This week's guest is Milla Chef Nee, who joins us for this interview from Barcelona in Spain. Originally from Vinitzia, Nucriena, Milla is a co-founder and co-owner of a bar named Nighthotz, who is pronounced in Ukrainian, Polumosnake in her hometown of Vinitzia, Ukraine. Milla originally started a career off in the IT industry, working in management, human resources, marketing and social media. After continually dropping the phrase, let's open a bar for about three years, Milla and her friends opened up Nighthotz, which is still currently open and operating and serving the people of Vinitzia.
Milla is also the chief editor of Barout Media and an ambassador for Bharata Tools. The Ukrainian designed and crafted bar tools for the bar and restaurant industry. We had a terrific conversation with Nila and wish her all the best with the ongoing unfortunate war situation in Ukraine. Slava Ocriani, enjoy the show.
Okay, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kip. This is Dan. How's it going?
Doing well. Doing very well. Summertime, middle of summer, so it's nice. The weather's great.
And I'll do that work. That kind of cuts into my fun time. But I'll go with you. Well, it's weather's really nice in the summer, so my business is so shit.
People go away for the week. Yeah, that's true. I can tell it's pretty dead in town and I should make it from one end to the other without any traffic. It's not great for the bar industry, but falls almost here.
Yeah, that way. Speaking of those bars, if you are actually in town, you should come check them out. Sugar Run in downtown Kitchener is Speakeasy. We have monthly burlesque shows.
We have weekly stand-up comedy night on Wednesdays, DJs every Sunday and off and on Friday. So check that out at Sugar Run bar on Instagram. Babylon Sisters is the bar up to him. Waterloo at Babylon Sisters Bar on Instagram.
So you want to check that out. Lots of weekly features, DJs every Fridays and some Saturday. And then finally, our dial arms and beautiful Preston Ontario. It's at our dial underscore arms underscore 2023 on Instagram to check out what's going on there.
We have live music Wednesday to Saturday. So you can check out our Instagram feed to find out who's performing and when if you're a fan of the show, then you should subscribe to the podcast rate review it. That helps us have a great deal. If you want to get on the show, it's info at the industry podcast.club or you can DM us directly at the industry podcast on Instagram.
And what else? Oh, Zachana. Zachana does the artwork for the Instagram feed at Zachana.co.zak and hit them up for any graphic arts needs you may have. Yeah.
So it's nice to see you on the show notes as always. So just go down the bar on the show notes and you will see them all there. All right. Well, enough about that.
So good to our guests coming to us from Barcelona. It's me, La Tierney. How are you? It's like hello, friends.
All amigos. I love you. It's in several languages. Nice to see you.
Nice to hear you guys. Yeah. And it's a pleasure for me to be the guest because I checked. I got prepared.
So I checked several episodes. I listened to them for sure. Okay. And it's a huge pleasure.
Yeah. No, yeah. Well, thanks very much. Yeah, I know it's late for you because you are in Barcelona.
I appreciate you staying up and recording with us. Oh, yeah. I'm going to have to start off with a travel cleaning. Oh, yeah.
It's lava. Right. So they're going to conduct the rest of this interview in Ukrainian. That would be good for maybe three people listening.
People promoted. You know, it was like twice. Yeah. Okay.
Nila, let's start by talking about how you first got tangled up in the service industry. What was your first introduction? Well, it's a long story, guys. Yes.
Actually, yeah, we have all time of the world. Yeah. I've never been to service industry to hospitality industry before. And I started like when I was 20, you know, when you think of your dream life, you go to IT sphere.
It's always about this. You know, we just dream to enter IT to have the IT dreams. And but but I found that bucket list where I put all dreams of my life. And somehow I had two issues, two dreams to have to open the coffee place and to own a cocktail bar.
To own a cocktail bar. I don't know where I got it. Maybe from some movie or I don't know it was not quite green. Probably maybe it was like unconscious.
At the age of 20, probably I drank only bloody Mary and I did it not in a proper way, you know, I took a knife and I put vodka to the medev juice on the of the of the of the knife. So it was not good. But I had those dream. Yeah.
And I was growing up. I was having my first life experiences and those dreams were with me. It's not that kind of atmosphere of hospitality. You want to experience.
You want to face and you want to go through. So I need that I have the very expensive training on how to conduct business. How to own and how to manage the coffee place during COVID years. So it was my first first touch with industry kind of because I what we were doing, like some coffee, not alcoholic cocktails, and then I was becoming more interested.
So we went to me and my friends were visiting different cities in Ukraine and we were going abroad. And then this word cocktail bar, you know, it was like a magnet for me. So I started touching or dreaming about this industry as a guest sitting at the bar and trying to not to be ashamed without knowledge of what I'm drinking, what the history of the cocktails. So I was like, what in that with green cherry?
It's like green cherry is not a good cherry. Okay. I will know this. So yeah, and that was a long, long way.
And actually only three years ago. So I was a huge fan of industry. I was a different bars. I was like a guest.
And I forgot about this dream to open a cocktail bar because it doesn't it didn't seem real. It seemed to be very complicated, especially after owning the coffee place. It was like, oh my God, it's a complicated business. So three years ago, me and my friends were still craving my birthday in my hometown.
So I'm originally from a vinita. Many people are confused. They think it's viniz, but it's the vinita. It's like two hours of drive from here.
So it's in the central part of Ukraine. It's my hometown. It's like half of a million people living there. So we were celebrating my birthday in November and to know the weather was nice.
It was snowing. It was very close to sitting at home. I was so we were drinking red wine and someone told like it would be nice to go for a bar crow, you know, to go for one bar, then again into the snow, then again to the bar to warm up a little bit, have some blue wine, some cocktails. But the biggest problem was that in our city, we didn't have a proper cocktail bar cocktail bar to bar crow.
So we had some kind of pubs. We had some kind of restaurants with bar, but not a cocktail cocktail bar. The classy, that's proper that I wanted to celebrate my birthday in. And you know, it was not the first bottle of wine.
So we started brainstorming and making fantasies like then we should go to bar crow to other cities. But then the talk was unexpectedly turns to idea that we should open a bar in our city. And yeah, we were tipsy. We were very happy.
We were very rich with ideas. But next morning, actually, I met a guy who told me the information that at the place, I was hunting for three years to move my coffee place there. I was actually free and not free like it was not occupied finally. And it was a click.
So the same day I went to check the place and it was ideal. It was perfect for opening a bar. And in one month we signed the contract for a while. Yes, it was, you know, when you have these sites from the universe, you cannot skip them.
Right. So talk to me a little bit about how you see and have no service to the industry experience except for running the coffee shop at this point. So what made you think that you would be able to open a cocktail bar? Like how are you going to develop cocktail recipes, et cetera?
Did you just hire people to do it for you? Or I'm just sort of interested. You know, like opening a bar is it's not like hotels go not forced, not in the first line. You need patience, you need systematic approach, you need to plan everything very thoughtfully, thoroughly and you need management skills for sure.
And as a word in IT industry, so I decided to use all my experience and all my skills that I can, applying them to my industry. And it was an ICD because I had hunted many bartenders actually. So it was hunting. And the first step we did, like me and my partner, partners for the business, we went through bartender school.
So we decided to become bartenders for ourselves to investigate all the industry from inside to understand what we are doing, what we want. It was the first step. So we went and we were studying, learning and buying all these books in Amazon, trying to figure out what is the history of the cocktail, the eras of cocktails and so on. The second step was finding inspiration.
So there were movies like a cocktail, the cocktail, the employees only to get some documentation recently, and also then we were looking for inspiration in different bars. So we were brokrolling in Ukraine and abroad. It was like kind of drinking weekends. We were visiting different places.
So for example, we were going to Lisbon and the whole weekend we were doing only barcrows. So we were tasting in different places. I think that in that way we were developing our own tastes and flavors, like feeling and senses to understand what we like and what we want to see in the bar. And all these small puzzles, information, knowledge, tastes, flavors, talks with bartenders, all experience of hospitality in different countries and different cities gave us the meaning and senses that we put in this new place.
Yeah, well, I mean, that's the way to do it, right? What year did this bar open? It will be in November of a little bit two years. So yeah, it was in 2021.
Okay, 2021. And then so the war happens soon after that. So talk to us a little bit. Yeah.
So how did it talk to us about the effect on your business and how it is still affecting it now? Yeah, you know, when we opened, we were so happy. We were happy with everything with the concept, with a huge event with everything, all energy we invested in it. And also with the name because we picked up a very funny name, but very logical for the bar, not at all.
So people who do not sleep at night because actually we were inspired by this painting of Hopper. There was a famous one at Hopper. So in 1942, I guess he created this painting when you probably saw it. There are four people sitting at the night bar and they are drinking and we are four partners.
So it's a psychological to pick up this name, night Hawks. But when the war began, first you didn't know what to do because you didn't know for how long it will last. You didn't know if people will stay in the city, if you are not going to lose your team. And if it makes sense to be open, you know, to serve a couple during war.
So it was a huge kind of question for us. And also the curfew from the first days of the war, we had the curfew starting at 11 p.m. At 10 p.m. Sometimes.
So night Hawks. That's great. So the first part is closing at 10 p.m. So huge challenge, challenge, challenge.
After COVID, I think that businesses couldn't expect to get worse, but it happened. But after first months, for first months, we were closed. But then we realized that we are so passionate about this business and we are so passionate about our team. And definitely this project is like a child.
So you cannot say to your child, like wait for a year or two because I'm struggling. I'm going through not the easiest period of my life. No, we cannot. You just stay this child with you and go through all tough times together.
So we decided that we will do everything we can. And also I was so pleased to see it. Our guests began to text us. So like we need you.
We need a place to come and to feel safe, to feel like home. We need to socialize because every day something is happening. You know, the news is not the best. We are losing friends and so on.
So people needed some kind of place to be joined to have a cocktail to exhale a bit. And in this sense, it was a huge click and change when the bar stopped being just a bar and it became more like a psychologist, more like a friend, more like a safe basement, like a doctor. And yeah, people were joking that it's even cheaper than a therapy, you know, just to have the cocktails and see the whole inning like talking with with warm people. So yeah, we are working now, even after a year and a half year and a year and a half has passed.
But we are working and the whole team is working. So we have 16 people now in the team. Everyone is with us giving all and doing every day, all that he can because I was reading, you know, all these books of Hemway about the war of remark when it was war and people were sitting in the bars and drinking and dancing, you know. And I realized that people do need this.
So we cannot skip it. We cannot pretend not to see that people need this kind of relax and also we cannot pretend not to see that the war influences the bar industry and the bar industry influences the war because during the after second world war when there was a prohibition era, you know, if this didn't happen, the world would never see the recipes of many cocktails and there were never specific bars opened and people were not able to add some liquor or sugar to bad alcohol, you know, to cover the awful taste. So it all makes sense and we just can use it somehow and to do our best without that passion that we helped with the industry. Yeah, I like to how you sort of describe it as like originally you're like, oh, should we even be open during this time because of the war and like and then realizing, no, it's actually sort of a necessity that people need a place to join together and be together and commiserate and what have you, right?
And that's what bars were originally meant for and should still be. Yeah, that's true. That is the mission of the bar. Yeah, like, and I think it's funny because somewhere down the line when we all got sort of into creating all the, you had to have like a new idea for a bar, right?
Or like something that hadn't been done before and keep pushing the envelope with cocktails and all this stuff. But I feel like maybe somewhere along the line, we've lost that sort of sense of the bar really just being a gathering place for people to communicate with each other. Yeah, you know, when we kind of sense phrase or motto, so I choose or create it. I don't know how to say this one that people with cocktails and cocktails with stories.
So we know that each cocktail has its story. So our main targets and mission from the first day of opening was to tell stories, to listen to stories of people and to pay back with the stories about cocktails. Because when it's just business and when it's crowded bar, this go bar of something, yes, it makes sense. It's five ish, it's popular.
It always has lines. But for me, it's very important to grow the drinking culture because, you know, Ukraine is like slightly countries, to be honest, as to specifically associated with drinking vodka, vodka, vodka, coffee time. So I'm going to go get drunk, drunk and do stupid things. But I want to prove and I want to see great and people drinking the style of drinking dry martinis and no, and they do know now that the green cherry on the top of the cocktail is bad sharing.
Bad sharing. Yeah, it shouldn't be green at least. Okay, so tell us a little bit about bar out media. You're also the editor of bar out media.
So explain to us what that is exactly and what you do. Yeah, so my industry should be vocal, like to raise culture, to talk about drinking culture, we need some media, we need some kind of place where we can put our voice and talk to people and also unite our bartenders. So we used to have this media, it's online media, but it's, I think that every country that has developed bar industry does have such media. So it's a kind of place where we posted articles, interviews, different events about like we are looking for embers, and so on.
Friends, seasonal menus, events, bar shops and so on. But during the war it was frozen. And people who were working at the project, many of them went to the front line actually. That's why it was frozen.
Oh wow. And I decided that we do need to go vocal because now when I moved to Barcelona, actually I realized that Europe knows such few things about Ukraine, Ukrainian culture at all, overall Ukrainian bar culture even less. Like some people do know about barometer show that we used to have before the war every year, it was annual bar show. It was muy muy muy, it was so nice.
It was the level of Athens bar show, Lisbon bar show for me even better because I visited several of them and Kiev bar show was the blast and many, many European bartenders visited it. But everything stopped. We do not have so much events now. We cannot compete in world class and other kind of competitions because the guys now cannot lead the country.
That's meant in Ukraine cannot lead the country. So we have kind of limitations, but we decided that it's a good time to go vocal inside the country and to unite those bartenders to form this huge network and to share ideas to support each other inside the country and also go vocal abroad. And if we cannot go for the guest sheets now, like men cannot do this, women still can, we can talk, we can share ideas, we can share our local recipes, we can share something about culture, about local ingredients we use. So we decided not to do silence.
That's why I jumped into the role of chief editor and now we are making like first steps after this frozen period to make the corpse revival, you know, for this site. Okay, so you were mentioning that like people in Barcelona and Europe in general don't understand Ukrainian bar culture. I don't either. So it's like to be what is Ukrainian bar culture?
How would you describe it? Yeah, so as I told you, as I do not work anymore, people do not drink on live vodka, but it's true that, okay, I will start with the best things Ukraine has awesome hospitality, very high quality hospitality. I should say that our level of service I barely can find here in Europe. So talking about what a friendly approach about not to let guests go drunk drunk if we see that it's enough so we can save his health and his reputation sometimes, you know, about yeah, about knowing and telling stories about the cocktail, trying to prolong this history of cocktails because now you know everything like the world is growing speed.
Everything is like very quick. We are using we are listening voice messages of the high speed. We are using phone, Macbook, tablet all at the same time. So people prefer everything to happen very quickly and cocktails the same, but they skip this part of conscious drinking and they sometimes they do not know what they are drinking.
So they just get something they get the effects of the effects they were expected. They go relaxed, but actually they do not know. But we are buying something like iPhone or I don't know any other gadgets or goods. We do know why we are spending such it sounds of money, you know, that gives us some kind of appreciation and we appreciate it more when we know the senses.
So yeah, people in Ukraine try to go through these senses. Maybe it's like kind of period and it will last for several years and we will jump through each to this quick, quick, quick service. But now it's more about talks between Mars and the guests, the hostess and the guests, administrator and the guests, they're friendly service. So it's about hospitality talking about dreams.
So obviously Ukrainian bar culture is when people do bar crawl. They do like to do it in big cities. People know what they are drinking. People upgrade their tastes.
So actually when we were opening the bar, barely, I don't know, one person from town knew how to drink dry martini and they were like, oh my God, if won't, they had this cocktail, should I? No, no, there are people that come to the bar and say, okay, what proportion should I play for dry martini today, like half and half or 62 or three to one? So people know the stuff and it's very pleasant that they are not asking to give them, but I don't know what biscuit and color. But still we have people to educate them.
And Ukraine is also about many local ingredients. I had them, so my Barcelona started with my guest trip in Bokharskravinsky. There was one of my favorite bars in Barcelona. It's Bokharskravinsky.
Several years ago. And I was making Ukrainian La Grande because I'm a huge fan of La Grande and I decided to bring Ukrainian variation on it. And I was using local berry. It's named Kalima and it's very, it's like cranberry, similar to it, but it's very, very bitter.
So it gives that bitter taste that we usually expect from a company. And with this berry, you do not need to compare it. So I compare it if you're listening to it, but it's a idea for Ukrainian company. And people who are drinking, it's like, oh my God, oh my God, it's so bitter and it's so tasty.
And no one knew that we have such kind of berry, you know. And there are a lot of buckwheat we use buckwheat to infuse rum with buckwheat. So usually buckwheat, people eat grain and people use it while like a porridge or like to bake bread from this buckwheat. No, we infuse rum with it and it gives like kind of bread flavor, very foolish.
And oh my God, I want to drink it. It sounds so good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or sorrel, for example, or other herbs.
So we have a lot of them. And now bars are going through all these experiments with local ingredients. Maybe it is because the patriotic spirit grew a lot during the war, you know, and second the dark side of it, that because of this unstable situation that we struggle, many brands have put limitations on exports, you know, so they bring to Ukraine less alcohol because they cannot predict how much alcohol we will need. So logistics and delivery kind of flexible, not stable.
So that's why people are making experiments with local ingredients and actually many bartenders now are launching Ukrainian craft spirits like Jim Ukrainian, and it gives a huge push for development. That's interesting that how like out of a terrible situation, it's kind of sort of developed a very unique style for Ukrainian bartending though. It really is like out of almost every unfortunate situation, good can come out of it in certain ways. Are you thinking the granny now?
Is that what that is? I decided that staying at home at midnight and having a granny, it's not about city. I prefer a new granny somewhere at the fancy bars. Yeah, no, it's like kind of gin tonic with cinnamon because two months ago I was visiting salmon guru in Madrid.
I love the bar a lot and they have only a recipe of cocktail. They didn't change for seven years was the classic gin tonic, but they adjusted it. So it goes with ginger and cinnamon and it's so tasty. So no, I do it with cinnamon all the time.
Oh my God, for people who lost cinnamon. Awesome. So was it the word that brought your move to Barcelona or did you come for a different reason? No, not because of the word.
I won't say this because I was staying in Ukraine for the first year of the war and we were working, we were doing even events during the war, like I mean concerts, but all these concerts they had like charities, so we are collecting money to help already. But then you know, when you are a manager and when you are a person who wants ambitious ambitions to push something, you need energy. And when you are there, of course, all energy is supposed to volunteering to struggling, surviving every day because all energy is like to renews, not to renews, to go to the basement, not to go to the basement. So I decided that if I want to change something globally, like we train to do something useful called the crane and buck bar culture and I have this kind of motivation and ambition still help.
I need to take care of myself in order to have enough to inspire team, at least, maybe other people. So that's why I moved, and I moved actually, I didn't plan it, but I moved to my guest ship. So I had the guest ship in January, this January, I was staying here for a week or so, I had to talk with several people, I met friends with several bartenders and I understood that Barcelona, it's like a hub for bartending culture because like talking even about now, we have this 50 bus list and first, third and seventh numbers in Barcelona. So seats to schmucks and part of this, you know, and a huge number of other bars that are worthy, investigation, a worthy inspiration.
So I decided to use this time both for healing myself, like mentally, emotionally, to use this time also for networking. As I'm in Europe, I can, I usually represent my bar at the guest ship. So I'm not a bartender, originally, I didn't do shifts every night at my bar, but I know how to do it. So that's why when I have invitations from different bar shows or bars, I'm super happy to do this.
So I stand at the bar and prepare the cocktails for the recipes of my bar. So like trying to represent it here in Europe and also trying to understand what can be done for for your crane and buck culture as well. So yeah, that's the idea of moving here. Right.
And how do you find that people are taking to the Ukrainian cocktails that you're making for them? If they do not like, they are very tasty. I hope so. Because I've heard that not only from my friends, bartenders, they do so.
Well, bartenders will be honest with you. So yeah, bartenders will be honest. Yeah. Yeah.
You might get the odd guest who says they like it and they really don't, but bartenders will tell you the truth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Because like cocktails, as I told, we use many local ingredients, it always, it's always about curiosity. Like what it is, taste, what this color goes from. How you did you do the diffuse or something? And also I'm super proud because when, when before the war, even one guest came to the bar and I told you that they were starting from the very basic level of education bar education.
So the banker was porn star martini for sure, cover club for sure, because they are pinky sweetie. They were drinkable, very pleasant, you know, and it's nothing that can embarrass you or shock you. But when people were asking shots or, for example, I don't know whiskey at call, as I told you, we tried to deal with this. It's like not to say no, just no.
Just to explain and define some compromise. For example, short, we can serve one cocktail divided into three small cup beaters, like three small glasses. So the company can share cocktail, but it's nice quality cocktail with good alcohol, but they drink the drink it as short. For example, whiskey column.
Yeah. So it's, it's changes the culture a bit, you know, and if you say, for example, that this cocktail, like, brandy Alexander, it was the favorite cocktail of John Lennon, and he was a colony, it's his favorite milkshake and he was drinking liters on this Alexander when he quit with the alcohol. Guests are like, oh my God, I will have another one. You know, so it's all about this curiosity, interests and sharing stories.
And whiskey column, for example, why we did it was also very funny that people were asking all the time because it's kind of memory from student here. So he dreamed when you buy your first bottle of whiskey and just be called or somewhere on the bench, sharing with the friends. And we did our own, our own craft called. So we played a little bit with adult whiskey.
So we used a countryside and I always key. So it's smoky and we also cook our own cola. So it's not, we didn't buy it. We cook it with craft ingredients, we hurt with honey.
It's like a secret recipe, but we have it in bottles. In retro vintage bottles, we had in, I don't know, 80s, 90s and people are drinking whiskey cola, but it's with fucking, sorry, cut aside. It was funny, you know, and they're like, oh my God, it has smoky taste, flavor. And when they know it's craft, and it's designed by us logo of, and the bottle is in touch.
So it's the same, but not the same, you know, it's like, I'm rated. Yeah, I love that. We, on sugar on our original menu, we made our own rum and cola with, uh, uh, has made cola as well. And it's like, it really does make a difference.
Like the people freak out about it because it doesn't have, it doesn't have that like over arching, like, uh, sweetness that like, have it like sugar. Yeah. Just like, just tastes like sugar. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll go soon because I know you got to go sleep, but before we go, you want to plug this line of bar tools that you're the ambassador for? Yeah.
Yeah. That is, I think that, you know, uh, very soon I will be just ambassador of everything Ukrainian that is connected to the world. Yeah, because those are my friends. I know them very, very well.
So they had a dream of creating the creating bar tools for bartenders. So these bar tools are created in Ukraine. But the idea is that you can go worldwide and actually they started to do it right now. And last year, I know that they started the ambassador relationship with Daniel Jones.
I love him so much. The other schooler, a better global ambassador. So yeah, they are producing different tools, starting with swizzle, stick, shakers, very nice mixing glasses, jiggers, uh, also very, very sophisticated glasses. So for example, I don't have it right now with me, but it's a cup for punch, for example, or you can put some hot alcohol drinks, but their leg is from the glass from the, like glass glass.
So it's a cup with a leg from the glass. Yeah. Yeah. And these glasses are very sophisticated.
So probably they will fit more for some fancy dining or maybe very nice lobby bars at the hotels, because this is not for when you have 100 people waiting and you just serve in the sophisticated glasses. Yes, no, it's not going to work. So it's more when you have a person, you have a dog with a guest and you can serve something very special in a special glass. So now I try to help guys to make promotion in Europe, talking about Spain in Spain and to try to get the feedback from bartenders here.
Like it's better than other brands were not. The price is okay, not. So we are just gathering feedback. And of course, we want to see the Ukrainian bar tools in the hands of famous bartenders.
That's international competitions. You know, so that is that is our dream because it's worth it. It's worth the quality and the sophisticated effect people who are into something beautiful. And yeah, they will like.
And what's the name? The name is Barta Barta. Yeah, Berta tools. Okay.
Well, thanks so much. We really appreciate you staying up with us tonight and telling us all about your bar and bar out media and of course, another bar tools as well. But we really appreciate you spending the time. I'll let Dan sign off with you because he can do it in your language.
Yeah, this is the guy here. So yeah, this is the guy. Yeah, this is the guy. Yeah.
And I was talking so much guys and I'm surprised with myself because usually I'm not so talkative at midnight, but we just bring it out of it. Nice company. No, it was super pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for spending the time and yeah, good luck with everything.
Thank you. Thank you. I hope that after everything finishes, like, I mean, the world, you will come to Ukraine. They will visit my bar and many other bars and you will say that Ukraine is like an amazing talking about the bar world.
Yeah, I definitely will. Awesome. Okay. Thanks again.
Have a great night. Thanks for your panel. Good morning.