E134 Raven Mina and Elissa Dunn

This week is another two part episode. In the first part of the episode, we interview Raven Nina who joined us from Los Angeles, California. Raven got her start bartending in Riverside, California, while she was still in school. Raven originally worked as a servant bar back, but once she was given the chance to become a bartender and create cocktails, she fell in love with the craft, and you can now find her working at Death and Co.

in Los Angeles as well as Native Son. In the second part of this episode, the badass bartender, Elissa Dunn, returns for another chat. Elissa discusses her viral video success and how this adieu substantial increase in social media followers. Enjoy the show.

Okay, welcome back to another episode for the industry podcast. I'm your host, Kip Saunders. This is the producer extraordinaire, Dan Soretto, what's happening? I'm still awesome.

No real complaints there. That must be great for you. Yeah, it's a tasty fact. Thanks for coming with you.

Same old, same old, you know. Just living in a slightly post-COVID world of the service industry. So fun times, I've always. And we've done that traditional otherwise smash cut to winter, summer last week, this week.

Yeah, that's great. So we sold it around last week. It was about 20 Celsius. Now it's below zero.

Yeah. First of all, I've got to just get back from the trip back to Victoria. And I was like, why the fuck do I live in this? I'm not answering that question yet.

Yeah. So anyway, it is what it is. If you enjoy what we do here on the industry podcast, the best way that you can help us out is to subscribe, rate, and review the show. If you would like to be a guest or provide support for the industry podcast, you can do that on Instagram, DM at the industry podcast, or you can email us directly info at theindustrypodcast.clubclubclubclubclubclubclubclub.

The artwork is done by the fantastic Zach Hannah, Zach Hannah.co. We should check out him for all of your graphic arts and easy. It does an amazing job on our Instagram page. How would one go without finding you at one of your bars in town?

Well, if you're a downtown Kitchener, then you're going to want to go to Sugar Run. It's a speak easy in run bar. You're going to have to check our Instagram page. I should run bar to find out what the password is.

And then uptown, Babylon Sisters 1 and cocktail lounge is open presently. And we have some amazing stuff coming up there as well. So check that out. That's uptown Waterloo, Babylon Sisters bar on Instagram.

Perfect. And as always, I'll have links there. We talk about the show notes. I always check that for reference in case you're wondering what it is.

Well, enough about us. Let's get to our guest Ravenminas about to join us right now. Hi, Raven. Hi, guys.

I'm good. How you doing? Pretty good. Thanks for coming on the show.

Appreciate it. Yeah, so you're coming to us from LA. Yeah. Oh, my God.

I'm so sorry for you guys. You guys are Canada, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know for how much longer, but. Right. You guys got to go south of the winter, man.

I know. But then we have to then there's the whole dumpster fire that is the US political system right now. Oh, yeah. Exactly.

A little turmoil. Good job in the midterms. Oh, yeah. We'll see how it goes.

Thank you. Well, I said, if America is Budweiser, Canada is Budlight. So we're not far off. That's true.

But it's not right around the corner. Yeah. OK, so let's talk a little bit of we don't need to talk so much about weather and politics. There's about five million podcasts about those.

Right. So let's talk about bartending. How did you first get into the service industry? You know, I was 21 years old.

I was going to school to be a nurse. I'm like, yeah, I'm part of the Latinos. And my dad was always like, you have to be in the medical field. And I started waiting tables at this quaint little crash cocktail spot in Riverside.

And I just kind of like worked my way up. And I became a bartender. I just stopped going to school when I am now. Yeah.

You started off waiting tables a day. It was one day they just kind of threw you behind a bar. Or you had been trying to get there. You know, I found like an interest in it.

You know, and we had a couple like bartenders that just like wanted to do other stuff. So they left the company and we needed bartenders really badly. So they threw me behind the bar. It was far back.

I wanted to do it. And then also like just like that time crunch of like we need a bartender. Yeah. So I kind of like, I don't know, it was like a really like what is it?

Seeker's swim moment. But yeah, it worked out. I was bartending there within that year. And I know sometimes people bar back for like forever, you know?

So I was really lucky to like be able to be promoted that quickly. And they were already doing pretty high end craft cocktail stuff there. Yeah. So the bar that I worked for at Riverside, the guy who owns it.

His family is like they supply the produce for it. And so they were already like a pretty like, yeah, they're like a wealthy family. So he wanted to open up his own bar and restaurant. So he had already opened up a restaurant and he's like, you know what?

I want to open up a coffee bar. He paid death and co like for priors to come down and teach all of his bartenders and like all of his staff, like how to do everything. So he like had death and co like behind kind of like his business at first. So we were already doing like that level in Riverside or what we were trying to.

Was it back off? So it's called W will skill. Okay. And so that's kind of like if you're just like, like I can imagine you're just sort of you know, bar back and so often this is how it works.

Like you kind of end up at your job by accident because they just get somebody right away, but it's kind of for not having any bartenders before that and then getting into that kind of level of service. It's almost like drinking out of a fire hose. Yeah. I wanted to explode with all the stuff I was learning, you know, and then creating cocktails was also like really wild that first year, you know, because they wanted us to get stuff on the menus.

And I think we had like a 12 during cocktail menu at time. And I'm just like throwing everything like by the kitchen sink in and I'm like, does this work? And like of course it didn't, but I figured it out by trial and error. So they worked out.

But yeah, so I worked there for a while. And then I ended up working at like a nightclub bar down the street called the lobby. And then from there, one of my good friends from the U of skill told me that there was an opening for specifically a female bartender at Death and Go. And you know, Riverside is only like, I could go an hour away from LA or from the bar.

So I was commuting from Riverside to LA for about six months or so, just to sort of death and go, but I'm closer now like 30 minutes away. So how was the traffic for that hour drive? Oh, dude, it was pretty bad. Pretty bad.

But you know, it wasn't as bad as going the other way because as I was going into LA, everybody was coming out. So there was that also when you're coming home, it's like fucking two in the morning, right? Yeah, so I was like, yeah, flying down the freeway. But yeah, there was nobody on it, which is nice, like no traffic.

So just titles in the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. So like so when you say they were specifically looking for a female bartender, why was that?

They had no other female bartenders. Like they were all men. Yeah. So like they actually, the female bartenders, they had a quit.

So they were like, oh, we need to find another one. I just think that they need, they need to be more women behind bars. You know, I think that definitely needs to have another one. We're hiring right now.

So I'm hoping that we'll hire another female bartender. We interviewed this a long time ago now. So I might fuck this up. But Alex, who is the head bartender or was the head bartender at Death and Go in?

Denver. And I think she was involved in some of the training for the original Death and Go LA when we were surprised Denver opened before LA. Yeah. Yeah.

So there's definitely female bartenders in the other locations, but in LA, I'm like the new one. Yeah. To the say, how big is the location? Like how many seats do you have or how many people you think you have?

I don't know. On the top of my head, I can tell you we do have two different rooms. So we have like a standing room, like a receiving room where you can go in and just like your normal bar, you can like order, just stand around and wait for your seats in the other bar, which the other bar is reserved seating only. Like you have to sit in your seat, you can't stand in the aisle way, but they're just standing out.

Yeah. And then like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know, like maybe like 100 people, something like that. And how did you find now? So when you, I mean, I guess you got thrown in the fire a little bit at the first bar. How did you find it when you went to Death and Go LA?

Like was it was a transition easier because they had sort of used Death and Go for the previous bar as well? Yeah, definitely. So like going to like Wolf's Scale to Death and Go was definitely, I mean, there was some adjustment because things were a little bit more strict like that we had the leaning on, but other than that it was pretty seamless. Like I jumped behind the bar and there was just a few things that they like had me correct.

And also it's super dark in there. So everything is just lit by candlelight. And I'm literally like holding the jigger so close to my face, just to pour. But that's my kind of bar.

I always say that when I build my bars, I want it to look so dark in there that you don't know what your Tinder date looks like till you wake up next morning. That's us. That's exactly it. But yeah, so it does make it a little bit challenging when you're behind the stick.

But yeah, the adjustment wasn't bad at all. That can be a little bit when you were at Wilf's. Where's my saying that, right? Wilf's skill.

Not even close. Wilf's skill. You know, like W. Are William Wilf's skills?

So he was a citrus proprietor back in the early 1800s in the Riverside County area in Los Angeles. So that's what we need to name the bar after. And so you said that you were involved in some of the cocktail creation, their cocktail design for the menu. Yeah.

Like having a pretty much zero bartending experience before you jumped into that situation, how did you find that process? Like, I know where you're involved in menu creation. Oh, man. You know, I like to think of myself as a very creative person.

So it was a really cool outlet. It was a lot of fun. The mentor that I had there, like, he kind of like gave us like, you know, just a way to structure everything. He like, he broke it down in like a circle.

He was like, OK, this is like your base. This is like your flavor. This is what you want to achieve, right? So what complements this flavor that you're trying to achieve?

Like, is it going to be rum, vodka, gin, like what bolsters that flavor? So he kind of like really helped us narrow it down because it was me and I think a couple other people that got promoted relatively quickly. But he gave us like some more sheets and he was like, right down in your head, like the specs for your cocktails, bring him to me. And before we even create anything, like I'll tell you if that makes sense.

And you know, like when you're creating cocktails, like usually you can imagine how it's going to bounce out before you even make it. Like once you get to that level. But yeah, like I was definitely just throwing some stuff into the fire and it wasn't working out at first. At the beginning, like you're right, I just heard pal developed.

And I always say like cocktail creation is like playing tennis, right? You got to keep doing it every day or you're going to lose it a little bit, right? Like you, so when you have to be getting it's like, well, I don't know, it sounds like peanut butter and lemon juice would go together great. I've never seen anyone else do that.

Yeah, for sure. I wonder why. Yeah. But then as you get better at it, like that sort of what goes together in the drink becomes more natural to you, right?

It does. Yeah, it's like you don't even have to worry about it. But it is funny how that develops. But it is at the beginning.

It's kind of like, well, I don't know why don't want to start this combination before. Yeah, and then you find out. Yeah, there's a reason why certain combinations are being used over and over and over again, right? Yeah, I remember like the first time I used butter's like, oh, cool, it'll be like, you know, it's purple.

It looks like it's going to be sweet. No, that's just a vegetable as fuck. Yeah, yeah. I was like, oh, this is not what I thought it was.

But like the color was nice, you know? Yeah. It was like all the crazy back then. Where do you think this is going now?

Like based on just what we just been talking about, like how there's only certain, there's only a certain number of flavor combinations that are actually going to go together well in a cocktail. And I got to figure out how we've used them all. I think about that all the time. Like there's no originality left, right?

Or like, or whoever can think of like, what's the next best thing? Like, I don't know, like we're coming up with stuff like the flavor blaster now, you know, things that are like going to like elevator cocktails. Like, are you familiar with parks and recreation? Yeah.

So they go to this bar in there and there's like a, they like start selling stuff like vodka in the form of a vapor. Like, I have to wonder if that's what's next. Like, is it going to be like a patch that we throw on our skin that has like alcohol in it or something? It's just like, this is like green.

Yeah. And stuff like cocktail. It's like, well, it's like, I feel a little bit drunk, but it tasted nothing. Yeah, I can't help but wonder if that's where we're going.

And I don't know, I don't know how I feel about it. But I think that what we're doing now is what we can. I think we've, I don't know, I hate to say that I think we've kind of exhausted most of the avenues. And like you got to assume something else is coming coming molecularly or something, right?

That we can do something with. But I think my theory is this, the combination of the fact that we're running out of flavor combinations that have been previously attempted and the pandemic where everybody who started doing cocktails on Instagram has changed the game. So now it's all about presentation and much less about what how the drink actually tastes. Right, definitely.

It's more aesthetic. We're doing like glassware. Glassware is like taking on a whole new level. I've seen like little bathtubs, like people put cocktails in the little tiny bathtubs and like little rubber duckies in it.

And I'm like, all right, cool. Like, presentation is everything. We just put a bunch of beers in a big bathtub. So I guess.

Yeah, there you go. Just in the bathtub. Yeah. But yeah, like, did you have your watch that show, Drink Masters on Netflix?

I have it now. Okay, so it just came out. We just found it about it. I've been talking about it a lot lately.

Basically, America's Taps, we have four bartenders. Yeah, it's actually a school to watch. And it's like, I'm not a reality show guy. So I never really watched it something all the way through.

And it totally, they do all the thing where they play with your emotions, trying to get hooked very easily. But. So they have like a Dave Navarro guy coming in, like, you know, like an Ink Master, you know what I'm talking about? No, I don't.

Like an expert come in and judge. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like what I found about it was like that's going through the competition.

Like, so much of it was based on the look of the drink instead of like how like, and they went there. And I'll try and I'm in there. It's like, oh yeah, it was very balanced or whatever. I'm like, yeah, I'm sure these are some of the best bartenders in the world and I don't know how to make cocktails, but it was very presentation forward.

Now, and again, it's a TV show. So I guess they need that. But it just seems like the trend that we're heading towards more and more. OK, yeah, I agree.

But yeah, so what's the next aesthetic thing? Like how, you know, like we can figure it out. And pinpoint it. Maybe we can sell it to like every basis or something.

Yeah. So when you're are you involved in like the development of the like, how is Death and Go LA as a boat? Like as a bar when there comes to like menu development, is everybody involved? Or is there like four more head bartenders that handle it?

I also want to say like that. The coolest way I've ever worked at. Like I want to work at like this like a third, fourth bar, I worked at. But like everything is so organized, dude, the walk in, like you go in there and like everything is labeled and like lined up.

We have like these spouts that were up for a bad just to be full. But yes, it's answer your question. Yeah. So everybody, every bartender is included in the menu making processor cocktails.

I remember I first started there last year in July. And I had a cocktail in the menu for the winter that year. They're very inclusive for like all their bartenders. Like off the bat, they want you to create something.

We try to like get it going like three months in advance. We're actually changing our menu tomorrow. So we just, yeah, we just finished that for winter. We get everything going through them in advance.

We have like a ever know, like we have a wireframe. We try to get everybody's ideas and throw them all together. And we have like a 30, 40 drink cocktail menu. It's very extensive.

So we want to make sure that everything is we have every cocktail represented, you know, on that on that menu. We're going to flip it. Everybody's involved. And we all like kind of get together in the meeting.

And we have the lead bartender and the general manager come together and they taste our cocktails and they give us notes and they adjust it how they see it. Yeah, we're talking about this in the day. I really like that collaborative approach to cocktail creation because everybody does have different palettes, right? So somebody else might taste really something to do.

It's a different person, but you're going to get all kinds of palettes coming into the bar, right? Yeah, definitely. And we do. It's so funny.

Like some people will just hate one drink and love the other. But yeah, like it tastes very subjective. Like from a scientific standpoint, you know, some people think cilantro tastes like soap versus like some people think it tastes like something else, you know? So just with that being a basis for anything, like, of course, we're going to have people that don't like certain things.

The cocktail creation, I think it was really fun. And it's very, it's very like a clean cut, you know what I mean? Like we don't really do like that whole like aesthetic, like trying to fit things in every glassware. We do everything very traditionally.

So I'm trying to say like every, yeah, you know what I mean? Like we don't try to be like too crazy with our garnishes as well. Like we want like the flavors to like, I know, I would say like the most. So like a certain like a stir drink that's like second to a Manhattan or an old fashioned or something is going to go in like that classic kind of glass every time.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We don't really have any back to little stuff, but you know, maybe one day. We'll see. Keep up with everybody else, you know, like a little stall shower.

Yeah, exactly. You know, something that the cocktail glass shaped like a toilet, I guess. I see those man. I think it's really, yeah.

And there's like one with like a bird within the straw comes out of its butt. And it's like, I don't know. You want to drink because that's all of a bird. Yeah.

I don't know, man, because making these up. I feel like that affects your palate. You just already prepared for some. Yeah.

You drink with your eyes for it. OK, so talk to us about this other brand you're working at as well. Yeah. OK, so native son, they are great.

So the company started in Santa Ana, I believe, and they opened up another location in Rancho. And we just opened up an LA when I'm a part of that. I worked at the Rancho one for a while. My mentor from W Wolf's Hill from Riverside.

He is the lead bartender at native son. And that's how I found. Yeah, so it's all connected. That's all I found out about it.

And they're they're a great company. Everybody who works there is just so cool. Like their hiring process is really fun. So when I applied to work there, the owner himself comes down and he like sits in with the interview and they go around and they're like, I want you to draw a picture of your favorite cocktail.

And you basically get a sharpie in a paper and you just draw whatever, you know, your favorite cocktail is the moment you go around and you talk about it. And just from that, they can tell like, OK, like, this person know what they're talking about. Are they putting like chocolate in a mojito and like, oh, and some other pickled juice or something? You've got to be at the same time.

So they really hold it on like the bartending aspect in that way. And then they ask you to act out a scene, which is very, yeah. Yeah. So he was like, OK, we're going to have a scene and we're going to have you acted out.

And then afterwards he explains that, you know, in the service industry, you kind of have to do a little acting, you know, because if you come in, you know, you're in a bad mood, you have to put on your butt, that face and you have to everything is pretty and everything's fine to serve all the guests. You don't want to be a divvy owner, you know, on your shit. But yeah, that's good. And like I would say it's like probably 80% acting at the other day, especially when you're busy, right?

Like, so that's actually a good way of going back. Because then you're at least ensuring that somebody knows how to fake it if they need to. And yeah, because it's one of my biggest issues of my bars all the time is coming in and finding the staff in a bad mood. And you can see it all over their face and it affects the whole team, which does.

And or if they're like stressed out because they're in the weeds, right? Like exactly. Yeah. We're all going to be able to read on that.

You know, I was worse. It's easier for me to say that I'm on the ownership. Yeah. I can complain about it more when I was actually bartending.

Yeah. How do you find time to work at two bars? Like this is hard to schedule around or just. So the great thing about I think they have a set schedule.

So you always know. Yeah. So it's my schedule. I think I right now I'm working three days a week.

It's Monday, Wednesday, Saturday in stone, unless like, you know, I want to swap a ship with somebody or something. I pick up shifts like here and there from there. And then I need to have some that's like the little bit more random one now. So I just kind of block off my ability for the three days.

I think I'll and I just let them have rain on like whatever other days they want. But as of right now, since we just opened, I am having like one day off a week, which kind of sex, but it'll work out. You know, I just got a new car. So I have to like pay that off the car came in now.

I think one day off a week is just good for your mental health rate. And it's all right. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. The car will get paid off. Yeah. Now, I was thinking of the one day off.

When you're buying, you mentioned to play Dungeons and Dragons. How you doing about that? Are you creating a schedule? All right.

So like I always like that's like my number one, right? Like I'm like, OK, I have to have Thursday nights off. So like in my availability, so I don't work Thursday nights at death and coke. I don't think I've ever covered other things either.

Like if anybody asked me, like, I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, I got plans, you know, they don't know for what. But yeah, they'd be right now. But yeah, and then like a native I just like put my ability that I'm willing to work the lunch shift. And then I just can't work nights.

I mean, you know, on Thursday night. Just for then, then dragons and then I have Sunday nights, usually off like the whole day or stuff. Day and night. OK, so like I'm old.

So when I played Dungeons and Dragons, when I was like a kid and it was like a bunch of dudes, very nerdy guys sitting around in a circle in their parents basement. So are you playing it online or do you get together with people? Yeah. OK, so when we started playing, it was in 2020, in the pandemic and we're on lockdown.

So it gave us like a way to pass the time, you know, something look forward to every week. So we started then and we were doing it one night a week then and we started online. There was this site called Astral Tabletop, which no longer exists. They just shut it down like a few months ago, which is that.

So we're using that and we just moved over to another site called Foundry. So we're using that online and then you can have your like D&D sheets online as well for your players. So yeah, so we're we're online. We'll do like a Discord call and we don't do the face to face thing.

Like how we're doing right now. We just have the audio on and we just like all get together in the chat room. And then we just we like we have a map online, which is really cool. So you can see your character moving on the map.

Right. And these people you knew previously or just met them through doing this. So actually I met. So the old the old dungeon master we had, he was in the back of house at Wolf's scale and Riverside as we talk early.

Everything's all connected. But yeah, so I met him because he was one of the chef in the back of house and he was like, OK, we're on there. And he was like, Oh, yeah, I'm starting this new D&D campaign and like, do you want to be in it? I'm looking for people.

I'm never D&D or DM'd before. And I was like, yeah, I've always wanted to play since I was in high school, but I never had like enough friends or anybody who was interested to play. So I'll like tell you how dude. So like, you know, we were talking about it, but it wasn't until like the pandemic that we were actually able to do it.

And it was mostly just so he picked me up and then he had his best friend join and like one of his friends that he met on Xbox that was in Florida and and another friend that he had from high school. So it was mostly like it was just me and a bunch of dudes that I only knew one of them, but it ended up being really fun. And you know, like we actually just are old DM. We actually like he's at the group now, which is a bunch of drama.

And we know it was D&D drama. But you know, but yeah, so we brought in this other gold chick that I met because she's like she was like one of our chef's girlfriends who plays. And so she we brought her in. It's been fun ever since.

Like it's been really cool. It's a it's a cool thing to do like once a week and to get away from everything. How long did this last online? Oh man, like so we try to start around like 9 30 and we'll go usually until like 1 a.m.

or 1 30 morning. Yeah, so it's a while. Well, it's a rather short D&D game when I did play. No, they're never.

Yeah, but it is very easy to get caught up in them, right? So that's like the time flies. It does. And you kind of sometimes you don't want it to end.

You're like, I'm mad. Is it already one 30 thing? Are you sure you can't go the longer? And you know, I'm a bartender.

So I'm used to be up that late. Yeah. Everybody else lives like you normal nine to five and they're like falling asleep and shit. Like, all right.

Yeah. That's fine. OK, so when you're like, develop, we'll go back into bartending now. Well, like what would you say the philosophy for death and go is for cocktail menu creation?

Because I was like to ask our guests this about like, yeah, like what? What is the most important thing that goes into making a perfect cocktail list? Oh, like I really I think that they like to have everything represented. So we have on our menu, we have about four different pages.

And on each page, I think we have about eight cocktails or so. So on each page, like on the first one, it's like fresh and lively, which is like at the beginning of the menu, it's going to be very light cocktails, like sours and stuff like that, you know, refreshing stuff. And then as you progress to the back, it gets stronger. So like, like we'll have like all of our really strong drinks and back, like old basins, like Manhattan's like stuff that's going to be more like assertive.

And it's like, boozy flavor. But yeah, we just we want to make sure that on each page, there's like a diversity of not only like flavors, but a different spirits. There's something for everybody. So I think when we approach like, you know, we really want like all that different stuff, like we'll have something like savory.

We'll have something like it's going to be very like citrus forward or like juicy, you know, Michael on every death and go menu is I just want to put something weird. Like, you know, and they sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. But yeah, like I just I love weird stuff. Like I want to make something really weird about it.

But we definitely just want very like balanced, awesome cocktails, like all the flavors really shine. I would say. Nice. Sorry.

How old are you? Right. 28. 28.

So you're supposed to be very young. So like, what do you see for your future? You just keep wanting like, do you want to keep moving on and just bartending? Or like, are you looking to move into more of a management or ownership side?

Or like, and I'm just saying, I'm asking this because I think I thought for up until I was probably in my mid to late thirties that I was eventually going to go do something else. I was working in the service industry. And then, but I loved, I loved to travel and it was the best way to do it. It was like, you can work anywhere and you can make money pretty quickly.

And then next thing I knew, I was like old and I was like, fuck it. That's how I'm going to career. Right. Yeah.

I know it's like the impending noon is upon me. Yeah. You got some time. You got some time.

Yeah. No, I think that's something I've been thinking about lately too, is like, I first my third season, like I never really saw myself doing this for like forever, like a long time. I think like it can be really hard in your body. So I don't see myself doing it probably past like 40, like maybe 35, you know, like bartending behind the stick managing.

I feel like I could probably do. But yeah, so I'm not really sure. You know, I'm just kind of thinking how does I go? I think I feel like that Dan would probably agree with me.

Is that like one thing we just got ever done since we started doing this show is that like the way you can make money off the service industry as a career has expanded like so much. Like we talked to so many people who now they're just into consulting and they just have a consulting business or they are their authors or they're doing online classes or this they're on TV shows, right? Like it's not like like when I grew up in the industry, like there was no chance you could be a fucking Instagram bartender. Right.

Yeah. Now that's a full-time job for people. Yeah. At least it comes on all the time on the show.

And that's basically what she does now. She has, she works sometimes in a bar, but the majority of the money she makes is from being an Instagram bartender. Like that was never even a world that I could consider. And then your body does have to break down.

And then you're like, well, for me, it was like, well, I better get into either ownership or find something fucking else to do. Yeah. No, for sure. Yeah.

Definitely not. Like I, I don't know. I always really like science too. And like sometimes I like play with the notion of like going back to school, but I also don't want to like rack up student debt.

Like, you know, that's like another thing here. But yeah, so it's just like a lot of things that I, you know, on my mind, that I'm worried about career wise. Uncle Joe's trying to forgive all that debt for you. Yeah.

No, right. I better start now then. Yeah. It's like now.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Raven, this was super fun.

We really appreciate you coming on and wish you all the best and tell us about tell our listeners how they can find you on social media or wherever they need to follow. So I'm on Instagram under Zen reason, Aussie and raising like a dry grape. Yeah. You can find me on there.

Yeah. I just mostly post like nerdy stuff, funny memes. I work out. I do cross it.

So like I post like cross it stuff. Yeah. If any of those things interest you, give me a follow. Awesome.

Well, thanks again. We really appreciate you coming on. And best of luck. Thank you so much for having me guys.

It was nice to meet you. Good luck out there in Canada with the weather. I'm sorry. Yeah.

We're all sorry about it. Yeah. Okay. That's pretty much.

Thank you guys. And now for the second part of the episode with the bad ass bar gender. Oh, what's it done? And now we are joined once again by a Lisa, the bad ass bartender.

Thanks for coming on the show again for our little monthly spot here. How are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Wonderful. Thanks for coming out. Yeah.

What's new? I hear you really spike your followers recently with a video that you post it. So tell us about that. Yeah, I did.

So I it's honestly kind of like it's good and bad. So the video that went viral, you know, on Instagram, like 11 million hits on TikTok got a couple million as well. I went out about 50,000 followers in like a month. It was literally just a like 13 second video of me pointing to bottles of tequila.

So the video the video just starts with me. Like you just see me and I just point up and the text just drinking these tequila. And it was constantly go, you know, constantly goes done with the 1942 classes. Well, during these and said, and like I didn't say anything.

It's just me pointing the pictures of bottles of like, which tequila you should. And 11 million hits and 50,000 brand new followers. So it was a 13 second video that I didn't even that all the way to point. That's crazy.

What do you think? What do you think the reason behind that is? I think, you know, I purposely put the stock drinking and I purposely put those three tequilas. Like it was really it was really me fishing.

It wasn't really me trying to educate anyone. I didn't put a reason behind it. I wanted the video to be quick. I think, you know, you have to think of social media.

You are you are marketing your marketing yourself. So sometimes you have to put those things that are going to that are going to catch people that maybe aren't as educational and they're not really putting your whole thing, but you just got to catch on so that they can then follow you and see all your other stuff that's very educational. So yeah, I mean, if you think that for sure it was because I said, like the stop, you're drinking these. I put those three main ones, which are the biggest, you know, tequilas right now on the market in at least in America.

And I didn't put any reason behind it. And I swear at least like three quarters of the comments are just people going, why, why, why, but it pushed it that much forward. That, you know, the more people comment, the more views it's going to get, the more it's going to get pushed out there. So literally just because three quarters, because someone typed why or question, Mark, it got to 11 million.

Now, what will tag the video? What kind of different types of normal use or no? No, not really. Nothing.

Yeah. You know, it's funny that I saw somebody posted today on Instagram that like with all the fake Twitter accounts that are happening now, somebody did a fake pass amigos. They're making real tequila. I was posted that.

That's what I thought. We called on our we called those are bill paying tequilas. Right. Yeah.

Because even at my bar, we have an excellent selection of tequils that we do have those three main ones. And I always start out when someone's looking for a tequila recognition. I always start out like the Don Philano before to Leza. Here's a tequila.

Oh, and you know, they just glazed over and I go, or we can do the constantly constantly. It's got to be like, that's fine. You're paying my bills. That's fine.

That's fine. I know it's funny. I like there's so much name recognition for a cast of me goes and what's the new one that the rock? Oh, Terra mana.

Yeah, which is not very good. Yeah. No, I mean, it's, I think it's a little bit better than the other ones that he is trying to be a little bit more sustainable with his approach, but inevitably, you know, he's still doing the added ins and all that kind of stuff. And so.

I think when we were talking earlier, it's about the something that always been peppy for me is when guests are reaching into your garden. I was like, well, yeah, we had, I remember we had one at Sugar Run and she was like, she just case, she's literally opened up like it was sealed, a sealed thing of cherries or some sort of fruit. Just opened it up on the bar and started eating like they were bar snacks. And I was like, what are you doing here?

These are not, these are garnishes. I put these into people's drinks. You don't have to like it's like what it was me. You know, it's something that, you know, inevitably when you're a bartender, you're going to have that happen.

Someone wants to grab an extra line. They want to grab a straw. They want to grab this. They want to grab that.

And to a certain extent, I think when it's little things, maybe not the lines or like any type of food or fruit, but you know, people want to grab and unfortunately our bar, the way it's set up, we just don't have a place to put our garnishes and stuff like underneath where people can't get them. We have our kind of station really kind of in the bar. So yeah, I was serving this lady and her husband. She was clearly a little bit intoxicated, but nothing too bad.

And you know, she orders a drink and I go to make her husband drink and I turn around and I noticed she had a margarita or something and all of a sudden I noticed her cocktail has, you know, our nice little dardo cherries in it. And I was like, well, how did those get put them in there? And so I go to make her husband drink and I turn around and go check them out and I can like feel her looking to see if I'm paying attention or not. And I turn around really fast and I tell you she had her whole hand.

There wasn't just like a, and these cherries don't have stems or anything. So she had her whole knuckle deep and then we'll put them to her mouth. Directly. And I thought everything I do and I walked right up to her and I'm so ma'am, do you think it's a good idea to put your bare hands in my cherries?

Because now I just wrote this whole thing out and you just see the video. I mean, it just couldn't have been more perfect. You just see the video of me like dumping the whole thing into the dump sink and I'm like, I'm just gonna rage and be like stepping home. I never like I can't understand that.

Like the way people behave the bars is just amazing to me compared to like how they would behave at like a house party or like at their own house or if they were just over for dinner party at a friend's house, like it's just you would never do. But when you're in for some reason, when you're in a bar, you feel like you can do to do anything like I've had people spinning on my floors like, what are you doing? I think and this is what I told when I because I did get interviewed by Newsweek for they actually found this video because it did go a little bit viral. It's an article about it.

What I told them and I still feel this when people come in to an establishment, when they are a paying guest, they feel like we've paid now. We can do whatever we want. We paid our money. So now it's we're free.

Yeah. We are those cherries. If we were those cherries, we are this if we want that, you know, whether it's stealing glassware, I've had people try to steal my bar tools and, you know, different things like that. I don't understand that they think that because they're paying, they get whatever they want.

One, that's not how it works. And we were talking about this last week, I think on the podcast, but it doesn't, it also doesn't seem to carry over to like if they're paying for something somewhere else. Like if they go to the grocery store, they don't behave that way. We were talking with Kekur and about the birthday thing where people are like, Oh, it's my birthday.

What do you do for birthdays at the bar? And I would always be like, well, I don't know what they do for you at the grocery store today. Did you get like free bread? Yeah, it never ceases to amaze me.

But like there's something about, I'm obviously part of it's the alcohol, but like, but yeah, there's a sense of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

There's just this very like, and it doesn't help that, you know, where I work is a very affluent area. So I'm sure they're used to kind of that more of that treatment. So when they're coming in, I don't know if we spend a lot of time actually talking about the bar that you work in to tell our listeners about the bar so they can come see you when they're in. Yeah.

Yeah. So they're technically located in Sottsdale, but Phoenix and Sottsdale, you know, they're all together. So it's the oldest cocktail lounge in Phoenix. It's called Merck Bar and ERC Merck Bar.

It's kind of like, speak easy. Very like when you walk in, you feel like you're almost in like so, New York. Their first bar, their first Merck Bar was actually in so, New York and this was kind of their second location. The one in New York has its close.

But yeah, we've been almost, it's almost 30 years. They've been open. Wow. That's amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. It was a, we interviewed somebody recently from Phoenix who had just opened their own bar there as well. Oh, that was Kim Hesteruth.

Yeah. Do you know Kim Hesteruth? No, nice. So there's two bars to check out if you're in the Phoenix area.

Also tell our listeners one more time on where they can follow you because it sounds like you're really hurting for followers. Yeah. You can find me at the.ask.bar. And stay tuned to right here at the industry podcast.

Lisa's going to be coming on about monthly to do some of these little segments, but my schedule is fucked up. So we'll see how we're trying. We're trying. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks again. It's always a pleasure. Enjoy your evening.

Oh, wait. Before I let you go, are you watching that drink master show? Of course. I binge watched it as soon as I could.

Yeah. Because I was only like halfway through. I was only like half way through. I was like, I'm happy to know.

Okay. I know. I know. Yeah.