 10 seconds out. Leave a great review, um, and it from a producer that has done it before. It means the world. Um, it really does so. Um, that's the last thing.
Chris Schneider:That's my last one, so box left thank you for saying that, uh, because it's it's uh one of the hard things about being a podcast host and I'm sure you ran into this as well. It becomes very easy to talk up other people, but it's still simultaneously very hard to say things about yourself. So thank you very much for saying that, because I don't have the balls to do it myself. I don't know, but you've been there, you get it it myself.
Chris Tunstall:I don't know, but you've been there, you get it. Yeah, I do. Yeah, it took me years to be able to ask for a review.
Chris Schneider:So with that, chris, just thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing your insights and the information, as I mentioned a moment ago, for anyone that wants to learn more about Chris, learn more about his products, learn more about what courses he has. We'll have all those links in the show notes for you guys to go to. And with that guys, that'll wrap us up for today. So a couple notes before we leave.
Chris Schneider:If you have not joined Bar Business Nation on Facebook, go ahead head over there, join that group. We have a growing group of bar owners. That is just fantastic and I post a lot there, but it's also a space for everyone to ask questions, learn from each other, because I know from being in this business to one of the earliest points Chris made eventually you learn how much you don't know, and I will tell you right now there's a whole heck of a lot I don't know, and there's a whole heck of a lot that none of us well, no individual knows all of it. So we're trying to create a community so that everyone can grow and learn together and really support each other and, as always, everybody. I hope you have a great day and we will talk again later.
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