E216 Jean-Marc Dykes

This week's guest is Jean-Marc Dykes, who is the creator developer and driving force behind the Infibile app. A cocktail recipe platform for bartenders, bars, restaurants, and pretty much everyone and anyone interested in cocktails. We talk with Jean-Marc about his journey from bartending to app development in cover of various topics such as the importance of specialized training, particularly in wine and cocktail making, as a deep in John Marc's understanding and appreciation of these fields. We talk about how he wound up being motivated to learn coding after being frustrated with the cost of setting up a WordPress blog.

We also talk about how the inefficient process of finding cocktail ingredients in a physical binder was a driving force for Jean-Marc to develop the Inbibia app, which also allows for quick visual filtering of information and eliminates the need for a constant scanning of text. Jean-Marc is also the driving force behind the website guest barshift.com. Jean-Marc provides us with a terrific walkthrough of the Inbibile platform and features, and is absolutely outstanding and we do highly recommend you check it out as well. Inbibile is spelled I-M-B-I-B-L-I-A, and you can check the show notes for all the links.

One of the next John-Marc once again for joining us for this terrific interview. Enjoy the show. We're back with another episode of the industry podcast. Keep with you, Dan with you.

What's going on buddy? Not too much. It's another fun exciting weekend. We saw some local pro wrestling once again.

It was a good time. A good time. Shout out to the union music hall. I guess that's Kitchener, right?

Correct. Yeah, and off the top ropes the wrestling promotion, the local one. Yeah, good times as always. Thanks to everybody involved in that.

That was a lot of fun. And TWB I guess for the booze. Yeah, it was a nice and sweet. What are we going to do?

Right. 100%. But that was fun. They're always fun.

Authoropes is a great promotion if you're in our neighborhood. Check them out when they're in town. If you're in Kitchener, check out the union. They're doing a bunch of concerts and basically you can rent that place out to host your own event.

So check them out as well. And if you're in Kitchener, one or one in general, check out my spots. Babylon Sisters, Uptown Waterloo at Babylon Sisters Bar on Instagram, downtown at Sugar Run at Sugar Run Bar on Instagram. If you need liquor or wine, I'm also the guy to talk to you about that.

Your territory manager for a Laura Distilling Company, a Malivoir Winery, and Terroir Wine Import. So you can email me directly kypp at Babylon Sisters dot c a for any of those spots. And I will hook you up personal private sales or for bars and restaurants. So this podcast that we do here, if you like what we're doing, subscribe, follow, rate, review, tell a friend who's and likes to say.

That's the easiest thing to do. Just tell one other person. It takes about a minute. Share the link and that helps us grow the show.

Check out the archives. We've had a lot of great guests recently. We had Emma Janssen last week. We had Beckley Franks before that.

Jake Richards was on here recently. Castle Walker. Lots of great guests. So that's correct.

Check out all those. This is episode 216. So you got 250 archival episodes if you want to listen to them. Yes, start now.

See if you can catch up on the time of the week's over. Okay. Also, if you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can email us directly info at the industry podcast club or DM us on Instagram at the industry podcast artwork done by Zach Hannah at zach Hannah dot c o. Anything else you want to talk about?

Let's see. Where should I start? I'm all good for right now. That's great.

Okay. Yes. Let's get to our guests joining us from Massachusetts at the moment. Although we were just discussing his dual citizenship.

Sean, Mark, thanks. How are you? I'm great. It's awesome to hear it.

Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor. I know. Thanks for coming on the show.

We definitely appreciate it. Great. So well, obviously, the main thing we're going to talk about is ambiblia, which is your app that you developed for bars, restaurants, bar tenders. And I guess probably it would be pretty cool even for just somebody who wants to do some home bartending.

We checked out the app. It's pretty awesome. But before we get into that, let's talk about your bar experience. How did you you grew up in the service industry?

So let's talk a little bit about that. How did you get in there? So, um, let's see. After university, which I did in Vancouver, I rode my bicycle home to Massachusetts.

Oh, yeah, it was quite a trip. And on the way, I'm thinking like, man, what am I going to do for work? Because the degree I did, I kind of, I studied what I love and I knew I wasn't going to use it for work. So I was like, yeah, what did you get?

I double majored in literature. So yeah, we're political scientists. So we totally understand. For sure.

Yeah. I was like, I know I don't want to try and like become a professor. Like that's definitely a very poor idea. An English teacher in high school.

Like I just hate homework. Mark, man, can you imagine that would have been wrong turn, especially kids these days? Not to yell at clouds or anything but I don't know too many teachers. My teachers were very pleased with their jobs.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what? I did work as an art teacher for a while because I grew up sort of in an art studio.

So I'm definitely familiar with like how brutal it can be. Yeah, it's tough. It's like an energy. You have to have a lot of energy to be able to like teach kids without being, you know, feeling like the victim of a vampire by the end of the day.

Just coming home and taking a bath with a hairdryer. Exactly. Anyway, yeah, I was writing home and I was like, all right, I need to figure out how to make money. And I didn't, you know, I was like, all right, what can I like learn fast, pick up and drop and like be able to move around with and is fun and you know, I'm kind of introverted and I want to like change that a little bit.

So like what is going to force me to be a little bit more extroverted and I was like, oh, I'll be a bartender. So I'm going to Massachusetts and yeah, I started bar backing at like a local restaurant, which was very interesting and colorful experience. And there was, there was like one table where I made like a huge mistake or something and I went over to them and they were not happy. And within like 12 seconds, I had them smiling and laughing and they were just like over the moon by the time I was done.

And there was, there was another guest who saw that whole thing and he was a bar manager and he like waved me over and I was like, you know, I think I'm, oh shit, what else have I done now. Go over there and he's like, I saw exactly what you did with that couple there. And he's like, you need to get into the city. You need to find like a high class joint.

You need to, you can't be running around with dish bins. And I was like, you know, in my head, I started like 12 days ago, what are you talking about, dude? And within like three weeks, I was hired to be one of the opening bartenders for Bistro Demidi on Boylston. Nice.

We had such incredible training. We had three weeks of eight hours a day in training, like classroom style. Wow. Really?

Yeah, before we even got into the restaurant. We only fucked that. Like, now, sorry to interrupt you here, but just because like I've never heard of any sort of training program like that, like is, where's their point where you're like, fuck this? Like, I don't need to be, or was it, or did you find the training kind of fascinating?

I found the training fascinating because a lot of it, like a few hours a day, it was like all wine. Yeah. So by the time we got into that restaurant, I hadn't really bartended at all. I had a ton of wine knowledge before I'd even like, you know, poor, really poured much wine at all for other people.

So I think that was like a huge leg up. I mean, it gave me a huge appreciation. I realized like very early on, I was like, oh my God, you can literally get so granular with wine that you can become an expert in like one hillside in France. Yeah.

And like all of the variables that go into that, it's pretty amazing just how, you know, like how in depth you can get, but then you zoom back out and you're like, oh my God, there's no way anyone's ever going to know all of this. So I think it gave me a good perspective in terms of the knowledge of like spirits and wine and about how to like move forward and how to tackle that. I actually think that that's a good point about the wine knowledge thing, which it's almost better to just get hyper focused on a certain area and go from there because if you try and take sort of a 300,000 foot view on the wine world, you're just going to get overwhelmed in no time. Like get the basics down, then maybe if you want to be an expert on Italy or France or, you know, I mean, like 100%.

I think that's how a lot of people in this industry, particularly bartenders, you know, they have like a flavor profile that they really like and they kind of replicate it in all. So you've seen this with ambibia and, you know, hopefully we'll get into this part because ambibia generates a palette analysis of a bartender based on all of their recipes. So you can get like a comprehensive and then an aggregate so you can see like where they kind of zero in in terms of the flavor matrix. And but to go back to your point, I think that's fine.

Find like a few, you know, flavors and grapes or styles that you really, really like and just go deep on those and then that becomes basically like an anchor node for being able to like understand where everything else is in this in this, you know, sort of Euclidians place of like geography and flavor. So you can be like, Oh, well, that is like so different from what I like so I can understand it in this sort of inverse way. Does that make sense? Mm hmm.

Okay, so you're there and you're doing all this training that eventually you obviously like, what do you want to spend most of the time talking about the app because this is what you're doing now so but like we'll speak a little on a little bit like so after that experience, you're working at that bar for a little bit. And then like you have 10 years in the bar game. So where else after that? Yeah, so I mean, I just I have to give up one shout out during this this period to the Misty call Cophen at the bar drink in the same district in Boston.

Unfortunately, it's closed, but I closed. I'm pretty sure it's closed. No, I just had a friend go to Boston. I recommend you went there.

Yeah, I think that's how I maybe it's. Yeah, I think it's I'm not sure. Yeah. I'm not sure what the drama behind it is unfortunately closing both drink and then it's about anyway.

Yeah, go ahead. Anyways, like that bar was just such an inspiration for me. And like I said, have you guys had Misty Coco from on? No, no, you guys have to have to get her on.

She's she's amazing. She was such an inspiration for me and made, you know, an annoying number of Ramas Jin physicists for me when I had no idea how much of a crush it is to order that kind of thing. Mm hmm. But yeah, I was in Boston for a year then then traveled India and Nepal, Thailand, that sort of thing and then landed back in Vancouver.

And the job I got there was at the Four Seasons. And it was one of the best restaurants in the Four Seasons chain and it had an incredible cocktail program. And I learned I learned so much from Justin Justin Taylor, who is the who was was the quote unquote bar manager there management is like a bit of a weird thing when it comes to Four Seasons hotels, but not but Justin basically was the bar manager there. And that's where I like I really learned everything that I know and it's in large part thanks to Justin Taylor because he is just an absolute machine behind the bar.

And then yeah, I was there for a number of years, five, six years, and then went to take a break, worked on a tall ship for a little while. And then what? Yeah. I was about to wait on a tall ship, the Lady Washington, which is out on the West Coast.

So I did a close to a year on that, which was a lot of fun. Proving. And then yeah, I went back to Vancouver and Justin called me off. He's like, do you need a job?

And I was like, yeah, please come work for me on my cascade on Maine, which was another sort of it's got like identity problems, at least in my opinion, it's marketed as an English pub, but it's a cocktail bar. So it's a bit of a bit of a bit of a fusion there, but the cocktail program was amazing. And I was like, I'll come work there if I can just do Friday, Saturday nights and like be on the well the entire night. He was like, yes, please, sure.

And then it was just, you know, it was a sort of bar where you can be in the weeds for hours, hours. And it was awesome. It was such a good time. It's just head down, factory style cocktail, make them.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I've done that before. I don't love that style.

But I mean, the one good thing about it is that you start your shift and then but like it flies by so quickly and then it's over and you made a bunch of money and then you move on. Exactly. Okay. So at some point you teach yourself how to code, which is fucking crazy.

Like, how old were you? If you don't mind me asking when you just were like, maybe I'll teach myself how to code. And did you do it with the idea of building this app already or was it just something you thought you'd want to learn? I'll answer those in reverse order.

I'll try to remember them. I basically had this app in mind when I was sort of teetering on this edge of like, oh my gosh, did I learn all this like inscrutable bullshit that is on these screens that my friends are looking at and making money or not. And then like the sort of the coup de gras was like, I was trying to set up a WordPress blog for a girlfriend. And I knew just enough that like, oh, if we want tracking, you need like a piece of Google code and you put it in the header of the HTML and we should get it.

And then I realized that like WordPress charges you like $10 a month. Just edit that. And I was like, fuck that. I'm gonna learn.

I'm gonna build this all from scratch. I'm not like, so it's basically like this $1 $10 subscription fee that just like sent me over the edge. I was like, all right, I'm gonna learn the shit. I can't stand it.

So I was like fooling around with coding like a little bit like on and off after that. And then COVID hit. And then that was basically like, I had just like built a mini home in a utility van because I was like, you know, I'll save on money just by living in this thing instead of like paying for an apartment that I'm not even at all often. And so I had basically just finished it and then COVID hits and I'm like, oh, I'm stuck in this van.

And you know, I stuck like a Wi-Fi antenna out the window and like mooched Wi-Fi off some friends and basically just sat in there and coded for, you know, I do like 12, 15, 16, 17 hour days. Just crazy stuff. Yeah, I was got really into it. Was it mind-numbing or is it like, is that do you have some sort of bizarre personality trait where that's okay for you to do 60 hours straight in front of a screen?

It just seems so in typical to like a whole bartending experience, right? I mean, maybe I do have a bit of a bizarre personality. I definitely can like get into the zone and just stay there and be like, oh, what is that bright light? Oh shit, it's sunrise again.

I need to go to bed. So, you know, were you self-taught or you just take a couple online courses that helps put you on the right track at the start? You know, I went the hard route. It was all self-taught.

I basically just started trying building projects. So I started, I basically ended up building in Biblioth like three times from scratch because I get to a certain point and be like, oh, there's this whole aspect that I don't understand. I need to go like learn that. And then I would go build another project that is like specifically for learning that, you know, piece.

And then I would come back to Biblioth and be like, oh shit, I gotta like start over and build this again. So, yeah, in Biblioth was like, you know, there's been many thousands of hours into it, which is either, you know, really impressive or very embarrassing, depending on what we've added. So, yeah. Okay, so let's talk about the App then.

So you had this idea for an app that basically provides a bunch of recipes. Now, I know you've expanded it since then to do other things, but talk about the original idea and the building of that and like the original version of the App and what it provided to its users. Okay, that's actually a really great question because version 1.0 is basically like, you know, just a public library of like 400 cocktails. And that was based on, you know, my sort of mentor in the coding world.

He was like, just build like the most basic MVP and get it out there and then just get feedback. Don't build like your entire vision, which you have, and like waste all that time without having some like, you know, feedback that is like a proof of concept. That's really like a smart actually, like, because I would like I would totally be in yours shoes as well where I'd be like, oh, I know what I want it to be. But just because you want it to be that doesn't mean that anyone is using it wants it to be that, right?

Exactly, exactly. So yeah, first it was just like a library with like the concept of the what the recipe card would look like. So, you know, the whole idea is to, you know, I mentioned I was a double majored in literature, but I'm really slow at reading. And so like, painfully, slow.

People don't believe me. And then I'd be like a side by side like, all right, you read this page, I'll read the same exact page. And we'll see how, you know, who finishes first and by how much? And they're always like, oh, you are very slow.

What's wrong with people? So, you know, having also have this background as an art teacher, one thing that I've always sort of wondered about and intuitive is like, all right, when I'm like, you know, I'm like buried at the well and it's like 1 30 in the morning and I'm like flying and I've got like 10 drinks that are like 60 to 80% done and I'm like shaking four tins at once and I have like a ribbon of chips around my neck that annoyed waitress has put there, you know, and then I hit a cocktail that I haven't made in like seven months and I'm like, oh shit, I can't remember that like one ingredient. Like for me, it was always the hanky, hanky, it's kind of ridiculous. I would always, you know, I have the ratios in my head and I know all of the measurements and I know the glass and I know how to make it and I know the garnish, but the smallest ingredient, I always forget what it is.

And I'd have to like, all right, everything, my whole dance and like, you know, the machine grinds to a hall and I have to turn around open up a cabinet, pull out this like big, gross, sticky binder and then I have to flip through it and then I have to scan a paragraph for like the one word that I can't remember. And it's like this whole process is so agonizingly slow and inefficient and it's ruining my workflow. And you know, so with ambibilia, it's like you click to have it open and then on the side here you have all of these numbers, these letters. So boom, it gets you all the way down to age, you know, your second or third click open and then you can visually, you can just ignore everything that you don't need to like scan through as you would have to do with a paragraph.

So you can just look at the smallest pie slice in the ingredient graphic brown and color code it with the, you know, the ingredient dot below and it's like, oh yeah, for now. Yeah, and so I'm going to interrupt you for one second here. And it's just to tell anyone listening right now. I strongly suggest that you just download this app right now.

So you can follow sort of along with what John Marks kind of explaining because it's really the interface is amazing and it's there's a paywall for some of the stuff now, but the, but most, but you can download it for free and you can definitely get the recipes and it's, it's really well laid out. Like there's little pie graphs with, well, anyway, I'm just not describing it because hopefully by now you've listened to me and just pause this show and download of the app and follow along from here. Anyway, so I go ahead. Yeah, no worries.

Thanks. Thanks for saying that again. It is a free download and like the paywall stuff is for like bartenders who basically want to build their own portfolio. Right.

And have that all like accessible in like digital format that they can share. There's a built in resume, all that sort of stuff custom ingredients, etc. Anyways, so you know, the other sort of like analogy that I bring into this in terms of like being able to like visually filter out information you don't need is like, imagine if you were going to drive a car, but you had to read a paragraph describing what's in front of the car in order to decide whether you're going to like, you know, press the mask. Exactly.

So you're like constantly scanning text for like child's ball, like bounces out from the left. Right. It would be utterly impossible. And the reason we can drive is because our visual system just automatically filters out and ignores like all of the nonessential stuff.

So you can, that's why you can like just be driving along and, you know, talking to a friend at the same time, but like, again, a child's ball bounces out from, you know, behind a parked car, you slam on those breaks because your visual system just clues into that automatically. And so I wanted to take that whole idea and say, can we apply that to recipes because as a bartender, I would get so slow down by this, this obnoxious process of trying to find like a little detail that I forgot. And then also putting it into this digital format. It's like, now, now we have like a single place where we can actually like keep track of these.

I'm like, you know, you come over the great recipe, you like, scroll down on some receipt paper and then it goes through the wash in your pants like two days later and it's like, well, that's gone. Yeah. I've talked to so many bartenders that are like, oh, yeah, I had it all on like this book and then like, I don't know where that book is anymore. And then, you know, for example, it's even gotten to the point where like, if you're really good with the builder interface, you can come up with a cocktail behind the bar, input it in here, and then, you know, there's the sharing feature where you can just turn your phone around and show the QR code for the rest of the day.

And show the QR code for the recipe that you just made and show it to the person who's like, oh, my God, I love this cocktail. Like, can you give me the recipe? It's like, that's great. Just just shoot your camera at this QR code and you can have it.

That's amazing. That's a great that's a great feature. Yeah. You want to talk a little bit more about this part of it or do you want to talk about some of the new features that you've added as well?

Like there's the guest bar attending aspect as well, but I don't know how far down the line that is. So I'll just let you go. That's actually like a totally different project that I just launched a couple days ago. I'll get into that in a few moments.

I think I think what's also like with this version 2.0 update, which I think officially launched in May and we have this awesome launch party at Deacon Giles Distillery in Salem in June, which was just off the hook. It was so much fun. Like shout out to Jesse at Deacon Giles and Ross. Like you guys are baller.

Thank you for having me. It was a blast. But yeah, another like core feature of this 2.0 update is that every recipe has like a flavor profile. There's 12 dimensions here.

Sweet sour, herbal bitter, vegetable, umami, savory, even ABV, fat, smoke. And it's all like, you know, there's a little secret sauce that, you know, how I actually figured out a way to pull this off, but it's shockingly accurate. It sounds like a shit ton of daily that I have in there to do. Like, how long did that part take you to get set up long?

Like I said, I put many thousands of hours of work into this and there's only like 4,000 ingredients currently in the database. Yeah, only. But like, well, I say only because I'm adding more almost every day and I think in a year or two, you know, there will easily be like 10 to 20,000 ingredients in here that people can pick from and use. And they all have flavor profiles like this, which in Biblioth crushes based on the ratios of the actual recipe and then comes up with this because all of these ingredients have their own.

So if we go to Fernet, that's another thing that you can do. You don't have pictures too. Yeah. If you're a brand new bartender and you're like, what the hell does this bottle look like?

You can just click it and boom, there you are. That's insane. That's great. Yeah.

And then they've all got like, yeah. So we're doing for the generic one, like Jen and Sweet Permouth in that shot. Like what? They wouldn't have a photo.

Okay. Cause that's going to depend on what brand you want to do. Exactly. But it really gets some brand sponsorship.

Yeah. So all of the brands have photos so that like a bartender or a bar back can see what it looked like. So this is the flavor profile for Fernet. Obviously you can see it's like pretty maxed out on bidders and herbal.

And then that based on, you know, there's only a core ounce in here. So it still has like quite a bit of influence. But another, the two other things that this flavor profile really allows me to do is, you know how Spotify has that algorithm where it's like, oh, here's a song you might like, even though it's a totally different band. It might be a totally different genre, but somehow it's got like the similar vibe to these songs that you like.

So I was essentially able to do that for flavor with words to recipes. So down here, it basically takes all of the flavor profiles for every recipe and ambibile. And then tracks it in something called Euclidean Space to see how close they are to this given profile. So like this is a night, the Martin is from 1884 is a 98.39% match.

We can click on that and just bring it up. That's amazing. So yeah. So it's like now you have this tool where somebody say orders a hanky, panky and from you at the bar and then you've already pulled this up now.

And then that same guest is like, oh, I really like that. What else? What else do you recommend to me? Now you can pull like a million different options.

I've like, yeah, like, that's amazing. That's great. Yeah. On top of that, like, you know, the second one, Love on the Weekend 97% match.

This is actually from my buddy Blake Adams, who's his manager in Lin Massachusetts, the Blue Ox. He's one of the top power users of Inbiblia. So you can go from hanky, panky to like a recipe that you've never seen from a bartender you've never heard of. And it's a very similar flavor.

And this is from them loading up their own cocktails with the sort of paywall side of this that they can do that. But then, but you don't need to pay wall on the other end to access that cocktail. As long as Blake has made it public. Right.

Oh, so that's on his end if he wants to do that. Right. Yeah. Very interesting.

If it's public, then it'll show up in the searches. It'll show up in the recommended recipes. But if you're a business that wants to be on Inbiblia or if you're a bartender who's just really secretive about your recipes, there's like a set of permissions with regards to privacy that you can set. So it's like, I want this public on my profile, but I don't want it, you know, basically like keeps it, you know, clandestine or not.

Sorry, no, that's just brings me to a good question. Like if you are a bartender, like, he has recipes secret, why would he want to be on your app? Well, there's a few reasons. One is you will have them immortalize in a way that, you know, you could, you could always change that.

Or if you're working at a bar that uses Inbiblia, they can add you as a staff member and you can share, you can share private recipes with the bar account. Yeah. And then it can be seen by like other staff or not depending on. Right.

Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. I'm just wondering because I know a lot of people are pretty like most of my bartenders that have worked with or for me are pretty secretive about the recipes.

I don't want it to really get out, but that makes sense if you're just sharing with other staff members and of course. Yeah. And what an easy tool. It's better than making a fucking manual.

Yeah. And like, you know, like if I were to think of a few other reasons, like, for example, you know, the bartender profile, it has a, it does palette analysis. So this is currently crushing all of these 51 recipes and it's coming up with like a comprehensive analysis of my palate based on those recipes and then an aggregated. So the aggregated is basically like this is the cocktail flavor profile that I usually am most likely to make comprehensive shows like breadth of a bartender.

So it's going through all of those recipes and it's looking for like the most, it's the maxed out metric on each of these. So I have a, a cocktail that has a very high fat content, but if you look at my aggregated, I usually don't have much fat in my cocktails. So this is fucking awesome. I just got to tell you straight up like we kind of like, like, it's helpful to have this conversation to show all the things that can do because like when we're looking at our own, we're like, oh, cool, some recipes, blah, blah, blah.

I haven't had a time to deep dive into it yet. And the, but like listening to you explain it like this way. It's like, this is an incredible app. No, thanks.

I really appreciate it. I've put a lot of work into it. I burned through my savings and then dug a hole, but I had a vision and it was like, what's again, I'm going to say, if you haven't just paused the show, download the app, if bartender not bartender specifically, if you are a bartender, definitely do it. I can't recommend it enough.

This is what I'm actually done here is unbelievable. This is fucking crazy. Like every bartender should have this. So I think that's a good place to just maybe switch gears to like the mission statement that I've like, it's been my like guiding North Star is like, one, I want to rid the world of all the fucking sticky binders because they drive me out of my fucking mind.

So that's sort of like, you know, one half of or one side of the coin. The other is like, I'm trying to build a tool for bartenders that makes their life easier and allows it like gives them some sort of leverage or a platform that can perhaps make their lives, you know, help them level up in their career. Like one of my absolute favorite people, Caleb Lopez, he, you know, he took a break from the industry. He's an amazing bartender in Vancouver.

And now he's looking to get back into the industry and he's filling out his profile. And like I said, it also has like a resume and you can make your, you can share your whole profile for free. So instead of like this laborious process of like printing out your resume and a CV and like walking out walking around bars, you can literally just take your ambulia profile and share it to bar managers. And the thing is like, if a, you know, a good bar manager can like look at all of these recipes, look at the palette analysis, look at the resume.

And it's like, all right, this, this person knows what the fuck they're doing behind. At least when it comes to the creative aspect. So then the, then the interview can just be all about like the personality. And it's like, all right, is this a good fit?

Like you, you, you're ambibilia profile is like maxed out. So you, you're clearly going to be like a creative benefit to the bar. Now we just need to like make sure that like the, you know, the personality is clicking a place. That sort of.

Like your background as a bartender and being creative in that space and as an art teacher and literature and all this stuff has helped you be so creative with building this app as well, because it's not just that you've done the coding work behind it. And it's not just that you've almost thought of everything that the app could possibly give a bartender or a bar owner or a guest, even for that matter. But it's like very creative about the way you've sort of thought about everything that the app could do for a person. Do you feel like there's a connection there?

Absolutely. In the tech industry, there's this sort of trope where like programmers don't know what to build because they've never been in another industry. So they don't know what problems are out there. Whereas like, I suffered behind the bar being like, I want to take the sticky binder and like literally light it on fire.

Like, can someone please order a blue blazer so that I can accidentally light this thing on fire because it annoyed me so much. And like, you know, the whole process of, of like, you know, getting recipes together to like put a new menu together was like this, this could be like a lot easier and a lot more like efficient. So like, with that flavor profile thing. You know, another thing that it does is it like it generates it on the fly as you're adding ingredients.

So like, I've got like this, whatever this is loaded into my builder, which is just tequila and egg of store bitters. And if we look at this flavor profile, like, yeah, it's like quite bitter and herbal. Like, look what happens if I take out the ingot store bitters, boom, it changes that bitter went way down. So you can actually, you can actually workshop the flavor of a recipe in the app without ever pouring anything.

That's incredible. Jesus. You really have thought of everything here. That's what I find amazing about it.

So did some of this come from like feedback you got because you're going back to when we started talking about it, you were saying, oh, build the basic one. And then get some feedback. Did you get a lot of feedback that we're like, Oh, we'll be great if we can do this. We'll be great if we can do this.

Yeah, I'm constantly talking to people that use the app. Like everyone, everyone who subscribes, I like email them within a week and I'm like, Hey, welcome. I'm like, any questions you need any ingredients? Like, here's my phone number.

You can text me. Like, if you need, like anything you need, like, I will, I will get it in there or I will build it. So like a lot of these features have been due to like due to feedback. So like, like another one is like, you can someone gave me this idea since I've got all these flavor maps.

You can search by flavor. So like, let's take the fat all the way down. Let's keep the ABV high. Let's keep the smokey down.

So it's like mostly herbal, sour, sweet. And let's see search what this comes up with. So it comes up with like, Oh my God, that's amazing. This is what the fuck we get from guests.

It's like, Oh, I want some sweet, not too sweet, a little bit like, yeah. And that reminds me going back to like drink what we're talking about. Like you walk into drink and they just ask you what flavor profile you want your cocktail. And they just make you drink, right?

So it's kind of like this app does that for you as well. Yeah. So like my, my, I mean, despite me talking about like wanting to be on the well in just like, crush for hours, my favorite thing behind the bar was actually someone would be like, Oh, you know, I want something like new or fresh or they'd be looking at the menu, but they're clearly not in a mindset to like actually read and I would just like take the menu from them. I was like, all right, let's talk about what you want like sweet, sour, herbal, bitter, any combination, anything off limits.

What do you want? Like that was my question. And my favorite challenge behind the bar is like, particularly when I get like two, two women friends who'd sit down and they're like so excited to see each other and like having like a girl's night and just like chat for hours. And I would shoot this question at both of them, get to like either slightly different or radically different answers.

And then I would, you know, crunch my own algorithm in my head and make two custom cocktails based on their answers, give them, give those two drinks to them. And of course, because you know, we've all seen this before, they taste their own drink and then they're like, Oh, you want to taste mine? So they swap drinks to just get the experience of what it tastes like. Yeah.

And you know, I got better this. I got like a higher hit rate as I, you know, progress in my career as a bartender, but it got to the point where like very, very often like 80, 85% of the time they would taste their own be like, Oh my God, this is great. And then pass it off, taste each other's and they'd be like, I like mine better. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's like they're both like happy and exactly what they wanted and what they were looking for. So it was like, you know, going back to your question, it was really like that experience being like, you know, just asking so many times sweet sour, herbal, bitter, any combination, anything off limits. And like as you can see, like that, that forms like the first part of the flavor profile sweet sour, herbal, bitter, like that's what I would ask.

And then I, you know, I had to add all of these others just to like really flush out like the flavor matrix, if you will. That's incredible. Like honestly, I'm just going to keep recommending it at this point, but please people download this app. It's fucking amazing.

I want to get to some of the other stuff that on your plate, like the guest bartender stuff anything else you want to talk about before we let you go. So I'm just going to let you roll with what you want to talk about. One last thing on Bibliot. So this is, like I said, this is a second business account that came on board.

They have 423 recipes. I just want to show you one recipe with regards to something that was like a really key insight with regards to making in Bibliot work. And that's nested recipes. So like any good cocktail bar, you know, a lot of their recipes are actually going to be used for prep to make custom ingredients that are then used in other recipes.

So in order for an ability to really work for bars and bartenders, it has to have this ability to like make a recipe for an ingredient, save it as an ingredient, and then that ingredient pops up in their builder. And then they can select that, add a quantity to it and then add that to another recipe. So here we have an example where if it's got this little recipe symbol, which matches down here, that means it's a it's got its own recipe that you can pull up. So here we go.

We pull up. This is a batch cocktail. So they have three, they have three juices paired with three ounces of a batch, which is made prior. And so it makes sense because you don't want to batch the juices because they'll go bad.

So you have those right at the moment. And then you add the batch just so that you don't have to add everything else. We pull up this batch recipe and it itself has four other nested recipes within it. So we've got cold brew, honey, syrup.

We've got a dark rumbland. We have something called news. And then like we look at this one and it itself has a recipe nested within it. Oh, wow.

This itself has another recipe. It's amazing. Yeah. So just for this one recipe going down this one branch of ingredients, we have one, two, three, four, five recipes nested within this one recipe, which is awesome.

Which is awesome. One drink. Two because like if you're just like trying to get creative exploring as a bartender and you're like, Oh, I went to this bar. I tried this cocktail was awesome.

Then you're like, if you go through that like down the rabbit hole of all those nested recipes, maybe you just land on the one thing like, Whoa, maybe I can do something with this little recipe here and build my own cocktail off of that. It's great. It's great. Yeah.

That's amazing. Okay, man. I don't even know what to tell you. This you've blown us away by this app.

It's again, like, please anyone listening to this who even if you just want to start into home bartending, this is all you need. So in Bibli, I go get it. But yeah, let's talk about some of the other stuff you're doing as well because I want to make sure we get it all in. Yeah, this is this is really quick.

So like this was just based on like a discussion I was having with some bartenders last month and the topic of guest shifts came up and it's like everyone loves the idea of guest shifts. Everyone wants to do guest shifts. It's like it's shockingly difficult to like actually organize them. Like you got to go like camp out at a bar, like make friends and like, you know, then organize it and like it's kind of like this chicken and egg thing of like, How do you get a guest shift somewhere?

And so I built guest bar shift.com, which is a totally free completely free service. Again, like I am just trying to make the lives of bartenders better and easier. And so you can sign up for free, create a profile to get listed on guest bar shift. And then, you know, it just launched.

So I've only got one bar on here, the blue box from Lin. Basically how it works is that bars will have the ability to like, you know, list shifts on given days. So there's calendars inside of the app. So a bar can be like, Oh, well, you know, we'll list potential guest shifts for like every Friday of the month or like every Tuesday of the month.

And then that pops up if you're a bartender on here that pops up and you can select it and basically request that shift. And then there's like a handshake that happens via emails or you can have it happen in the website or the app. It will be available for download on Apple as its own standalone app. I'm currently haggling with the submission process, but it should be it probably be like live and approved by the time that this podcast has some listeners.

So again, it's a totally totally free service. And for the time being, it's going to remain a free service. I did talk to a manager who was like, man, if you could auto generate the tax forms, this would totally be a service that I pay for and it would be like huge with caters. So I mean, that's that's way down the road.

It would have to like actually take off and be useful. But yeah, this is just something that you know I thought of and I discussed with bartenders and I've seen gripes on Instagram about like, Oh, how do you get a guest shift? I was like, I know I'm just going to try and build a tool for this and see if we can get some traction. So awesome idea.

Awesome idea. Well, I mean, I don't even have to say you blow me away with your app with the website. It's great. Before we let you go, you owe me one celebrity story.

Oh, God, which one? Well, there was one that you mentioned on the Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

All right. This was the four seasons. And the only reason I was able to be this smooth was because this celebrity had dined at the restaurant like nine months prior or something like that and I had been on the well and I had gotten the ticket for her drink when it came up. And so I knew what this celebrity drank.

But for this story, it was like a completely dead afternoon. Like at the four seasons, there's like a rush at like, you know, there's a huge lunch rush where the entire business crowd would come in and then it would basically be dead for like two or three hours until like the dinner crew starts coming in. And so this celebrity walked in with a friend and sat at the bar. They just needed like a couple of, you know, a bite to eat and a drink and they just wanted to chat.

And I was in a pretty like cheeky board mood, you know, like those, those like a difficult shifts. You can kind of be like, I need to like entertain myself just as much as I like need to be entertaining. And so, you know, she sat down and I kind of grinded their gears a little bit and was like, all right, you know, put the menu away. You're gonna get the crab tacos and this and that.

And then, you know, what do you want to drink? And they're like, oh, sweet. So I put all that food in. She orders a diet coke and I was like, huh, that's weird.

And as I put the diet coke down, I was like, you must get the Kim Katerrel thing a lot, right? And she's like, yeah, I do. And I was like, is it a blessing or a curse? And she's like, you know, I guess it's a little bit of both.

And I was like, well, she's lucky to look like her. And so, you know, so they eat and they're finishing up and because it's a hotel, you can sign the bill to your room. So I put the bill down and out of the corner of my eye, I see that she just like signs it, signs it to her room and then they get up and start walking away. And I quickly like open the bill fold and lo and behold, of course, it's Kim Katerrel.

And I call after her. I'm like, hey, I thought you drank Campari Orange. And like, she doesn't miss a beat. She just turns around.

She's like, I had to give it up. And then she just keeps walking. Oh, wow. Amazing.

So good. So much more. That's good. Well, John, Mike, this is awesome.

I can't tell you how impressed I am with Inbiblia and the guest bar shift website is an amazing idea. All of this stuff is amazing tools for bartenders. And honestly, even if you just like to fuck around at home, I strongly recommend that you download this app. It's super cool.

What do I listen to? What's the easiest way to find all your shit? Inbiblia.com, like that is your go to. And just like, you know, to any of the bartenders out there listening, like message me, talk to me like whatever you need, I will make happen in this app.

Like, just like one example is like, if you need an ingredient and you go into the builder and you search for it and it's not there, there's a little button that says, is there an ingredient you need that's not in Inbiblia? You press yes and it opens up a little dialog box. Whatever you write into that thing sends directly to my phone. I get a message just like a text message.

And like my turnaround time for people who text me or use this feature being like, I need this ingredient, I can usually get it in within like three minutes or under. So like if I'm not like completely preoccupied, I drop everything and I do it. I get it in there for you. So like, honestly, like I'm just trying to make bartenders lives better.

If you need something, reach out to me. 778-302-2531. Like, I've gotten texts from bartenders all over the world, you know, who have questions or have been very kind, but they're praised. Like, I'll give you some more and not to blow any more smoke up your ass, but honestly, this is a tool that everybody needs in this business.

And so yeah, stop listening to us and start downloading the app. Thanks so much for giving us your time, John Mark. It was a super fascinating conversation. I love the app.

I love the website and we really appreciate you giving us the time. Cheers guys. I really appreciate it too. It was an absolute honor.

Thanks very much.