E155 Danielle Crowley

This week's guest is Daniel Crawley, who joins us from Whisper BC, a very passionate and creative bartender. Danny is originally from Aurora, Ontario, and has been in the industry for over a dozen years now. Danny has worked in multiple facets of the industry firm, golf courses, cafes, nightclubs, train travel service, and everything in between. Danny has also started competing in cocktail competitions and was crowned the Jafard West Cup Canadian National Champion, and was a semi-finalist at the Azure World Class.

Currently, Danny is bartending at the Raven Room, a craft cocktail bar in Whistler. Make sure you check out Danny Online on Instagram at drinkingwithdanny, and Danny is spelled to the A&I, and at theravenroom.ca, or check the show notes for the links. Enjoy the show. Okay, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast.

I'm your host, Kip. This is producer extraordinaire, Dan. What's going on? You know, another day at the Salt Mine.

So, okay, complain. Yeah. And it's the best, apparently. I don't know what to do.

Good. We finally got that fucking pub open. So, yeah. I was going to pre-week it.

It was delightful. Yeah. Cambridge is a scene. Yes.

But we had a good turn out for Friday and Saturday night. Everything went relatively smoothly, a couple of pickups to be expected. But aside from that, it's nice to have money coming into your bank account instead of just flowing out. So, that was exciting.

Nice. Congratulations. Yeah. And now people can stop listening to me bitch about the fire.

But I go, well, I'll tell you something. I will be a problem. I'm next week. I'll be just be bitching about employees.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, that is the Argyle Arms Pub.

It is open in Cambridge. Now we're going to be open Wednesday to Sunday every week. Come check it out. Great food by Chef Dennis Hernandez, H86.co is the name of his company.

So, you're going to want to come back that out. We can have live music every weekend Friday and Saturday night. Stay tuned to your hours. Well, we're starting flex right now.

We're going to be opening at 4 p.m. till whenever people leave. We may be open for lunches in the foreseeable future. So, check it out though.

You can follow us at Argyle underscore Arms underscore 2023 on Instagram. I think I got that right. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. Thanks.

Thanks. Somebody has to look after me. In addition, I'll tell you I want to do check out Babylon Sisters as at Babylon Sisters bar on Instagram. Lots of fun exciting events coming on there, including DJ Bain every Friday night.

And then Sugar Run at Sugar Run bar downtown Kitchener. That's the speak easy. Follow us on Instagram to figure out what the password is and see if you can find us and then check out the events that are happening there. We have burlesque the last Friday of every month.

You don't want to miss that. That's sassy Ray burlesque at Top Shelf burlesque Super Show. So check that out. Perfect.

I do have to say one big thank you to a former guest of ours on episode 144. We had Steph Suley's and we had our party for our retiring CEO last week. And I used her business non non treats to make a cookie for everyone. Go in there.

Yeah, we had our CEO as the incredible whole for them screaming image. So it was worked out great. We said wonderful. I said, thank you to them.

That made everyone laugh. That's great. And while we're doing it to thank us, we should say thank you to Zachana as that Canada.co for the artwork he does on Instagram. That's that AKH a double N a H dot C O.

You want to hit him up for all your graphic arts needs and if you like the show, subscribe, rate review that helps us out tremendously. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, it's info with the industry podcast club or you can DM us at the industry podcast on Instagram. I think that's pretty much all the has keeping. Oh, yeah, I should have driven off about 90% of it.

It's just people that fast forward button. All right. 30 seconds 30 seconds 30 seconds. Okay, so enough about us.

Let's talk it to Danielle Crowley. How are you? I'm great guys. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for doing it. Nice to come on the show. I'm jealous. What's the deal with Whistler in the summer?

Like is the bar still busy in the summer? Is it mostly just like a winter too? Really? And of course, this year in the winter, but it's a frickin zoo and it's starting to be.

We've had the weather graces with some beautiful sunshine all of May. So our summer's come early and it definitely shows with an amount of tourists here already, which is great because this is usually downtime for us. We actually typically close for two weeks in May. We somehow decided not to do that.

It worked out in our favor because the weather's been great. We've had people visiting and we've been busy, busy, which is it's awesome. It's awesome. It's what we want.

Yeah. So you guys, like when you say the next weather, you guys have a patio? Is that helpful or? Yeah, we do.

Which is awesome. So inside the restaurant is about 65 seats and then that doubles once you go outside. And we do have a covered area and lots of fireplaces and heaters for the winter. People love to just apprehens it outside after the mountain too.

So we do use a chunk of the patio in the winter as well. But yeah, the restaurant basically doubles in the summer with the large patio is gorgeous. But yeah, it's cocktail focused, craft cocktails, seasonal seasonal food items. We work really closely with local farmers and greenhouses around Whistler, Sea to Skye, you know, Pemberton, Swamp-ish and locally owned, which is great.

And it's kind of the main thing that attracted me to want to work for the Raven Room is its own by two local couples, two married couples, Jay, Steph, Luke and Brandy. And they opened the Raven Room just before COVID. But it's even quite well and we're now pretty well known for a while. It was very much like a local crowd that we get, which was awesome to have all the local supporting us.

But now we're kind of well known by a lot of people across the country, which is awesome. And our friends down south in the States too. And yeah, it's been good. We're getting a lot more people talking about us and we were on the top 50 list last year.

Unfortunately not list that just came out a couple of weeks ago, but that did a lot for us. And we kind of always get it right. Yeah, right. It's like the news.

But yeah, that's a great vibe. That's amazing though, that like, because one of my bars I opened right before the pandemic and the other one during the pandemic. And so then you want to mix it through that bullshit is a great success story to become like. So you're from Aurora originally.

Is that where you started your career in the service industry? We're working in bars. Yeah. Yeah.

So basically my first job ever, it's kind of how I got into the industry. My first job ever as a working girl was at golf course. It was my summer between High School and Uni and I was a cart girl. Really?

And I was like, oh my God, I was freaking awesome. That job was money-wise. Yeah. This is real life.

You know, like a teen girl girl walking away with $300 every night just sitting outside on a golf cart serving a beer old man, like, dream job. I wish I could still have a conical golf cart. Yes. But yeah, so I quickly fell in love with the money aspect of that.

And you know, everything else come along with it. But yeah, so I basically got started in the industry working at golf courses. And then after I went to university, I was kind of working with dive bars and nightclubs and cafes throughout studying. And then every summer I would kind of take myself away to the golf cart or out to the Rocky Mountains or somewhere in DC to the same thing, go work at a resort golf course or whatever.

And just kind of live in the staff of Kong and live that life and just fully immerse myself in like the server life culture. And again, was very obsessed with the money aspect I was starting to save up for my dream of traveling the world. So it was a good way for me to start saving some cash as we all know. It'd be great.

Did you travel the world? I did. I did. Quite quite quite a small chunk.

But for as long as I can remember, that's all I really wanted to do. My parents were big travelers. So I guess kind of in my blood, I just had to guess through those university years somehow. For some reason, I decided to go to school.

Where did you go for? I was like, travel and environmental studies. So I mean, I was interested in that. Right.

But yeah, I just was always just dreaming of traveling the world. And it worked out great in my favor, working in bars and restaurants because I was able to put myself in this like really awesome routine of traveling and working and saving up money quickly. Like I would travel the world until I ran out of money and then some and then I'd move back to Canada and kind of decide where I wanted to live. And most of the time it was West.

I mean, basically all the time I basically left Ontario as soon as I graduated university. And so I choose somewhere best. Yeah. But it's funny to say that because I was kind of my experience, dude.

That's why I ended up stuck it. What? I don't say stuck now, but like where I ended up like sort of landing in the service industry was for the exact same reason because you could make a lot of money quickly. You could always find a job if you were good at what you did, whether it was while you were traveling or at least you could go blow all your money traveling and come back and easily find a job if you were good at what you did, right?

There's always something there and wherever you go to, like that's we're so fortunate in Canada. There's so many options for anywhere you want to live in this industry, you're going to job anywhere and kind of choose. So that was basically the cycle of my life through all my phone is so I've lived in quite a few different places on the West Coast. And because of that, I've had quite a wide range of different jobs within this industry, usually like small stints of like a year or a little less until I was able to save money and take off again.

And usually I work while I was traveling just to prolong the time away, like kind of just bartending at a hospital to have a bed for free, stuff like that. But yeah, it was kind of just like working in bars. It's just like a job for me until very recently and to like kind of made it and talk more as this is my career now and I love it. Yeah, it's funny.

And there's no like light bulb moment where you realize that that's your career now. It just sort of happens. And then you realize, oh shit, I think I'm in my career now. Yeah, I've never thought that is what I would be doing, but this is it.

When you were traveling, did you find that like working in other bars in other countries influenced what you do now? And was maybe that part of like what? Because I feel like, for instance, if you go to like say Europe, like bartending is a very serious career there, right? Like so it's not like in North America where people tend to take it not so seriously.

It's changing. That's changing for sure. But like there was a long period of time, at least like I'm at least when I was coming up in the industry, which was way before you. But like that, I would always have to be embarrassed telling people that, oh, yeah, I have a bartender or I'm a server, right?

And but in Europe, that's like a totally legitimate career. So did you find that influence you at all when you came back and maybe with regards to like becoming your career? No, almost like just seeing the work ethic there too, like in a lot of Asian countries as well as in the European countries. I feel like there's a lot of Asians that I swear they've been bartending before they could walk and they just take such pride and you can see the passion and the artistry.

And I think just like visiting different bars rather than just working out like the little shite hustle bars that I did work in, but visiting different bars in countries like in European and Asian countries just kind of inspiring. Yeah, definitely making me realize that there's potential to become some sort of career bartender in it. Yeah, and I think it's like good to get like switch your level of thinking about it that like any career really is worthwhile and ever if you take it seriously and put passion into it, right? Like even if you're just fucking picking up garbage, if you're serious about it, you know what I mean?

Yeah, totally. And I do think that in North America, we have a very hierarchy of like thinking about how you and like a little judgment level about like careers, right? Whereas in other countries, specifically Asian, like you're mentioning, so like every career has value. Yeah, I agree.

While I was in that cycle of traveling and and the bartending thing when I came back home, it kind of obviously came to a halt when COVID happened and at the time I heard about that. I heard about that. I heard about it a long time, but I was working in Victoria at a bar and then kind of obviously lost my job, but that's why I really started to appreciate like craft cocktail culture. Just kind of started myself and realized that I miss this.

I miss the bar. I miss my guess. I miss making drinks. I miss being creative.

So I started like stopping at my home bar and have all my friends over and just started bartending for everyone and started reading all the books and I kind of just immersed myself in like that side. Of being in this industry rather than just like slandering and getting paid. It's like there's so much to learn and that's my mind kind of like my eyes were open to a whole new world of what you can do having these skills and that's when I'm like, what I was like this is what I want to do. Like I guess I did have that little like moment during that time period and that's when I realized I'm like, yeah, this is what I want to do.

And there's so much more we can do with it and it's not just working behind bars and yeah, that's kind of what I've been up to. I guess for the last two years since COVID happened is just doing a lot of like behind the scenes stuff and there's so much more to it like comps and workshops and tastings and seminars and guess shifts. It's all fun and exciting and it's all like little niche things you don't really know about. Like when you hear someone's bartender, you just kind of think they're working behind a bar selling drinks and whatnot, but there's so much more to it.

Yeah, I feel like there was a stretch where people were just like thinking about bartending in that fashion and then right like it was starting to, I mean, probably again in like London or New York or wherever it was more this way already but like it was a slow bleed into people realizing, oh no, there's a ton of shit that can go into like making a career in bartending that's like a lot of knowledge that goes into it. And then a lot of different ways that you can do the job and then when the pandemic hit, it forced so many people to think about bartending in a different way. Like this is my career is what I do, but how can I do it during the time when bars can't be open and then that opened all these like a million new doors into like what you can do with this job. We talk to people all the time on the show who are doing, you know, like like Instagram influencers or consultants or like to go cocktails or whatever and like the doors are really open for what we can do in this industry now.

Yeah, I think so too. It's like we've kind of evolved and the opportunities kind of seem endless at this point. I think it was great for our industry. We kind of just had to think under pressure on how to make especially for you guys in Ontario with all your crazy lockdowns.

I'm sure there was a lot of people just trying to make make money somehow and keep their bars open and you just got to think out of the box. And I think that almost probably worked to an advantage for a lot of people. So what did you decide to like start getting into competitions? Yeah, so I had the brave room on my radar.

I decided I wanted to move to Whistler during COVID. I knew I couldn't travel anymore. So I wanted to change a scenery somehow. So the mountains kind of seemed like a great idea.

And so I moved to Whistler and I saw that they were hiring and the pretty sought after position to bar turned at the Raven room. It's a small little group of restaurants and cocktail bars and there's not very many. There's not many other places that I would work in this town. And I heard about the Raven room.

I knew they were locally owned, you know, like industry focused as well. And I had just like seen photos of the back bar. Like this is fucking sick. Like their back bar just looked amazing.

Like I'm only going to work here. I manifested it. It was the only place I was going to work and luckily enough for me they had to put up an ad for a part-time bartender at the time during COVID. And I think Steph, one of the owners that 40 people applied and it was all just from like one post on Facebook or something.

And she had to just like sift through. I guess she ended up doing 20 interviews. And my interview was the last one she said. And luckily for me I ended up exploring the position and I've been there for about two and a half years now.

And yeah, and my career really didn't take a turn since working for the Raven room. And I just had a lot of people push me and see things I didn't really know that I was capable of. I was going to say how do you think like not interrupt you, but like how do you think that you got it then if you were like the 40 of them maybe not the most qualified at the time. I don't even know.

I guess she must have saw like something within me that I would kind of fit with the teams. A very small close knit team were quite a small restaurant, but I don't know maybe the manifestation. Maybe. But yeah, I felt very lucky to score that position.

It was awesome. And it was obviously tough times during that period too. I think that was when we were closing at 10 p.m. or something.

And we were like industry focused bar like one of the only late night bars open where everyone would come after work. So we kind of lost all that. I think we shifted to do in brunch and said or something like that. We were like an industry focused bar at the time and I told it to be.

But yeah, they all the owners and like fellow bartenders within the community, I guess, kind of pushing me to do this first competition which was just a local competition during beer fest week. And you were given a spirit from a local distillery and a beer from a local brewery and have to create cocktail. Quite simple, but that was the first competition I ever did. I made I had the peach sour blonde ale from coast mountain and I had the Rosa Biscus gin from Tothino distillery.

I made some sort of sour. I remember I made a syrup or something out of the beer and then made a phone with Hibiscus flowers and some sort of. Yeah, I think it was a basically a gin sour, something along those lines. But I ended up just falling really hard in love with the aspect of presenting and speaking publicly and just like almost like educating my audience and the people who were at the competition.

It almost came easy to me to talk in front of a group of people. I mean, I guess we do that all the time at work, right? Like we're kind of our industry with our guests, but it came naturally to me to speak in front of an audience and I didn't even know I had that in me. I ended up winning the competition and I was like sick, like I'm good at this.

Maybe I should do another one. Like I never thought of cocktail content or even really knew that they existed. I never thought to do them, but I was pushed by my owners to do that. I won and so then I did another local comp a couple months later.

It was put on by Campari, it was in a girl around the comp and I won that one too. Oh, yeah, that's not something. Yeah. So yeah, it was basically just my community and at the Raven Room, my mentors who helped me in pushing me in kind of giving me direction and competing.

I found out that I was quite pretty all right. Yeah, yeah. The competition is the end of it. Yeah.

And then from there, I hadn't really done much research into like bigger global content or anything like kind of in the world class, but I had a couple of people send me the posting for the Shafar West Cup competition. And obviously put on by Shafar, which is a French liqueurs and serop's brand. They do this every two years. They do the West Cup comp and they've been doing it for 25 years, so it's pretty historical.

So I had some people send me the flyer, the post on Instagram and I was like, this is actually pretty cool. I liked the idea. They do a theme every year. And the theme that year was called Listen to the Flavors.

You basically had to create a cocktail inspired by music. That's cool. So I didn't really read the fine print. I was like, oh, this is cool.

Instagram competition. Like, yeah, absolutely. I just kind of created like an idea up in my mind. And then once I actually started to like get down into the works of like making the cocktail and figuring out what song I was going to create or pair with.

I read the fine print. I'm like, wow, like a winner goes to France. I'm like, this is a big deal. This is like a global competition.

I had no idea. I'm like, I'm not going to get that far, but this is cool. Anyways, so I ended up choosing Don McLean's American Pie Classic. Obviously everyone knows that song unless you're living under a rock.

Yeah, I think that they're actually still recording it. No, it's just fucking long. It's what I mean. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I had so much like, I had just like so much. I was just listening to that song because my mom would play that song constantly. Like that eight minutes song concert over and over and over again. So it's like, it might have just been one time Daniel.

So I had like a little bit of a connection to that song and I felt like I could have some talking points and yeah, like there's a lot to be like research about that song. It was quite interesting to try to figure out like the meaning behind it. Yeah, I was funny. I recently read a fucking article about where they were trying to break down what each line meant and I'm like, oh, I think I'm just guessing at this point.

I'm raising behind what he's saying. Yeah, there's a couple lines that make like are very clear what they mean, but then other times I don't know what the fuck this means. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, so I go ahead. But yeah, I know. So this song, so I felt like this would be a great song to talk about and to have some sort of tie in with a cocktail.

So I basically chose the little like, I basically chose like my little like theme was going to be nostalgia and you know, that's all kind of like, makes you feel nostalgic when you listen to it. And then I chose the look here that I chose to take my cocktail with, which was rhubarb. In Canada was given the choice of three liqueurs. Every country was given three different liqueurs issues from obviously boys and crossover.

But I chose rhubarb and I was like, perfect. My grandmother used to make a strawberry rhubarb pie, you know, like nostalgia back in the good old days. I'm like, oh, it's perfect. So I just had like, I had the story.

I had a good idea of what I was going to like revolve my whole presentation around. And yeah, so I basically applied online first. I think that's how that works. And then the finals were in Vancouver and yeah, I won that.

So I was like, I've never lost a cocktail call yet. So I was like, okay, I guess I'm pretty good at this. So I was crowned Canadian national champion for the Chicago West Cup comp. And I was I was ultimately then now going to France.

I never thought that I actually would be the one to France. I'm like, fuck now. I actually got to stress all summer long ago this year. But yeah, so it was basically June and I had the summer to kind of prep myself because we went to France in September, which was sweet.

Yeah, so the competition took place in Ange, which is where the distillery was originally. Yeah, it was sweet. It's just it was just really neat to go there, like to the origin, like where your father came to be. And the family, like the business was born.

Yeah, we actually interviewed Mal, who's like the ambassador in Dubai. Yeah. And she has cool stories about like, it's actually like for a, you don't think about those liqueurs like, you know, if you're like an old school bartender, you think about like fucking a Guinness or all those shit. Yeah.

And that's how far there's sometimes I don't think about liqueurs. But then when you realize what they do it, get fired that it's like, no, they're doing it seriously. Like, there's a good way to do it. Yeah, exactly.

It's all like fresh, real fruit and ingredients. And they're always stating where exactly they get the fruits from. You know, if we're saying that, I look here, like it's obviously not all local products they can get. But, but yes, and it's neat now too, I think, because a lot of bartenders are taking such a call in a merry approach and a lot of people, we don't need liqueurs.

We can do that ourselves. But why? Like, don't you want to save time and like purchase this incredible product? Like, oh my God, I'm so glad you said that.

We've been talking about this quite a bit on the show lately. It's like, do you need to get like a fucking red seal and cooking to be a bartender now? Like, what is the deal? I know why we, yeah, like we've just, we've just thought that we can just do it all ourselves now.

But like, let's save some time and buy products from like legitimate companies instead. Yeah. You can't really pull and do yourselves and it's quite amazing the range of liqueurs that they have. Like, and what they're doing now too.

They're coming out with an alcoholic line of liqueurs and a pair of teas and stuff like that. It's wild. And you see it when you're in France, it's hard to get in Canada. There's only a few, I think at the LCBO, you guys just have three, like obviously come to the L.A.

and I think of great fruit and maybe, and only sometimes, because frankly, like the LCBO is the worst organization that are so, like, they're like, there was there was in the Proud Boys. France are everywhere. Even in the cafes, they're using all the Chafaras to stir up for coffees and whatnot. So like, they're, they're big game in here.

Which is cool. But it was really neat to go and just experience the, like, this, like, we got to experience everything. Like, we saw the distillery, we got a distillery to where we, the competition was hosted at the oldest only, which is now the Anjay Centre for Arts for the Arts School. We saw the pharmacy in which the distillery originated from, like the actual building of where the pharmacy was in Anjay and Edith and Bruno Chafar were two of the judges, along with Simon Difords and Sam, Trust Co.

winner of 2019. So yeah, it was a really close, it's kind of like family feeling competition. It was great. It was very well organized and it's like almost just like so wholesome.

Yeah, it was a good experience. So how did that play over you? Like, were you, first of all, describe the competition, like, what were the rules, like, how do you win? And then, like, talk about your level of stress.

Oh my God, I know we were going to have to do that myself. But, so, so we brought the competition that we did in our home countries to France. So we were all competing with that exact same cocktail and so on. Oh, okay, so that makes it a little easier.

Yeah. Yeah. So we kind of had that one dialed and then there were two other likes of the comp. The first one was basically a black box.

We were given a spirit, a liqueur and an herb. It was, it was quite like simple. It was just like our little like easy little intro to the comp. We did that one on first day and then you just had to create a cocktail.

Obviously, with the ingredients were given. And then the second competition, second day of the competition, the challenge was called Clarity. And you basically had to create a cocktail with their OG liqueur, which is their Mont Pesti. So it's like their mint liqueur.

And that's the spirit that made Jafar was. So, Emil Gisargu is the founding father in back in 1885. He was a pharmacist and he soon was made aware of all the many healing properties of certain herbs, more specifically mint. And so we created this beautiful mint liqueur, the Mont Pesti.

And he would give it to like all people passing by. Like his pharmacy just like on a hot summer day, just like pouring out this mint liqueur and chugging it down. And then he realized he can really kind of shift his pharmacy into a distillery and start creating, he started to create liqueurs and syrups and, and I don't know if you know no spirits, just liqueurs and and syrups and he basically shifted his pharmacy into a distillery. And that's how that all came to be in house, how many years later, about five generations of family business.

So this leg of the competition, we could create a cocktail out of the Mont Pesti and a theme was Clarity. So you kind of have to figure out what Clarity meant to you and blah, blah, blah. So I was just thinking logically and I'm like, I'm going to create a clear cocktail. And I decided to kind of just like transform the distillery back into a pharmacy and I just played that up.

I wore a pharmacist coat. I had a little badge. All the ingredients that went into my cocktail, had healing properties. So I was using things like a group of insurance, Bruce.

I use an overproof rum. I use vanilla liqueur. What else did I do? And then of course Mont Pesti and then some butterfly pea flour oil.

The cocktail ran clear and I kind of had it set up like old apothecary bottles with a little tag on it that said in French drink I prescribe, Mont Pomperscree. So I had the whole set up looking like a pharmacy kind of transformed the distillery back in the pharmacy and that was, I loved that. That challenge was fun for me. We were given the rules before going to France, which was, it took a lot of distress off like we knew what we were getting into wasn't any like surprise challenges.

So I had time to prep for that. Which made things easier for sure. So like you're kind of a nerd. Like you kind of got into doing this like I don't know where during the pandemic I started reading books about it.

Next thing you know how to make those fucking cocktails. Like that's impressive. Like but you got to kind of nerd out to do shit like that. And I get so high on like going all out for competitions.

Like I always to match my outfit to my cocktail. You know I go like full after mode. Like I was speaking on the stage. I mean I was speaking on the stage.

I mean I was like memorized this little intro in French and French and like I get really into it. Because that's honestly half of the points. The fucking cares are cocktails taste like you got to be able to present to the present. Well because the thing is like anybody who's made it that far knows how to make fucking drinks right.

So you're going to have to sell the process at that point. It's the same with like I always talk to my people at the wine bars like the people I work with there. Oh like if you've made it into this bar the wine is good. So to sell it to the hand to sell it to the guests you have to hand sell it and then you need the story behind the winery.

That's what sells it right. And so it's very similar with your with these cocktail cons. It's like it ends up being more about the presentation than it actually is about the drink because also they're trying how many fucking cocktails right. I was just watched afterwards.

Yeah. First couple rounds like and then that's kind of like a nice little touch. You can you can do always have to go that extra mile for the judges to you start schmooge the hell of them. So I would always give them a little like a little app or tea to have to cleanse or pal a little like warm towel.

Whatever. Get all those brown points. Yeah. It is cool to see the like the scorecard too because you are being judged on like cares like your charisma.

Obviously tasting a Roma but a lot of it is like your ability to speak publicly and saying the timeframe and connection to the theme and stuff like that. So there's a lot more to it. Obviously tasting a Roma makes makes for a lot of those points too. But yeah, there's a lot about storytelling and be able to present yourself well.

And yeah, being a good public speaker which clearly are. So when you know in advance what you're gonna like what your content is going to be and you know you're going to put your presentation for it does that make it like more relaxed when you get there or you like the kind of person who like is very competitive and wants to win. Yeah, I think it almost like the faults it like room wins me like knowing what I like my parents came with me to France as in my younger sister and they were like who the fuck is this girl like they couldn't even be around me so it's just like a stress case running around parents trying to like get all the ingredients I needed. And basically the getting there and getting myself set up was probably the most stressful part because you bring everything I had to bring all my own box where all my own box rules all my own teachers and see the infusions like everything and I'm flying from from Canada obviously I'm like fuck like I'm gonna have to bring it.

Yeah, I hope it doesn't break in your fucking. Yeah, because you see the way the guys throw your bags. And so I had all my little like tinctures and infusions put into a little hundred mill bottles so I could bring them on the plane with me. That was so stressful.

I remember coming home from I went out to San Francisco and I was coming home from I was coming home from the wine to her and I was going to bring all these bottles back these beautiful bottles I tried all these wineries and I packed up so fucking tightly wrapped up in t-shirts and shit. And then when I got the bag bag the guys are just like winter fucking bags of course the check baggage and you couldn't bring the full bottle wine on the plane obviously so and I just like I remember it's a smash bottle ruin all the clothing in there and it was wrapped in like my favorite blue tag t-shirt. Yeah, just rip the shirt with glasses like oh yeah so that's something amazing experience like and then you did world class as well. I did yeah I made it to the second round so semi-finalist world class yeah that was kind of a very different competition and it was very very last minute that I decided to do it to I was like hell no world class is so intimidating to me maybe next year.

And I had seen the posting and I was like I don't even want to like look and see people like sending it to me so I'm not doing it so intimidating I just can't and then like someone talking to like just fucking apply like who cares just like get a concept together read the rules and get your submission in there and say okay what I have to lose. So I week to come up with a concept and the rules are insane like it's just pages and pages and pages of rules that are like the cocktail you have to make is very simple. I don't have five ingredients they all have to be ingredients that you can buy the grocery store you're not allowed to make anything and like infusions or zero so so the recipe that you're creating has to stay quite simple however I found that quite puzzling in the same way because you just never really knew can I do this and I do that and the rules were I honestly think they were like a little bit unclear how to ask so many people that doesn't mean this or does it just a garnish count for ingredient you know so it was a lot of reading between the lines but I think they do that for a reason. However the submission had to be a photo of video and your recipe and I think a few essay questions as well so with that competition I ended up.

Can I just stop here right there actually what the fuck like why are we running essays. That's bizarre to me like I mean I guess it's a way to weed people out like when you're so many like I guess you're watching so many videos and looking at so many recipes but it also seems a little like. Yeah a little much like I don't know what the heck I'm looking for here but it's like really we're making cocktails here I don't know what you're gonna fucking to say about it. I'll just like you know like prompts like what who inspired you to enter world class like what are out of stuff like that but still have to be a certain amount of words and you really have to think very carefully about it and stuff like that it was definitely a very thoughtful process to really not more fucking out.

But yeah so again I got I feel like I got quite lucky with my with like everything just coming together with me within like my connection to my idea of the cocktail and the reason behind why I chose this year that I did so basically had to choose a reserve spirit with India I feel like I'm not going to go. Right. I think it's just one and a half ounces or one full ounce of the reserve spirit and then anything else goes and then you just have to create a video and it could have been as simple as just recording yourself making the cocktail and talking about it like with your iPhone it didn't have to be anything special couldn't be longer than a minute and then yeah photo but obviously the nerds that I am I was like I'm going all out. I'm a good friend and I'm like we're making a sick video for this like I'm not doing any amateur shit so I ended up choosing a couple rum, a Guatemalan rum and I think I maybe chose the spirit first for some reason I wanted to do like a tropical style drink and I was thinking I was thinking of maybe connecting it to like a story from my travels and and then I remembered this like I remember this like incredible story that I have in my family of how my parents meant basically or how they they solidified their relationship and ended up getting married.

They had this like beautiful trip to Guatemala planned and ended up breaking up so that was called off however they both individually chose to go on this adventure to go on all regardless and my dad where that my mom is traveling to Guatemala so he ended up writing her this love letter and left it at a guest has some Guatemala for her to find. So this story's always been in my family and I was like oh I got this like I can just create a video about how they had this beautiful love story and tie it back into this Guatemalan rum because Guatemala is a place where my family truly began you know. So I was this movie ever made with Meg Ryan. I'm like actually having a month.

The Guatemalan letter starting. I was like a Guatemalan rum and like this is so perfect so I ended up just creating this I guess like quite basic simple cocktails basically like a riff on Manhattan with this a copper rum and I had this video for a month. I was like a love letter and I swear like I still watch it and I get like tears in my eyes. Like it ended up coming together and my video I just nailed my vision.

So yeah I applied with that and then what they do is they narrow it down to 30 I believe they did a little different this year I think in years past they do 15 East and 15 West Coast and then from there you do a regional in-person competition but this year they did top 30 Canada and we all did a online regional submission like via zoom we had to host a master class for the judges. So that was online which was someone maybe would think that would be a lot easier but I thought that was just so much more difficult just being in front of like your screen and having the judges on zoom I much would have rather done it in person I think. Yeah I can see that like there's something about talking over zoom is a little bit weird right especially when you're presenting something like you know we're talking over zoom right now but this is more like conversational whereas like you're trying to do a presentation over zoom it's like you feel disconnected from the audience. And you're also you're you're you're they're hosting a master class to these people who are not partaking in your master class it's all fake you know you're kind of talking them through this master class assuming they have all these tools in front of them and they know.

Yeah. So it was it was it was it was difficult but it was it was difficult. Yeah. It was difficult.

I got a copy of my sober zoom during the pandemic and it was like the same thing it was like I was doing it but I'm like I don't know if they're actually following along. You can't see what anyone else is doing right like yeah fucking weird. Yeah. Yeah.

So you said something earlier that I found you were talking about like that cocktail you did for world class and then you said you started with the spirit first for some reason. Do you find that you generally don't start with the spirit first. I think I usually like think of an idea first and then I'm like I'm going to get my idea was having some sort of tropical inspired drink and so I could tie it in for my travel so I guess I did have some sort of an idea and then I click later on that I have this like story of my parents and that all can better but yeah I would typically recipe second like storyline idea and concept first and then recipe kind of just like it's like almost the easier part. And so you involve sorry I mean are you involved with the cocktail creation at the right room now as well.

Yeah. I'm going to give a tack your cocktail so the list there as well like story first. Oh that's super cool. Yeah I do that for basically all cocktails and make them just or even like have the name first.

Really yeah. Yeah we do these really fun cocktail commercials at the Raven room. Same videographer that filmed my world class. He's a good friend of ours and he will basically like film a funny little video to promote a cocktail just for fun really so we had a cocktail on our menu called Cuffing Season for the Winter.

And like recipe doesn't matter I can't remember it was a it was a couple local spirits we did ever sent Jim just from Vancouver Island and honey spice crop and look here which is like a honey like here also from Vancouver Island so it was kind of like a winter bristle type. But yeah it's called Cuffing Season we had this really funny commercial film that one of our servers was like at the bar with her girlfriends like just chatting and having a good time and like zoom like kind of looks over to this guy sitting at the bar with a boyfriend in real life and it kind of like zones in you know I'm like video game when it's like you target like you target someone. So she's like zoning in on him and then just gets her handcuffs out and walks over the bar and cuffs him and then like skip to the next scene they're both on the couch like eating ice cream watching Netflix and they're cuffed at the wrist and she's like can you pass me the remote so it's just like. Nice.

The summer and so I was like I got I got a creative cocktail called hot girl summer now because the whole sequel of the. The show is going to get your boyfriend take the cops off and like run off with their girls and start drinking the hot girl summer cocktail. That's a good idea that's a good way to promote the bar. Totally and it's a fun little like 30 second videos but so for that cocktail I have the name for something I got to create a cocktail called Hot Girl Summer and then you just kind of think of the ingredients based on that.

So yeah I do find that I have an idea first or name first before choosing the spirit ingredients company. Well it's been super awesome talking to you Daniel like the crazy fun career and like your super passionate about the cocktail creation which is awesome we always love to hear that on the show so thanks so much for doing this tell our listeners where they can follow you and where they can follow the Raven room. Yeah I am at drinking with Danny on Instagram and the Raven room is at the Raven room dot CA awesome well thanks again Daniel we really appreciate it thanks for coming on and especially with the time difference with stuff I always like to thank people for the time difference. It's like easy for us we just show up at the same time every Monday.

Okay. Thanks. Thank you.