This week's guest is Bethany Narny, who joins us from Granite Bay, California. In our interview with Bethany, she shares her journey through various roles in the service industry from her early days at Taco Bell to her current position bartending at Hawks Restaurant in Granite Bay. Bethany discusses her experiences transitioning between different restaurant environments, including high-stress casino bartending and fine dining, while highlighting her success in the bar boss competition and subsequent recognition in the industry. Bethany reflected on her career path and societal perceptions of bartending while sharing insights about managing Hawks restaurant's growth and adapting to changing consumer expectations of the restaurant industry.
You can find Bethany online on Instagram at bartender underscore Bethany and Hawks restaurant at Hawks restaurant Granite Bay or check the show notes as always for all the links. We want to thank Bethany again for taking the time out of her busy schedule to join us for an interview and enjoy the show. All right, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kit and this is Dan.
Hey man, that's me. How's it going? That's great man. Great.
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Yeah. Good news. Good news. You shot 12 when you were shopping for houses.
Yeah, I know. I should really use the finest space that suits yourself. I fall into the house. Thank you.
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Okay, that's about all we had to prattle on about. Let's get to our guests today. Joining us from Granite Bay, California, it's Bethany Nardi. How are you?
Hello. Good. How are you guys? Yeah, thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here. Probably since this is middle after noon for you, so we definitely appreciate it. Yes. Okay.
Yeah, so I'm not too familiar with Granite Bay. We were looking it up clearly. We were looking it up before the show today. I guess we'd just say Sacramento is the closest major, so I think Sacramento would be the closest major city that most people know about.
We're based out of Placer County. We're about 30 minutes from Sacramento, going towards Tahoe. Okay. Nice.
And how did you land there? I grew up in Rockland, California, which is also in Placer County. I worked throughout Lincoln, Sacramento, and Roseville and ended up here in Granite Bay, California, which I only live about 12 minutes away from. So, how did you get started in the service industry?
What was your first job? I started back in 2006. I'm aging myself right now as a server. But technically, I started in the food industry when I was 15 and I worked at Taco Bell.
There you go. That was my first job at 15 years old was on the line making burritos and tacos. And then I started as a server at Strange Italian Cafe, a little local Italian cafe in Roseville, California. And eventually it worked my way up to Bartendinga 23 at a Red Robin location.
Right? Yeah, that's like a big chain, right? It is a big burger chain. Oh, okay.
It's like a family restaurant style. They have like franchises, but it's a lot of corporate. Yeah. So big burger chain, you're making when you bar 10, you're making what corporate says to make.
You're not creating anything. But that's where I really got to love. Bartending was by the guests that were coming in. No, no, I'm not.
But Robin was the training very like regimented and very laid out. Or is it kind of more loosey-goosey kind of style? Or how was it there? When I first started there, it was very regimented.
You had to create three different drinks blindly by the bar manager, and you had a set amount of time to do every drink, and it had to be exactly no mess-ups. Oh. So in order to pass the test to be a bartender. So I did about a month of training where it had to memorize 200 recipes, and they chose three drinks from the 200 recipes.
Oh, like Jesus. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And did you guys see me obviously passed on the first try?
I passed on the first try. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So I'm like trying to, I guess I don't really know exactly what a Red Robin is.
I was picturing something. We have a bunch of chain restaurants here that are called Kelsey's or Montana's or something like that. There's sort of food for everybody. Roadhouse style.
Roadhouse style? Was that kind of what it is? Yeah, it was more family oriented back in the day where they had arcades for the kids to use, and the bar was not just 21 and over. But the visions definitely change now, and it's more like a BJ's or a yard house kind of roadhouse.
Yeah. So why does a place that's a family restaurant with arcade games and should need 200 cocktail list? Well, I had milkshakes and everything too. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Oh, so you do want to drink some any kind? Yeah, there was, I mean, there was even alcoholic milkshakes like with slow and stuff on it. Yeah.
So it was, yeah, smoothies, pina coladas, milkshakes, all different zombies, you know, all my ties, all different kinds of drinks that they had there. So that's kind of where you've learned how to bartend and like even though it's like you don't get any creativity there, it's still like having to learn that many drinks and make them. I'm sure you'd like to turn over was pretty quick too. So you're making your bartending very quickly at all times.
Yeah, it definitely helped me with my multitasking and fastness. And especially since I had to, they would time you on the drinks every time you had to have your drinks and tickets in the window within five minutes. No, jeez. Yeah.
We have a couple of places here that do the timing thing too. It's crazy. Yeah. It is crazy.
But it definitely helps with my speed and helping me be able to multitask, still get to know all my guests, but make sure that I'm being efficient in what I'm doing. So yeah, do you have a lot of time to chat up the guests when you're, when you're kind of on a timer and making drinks while the tables at the same time? Yeah. I mean, they're sitting right in front of you.
Yeah, I guess. I guess that's true. I guess the multitasking. I was nodding a lot, you know, acting like I was paying attention, but you know, yeah, but working in that sort of a stress, like a very stressful environment like that where everything has to be done precisely and with that kind of speed, it kind of prepares you to do almost any other bartending job after that, right?
Right. So I was there for eight years actually. And so after I had my second kid, he was six months old, I decided after managing and bartending that I was going to venture out into fine dining. And so I moved out and did some fine dining and wanted that more of a kind of a mindset of making more and not doing as much, you know, and being able to get my portfolio open.
So I was not just bartending in this, say like kind of roadhouse. I wanted more of a fine dining experience underneath me. And yeah, that's a big switch though, right? It couldn't be really that.
I mean, it's the same job in some ways, but it couldn't really be much more different. So how did you adjust to going from like making milkshakes and in as fast a way as possible to like serving in a fine dining environment? Well, in a fine dining environment, I was still making, you know, the drinks that they were telling me to because I worked in Thunder Valley at a steakhouse called High Stakes. And so I still wasn't making drinks that I wanted to do, but I was doing drinks that they were telling me to, but it was more about the food aspect of it.
And also the price point of every ticket that you were given to the guests, I wasn't making, you know, $5 on a table. I was making $50 on people. So I wanted to work more smarter than harder. Yeah.
Yeah. But it's a, your clientele is like, got to be drastically different at these two places. Yeah. And looking back at both now, which do you feel like you enjoyed more?
Well, working at a casino with a whole different world. And it was crazy. Some nights you would walk in and everyone would be drunk already and you're just serving them food and you're trying to feed them water at that point, you know, then from a family style restaurant, whereas you're in milkshakes and things like that. And no, you weren't really dealing with drunk people.
So it made me be able to get more of an experience dealing with people that were more intoxicated. Yeah. Yeah. And then COVID hit and I left there and took about like eight months off of COVID because California was shut down to like a purple tier for a long time.
So everyone in the industry was out of a job for a long time. And so what happens with the casino, since it's on tribal land is that everyone was brought back seniority based and some people had worked at this casino for 15 years. Right. And so once we started to generally kind of open up, they would bring back the people that had the most seniority.
And so I had only been there for three years at that point. So I ventured out down to Sacramento. Sacramento was not in a purple tier as a red tier. So we could do outside dining and bartending at that point.
So I got a job down in Sacramento for about nine months to bartend down there while waiting for COVID to open. And what kind of a place was that? It was a steakhouse too. Yeah.
Yeah, it was connected to a hotel. So it wasn't really dealing with a lot of the craziness from a casino. But definitely you have your regulars that live in the hotel that come in and dine every single day. Still a nice price point for a steakhouse still supplementing that amount of income I was used to getting for the last three years and missing out on because of COVID.
But it was kind of a high stress restaurant to work in because of the chefs that were there. Oh, tell us more. Yeah. It was a the two chef was just very like anti women and not respectful.
The turnover rate was very high. People didn't last more than six months there. Wow. That's not a person that we kind of think that we've reached this point in the service industry where we're kind of over the whole fucking Gordon Ramsay style chef.
But it's like it's amazing how many people we talked to all the time on the show. We've had a recent experience like that. Yeah. Like how are these people getting by with like that kind of behavior in 2025?
I always wonder. I know this was this was back in 2020 though. But yeah, it was just say the least it was my first job. I didn't put a two weeks notice in and I walked out on.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Doing this for a long time.
I've never done that. So I've only done it once too. And I've I've been doing this for about 30 years now. So but I guess what I started opening my own spots after a while.
So I can't really walk out of myself. But yeah, I have done the walking out and I felt so fucking guilty after the next day because it's just like my style. But then I literally called back and apologized for walking out. And then I think that they thought that I was looking at my job back.
I'm like, no, no, no, I'm not coming back. I just felt bad about the way I did it. Yeah. I mean, a kind of similar situation.
I was friends with the GM. So I definitely felt bad that I was leaving him in a hardship by leaving. So definitely reached out and text him. But I mean, all the management left within the next 30 days of me leaving as well.
So how was about to work? I feel that bad for too long. Yeah. So when you walk out now, you obviously have kids at this point.
So now that's like as shitty as the job was, now you put yourself in a bit of a risk. I'm sure you feel like you had built up enough experience that you could probably get a job. But was there any trepidation about like finding another job that was going to pay as well? Well, in my case, I was stressed that night, but the next day I received a phone call for the restaurant that I'm working in now, a pop restaurant.
The next day. The next day. Yeah. So I came in, I interviewed, I did what we call a sta shift, where we come and work with the other bartenders, meet the other staff, spend a few hours here.
And then I started working here the next week. So I wasn't out of a job so too long. So you had obviously already been applying for other jobs, anticipating that maybe you weren't going to be able to last much longer at the hellhole? Yeah, I put my resume up on LinkedIn.
Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So tell us a little bit about this talk spot.
It sounds pretty awesome. We also check the website there, but tell us like sort of what you're offering there. So Hawks Restaurant is 100% far into fork. We use everything in season.
We don't create anything out of season. So if it's not corn season, we're not making dishes with corn. If it's not a spare season, we're not making dishes with the sariest. The same thing goes with my drinks that I create.
Everything is from local farms. A huge vendor that we use is produce express, anything that I want from them. I order through the chefs and they get it here within the few days. And then I cook and create everything and put it on the drink menu.
Also like to pair cocktails with our tasting menu. So every month we have a new tasting menu for the month and we're using strawberries and we're using corn and things like that. So I like to pair my drinks if somebody would like to do a cocktail pairing or a non alcoholic period. Oh, so you guys, so do you have like a tasting menu and then you can either pair it with non alked drinks cocktails and I'm assuming wine.
And wine. Yes, that's awesome. So this has got to be your first go at making your own cocktails and because everywhere else you worked was either like a corporate type spot or like a stickouts where they already had set cocktails. So is this your first chance to be creative?
Yeah. So I learned how to do syrups and things like cooking from the other restaurants, like Echo and Ring and some infusions that the chef wanted to do through them. But once I came here, proved myself to the chefs and my ideas and what I wanted to do and really just dug in deep on flavors and textures and balance and citrus. And now I have full range to make any drink that I would like.
Yeah, that's awesome. So did you have the confidence when you came there that you could do it because you never really had to do it before? Or did you just sort of, I guess you would learn a lot of the sort of the ways of like infusions and sort of the ways to go about making great cocktails, but you never really put it all together on your own menu. So what was your confidence level like for that?
I think me graduating with my fashion design degree, I had a lot of creativity already within me. And I think that I just put it towards my cocktail creations. And I like to say that my cocktails are, you know, styled. So the way the garnishes are, the way that they're presented, how I capture them, I do all my own photography on my Instagram page, editorial wise, and you're also getting that when you dine in here.
So the confidence for me grew after I had been here for about a year and really started to prove myself and the chefs were all saying, you're doing good. This is great work. Keep going and keep pressing. The management here, you know, really wanted to support me too.
So I think all of that together really helped my confidence to know I am doing great things here. And so at some point you start to get some recognition for this as well. And like I know, I mean, obviously California is a huge state with a lot of people living in it, but like Granite Bay is not a well known spot to people who don't live in California. So how did some of this recognition come to you?
Like being featured in Forbes and you are up for Best Bar Tender for what is it? Style Readers Choice Awards? Yeah. So that's going to be announced in August.
And I think the huge recognition came from one, building up my Instagram following for Bartender Bethany and two, I entered into the first ever bar boss competition back in 2024. And that was a voting based. So everyone that is a regular in my bar, everybody that follows me on Instagram, all my family and friends spent about three months consistently voting for me. And that really raised my confidence to know that people do see me and they do see what I'm doing and they are going to support me.
And they are supporting me that I ended up being ninth place out of 72,000 bartenders worldwide in that competition. That's crazy. I want to talk about the competition, but this is a good time to bring out your Instagram page. Where can people follow you?
My Instagram handle is bartender underscore Bethany. Okay. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. As always, as always, so talk us about that bar boss competition.
What is it? Where is it held? How did you get involved and talk to me about the experience? So the bar boss competition is solely online.
It was ran from the first season by bartender magazine, Dose Ombres Mascale and Kind Campaign, which was the sponsor, which was supporting bullying in school. So they all came together. Wait, it was supporting girl bullying? Sorry.
It was not, it was bringing awareness to anti-bullying schools. We better clarify that before this podcast drops. That would have really hurt the Instagram page. Sorry.
Okay. So you found out about it and just thought, oh, I'd like to try this out. Yeah, I was like, oh, this is because of my three kids that I have now. It was a way for me to enter into a competition that was completely online.
And so I thought, oh, I can do this. It's not going to take that much time away from me being home. I can still work and not traveling and doing these competitions everywhere else throughout the United States. So it worked for me.
And so I entered into it and I didn't realize how big it was going to get once I did do it. But yeah, and then bartender magazine was a huge support for me throughout the competition. So how does competition work? Like you submit a cocktail that you've created or how does it work?
So it was 100% solely based for a lot of it. You had to get within the first round, the top 25, the second round, the top 15, the third round and you were in different groups. So there was like 45 different groups of 55 different bartenders that you had to get into a top amount in within a certain amount of time. And the top amount is ranked by votes.
So how many people voted for you? What are they voting on? Is the cocktail that you created? No, they're voting just for you.
Oh, just for you as a bartender. Oh, OK, I see. So yeah, so you're really relying on the participation of your guests and regulars. Right.
Oh, interesting. And then once you got to the semi-finals where then everybody was together, then you created a cocktail using Dils Ombre's Mezcal. You took a photo of it, you submitted it, you sent your specs to it, bartender magazine recreated it, and then they picked the secondary winner within the competition. So there was an overall winner that won first place throughout the whole competition by voting.
And then there was a secondary winner that won by their dream creation once they got into semi-finals. Crazy. And you managed to finish ninth in this whole competition. I did.
So on which side or is that on both sides? It was overall. Overall. Yeah, yeah.
That's work. What was your cocktail? So I did a cocoa nib infused mezcal with the Dils Ombre's. And then I made a cashew or jot infused orange bitters with habanero.
And I made a macaron garnish for it. Sounds amazing. Yeah. So it's kind of like a spicy orange chocolate drink.
And so through this is that now you get a tend to get some attention because you did so well on the competition like that. Obviously that probably boosts your Instagram situation as well. And then that's how you get recognized by like Forbes or whatever sort of just kind of rolling downhill from there. Right.
Bartender magazine featured me in the month of February. So I got a feature spread in Bartender magazine after I had already been out of the competition. So that was amazing too because that was part of the prize was winning money and being on the cover of Bartender magazine. So I wasn't on the cover.
I didn't win money, but I was featured in it. So that was. Right. So yeah, I worked with it anyway.
Do you feel like you've noticed that any effect on like the business for the restaurant since your recognition? I mean, people will come into because of my posts or my drinks or Hox is then great sharing about what I'm doing. You know, they're going to share about maybe on the podcast. I flew out.
I was flown out to New York in September by the winner of the bar boss competition and I bartended alongside him at his restaurant. So it does. I'm doing a lot of things and people want to know about it and they want to come in and they want to talk to me and see me and drink and eat. And so that's great that you got to flow in by the winner.
Like that's good bartending support bartender supporting bartender business right there. Yeah, he has done that with other people in the competition as well. He has not. Oh, wow.
Congratulations. That was good. So touch us about that experience. Have you been to New York before?
No, it's my first time ever going to New York. I was flown out on a red eye and I spent three days there. I was at his restaurant every day, but I did go to them bucket list things like employees only I wanted to experience. So I went there and then went to Hudson Valley and went on the highest part in New York.
I think it's called the peak and really looked over all of New York and that was amazing as well. And it's a lot of time at his restaurant and bars called Drinkology and it's out of the Astoria area. Nice. So yeah.
And so that obviously your first time bartending outside of California, did you notice any specific differences in the clientele or the style of bartending or I'm always really curious about that because the United States is such a diverse place, especially state to state, right? I've done a fair amount of traveling there and like there's so like there's a lot of similarities between everybody who lives in the US and Canada for that matter, but state to state, there's some real differences. So what did you notice? I noticed that people in New York are a little standoffish as to why you're so friendly to them.
And then once they get a drink or two in them, they're like, okay, let's talk. Why are you here? You know, kind of thing. But they were just really wanting to just get their drink and kind of be like, okay, like, I just want to drink.
I don't know why you're talking. Why you're so friendly to me. That's funny. But they warmed up to me after they had a drink or two and you know, everyone that I had an encounter with was really nice.
So that's good. Well, that's a crazy awesome experience. And like, just imagine, like when you started working at the Red Robin, I'm sure there was no part of you that dreamt that one day you would be featured in Bartender magazine and being flown up to New York to work alongside the winner of the competition that you did so well. Absolutely not.
I had no dream or desire or aspiration to do anything that I'm doing now. It's just, it's a dream now for me because these things are happening and I'm experiencing them and it's crazy because I'm a mom to three at 36 years old. Yeah. You really got to work on that.
Yeah. Do you remember when you realized that this was basically your career? Because there's usually a light switch moment for like, I was talking about this on the show all the time. Yeah, I woke up and I'm like, oh shit, I guess this is what I do now.
Yeah. So I think being pregnant with my last, she's two now. Being pregnant with her really was like, okay, this is, this is my time. This is what I'm doing.
This is what I love to do. And I go to work because I love it, not because I'm forced to do it. Did you have a, because we're younger than us, but like the, when I was growing up in the industry, there was like, I certainly had guilt that came with realizing that this could be your career because it was like not considered a real job quote unquote for so, for so many people. It's like, oh, it's not a real career.
Did you have any of that? Or are you young enough that? I think the younger generation, the younger generation don't have that anymore. They realize that it's a legitimate career.
Yeah, I think too. Like, I don't know if it's something within my own head, but people are like, oh, what do you do? And I say I'm a bartender. I think that they look down on that.
Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, yeah. It's still out there a little bit. So then you can't help but feel guilty about it a little even though we should all be proud of what we do, but yeah.
Right. Right. So yeah, you do still have it. Yeah.
Yeah, and it's probably our age. Yeah, it doesn't really go away either. Like I think once, to be honest with you, once I started opening my own places, it was definitely easier to tell people, oh, I own a bar as opposed to, oh, I'm a bartender. And you could definitely see the difference with the way people look at you, but it's so stupid.
Like I make way less money now than I own a bar than I did when I bartended. Yeah. Well, and it's like, you know, are you paying my bills? Why do I really care what you think?
Right. Yeah, it's a weird thing, but it's just like rained into us because I don't know, like we're from that older generation where it's like, you were supposed to graduate from college or university, go get your career, start your family. And it's career bartending was a job, not a career. Yeah.
Another thing also that I deal with is people are like, oh, you leave your kids home at night. You don't have dinner with them every night there. Oh, you're here four days a week who's taking care of them. Where are they?
Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. They're just running free through the city.
Yeah. Do you mind if I ask you, Mary? I am married. Yeah.
So what does your husband do? My husband is a correctional officer. Oh, wow. That's crazy.
So where's the prison or jail? It's in I own. It's up towards, you're not going to know, but it's up towards like Jackson, Rancheria area. No, interesting.
That's got to be an interesting career. Yeah. He was when we met. He was 22 and I was 21 and he was a busser at a steak house called Catamens and worked there for a long time.
So he was in the industry as well, but he wanted to get out of it. And so he became a lineman. And then after that point, somebody that he had worked with was going through the academy and my husband's like, okay, well, let me try this and the benefits and the retirement is amazing. And both of my mom and stepdad were also correctional officers.
Oh, really? No. The kids don't get it online. I'm guessing.
No, yeah, they were correctional officers in a jail, not a prison. So a little different, but still, yeah. But that's interesting that you said just to go back to what you're saying earlier, that's something that like, they're not everybody else in the industry has to deal with is like being a mother of three and then having to people ask you ridiculous personal questions like that. Like it's any other fucking business in the first place.
Right. But it's definitely, they're definitely looking down their nose at you with a question to that too, right? Like implying you're a bad mother. It's just like, it's a demeanor, right?
I'm a demeanor of saying that you're a bartender or now I'm a mother and I'm a bartender and I'm not fitting into the status quo of Monday through Friday and eight to four job, you know, because they don't ask questions to somebody who's a secretary working somewhere. Children are. That's right. It's what's the difference?
The hours, but it shouldn't make any difference, right? Right. Well, I mean, my next question was going to be where the fuck are your kids, Bethany, but we'll just move on. They're taking care of, I promise.
I'm a good mom. I'm a little kid. I'm a little blowtorch to heat up the piano. That's probably fine.
That's probably fine. That's probably a rush too. No, I'm quite sure you're a good mom. Obviously, but I do want to ask a little bit about the whole restaurant bar scene in Granite Bay.
What is it like? Obviously the place that you're working at seems like they're doing some very high-end stuff, which is super cool. Are there a lot of places like that in that area? What is Granite Bay like in general?
We have a lot of restaurants in this area. The thing is that COVID has really changed the way that people look at food and look at drinks and they want to spend their money on things that are worth it to spend their money on. A lot of places are mass-producing things. They're not that great.
Their prices are high and they're leaving, feeling unsatisfied. When they come to our restaurant, yeah, they are paying a little bit more. We don't have a happy hour here. Everything on our menu is a steeple.
They know when they walk in the door that they're going to get great things. A lot of it is word of mouth. Our restaurant's going on to 19 years here. We are successful here.
We are in the process of opening another location, 10 doors down in the same parking lot. Wow. That's great. That's exciting.
I don't have an opening date because the liquor license and all the licensing and everything here is crazy to get around. It's been pushed back a few times. It's funny. We've had so many conversations lately about people trying to open places and the different liquor laws, especially in state-by-state or county-by-county throughout the U.S.
That's it. We have our own crazy ones here in Ontario and Canada that make no sense either. It's quite an interesting thing for me because having opened a few places now, I'm very curious about the different ridiculous little bylaws or red tape you have to go through in all the different spots. It's just never ending.
Never ending. Yeah. We're still waiting on that. I assume you'll be involved with the cocktail menu over there as well.
I can't say anything yet. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. But that's exciting because you've probably never been involved in the opening of a place before.
I've never been involved in an opening of a place that I have managed places before. There's something about being on that from the ground up and creating the whole thing. Whether it's yours personally or you're just part of the team that's doing that. It's a very prideful experience.
I feel like. Yeah, I'm excited looking forward to it. Something else to put on my resume there. Yeah.
So what the other thing I was going to ask you about? How did you start to grow the Instagram page to the point where it got noticed so much? I think just showing myself and my personality and creating drinks, people want to be a part of it. They want to follow it.
They come in, they experience it. Yeah, I take editorial photos. They might have a little bit of a bigger garnish on it for the photo, but they're still being able to sit at the bar and get the same experience. And they want to be a part of that.
And I think just word of mouth, Sacramento Bar community, Placer County Bar community is very small. A lot of people know everyone. And so it is a very much bartender supporting bartender. So when I'm my husband, I have a date night, we will go see other bartenders.
We will make friends. We will, the bar boss competition, a lot of bartenders I threw events for to just come out and support me. And I paid for food and just had everybody meet everybody and kind of do a mingling meeting to make everybody more aware that this is a community and we do need to support each other. Yeah.
Well, I like the whole idea of the whole bar boss competition as well as the way of supporting bartenders almost on a global basis. I assume it was a global competition. It was a global competition. Yeah, even globally.
And all this support starts in the local community like you were mentioning, going and supporting your other bartenders. I think it's important because I think sometimes we all get wrapped up in what we're doing and like our personal lives, what's going on, like Christ, you got three kids to worry about. You got like your own career to worry about. You're trying to further that.
Your husband's beating down prisoners on a daily basis. I'm just kidding. That's the best. But we get wrapped up in our own ship.
But it's good to remember to like when you do have time to go out to try and support the other places where there are other great bartenders trying to do good and creative things. Yeah, it means a lot. It's important. And a lot of community needs to happen within the support system of bartenders.
And you can really grow yourself. You may not know how to do something and you become friends with another bartender and they know how to do it. You're growing your knowledge by other people that may have more experience or read another book that you may have not read or went to Europe and experienced their cocktails and how they do things there. And they brought that knowledge back.
And it's all just this big cycle and circle to growth. And the great thing about this industry is that in general, like there's always bad apples, but we tend to have each other's backs and want to support each other. So and I think it's getting more and more that way. And I think COVID actually is one of the things that COVID helped.
It's really kind of gotten more that way. We become even more supportive of each other because of the ways we all had to try and pivot during the lockdowns and try and still make a living somehow or keep our names out there or whatever that we become more supportive. And that's been great for everybody because there was a time way back. Like certainly when I was coming up in the industry, everybody was very guarded about their practices and techniques.
And you know, after a while, it just seemed ridiculous. People were writing books and giving classes and stuff like what are we holding onto like share? Right. Right.
We don't need just a one person fan. It needs to be, you know, a community of growth together. And I think too, during COVID, a lot of people talked about mental health in the bartending industry as well because working the late nights, being on show all the time behind the bar, being a therapist, you know, and putting yourself last for the person that you're serving in front of you was hard. And then for all to be taken away during COVID and not knowing, you know, are you going to have a job to go back to?
Or do you have to find a different career? What's next was a big eye opener for the community as well? Well, that brings me to my last question for you. What's next for you?
I know obviously you've got the new place to worry about helping to open that spot up. But anything else in the hopper that you've just sounds like it's probably pretty busy. But yeah, I am doing a anniversary farmers market for produce express. Which is going to be about 300 people.
They'll be sending me a bunch of produce tomorrow that I will be cooking up and making an a in a beverage for. So I'll be out there next week doing that. And that will be with all a lot of restaurants and chefs and farmers throughout California. So that's next.
I'm working on that. And tell our listeners where they can find out about Hawks Restaurant and all the good things you're doing there. Yeah. So Hawks Restaurant, Granite Bay on Instagram and also HawksRestaurants.com is where you can find all of our amazing food, our drinks and our location.
Well, I've definitely checked it out and Dan has as well the website and everything we were looking at right before we started recording. Everything looks amazing. I think that what you're doing there is awesome and anybody who's in that area of California or if you're visiting, please go see Bethany. Yes.
Thanks so much for doing the show Bethany. We really appreciate you giving us the time especially on Monday afternoon and as busy as you must be. So we really appreciate it. It was a great meeting you.
Great meeting you both. Thank you very much. Thanks a ton.