E133 Kate Gerwin

This week's guest is Kaitlyn Burwain, who joins us from Albert-Brockingham, Mexico. Kaitlyn is the founder and one of the owners of Happy Accidents, a distillery in cocktail bar. Bar is 100% bartender owned and puts staff first in all operational decisions. Kaitlyn is a certified master's smalier and has worked for several Napa Valley's top wineries, consulted on TV shows and has taught at such prestigious culinary institutions, such as the Le Corden Bloc Campus in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the New England Culinary Institute in Montpellier, Vermont.

Most recently, Kaitlyn is a contestant on the Netflix cocktail competition series, Drink Masters. Kaitlyn is a wonderful guest. You're going to love the interview. Enjoy the show.

Okay, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kaitlyn. This is Dan. How's it going, buddy?

I'm doing all right. Thanks yourself. How are you? Doing fine.

Wonderful. I was up last night binging this new show on Netflix. We have a guest joining us and I told her she can't tell us how it ends because they haven't got to the end yet. So Kait Gervyn is going to be joining us in just a second from Drink Masters from Netflix, as well as owning Happy Accidents in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

So we're going to talk to her in just a minute before we get to that. We should mention that if you like what we're doing here on the show, then you should be subscribing, rating, reviewing. That helps a lot. If you want to be a guest on the show or if you'd like to offer some support, then we can just info at the Industry Podcast.club or DMS directly at the Industry Podcast.

And if someone wants to find your bars and town, please want to stop by to the alone person. How's your life? Right here in Wonderville, Kitchener, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. You can find Sugar Run, Speak Eevee, Downtown Kitchener, at Sugar Run Bar on Instagram or Uptown.

I own Babylon Sisters, Wine Bar, and you can find that Babylon Sisters bar on Instagram as well. Find out all the stuff we've got going on. This artwork is done by Zacana at Zacana.co. You should check him out for all of your graphic arts needs.

And I think that's about all we need to talk about. Let's just get right to our guest. Kate, Gerwin, how are you? I'm doing well.

How are you? We're doing all right. Thanks for doing the show. Absolutely.

So let's talk a little bit. I do want to talk about the show, obviously, because I kind of hooked on it last night and I ended up staying up later and I wanted to. But let's talk about first your career in the industry. How did you get started in the beginning?

Kind of by default. I didn't actually stop writing until kind of like my early mid 30s. My background really comes more from wine. I grew up in wine country in California and wanted to be a winemaker.

So when I turned 21, I worked in wineries and shoveled grapes. And that was a semi-a. And I took a quarter of Samiades test. My ex-husband, I met in Napa.

He was on his ex-friend ship from Colonial Fuller. He was a chef. We opened a restaurant together. It was designed to be very wine-forward and food restaurant.

And people wanted drinks. So by default, I started making drinks. Apparently people liked my drinks more than they liked wine. And our restaurants.

And we started getting like awards and stuff for drinks. And I was like, well, I can't tell. But just like a word of wine. But we wanted drinks.

So we want to say a word for Spirit Hospitality in Albuquerque. Spirit Hospitality in Southwest. We beat out like Las Vegas and all these bars. People just started coming to the bar.

And by default, I ended up being a bartender. I will say I was invited to the cocktail for the first time by Charlotte Boise after she passed through our bar. Doing work for William for a time. It was time to expect now she works for William Grant and Sons.

And I went to the cocktail and I was like, oh, these are my people. The wine industry is great. I still obviously love wine a lot. But I was kind of the outspoken allowed possibly somewhat obnoxious one in the wine world and in the bartending world I fit in a lot more.

That's funny. That's true. I know the wine scene is a little bit more civilized. The regular part.

Yeah. That's funny. OK, so but how did you find it? You're training in wine becoming a salamalie.

Did that help you at all when it came to crafting drinks? Yeah, I think it's probably why I'm considered a great bartender. I have a good palette. I taught to culinary schools.

I taught olfactory training and operations management. But I taught basically how to taste how their body works and how taste versus flavor versus smell and those things. And I think that helped me a lot in making drinks. So as a salamalie, I would take something a winemaker created and if they look at vintage and how cold it was, then what kind of wine, acidity levels, and then I would take food.

Is it fat? Is it rich in protein? Is it round? And I would have to try and match those things.

Like basically two creatives and finding a happy medium. And then with bartending it was just kind of like, oh, this is really rich. I need something high acid and I would make something high acid. Or, oh, I would love to highlight the berry notes.

And it was just easier for me to make a drink than I have to go find a wine that took the criteria. But then I could just kind of do it myself. That's funny because we've interviewed tons of people who have come from the culinary side and we've interviewed tons of people who have come from the wine side. I'm not sure if we've ever interviewed somebody who comes from both.

It must have made it incredibly easier to, once you get in there, like your palisot develop. Plus you know, like from the coming from the kitchen, like exactly what creates those flavors, right? Yeah, it was not surprisingly easy. I kind of like just whipped out a menu at our restaurant.

It's like, we'll just put these eight to 10 cocktails on the menu. It'll be really super simple. And people would come in and drink them. And they'd have a cocktail first.

Like, what kind of wine would you like? And they'd be like, well, no, I'm trying to cocktails. And at first I was like, but it's supposed to be a wine restaurant. And then I was like, man, this is so much easier.

And then I just started really studying spirits and found that it was much more my style. It's equally fascinating too, right? When it comes to like, I think, flavor profiles. And like I said, people don't think about spirits in nothing that way.

Like it's very much a wine focusing. But like what do you say? I feel like it's even more so because like the history, you know, our world revolves around drinking more than people realize, you know, wars have started and ended and laws have been creative and times of celebration and times of depression. People drink and people drink in pretty much every corner of the world.

There's some type of drinking custom. So for me, one thing started studying spirits and realizing what a rich history and how much culture was involved. I was like, man, this is great. Like this is so much more interesting and so much more versatile and fascinating.

And there was just a lot more for me to kind of explore in that nature. Yeah, it's funny you say that because the talking like we always used to say that like the bar industry is the one recession proof industry because like, even in what we feel, you drink, if you feel happy, you drink, right? Well, I mean, I've said that for years, you know, during the Great Depression, bartenders were one of the highest paid salaries. Jerry Thomas was making as much as the president and, you know, bartending was so prestigious and then the pandemic hit.

And I was like, it's not a pandemic group. Yeah. I just hope all the time we have the most our industry is one of the most resourceful. And like, you know, we always have a job because it doesn't really matter.

People are going to drink and then the pandemic hit that was like, oh fuck. Yeah, we found a thing. That was it. No.

I mean, it's still recession proof after the pandemic because I think we're on a one-way trip to that again as well. So, I mean, if our bar, you know, what I've seen is any indication, we're not going anywhere. If we survive the pandemic and I think a lot of, I personally believe a lot of us are coming back more empowered and a lot stronger to really what I tell people at times is like, it's time for us to take our industry back. The day the customer is always right is gone in my humble opinion, which is not very humble.

Sorry. But I'm not here like the day of the guests dictating how we do our business and, you know, the guests, Googling, Google reviewing us or Yelp reviewing us and it's done for me. You know, you don't get to control my business because that's kind of what got us into the situation. We're working in an industry, you know, where we're surviving off of like two to 12% profit is considered successful.

There is no industry in the world where you look at 2% profit and people are celebrating. But yet we're just barely squishing by and people are like, yeah, I didn't have to close down. Right. That is like literally not it.

That's fucked. I didn't even thought about it that way. But you're right. It really is.

Like you're like, oh, I mean, I didn't go in the red this month. Like, there's no industry that operates like that. But because we are so conditioned that the hospitality we're supposed to give and the customer is always right. You know, we end up giving away the house essentially, you know, someone orders a drink and they don't really agree.

And so they don't ask the questions and they send it back. And what we do is we just go, okay, we'll get you another drink. And you know, people, we don't have hosts at our door and people come in and say, well, what do I do? Do I like leave a number or are you going to text me?

And I'm like, no, I'm not going to text you. If you want to make a table, you literally want me to hire another tire human to stand at the door to pay them horrible wages so that you can take a walk, so that you can tell that I have to text you. Like there's so many things in hospitality that we have done to kind of compromise any profitability or any sense of even humanity or equity that we kind of got into this position where one pandemic, which it was a huge one, but it practically broke us. And I think that's part of that is because we're such empathetic people in the hospitality and we want to make people so happy that we started to compromise just business standards, just to make people happy.

I want my guests to be happy. I want people to have a great experience. But we have rules and we have things that we do to in order to provide those things and still provide an equitable space for our staff and a profitable business. And some of those things, people, you know, kind of like what the customer is always right.

Not necessarily in my room. No, and they haven't been for a fucking hundred years to be honest. Yeah, I'm so sure you're like, oh, really? That's so awesome that you completely know the ins and outs of my industry.

I've been working in, you know, just my whole life. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you so much.

That's awesome. You know, I have people coming all the time and they're like, well, you know, we should do. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I had a business partner literally named those people to should use like, you know, we should do. Yeah, I was like, no, tell me, I know you know nothing about this industry.

But and obviously the fucking Google reviews and the internet in general has made a lot of brave people, right? So it's very brave to sit in the restaurant or bar all night, not saying anything to yourself about having an unpleasant time so that we could maybe fix it while you were there and then go home and type out your shitty review like that one. So I call them, I call them revenge reviews. We have we have a Yelp board.

It's very popular amongst industry people and a lot of great guests and things. Some people get like really offended when you come in. We have this Yelp or of the month and we put the crap reviews this the current Yelp or of the month is someone who said one star, I came in and they I deed me at the door too much. Then we got to the table and so we have eight signs at the door that say we're distillery in a bar, right?

Eight times eight signs at the door that say, please stop. We'll be here to ID you. The third person at their table walk past those signs. She said, my friend came in and they ID her before she even sat at the table too much.

Guess the waitress was actually bartender. But you know, another thing asked us three times, you know, if we needed things too much too attentive, this is ridiculous. I'll never be going back. And I was like, so because we ID you and because we were too attentive, you felt the need to bash our business and prevent other people from having such a horrendous experience.

I honestly don't think almost words in the reviewers are the people who fucking read them and take them seriously. Like, why are you like, anybody with a head on their shoulders knows that these people are just writing bullshit. Like, go experience the place yourself. Like, yeah, what happened where we literally have to go review, find someone, some strangers' opinion of a place before we will go in there.

So we kind of just, so I don't respond to reviews. I don't have a Yelp account. I don't have a Google. If you want to bash me, which they're usually about me, fine, great.

We care about our business. We care about people. We want people have a great time. Come in, experience the place.

But if you don't have a great time, like, you don't have to be so revengeful that you try and actually hinder people's growth as humans. Like, my staff survives and they have kids and they have bills to pay. And you really want to bash all of that because you just didn't like something that didn't go your way. And I think it ties back to that customer is always right.

People have this ingrained idea that they can determine the rules in a restaurant. But when you go to the bank, you don't walk in and go, you know what, I'm not going to wait in that line. And I don't want to fill out that deposit. And I'm not going to do these things.

What I really want to do is just throw my money down and walk away. You know my account number, right? You don't go to the grocery store. I'd be like, yeah, I'm not going to do this.

But like in our industry, for some reason, there's a sense of entitlement over our space like, oh, I'm going to go to this restaurant. And I know you don't have this on the menu, but can you make it for me? And it's like, I don't understand. I used to always make a joke about that with the birthday thing where people would come to your bar and be like, what do you do for birthdays?

I'm like, what did they do with the grocery store for you? Did you get a free love of bread? Because it was your fucking birthday? No.

We got a review about that actually. I didn't do anything for our birthday. And I was like, wait, hold on, we just arrived to the pandemic. But you want me to give you a free shit because you were bored.

Exactly. And I don't know you. But yeah, like the owner says it on us to host your birthday party, because you don't want to clean up your house either. I get it.

That's amazing. I agree with everything you just said. Okay, I do want to are you tired of talking about the show or do you want to talk about it? Okay, right?

I know you want to know. Well, full disclosure, I did not know the show existed until yesterday. We were actually being interviewed on someone else's podcast. And he told us about it.

And I was like, Oh, shit, I will. And I reached out to you months ago, probably, to be a guest on the show just from your Instagram profile because it looked cool, right? So I was like, and I thought we do it sometimes, right? So I mean, you I'm not going to lie, you totally luck out.

Because like someone had even said, like not like so many requests. No, no, I'm sure you do. Like someone was like, Oh, you're part of like, yeah, because I've just been so busy. And they're like, Oh, you're doing a part I was like, now these people asked months and months ago, they were like lucky them.

And I was like, Oh, well, thanks for following through. But yeah, I had no clue about the show at all until last night. And then I started watching it. And I got to talk to you.

I don't know, I watched so many in a row, like they just get saying, are you still watching? And I was like, yeah, of course, now. But the last one I watched, I think might have been, I can't remember what order they came in now. I think it was a dessert one, maybe.

Dessert. Yeah. That's about midpoint. That's where I was.

Okay, so I might have to do the episode of fashion. I can my wife came in and she's also a bartender, and she got into it. So then it's like, so we stayed up a little later. But and I talked to Kate before we started and said, you can't tell me what happened because I haven't got to the end yet.

But when I stopped, you were still alive. And so I have a few questions about it. First of all, like, how do you get approached to be on the show? Like as well as all the other bartenders on the show, all of you guys were awesome on it.

Like, no, so there was application I was scouted, I guess you would say I many, many moons ago did this incredible TV show called Bar Rescue. We'll skip that one. Yeah, one of the producers on that show is just an awesome human and over the years, still kind of kept in touch through Facebook. And they were he had been trying to do a show like this for years.

But what people don't realize is there's a lot of reasons why I show like this has never been done is like drinks aren't like food. We put a drink up, it immediately starts to die. Yeah. And filming takes forever.

So every angle, every shot and drinks get sweaty and they get grossed and they don't taste the same. And so it was a huge undertaking for them to figure out how they could really accomplish this. And what the other thing that people don't realize is like a drinking show is really hard because you can't you can't have like an old fashioned challenge, right? You don't want to be like, all right, everyone making old fashioned and 12 brown drinks go up.

It's not entertaining. It's not really tasted. People are like, cool. Same drink looks the same on every single way.

So it was a huge thing for them. So once they finally figured out that they could produce it, they reached out to lots of industry professionals and asked us to help them, you know, get people involved. I posted on my Instagram and my socials like, Hey guys, there's an application for the show. And they had asked me if I was interested.

I haven't competed in a very, very long time. So first I was like, you know, I'm old. I'm good. I don't really do competitions anymore.

I had talked to them a little bit about, you know, being a maybe a guest judge or but my staff and my, you know, the people that I had kind of post, I posted like, we're not doing this. And I was like, no, you know, so I just opened a bar and you know, we really wanted to get our name out there. We're in a smaller market. And my staff is very important to me.

And I really want this business to, you know, become their future. And honestly, I just kind of was like, man, this is, this is going to give us a lot of publicity and a lot of, you know, street cred. I should go do it. And when I talked to them about the diversity, you know, they, they agreed that not on my team, but like it was going to be very diverse cast and wasn't just going to be people from Chicago and New York.

And you know, the typical cities, I was like, yeah, let's, let's see what's out there and give it a go. Honestly, that's what I got. I was watching the show last night. I turned it on and they started introducing all the bartenders.

And I was like, why does that woman look familiar to me? And I was like, Oh, I think we're interviewing her this week. So then I got hooked, but I started watching it. But I actually think like, how did you know how they came up with the challenges?

Because it's kind of a hard thing to do. Like you mentioned with you can't do with just fucking old fashions or whatever. But I think they did an okay job with challenges that they came up with. Like it does put you in a situation where you're creating a bunch of different styles of drinks.

It does win emphasis on the cocktails, but also on the presentation. Like it's not the matters, right? You know, we were encouraged to make drinks, but also think outside of the boss and presentation, which was very important because these things have to be visual for people to hold on to it. Like I said, 12 brown drinks.

And the cocktails couldn't just be, you know, I just want to make a decor. And this way, you know, making old fashioned, like it had to be more than that. So, you know, going through it, there was that there was so many challenges for us and learning curves, but watching the show, I'm like, man, you know, we pulled it off and it looks really good. It can't go to really well.

Which challenge did you find the hardest? The pastry challenge. Yeah, that was fucking tough. Yeah.

Dude, you know, like here, how about have a bread piece of bread? Like here's a good song. Make a drink that tastes like a croissant. No one was fucking drinking croissant.

Exactly. That's what I was thinking. I was watching it. I was like, no one wants to drink.

No one like, you're kidding me. And like, you know, somebody other guys got like, you know, banana and like lemon meringue kind like, I can make a lemon sure. Give me the fucking lemon meringue pie. That was the easiest one to make a lemon.

Yeah. But no, like that was a little hard for me because I was like, okay, I don't really like sweet drinks anyway. So I was like, you want me to make a drink that tastes like bread and chocolate. And then you personally would never drink either.

Yeah. So that was that was difficult. And then, you know, towards the end, they wanted cocktails with stories about, you know, to represent you. And I don't, I don't make cocktails for myself.

That one was really hard for me. And they would always ask like, you know, make a cocktail that speaks about you. And I'm like, I make cocktails for guests. I want the guests to feel seen.

I very rarely sit down and think about myself in any of my drinking processes. I think about what would make a guest feel connected to something. So it's usually based through some type of nostalgia, TV, music, something that really makes people feel like they've been seen. So it was hard for me when they would, they would ask for cocktails with our stories because, you know, I was like, Oh, okay, cool.

Well, white girl from California. Yeah. Let me deep, you know, like, right. Yeah.

Early in the show. And I can't remember which contestant it was, but had done that thing with the Bo Dega style cocktail or whatever. It's like, okay, from New York, that makes sense. But like, yeah, white girl from California is a little more difficult to.

Yeah, I'm like, cool. Yeah, I got a lot of problematic shit. You want to. I can offend on TV.

Okay. Well, I was not the, you gave us that stuff about the show, but I do want to focus more on you. Yeah. We had to talk about that, obviously.

And that when I finished watching it later tonight, I'm going to message you and congratulate you or say good try. Yeah. Now that the local paper here published an article and I had told them like, because the guy didn't really binge it. And I was like, Hey, don't put anything in there.

And then they like did a headline and everyone comes into the bar. They're like, Oh, I, I've been, I've ruined it. I'm like, Oh, great. Yeah.

I'm not going to. Okay. So like, getting back to your bar. Let's talk a little bit about the concept behind your bar.

And are you still like, is it working behind the bars? Yeah, good for you. I'm older. So I said, my body is broken down.

I mean, I can't do that shit anymore. I'm definitely like, I'm just like, I used to, but Friday's and Saturday's, yeah, I'm usually, you know, in the bar behind the sick. The rest of the week, I don't ever say my staff is amazing. I don't have to be behind the bar, which is great.

But like, this, this last week with the show coming out, we're just dead. Like we open the doors to a line. And we've been on like quite literally an hour and a half to our weight. And then my, my staff is like, they're like, we're telling people an hour and a half thinking that they'll leave.

And they just say, okay. People on a way, two hours for a drink. And it's very, it's not about problem. I'm very, very full.

I'm incredibly honored that people want to come in. But we are just getting our asses. I went home Saturday night and was like, man, I haven't felt like this. And I'm very, very long time.

And I was just, exactly. When you go to bed, you can feel your heart beat in your pee. I'm having those nights. Well, we won't keep you much longer.

I just got a couple of questions. So you, so you're obviously still very involved in cocktail creation and the menu creation, I'm sure at the bar. What, like, what is your sort of philosophy on how to make a perfect cocktail list? So we, I don't think that I'm very anti perfect cocktail.

You know, my background is, is tastes in old factory and how the body works. And taste, what people keep forgetting is taste the subjective, you know, it has a lot to do with your genetics. It has to do with your male or female. It has to do with your culture, how you were raised here in New Mexico.

Everyone drinks, you know, has green chili, right? Like everyone has a very high threshold for spicy foods. I grew up in California. I don't.

So what's perfect for one person is not perfect for someone else. If you are diabetic, you will not taste the same as other people. You have much higher sensitivity to sugar. If you are a female, chances are you're much, much more sensitive to bitters.

And that's just inherent in our, because we are the baby makers and in nature, we taste things and we have to be very sensitive to bitters, which are toxins, which can, you know, obviously hinder childbirth or child rearing. So there's a lot of things I tell people all the time is like, there is no perfect cocktail because there's a, there's a middle ground, right, where you can get like the mass of people and kind of hit that palate. But some people, you know, grow up in cultures that eat a lot of sugar, like Americans. And we have a sweeter palate and you go to Europe and the drinks are more tart and they're drier.

I work all over in, you know, secondary tertiary markets. And we measure the sugar levels of all of our salad, all of our lemon juice and sours when we make them. And when I, consulting North Dakota, we would measure everything to around 26 bricks. When I consulted in Santa Cruz, we were down around 20, 2021 bricks, Californians eat a lot more healthy, they eat a lot less sugar.

So it really depends on where you're from. So for me, we have like 80 drinks on our menu, we're a cocktail bar at a distillery, we have a corrupt 10 of drinks, but there is no sweet spot for a perfect cocktail. For me, it's all about having balance on your menu. We have a drink that's, you know, it's like a cherry limeade, it's like literally tastes like a sonic cherry limeade.

I don't personally love the drink. It's one of my kind of sellers. Like people love that for drinking as much as I'm like, I don't love a drink of the love to take off the menu. I don't make drinks from my ego.

I want people just to feel happy and seen. And a lot of these people come in and they really like the nostalgia of having a cherry limeade that looks like a cherry limeade, you know, we serve in fresh ice and sonic ice and people get really excited. And that's what they want to drink and hula mita judge or tell them what they want to drink. So I don't, I don't think there's a perfect cocktail.

I think the perfect menu has diversity and you have boozy cocktails and you have white refreshing cocktails and you have tart cocktails and you have cocktails that are on the sweeter side. I will tell you that we do do things in our bar. When we first opened here in New Mexico, we were we started out about 24 bricks and right now we're sitting at about 22 or 21. So we try and gradually influence people's pallets where we started out and people be like, oh, this isn't sweet enough.

And then people come in the bar and they become regulars and we kind of like dial the sugar back as we go forward. And that changes because your palate can change as well. And that's how your palate tends to develop from sweeter to less sweet. So yeah, so we do that in markets where we'll we'll start here and we'll dial back.

But I think the most important thing that you do is you pay attention to your guests and you listen to them and you ask them how things are and then you know how to make drinks for your market. And then when I think that I tell me when I think you found like the perfect flavor profile, make sure you have something on your menu that is sweeter and make sure you have something that's more boob sword and make sure you have something that's you know that way people aren't I don't want my guests to feel like they're they're wrong for what they taste. I always teach chefs that or people in tasting classes when people will be like, oh, I don't know if it's right. I smell or taste banana.

I'm like, hey, if you smell or taste banana, then there's banana. Like I'm not going to jump inside your body and tell you it's not there. There's so many flavor components and conjuners and so many different things. You could very very significantly be registering something that you would just earn banana as well.

I just might not be sensitive to it. So I think it's more about learning how we taste and learning how drinks are made and learning what the average market is and then having things that are around that area as well. And you say it's also distillery. So what kind of liquor are you making there?

So we source imports to still everything. Everything that we do. So you know, we make our own absence. We make our own vodka.

We make our own gin. I source whiskey as I import agave spirits. I import sotol, bakanor, arsea, mezcal, and we import rums as well from the crema, we have a Jamaican rum, a rum from Venezuela. So we do all kinds of things and that actually is kind of one of the unique things about our bar is our bartenders have complete and total control over everything in the glass.

If they want a high rye cocktail, they go in the back and they pull from the barrels, they make the blend in the mash. Well, they want a barrel of rye with a barrel of corn with a barrel of wheat with a barrel of barley. We also have barrels of bourbon so they can go back and make their own blends. If someone wants a citrus for a wajin, they go to this still and they make a citrus for a gin.

If they want it proof to 45, they proof to 45. So every cocktail we have is literally designed from basically products to end result. That's amazing. That's a terrific concept.

That's awesome. So okay, we will keep any longer. You're fine. I appreciate it.

Okay, tell our listeners where they can find your bar and where they can find it on social media and then tell us maybe if you want to talk about your own personal social media as well. Yeah, sure. So the bar is in the Knob Hill neighborhood of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Instagram for the bar is Happy Accidents bar.

It was kind of born out of the pandemic. Happy accident. My grandma was a big fan of Bob Ross. One of the things about the bar is having a distillers license allows us to operate in a very, very different profit range than a lot of different bars.

All of our staff, it's a living wage. They all have access to health insurance, 100% mental health coverage. We try very hard to make sure that we are creating an equitable environment for our staff to thrive and it's not to be a pivot point for a job where they're getting somewhere else. So all of our bartenders are career bartenders.

We're 100% bartender owned. And that's kind of the business model that we really like to talk about the most. The distilling part is great and it's fun. But it allows us to kind of do things that a lot of bars can't do.

And it's not because bar owners don't want to provide equitable spaces for their staff. It's because we've never really figured out a way to do it. We've never really thought about, we have non-negotiables. We have things like rent and things we know we build in.

But the things that we don't actually are ever trained, I was never trained, is to build in health insurance is a non-negotiable. And it was just something that we kind of were like, okay, well, what if we just made it like rent? It's just something we have to do. And that's just kind of the way that we looked at it and wanted to make sure that our staff knew when they came in the door that this was something that was going to take care of them.

So yeah, that's kind of like our shfield. As for me, Alkam Estate is my Instagram. It's me. I don't like someone asked me out there, like, oh, does someone respond to this stuff for you?

I was like, no, if you look at my post, it's me. I'm a bit unfiltered. And I do talk a lot about just kind of my opinions and the industry and things that I think make it successful and things that I think are great about it. And then the things that I absolutely despise and hate about it.

So I have a lot of opinions, some of them weren't, and probably some of them not as well. You should have you thought about writing a book? I'm trying to put more on your plate. You should write a book.

I am a huge procrastinator. So it would take me, I would say probably 10 years to write a book. I also just kind of like, I blab a lot. So I think anything that happens comes out of my mouth and then just goes out into the air and then people are like, oh, this is cool.

And I'm like, yeah, it's got to go. You gotta take notes all the time. You just have to record your voice at all times. That's it.

I don't know. Watch myself on TV. I've only been able to watch the show once. And I everyone's like, you should watch it again.

I'm like, oh, watching myself and then hearing the things that come out of my mouth. I'm like, oh, she's such a bitch. Well, okay. We thank you so much for coming on the show specifically since you've reached a level of fame.

Before I reached our sense, I've reached out to you originally and you still came through and we've done you. So we really appreciate it. You're awesome. And I think that your concept for your body story is fucking amazing.

So keep doing what you're doing. And thanks for coming on. I appreciate you guys. Thanks so much.

Have fun. Stay warm. I live in Bismar Kata. It's cold up there.

I don't know. It's about to turn on us. All right. Thanks, Dave.

Thank you. Take care.