E199 Wyn Vida

This week's guest is Winn Vida, a beverage and hospitality consultant who joins us from Austin, Texas. Originally from Southern California, Winn moved to Portland after finishing college before currently settling down in Austin, Texas. Winn got her start in the industry in her early teenage years working as a barista, and this continued through her college years when Winn got into the world of bartending. Upon completing college, Winn moved to Portland and landed a job as a general manager of a steakhouse.

It was shortly after this point in her career that Winn came to the realization that a career in the hospitality industry was indeed for her. Currently, Winn is working with Empress Jin and Dulce Vida Tequila as their in-house mixologist and senior on-premise market manager for the South US. Enjoy the show. Okay, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast.

My name is Kip. With me as always is Dan. Hey, how's it going? Great man.

How are you? Oh, having the time of my life. He's nice little. Last little while.

Let's put it that way. The best part about having the time of your life is doing it during massive heat waves. So, how do you think it's going with the bars? Post business?

Well, it's too fucking hot. It's either too hot or too cold. I should have opened a bar in San Diego. Yeah, true.

I'm referenced wise. It's about 35 here today. I'm with the community. It's about early.

Low 40s. I'm getting into festival season. So, that brings some people out at least. And ideally, we would get them afterwards in a perfect world.

Cool. Sounds like a good plan. I know while recording this, when this comes out over, we pass the event, but it is Ethel's 30th anniversary. We're used to work.

That's correct. Ethel's lounge 30-year anniversary. So, we'll be headed down to that. A little staff reunion party.

So, season people haven't seen it a while. So, that should be fun. Yeah, another great time. Remember?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah. Ethel sounds great.

It's about to check out if you are in the kitchen or Waterloo region. Happy 30th anniversary to them. That's not easy. 30 years.

Yeah, but if you're in the area also, you want to check out my bars, Sugar Run is the Speak Easy Downtown Kitchener at Sugar Run Bar on Instagram to find out what's going on down there. We have karaoke now, once a month on Sunday nights for industry people mostly. So, that's fun. We have live comedy every Wednesday.

We have Burlesque once a month, the last Friday of every month. DJs all the time, live music every Thursday night. Always something going on there. Much like the bar up town, Babylon Sisters, at Babylon Sisters Bar on Instagram, we have DJs, we have live music, we have speed dating occasionally.

That's going to be, well, actually because that'll have already happened as well by the time you run to this. But we try to do it once a month. So, keep your eye on that. Yeah, so check those places out to find out what's going on.

You can check out our Instagram at the industry podcast. If you want to see or learn about all the guests that we have had in the past and are upcoming, the artwork there is done by Zac Hanna at Zac Hanna dot CO. Check in for all your graphic arts needs. You can also DM us there if you want to be a guest on the show or you could email us info at theindustrypodcast.club.

And as always, best way to help us out. Follow us, rate, review, subscribe, do all those things. Helps out with the metrics I'm told. It does actually, it takes only about 30 seconds just to push a couple of them up, push, just tap on the screen a few times.

And I get it. I'm fucking lazy too. It's 30 seconds. That's all it's going to take.

Drop a drop review. It helps us a great deal. Yeah, well, you got anything else you want to discuss or should we just get? I got lots to discuss.

Right. Nobody wants to hear us. I'm going to present that for the recording. Yeah, they're airing at the grievance.

Yes. Okay. Let's get to our guest. Joining us from Austin, Texas, it is.

Win Bida, how are you in? I am wonderful. How are you guys doing? We're doing well.

Thanks for coming on the show. Yeah. Absolutely. No, happy to be here.

Yeah, it's got to be pretty fucking hot there too. I'm guessing. It is pretty fucking hot. Yeah, it's about 97 degrees here.

We know in Fahrenheit plus the humidity. Oh, God. Well, hopefully you have air conditioning. We do.

We do. I pay a lot in front. It better come with air conditioning. So you're in Austin.

Did you grow up in Austin? No. Actually, I'm originally from Southern California. I grew up in like Waddanda Beach area and then I lived in San Diego and went to college in San Francisco and then I moved to Portland after college and then I moved to Austin December 2020.

So the end of the first year, the pandemic. What prompted that? The pandemic. So I don't know what everyone remembers about the pandemic.

I feel like everyone kind of put it on their heads and was like, fuck this shit. We're not going to think about it anymore. But the West Coast didn't really handle it very well. And whatever Washington would do, California would do whatever California would do, Oregon would do and fight, you know, all the way across.

So Oregon, you know, shut down and then it reopened and then it shut down again and then it reopened and then it shut down again and then it reopened and then it reopened and the fourth time they did it, I was over it. You can only call unemployment so many times 500 times a day, get that busy signal before you start to lose your mind. So at this point, that's the thing, right? You're not even like you're on hold.

You don't even know if you're getting through. You're just calling and hearing beep beep. You know, so finally I had enough. I went on, you know, there's this hospitality website in the U.S.

I don't know if you guys have it in Canada. Yeah, but yeah. We're going to get it. Yeah, no, we don't.

Yeah. So there's a website called poachedjobs.com and it's where you can kind of find like, you know, all these kinds of jobs like Bartender, servers, miniatures, whatever it is that you're looking for. So I went on this website and I was like, okay, where the hell am I going to go? So the only states are open where Texas and Florida.

And I don't know if you guys are ever met in California, but we do not like Floridians. So it was Texas. I met a few Floridians. Yeah, I know.

It's the humidity, it's the ocean. Why is the water warm? I think it's my question. But yeah, so I hopped on a plane to Austin.

I was here for about three days, did 28 interviews flew back, packed up my corgi, and a week later we moved here. Oh, well, that's pretty fast turnaround. But it's what you have to do during a pandemic. So did you have any friends at all?

I did not know anyone here. Oh, well, it's quite the move. Yeah. And so what was the first job that you, like, is the same job that you have now?

No, no, no, not at all. So when I left Oregon, I was working for a winery called Domain Serene doing like, basically a lot of wine sales for them. And then I moved to Austin and I got a job as like a bartender again. I hadn't bartended, just bartended in quite some time, but I love it.

And I did that for a while. I kind of job hopped, you know, as you do when you move to a new city, you don't really know where to work, what the vibe is. So I job hopped for a little while and then I ended up at a restaurant called Fix, which is a southern restaurant. It's like FIX-y.

I don't know why the E's at the end. It's not French. It's just, et cetera. But I was probably there for all and all, maybe two years.

And then I started consulting a little bit. So I would go into bars and kind of like someone asked me to like help out with like what's going on in the back bar, helping with the training, decking out your P.W. system, picking out what's going to be on the cocktail menu, training the bar centers on the cocktail menu and that sort of thing. And then I ended up at a restaurant called Toshicon, which is Austin's like number one Omakase-Pikizi.

We've been put on lists like with like with the French laundry. You know, we've had lots of celebrities come through like Deyche-Pel, you know, Joe Rogan, like people like that come through Chris Rock. And it was a really fun experience. I did that for about a year.

I was their beverage director. And then I got poached by Empress Jin to come and do on-premise like market managing for them. So now what I do for living is I sell Jin to bars. Yeah.

So yeah. You're kind of a sales rep again. Yeah. But in a different way before it was direct to like members, you know, like if you were a member at Domain Serene, I would just tell you why.

But with, you know, Empress Jin, it's like me coming into bars, me going into like restaurants and such and being like, Hey, like, carry my gin, two, you know. Right. How do you like that? It's similar to bartender serving and it's all sales at the end of the day, but it's a little different in like you like, the style of sales has to be a little bit more aggressive when you're just kind of walking into a bar and being like, use this gin instead of the way you're like, yeah.

Yeah. I have this photo that was taken five years ago when I helped open up a gin bar here in Austin. It's a shot of me pouring Empress Jane with the bottom of the background. I just happen to love the brand, I happen to believe in the product, right?

It is a fantastic, it's actually, you guys are in Canada, Empress is the number one Jane in Canada, it's the number five, I think in our in Texas. So it's not a bad product, it's not hard to sell. The problem is, and you all know this, you see, I'm not this person, to be fair, I don't come in with the rolly bag, the whole meme where you can smell the southern rep coming, no, I'm not happening to me. But there is a fine line between the respect that I had as a beverage director and the respect that I now receive as a rep.

But I would say that, like, it definitely, I think people hear what you do for a living and they automatically cast judgment as if I'm a terrible person now for having stepped onto the other side of the bar. It's definitely different, right? When you go into a bar, you are there to buy something. When you're working in a bar, you're not expecting to be sold to every day, right?

So I have to walk into your space in order to sell to you versus a customer coming into a bar and already in mind, they're going to buy something. I don't know what they're gonna buy, and that's part of a job as a bartender is to upsell you. My job is to go into the bar and sell to the bartender who sells the customer. So it's a little bit more of a difference.

That being said, in Austin, Texas, I have a lot of friends. I have a lot of connections. I've been here for three and a half years now. So I am able to depend on those relationships to build out who I'm going to sell to.

And I only sell to you higher-end restaurants and bars. So I go to restaurants like Red Ash, like Jay Carver, like Prelude, these places in Austin are just a little bit nicer, a little bit fancier, and I know people there. So that helps a lot. But it's definitely not a cake walk, but no job ever is.

Every job has its ups and downs. Yeah, and it is definitely different. You said it's one thing. I don't know.

When we have reps come in now, I've always marveled at the way because it's like, really, what's the issue? They're coming to give you free samples of booze. I thought I was going to the end of the same. Literally, okay.

And I'm a nice person. I'm coming in here. And it's not like I walk in on a Friday night at 7pm being like, yo, buy my gin bit. This is like, that's not how I approach things.

I'll come in all by glass of wine. I'll sit at your bar on a Tuesday around 8pm. And I'll just cat you up for a little bit. And if this is if I don't already know you, right?

Or know someone who knows you. And if you're mean to me after you find out that I'm a rep, that just sounds like you're kind of a terrible person. Like, I know it's a kind of thing wrong. I know hard selling you.

This isn't a vacuum cleaner that I'm charging $6,000 for. It's a different model. Yeah. So I personally, you know, I've been in hospitality I'm 20 years old now.

I've been in hospitality since I was 13 years old. I have not once ever treated a rep poorly, even if they did show up at a bad time. I just told them I was like, hey, now's not really good time. But here's my contact information.

This is when's a good time. And you know, you kind of like, I kind of teach these people, like this is, and they learn from that. But what they don't learn from is being made to cry in their car after being, like, you know, like, and that's happened to me before. I have gotten to my car and cried because someone was mean to me.

Like, I've been annoyed with people not under, like, because if you're in the rep game or whatever, you should know better than to come to a bar at Friday at 7 o'clock, like you said, right? You should. But you should. But they do it all the time.

And then that's what, like, again, not to be mean to them. But definitely, like, what are you doing? Like, come on. It's a teaching limit.

I find it to be a teaching limit. And you have to remember, not a lot of reps come from our side of things. A lot of reps come straight from college. You know, they get into sales because someone told them they'd be good at it.

And they don't always know. You know, they think like, oh, well, Friday night, the bar manager's definitely going to be there. Right. The bar manager wants to talk to you.

Absolutely not. But that doesn't mean, you know, that doesn't mean you mean to them. That means you take it again as a teaching moment. Let them, let them figure it out, like, together.

And maybe you will want their product. Maybe they have an excellent tequila for your well that will work super freaking, like, fantastically, price-wise and give them another opportunity to pitch it to you. But right then and there, that's not the time. And tell them that.

But that's not a reason to be mean. Yeah, I don't know why also, like, these companies aren't exclusively hiring people who used to be in the service industry. Personally speaking, every rep that I've ever met that I have loved came from the bar center center. Because they know, they know the deal.

They know what you're looking for. Yeah. Hiring straight out of college to me is not the best move, is that what I would do? But, you know, if that rep is fabulous, tell me I'm good for them.

Good for them for being able to kind of accomplish that because it's not easy. Being able to speak our language, that's not easy. Being able to know what for net is. Being able to take a shot of for net without making a face.

That thing is important for, right? So I think, like, good on the reps who are able to make it work without the experience that is required for our side of things. But personally, if I was going to start a liquor company, I would immediately make sure that my first hires are from the bartender's side. Yeah, I agree with that.

Yeah, they know the products. And also they know how to relate to bartenders, bar managers. They know what they're looking for. They know what times to show up, right?

They also know what product to sell you, right? They're their products. Like I have other products and I have other products and I have fully oversized for semperist. Emperist is my main priority.

But there are plenty of products in there that would work for some bars and definitely would not work for other ones. And I know that. And knowing that as a rep, I think, is also super important. It's like, you don't pitch, you know, a dive bar, a $20 bottle of tequila for their well.

That's not going to work. They need the $7 mix that's called like salsa or whatever it's called. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or whatever it's called.

Yeah, gross. So I think that's all sales is, and it's hard to do that without the experience of having already been a bartender. So Empress is pretty well established and well known. Most people know Empress Jin by now.

How do you, like how do you, what's your approach when you're going into a bar and being like, okay, you should be, like, because there's so many jins now. Like so many craft jins as well. Like everybody's making jins because it's one of the easier spirits to make. So yeah, so like how do you pitch Empress as I make it stand out compared to everything else that's out there?

I think for me, it's kind of like letting them taste it because I like to call Empress the vodka drinkers gateway drug into gin. Empress is one of the most approachable jins on the market besides Zephyr, I guess, which tastes more like a vodka. Like Zephyr is barely gin. Let's be honest.

But Empress also, like it is that like, you know, you see a pink front 75 go out because the bar is like, you flower it, you know, you add the citrus to it, you add acid to it, it turns pink. So you see a front 75 go out and it's pink and you're like, what is that? I want one. Boom.

Right. So kind of just like pitching it that way is like this gin will do really well in your bar and also just letting them taste it, letting them see a quality behind it, you know, talking about the distiller and talking about how much passion went into the project. And that's, you know, that's, that's personally how I pitch it. We also have like two new expressions.

We have like an elderflower rose that's like that ruby jewel color and we have a cucumber lemon gin now, which I think is pretty fantastic. It has like all of the qualities of the Hendricks without the ethanol and it's lemon instead of rose on the palate. So it's just doing really well. It's also clear.

So it's kind of taking that stigma out of the purple and then also the pink gin that we have now. So to have like a clear gin that I get to pitch people, I feel like that's been working really well for me. So yeah, it's a little test test next to it as well. But I don't think we have those, Empress.

I think we just have the original. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to get that in Canada.

We have a little bit of the LCBO. Yeah. Local goods. So the thing is the gin from the Lord is stealing.

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a great expectations gin. It's a truly homegrown Ontario craft gin and it has notes of Juniper, Sumac, Sweet Gale, and Burdock and the very balanced herbal gin and it's available now in the LCBO or wholesale to bars and restaurants.

If you go right to their website, you can order directly as well if you live in Ontario, Canada. That is. And I know they do source their grains from local farms in Wellington County and Waterloo regions. So it's good to see a nice local product in their local shelves.

Yeah, they even grow some of their own botanicals on their farm just 10 minutes south of the distillery. That would actually be very close to us. Speaking of distillery, they have two cocktail lounges there and a 70 person patio. If you want to go visit them in person and try all the products, we're pitching the great expectations gin at the moment, but they have tons of products.

I tried a bunch of different expressions of gin and vodka and rum. They have the Royal Rum Spice Black. We've been pitching that here on the show as well. We drank a lot of that in the last couple episodes.

Yeah. It showed with the work we did. There was a lot of editing involved afterwards. I just put it that way.

But in all seriousness, the Lord is still an amazing product there. You should definitely be checking them out. Follow them at allordistillingco on Instagram or you can check them at allordistillingcompany.com and go check out the distillery in person. Check out the patio.

It's hot as fuck right now. So maybe don't do it this week. I'm sure the lounges are air conditioned. We got to get up there ourselves actually.

We definitely will. Yeah. We'll take it to the cab to that one. Yes.

Exactly. Lord is still an company. Check out all their great products on the website, lordistillingcompany.com. And check out the great expectations gin at the LCBO right now.

Royal Rum Spice Black is only available to bars and restaurants wholesale at the moment. But it is coming this summer to the LCBO, the LCBO, not the greatest organization in the world. So just hunt in the sections that were Lord is stealing products. Yeah.

And Lord is stealing a grain of grass distillery. So support your local distillery no matter where you live. Yes, correct. Okay.

So back to win and the gin and the chia. So yeah, that's interesting. We don't have those other expressions of them. But that does sound exciting.

Yeah. It's a really great product for sure. So before you left California, you said you've been in the industry since you were 13. So let's talk a little bit about that.

What were some of the first few jobs you had? Yeah. So I started off as a barista, as we all do. I feel like you can either start off as a busser or barista.

Yeah. So yeah, barista, a little cafe. Did that for a couple of years. I actually learned how to make like crepes, gelato, Belgian waffles, chocolate dip things.

I learned how to make boba just all in this like one cafe that was in San Diego. And I loved it so much. And then I went away from college to San Francisco. And I started working at a restaurant called A16, which has the largest Italian, southern Italian wine list in the country.

So they would literally as you walk into this restaurant, hand you this binder and you just flip your pages. And it was like the randomish day. It would be like, you know, three pages of near the Avula. No one knows what the fuck near the Avula is, but you know, you work there.

So you know what it is. And someone's like, oh, you know, I want something, you know, medium bodied with like lots of ten and structure, but like still some fruit in there. You're like, perfect. I know the perfect wine for you.

You see these three pages with this really fine eight point font trip? All of those will work perfect for you. But that's a good education for you. So if you didn't know a bunch about wine before you started working there.

Yeah, no, absolutely. It was probably like my gateway into alcohol itself. I actually ended up getting a fake ID when I moved to San Francisco. So that I could start bartending because in California, you can't pour alcohol if you're under 21 or at least we could have a lot of that still a thing.

But yeah, I worked there for a while. And that was kind of again, like that was my gateway into bartending and my love of alcohol. So it was there for a while. And then a wine bar next door opened up and they hired me on to be like their bar manager.

And then I graduated and moved to Portland. My first job there was as the GM of a steakhouse and I was weighing over my head. There was a lot of googling involved. A lot of phone calls to friends in San Francisco about what to do about what I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

But it was a lot of fun. You know, like you obviously lie about your age. But it was my, I think when I was there, I really did fall in love with the industry and I realized this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Not particularly what I was doing there, but I definitely wanted to be in hospitality forever.

I just love the culture. I love the people. I love the banter. I love the cocktail creation, the wine list, just everything that goes into it.

There is not a single industry that brings together such personalities and such passion in just like a small, you know, like 1500 square foot space like that. Like there is nothing like that. You know, you can be in jewelry. You can be in a top optometrist.

Like you can, you know, you can work at like a super mall. Like there are so many things that you can do, but you are not going to find what hospitality brings in any of those places. So why do you think that is? Like what is it about our industry that attracts such a disparate group of personalities?

Honestly, I think it's, you know, this ability to change your personality, to suit what other people need. And you know, you're kind of combining the skills of being a barista with the skills of being an unlicensed therapist and mashing them together. Right. And an actor, right?

Right. Yeah. And so I think that you're being someone's, you know, granddaughter to the girl that like the guy wants to take home to the whiskey expert that the old white men are like, oh my God, you know, so much. Yeah.

You know, you can, you can do all of these different things and still be the exact same person. And there's just such like joy in creating something, especially when we're talking about cocktails, right? There's so much joy that I have in putting a drink in front of somebody and being like, taste this and then be like, you know, like just this mind blowing effect. And I don't find myself to be an artistic person.

And people have argued with me about that. I'm more of a math person. You know, I would just go for computer engineering. I am, I am numbers all the way, but with cocktails, it just feels like it is the perfect opportunity for me to express myself in a way that I feel like I'm unable to do otherwise.

And to see people's reactions to let them taste something that I created is just so like, I don't know, I just love it. I love it a lot. And it influences like happiness in me that I don't think I can get in any other industry. Yeah.

And it's like, it's interesting because it is one of the few industries where you can be that creative, but also the creative part of it is like only such a small little bit of what you're doing. And often it's the best release of your creative person is like making a cocktail list, but the meat and bones of the job is so far away from the creative part of it. It's like very much paid by numbers in a way and time or like organization of your time being efficient. That's the kind of how you get through your shift.

And then, but then there's also this other weird side of it where you can be all creative and then there's the whole part of like, you can put on a full new personality for a certain guess. It's like a really unique job and maybe that's why so many people are like so many different types of people are attracted to it. Right. Absolutely.

And I think like as far as like what you said like organizing and stuff, I also love that part of it though, because there is a part of me that is, you know, numbers, OCD, like I love to be in a well and pump out drinks and not talk to anybody all night. Like sometimes like I feel like once a week we're just in that mood, we don't want to talk to people. Don't look at me. Like you'll see a guest try to walk over to your well and you're like, absolutely not.

You just give them a look and they're like, oh shit, you know, and they walk away. I love to give people that look. Because it's like, what am I lifelong dreams to be quite honest? Which is a weird thing to say is to at some point work for a few months in a dive bar.

I personally never worked in a dive bar. I've never worked in a party bar. So I have never been allowed to tell someone to go fuck themselves. It's a great job.

As a party bartender, you can tell people off. When you work in fine dining, you're scared of Yelp reviews. You're scared of, you know, someone talking to the manager. You know, it's like there's all this, but like when someone makes an outlandish unreasonable request, you have to find a way to acquiesce them because otherwise you're screwed.

You know, you're going to get fired. And as a dive bar bartender, someone's like, can I get a espresso martini? And you're like, you can go die in a whole bitch. Yeah, exactly.

I'm like, please let's go. So there is also that part of me that's just like, I really do just enjoy again the personality show. Because I, yeah, the place that we were talking about at the beginning of the show, this having a 30th anniversary, I worked there for like 16 years. And it was very much that like part of the personality of the bar was that the staff was kind of surly.

So it was, you could say whatever you wanted. It was great. It was like very cathartic, especially if you're dealing with some real dickhead customers. But I've also done the fine dining side too.

And it's so different. It's like, you just kind of got to eat whatever they say to you or however you're being treated and just keep your smile on. And you're all sure Becky, absolutely. Yeah, so what sparked the move to Portland?

Portland move was a little bit different. I was 21, just graduated. I didn't really know what to do with myself. And as y'all know, like San Francisco is very expensive.

I love, I love expensive. I love Bougie. But when you're 21 years old and you don't really know what you're trying to do with your life yet, it just, you need to, you need to land so much a little bit cheaper. My birth father lived in Portland and I, he's my birth father.

I was adopted when I was really young and I was like, okay, well, maybe this is the perfect opportunity to get to know him, you know, kind of like vibe that out. So I moved there and actually lived with him for an entire year. And that was, that was really interesting. That was interesting.

I was adopted by Filipinos. Like when I was a little cold. So I know completely white, you would never know. But you know, one of my sisters used to say that if you were on the phone with me, you'd not know as white because the accent can come out.

And like, you know, when you're that young, like you are influenced by what your surroundings are. So when I went to go live with my birth father, who is 100% white, it was, it was not good. It was just living in a city that is so white, like Portland. It was so interesting.

And I was like, okay, that's not just the reason I was like, this is not just, like, an Asian culture. It's very introspective. You do not talk back to your parents. If your mother calls you from another room, you're like, coming.

You don't say what. You don't say what? That's not how life goes. And his kids were just so disrespectful all the time.

And I just, there was a certain point and it wasn't, there was a lot of things, right? But like, there was a certain point that I hit. And I was like, I just can't use it anymore. So I moved out.

Got me on a part and I haven't, I'm on and off. I've talked to him since then, but it was, it was definitely an interesting experience. But that was the main reason why Portland was chosen. the main reason why Portland was chosen.

It was never thought it lived there. And do you feel like you're glad that you did it though? Like you had that year or so to get to know him a little bit? What, no, how it worked out?

Like you're not always pleased gonna be pleased with the results, but you're glad you gave it a shot. Right, I am. I would not say that I am glad I moved to Portland. I think I did need the experience of seeing how another version of my life would have been.

And it did make me glad for all the problems that I've had with my adopted family. It did make me glad that I was raised by them versus by him. Because there is a part of me that is hospitality oriented because of how I was raised. And I would much rather be who I am, where I go into a restaurant and I sit down and I am the most amenable person.

And I have this personality versus, I'm sorry, but I wouldn't think of vodka martini. And this is just like so strong. Listen, bitch, you asked for a vodka martini. You don't even like that person now that I quote a ad.

Yeah, right. And I am as who I am, which I love who I am. I am an interesting person. I am, I love my life.

And I don't think I would have the life that I have built for myself if I was raised in a different way. So it was a good habit experience. One thing I started to notice is, especially as the craft cocktail scene has kind of exploded globally, a lot of the big cities are starting to be kind of the same scene. Do you notice the distinct difference between San Francisco, Portland, Austin, in my hospitality scene or is all the big cities kind of the same?

Like each city has kind of everything. So it's hard, right? Because the pandemic, I moved here during the pandemic. Cocktail-wise, specifically ingredients flare, that sort of thing.

Yes, I will say it's kind of the same across the board. Like maybe Portland, like I went to Portland and I noticed I use a lot of like pandan and I use a lot of Asian flavors. Austin got there, but maybe like six months later. So I feel like there is kind of like this route of like things being moved around the country.

But like, you know, and Austin, we love our craft cocktails, but we also love our classics. It's not all about like, what did this bartender come up with this week? It's about who makes the best of a karai? Who makes a best court survivor?

Who makes a lot of best last word? And it's weird to say it like that because it should all be the same, right? It should be the exact recipe that was put forth by these people who created those cocktails. But people still fucking up.

So it's nice to go to these bars and be like, okay, this is fantastic. And if you can get with the classics, if you can nail down the classics, then craft will come after that. Because any craft cocktail that you come up with is going to be a version of a classic. It doesn't matter how far away you get from an old fashioned.

It's still an old fashioned at the end of the day. It doesn't matter how far away you get from a last word. Just because you're swapping mezzcallen to it and calling it like, it's still a last word, right? So for me, like that's just how Austin is is where more focused on the classics.

I think Portland was a lot more creative, but partly because they had to be. You know, it's kind of this like hour and a half away from the beach. There's not really much else to do but drink beer. And, you know, Portland is a very niche city.

It's a very unhappy city is highly to describe it because the weather is just always crab and every bar is a dive bar and every bartender wears a flannel has a huge beer and has a shit set of tattoos. And like, you know, like what's what? Like, what's the show? It's a solid deal.

And you know that the move with drinks in Portland, I feel like it's beer in a shot. Like that's just what you drink there. And Austin is a little bit more into like, you know, tequila, ranch waters is like, they like to call it, which a ranch waters basically just tequila soda with splash of lime juice. But, you know, I think Austin is more into cocktails themselves and Portland is a little bit more into like their craft beer scene, their, you know, distillery scene.

And then San Francisco, that's a whole game in and of itself because that is a Michelin star city, right? You do have a lot of James Beard. You do have a lot of Michelin stars. You do have a lot of chefs that are up here, right?

You have Thomas Keller, French Laundry out now. But like there's a different caliber for me in San Francisco, which is why I loved that city so much. It still holds that title in my heart of the city that I love so much because that was how I fell in love in the industry. So it is, there's differences everywhere.

They are all the same, but they're all different. And I think California definitely still holds a higher caliber for me. I've been to a lot of cities in the US now too. And that's why I do, I eat and drink when I go, right?

Like, I mean, it's what we do. It's what we do, we do. If you're in the services where you want to check out. Do you have a hot house?

I like to eat, I like to drink. I like to drink. I like to have a hot house. I like to do, you know.

That's right. When we're not alcoholics. You have a friend that drinks more than you. You're not alcoholics.

Oh, that's great to know. Yeah. Now it's got a fine one. Yeah.

You have to talk guys. You'll find some people. It's a lot of hot house. They drink versus how fast you drink.

You'll find some. But I like San Francisco of all the cities that I've been to in the US. I would rank that probably the highest of all for like the quality of meals and bar experiences I had where better than any city I've been to. And then like that includes like New York, Chicago, like all these places they're known for.

Like San Francisco, the quality of the restaurants and bars was insane. It's I don't know how they do it. It's also beautiful. Like, yes, there's there's a crap in the homeless people.

There's also a lot of crap, like little crap from the homeless people. But you know, it is one of the most beautiful cities. There's a bar in San Francisco. I remember going to a hotel and I don't remember how the drinks tasted.

I was really young. I was probably like 1920. But it's called The View. And it was this gorgeous bar that had this.

I don't know if you guys have ever read a series of unfortunate events. But in that book, it talks, one of those books, it talks about this huge eye. And that's what this bar had. It had this huge window that was like a like an eye basically.

And you could touch the buildings that were across. And I don't think I've ever been anywhere as beautiful. Like, yes, you can go to Paris. You can go to Chicago to New York to, you know, Louisiana.

I don't know. But you can go anywhere. But I don't think anywhere has ever been able to captivate the view that I have not far. So I definitely agree.

San Francisco is kind of unparalleled. I didn't know what I was doing or where to go there because it's a huge city, right? And there's all these different sections. And so I was like, OK, how do I pick a hotel?

And this is many years ago. But I was like, oh, this is the hotel where they said where they filmed a movie a vertigo. That'd be cool to stay in that hotel. It's smack dab in the middle of the tenderloin.

And I was like, oh, no, no, on the podcast. The tenderloin is the ghetto. I was there. So not the experience I was hoping for.

But there was an awesome. It was easy to get everywhere. That's true. And there was an awesome speak easy there.

What's the speak easy? They're barrel and rain. They're like something about libraries. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was awesome. Yeah. That was so that was good. OK, so you've got this job now that you're pretty happy with doing the repping experience.

Do you think that you will continue that in that role for a long time? Or you might head back to bartending or serving at some time? I think it's what I needed right now. It's been about six months.

I'm really happy. I really love the job. I really love the company. I love the atmosphere.

I don't know if I ever want to be the person that's sitting at a desk all day doing Excel spreadsheets, which is kind of what happens as you move up. So my ultimate goal, my ultimate dreams are to open up my own bars and restaurants. I have concepts driven up. I have investors that have talked to me about it.

And I've talked to other people about what that would look like popularity-wise, where to place them. For me, it's more just like making sure that I'm ready before I open something. And I think that I need a couple more years before that happens. And if I can be a part of a company that I fully support and believe in, until then, then that's what I'm going to do.

There is a lot of cities in the US. I think I need to decide if I'm going to stay in Austin, or if I'm going to move back to California, or if I'm going to move somewhere else, and that's part of it, right? You don't really know where you're going to end up. And if you open a bar, as you know, you're kind of stuck.

You can't go anywhere. So yeah. You can't go anywhere. You can't go anywhere.

So you're not leaving for a couple weeks, because you come back and you've got a completely different vodka in the well. And you're like, what the hell? What happened? And you're like, what is this?

So that's kind of the game plan for me. I have a huge passion for this industry. And I'm part of being so young, means that you bar hop career-wise a lot. So I've seen what works, and I've seen what doesn't work.

I know what makes the bar successful, and I know what makes it not successful. And I think that's going to help me a lot, is all of the bad experiences, but also all of the good experiences I've had in opening bars and restaurants, and being part of different staffs, and seeing different management styles, seeing different drinking styles, how you advertise, how you market yourself, whether or not you're good on Instagram, whether or not you spend the money, where it's supposed to be spent. There's so much that goes into opening a bar. And I think I really have seen a lot of it, and being a rep has only opened my eyes even more, because I'm in a lot more bars and restaurants constantly.

Yeah, that helps, actually, because if you're working in a bar full time, then you can very easily get sort of tunnel-focused on the style of bar restaurant that you're in, but you have the advantage of going to constantly different bars and restaurants all the time. And you can eat a few concepts like we all borrow, so you said you have some concepts already in mind. That also is going to probably factor in where you choose to do it as well, right? Right, because I can't move to Minnesota, and open up a bar there, that's going to make sense in the way that it would make sense in Austin, not that I would move to Minnesota, by the way.

But in a bar that would make sense in Austin or California or Portland or Chicago, there's just so many different things that you have to factor in and think about. And so one of my concept is, and don't anyone on this podcast deal is, because I will punch you down and find you. I want to open up a cafe called Crapes and Shakes, where we serve crepes and alcoholic milkshakes, and I want to put a speakeasy whiskey bar in the back of it and call it rye by win, where we focus primarily on whiskey, obviously bringing in a lot of really cool rye and just putting out the best cocktails and cocktail service that we can possibly do. And one of my biggest, biggest things in this industry, I've had people mention that I'm a mixologist.

I've had people give me that title. I've had people tag me on Instagram as a mixologist. I hate that word. Because what you're doing when you call yourself a mixologist is you are taking the hospitality out of bartending.

So at the end of the day, I don't want to hire a mixologist. I want to hire bartenders. I want to hire people who love this industry, who love this craft, and I want to hire people for their personalities. If I have to hire some ho-dunky 19-year-old who's never drank before, because they have a fantastic personality and train them up to where I am, that's what I'll do.

Overhiring some 35-year-old who thinks he's the shit because he grew up in New Orleans and knows every cocktail in the book. Right? Well, I totally agree with that. The term mixologist is for Instagram bartenders.

Like, not for real bartenders. Absolutely. Yeah, you said it perfectly. And I think we've had somebody else on the show who said the same thing is that the term mixologist takes the hospitality part out of the job of bartender.

And bartender encompasses all the things we were talking about earlier, not just the creative side of making a cocktail, but like dealing with the customers, doing the fucking side duties. It's not just about coming up with cocktails. And also, let's think about these cocktails as bartenders. Let's think about these cocktails that we see on Instagram.

Has any of you guys ever tried to make those drinks? I have. They're not good. They're not balanced.

They don't taste good. They definitely do not look like the pictures that they come up with. I could have the same glass, the same ingredients, the same backgrounds. They're not going to look like that.

So for me, it's like, I'm sorry, but if you've never actually been a bartender, I'm not going to follow you on Instagram. I'm not going to save your cocktail post. That's just not, no. Well, the other thing, it's like now that I'm on sort of the business end of it, as like I see some of these cocktails, I'm like, great.

If you can execute that fucking cocktail in a bar, then that means you're barred dead. It means your bar is dead. And I don't want you to. Because there's any one I pull out of your pocket and it takes a little like tea and pinets to the side for like 100 times an hour.

If you can execute that, you are hired. No problem. Yeah. Otherwise, no, sweetie.

That's absolutely. It means you're working in a place that does like four covers a night. Right. I'm so glad that you got hired at a glamour bar, but I don't plan on running glamour bars.

I plan on running profitable businesses. So it's a good idea. It's a good model. And I think you should stick with that.

The bars bars that make profit. Yeah. Yeah. I thought so too.

Put that at the top of your pitch for any investors. You plan on turning a profit. Now let me tell you the rest of the concept. Yeah.

I do not plan on putting Casa Migos in my well. Yeah. Fuck it. First of all, it tastes like shit and it's like a lot of overpriced.

The vanilla. It's like, oof. If I wanted to drink a bottle of vanilla extract, I would have gone for a cheaper version. Yeah.

Exactly. Like literally the vanilla extract. It's actually pretty expensive, by the way. So that tells you something about the cost of Casa Migos right now.

Yeah, no kidding. Well, it's been super awesome talking to you, and this is, I think I love your idea for the one concept you told us about the, sorry, was it shakes? Crates and shakes. Crates and shakes with the spigies in the back.

That's dope. Yeah. Nobody takes that idea. It's wins.

And yeah, if I had money to invest, I would give it to you. Thank you. I love that. Yeah.