This week's guest is Kalei V Draper, who joins us from Montreal, Quebec. Kalei V has dedicated herself to building a brighter and more inclusive hospitality sector. Her vision to provide unfailingly warm hospitality to LGBTQ plus folks, and her passion for educating those both in front of and behind the bar is baked into everything she does. In our interview with Kalei, she discusses her very unique and unusual journey into the bartending industry, including her experiences competing in and winning global bartending competitions.
Kalei shared her insights from her time working at prestigious bars around the world, particularly highlighting traditional Japanese bartending techniques and cultural differences and cocktail practices across various locations. Kalei also discussed her advocacy work for LGBTQ plus representation in the hospitality industry and her upcoming events in Hong Kong plus a number of other topics as always. Currently you can find Kalei working at Montreal's iconic Biju Biju sharing her love of Sheri, Aparetes and the City of Montreal. You can find Kalei online on Instagram at non- underscore Barnery as well as at Places You Are Welcome Zine and on the web at placesyouarewelcome.com or check the show notes for all the links.
We want to thank Kalei for being a terrific guest and enjoy the show. We're back with another episode of the industry podcast. I am Kip and this is Dan. Hey how's it going?
Great man how are you? Oh still awesome, still awesome after 247 episodes. That's great to hear. Who knows?
I'm doing great man no complaints whatsoever. Perfect perfect. Yeah I don't even have an Elsevio complaint this week so that's I'll give it 10 minutes I'm sure you'll want to come in. Yeah I'll take a one.
Yeah perfect. Yeah so we'll just jump right into it this week since we have nothing new to report but creeping up on that 250th episode that's exciting. So I guess that's gonna be in a couple weeks forward to that and if you like what we've been doing for the last 247 episodes or whatever we're at right now then you should subscribe, right? Review the show that helps us tremendously and if you'd like to be a guest on the show or provide support for the show you can email us at info at the industrypodcast.club or you can contact us directly on Instagram at the industry podcast and that's where you'll find the amazing artwork from the great zakana at zakana.co for all of your graphic arts needs.
If you're in the Kitchener Waterloo area come check out Sugar Run at Sugar Run Bar on Instagram to find out what's going there going on there and kipsunderz.gmail.com if you want to get any of the wonderful products from Malibuar Winery or Alora Distillery you can email me directly for that. We should talk about the Toronto Cocktail Festival coming up in October 20th from October 22nd to 26th. It's very exciting. There's the gala of cocktails.
There is a neighborhood cocktail crawl and lots of seminars and tastings. You do not want to miss it. Toronto Cocktail Festival you can google Toronto Cocktail Festival to find out everything about it and where to buy tickets. I think I actually have a link for that and it is yeah the alchemistmag.ca slash tcf.
Yes thank you very much. Or listen episode 246 with Gail Nugent where we get a discussion that she is the producer of the Toronto Cocktail Festival. And also the publisher of the alchemistmag. That's correct.
So yeah check that out Toronto Cocktail Festival coming your way late October and you know if you're in the cocktail scene the other thing you want to know about is our good friends at ambiblia Dan take it away. Sure today's episode is in partnership with ambiblia the visual cocktail app built by bartenders for bartenders missing an obscure miscal and need that new amaro added. Ambiblia's ingredient request system adds new ingredients usually within minutes but here's the thing every ingredient isn't just a name on a list. Tap any bottle and get a full ingredient card with history info tasting notes and even a selection of similar ingredients based exclusively on flavor profiles with over 4000 ingredients and counting map this way it's not just comprehensive it's the deepest ingredient intelligence in the industry and it's only going to continue growing from mass market vodkas to rare models every bottle gets the full treatment here all the details in episode 216 of the industry podcast see why it was featured by Bon Appetit and hit number one in the app store when it launched.
This free download gets you 500 plus recipes and all core features with subscription options for individuals and businesses to unlock advanced tools and connect entire teams visit www.ambiblia.com for more. Okay ambiblia if you do want to check it out and once again Toronto Cocktail Festival don't forget to check that that's coming up so you're gonna want your tickets and I think that's about all we have to talk about so let's get to our guest Callie Draper joining us here from Montreal how are you Callie? I'm doing fantastic how are you both? Doing well doing well I think you're making some time to join us tonight yeah absolutely my pleasure so you are currently slinging drinks at BZU.
That's correct yeah join the team there back in May maybe jump from Edmonton to Montreal. Oh you weren't Edmonton previously I was yeah oh what's the cocktail scene like in Edmonton? It's solid it's growing I mean like I find Alberta a lot of folks go to Calgary but there's some good drinks being mixed up and where did you grow up if you don't let me ask them. I'm originally from Ottawa spent most of my life in Edmonton stayed there until I finished up university a few years later and I guess in a few years after that and then moved out to Montreal so I'm a bit closer to family but also like a good good weekend trip away from family you know yeah yeah that's good thing I keep that kind of distance did you go to Edmonton for university then or my family moved out there when I was a kid oh I see big hockey family my dad got a job with the others when I was just a youngling and yeah stayed at the most for life oh crazy so kind of a big move to fly all the way back up to Montreal to start working there but I'm sure like you felt at the time that maybe you're trading up I'm trading up a little bit on the cocktail scene Montreal's certainly more well known for cocktails definitely like a big global city it's connected more there's there's a lot more people so there's a lot more stuff happening and it's just easier to have more variety more passion more people who are pushing for a higher standard people at different grade have nothing bad to say about them but as a city it's it's smaller it's not bringing in the same level of crowds that allow you to do the same level of work yeah that's the real thing I guess right there's not like you're not getting the same level of tourism more and it's or like a bigger city with that's way more tourist focused like necessarily needs a better bar and restaurant scene so kind of then yeah and then the one pushes another next thing you know you've got a bunch of great spots so yeah big difference that way yeah so when did you first get into the industry what was your first gig I have a bit of a weird story with getting to the industry I was a hobbyist bartender for the longest time I was a regular to bar in Edmonton called little Hong Kong back when James Grant was heading up there and then he won world class back in August 2021 and I had free time for the first time in my life that's the very same year because I just finished up my studies so I realized that anybody could enter world class decided to enter made it to top 10 western Canada having never worked behind a bar then it's the national level ended up winning a challenge nationally and realized if there was ever a sign to follow a passion this would be a and went full into ever since started bartending at a bar in everything called a Clementine it's a classic spa really great absent program as well and kind of that's where I first started cutting my teeth and here I am now I guess three four years later wow that's crazy that is definitely the reverse way to do this very much whenever I'm like how do you get started like not like me yeah exactly no yeah don't follow that path necessarily but that's so at some point like right away you must have realized well I have some sort of natural affinity and talent for making cocktails like how do you realize that would never actually have done the job I guess for me the biggest thing was like this was something I did at home I was making drinks I was having fun and I saw it as an opportunity to have a drink that I made get tasted by somebody who was recently named one of the best bartenders in the world at the time and I thought I'm not gonna go anywhere with this I didn't expect to make it through to any level but I could sit down at James's bar two weeks three weeks later say hey what do you think of this and continue on my life like nothing ever happens so it's really just from a chance of like you know on board this is a chance to have somebody really good at this tell me how bad I am and how to improve and instead he was like go for it yeah that's crazy I took it around and have not stopped since so there must have been some point when you were just like doing it at home for friends or yourself or whatever your family I don't know who but um where you were like okay I think I might be good at this like how did that realization come I think it was uh there's there's a level when I got like just kind of obsessed with like the minutiae of certain things like I remember it would be me and my brother in his apartments and we'd be making like 10, 12, 13 like mini martinis each one with like a slight variation to figure out exactly how we like ours or like we'd each buy three different remotes and do like a blind tasting on each other just because we found it interesting and I think it was that kind of time I was like oh there's a lot in this to learn and there's a lot that I can like really find myself like falling in love with that the average person doesn't always care about and did your brother end up in the industry also or?
Funnily enough um he hasn't but I think two years later he entered world class and the two of us are the only two people who weren't active bartenders at the time of competing in world class in Canadian history which is the weirdest thing ever. Crazy. The fact that I did it first is a big pain in his side. Yeah but that's amazing though like a crazy story for that to happen and else just starting from the two of you just enjoying making drinks and getting nerdy about it completely.
We got lucky we stumbled into a bar one night in Edmonton and got inspired by somebody doing the craft with care and then we just kept on stumbling our way forward throughout the weird world of hospitality. When you finally decided that you were gonna go to work at a bar how did you find that transition? Because generally you're starting probably because of you know now you've got some accolades already from doing world class that that was probably all you really needed on your resume to get hired and but you've never actually physically done the job behind the bar which is like as cool as it is to make awesome cocktails the physical job of bartending is a completely different animal so how did you how did you find that? It was a it was a fast and intense adjustment like I remember first like I'd say year and a bit of just like on the bar like on the floor bar backing that kind of stuff just trying to like understand the flow understand the movement because yeah making a drink and bartending is completely different thing.
There's so much more that goes into it and I think like to talk a bit of shit about myself when I first started it's like I probably had a bit of a cockiness to me I had a bit of an ego because I was like oh look at me stumbling into this making a making like a name for myself when I had no idea what I was doing so I got that first job and I was like oh yeah this is gonna be easy got my ass handed to me routinely for at least a couple months before I started being able to hold my head above water and then yeah it was just finding the time to like sit down make sure I was like testing myself on specs testing myself on like like consistency of jigging that kind of stuff to make sure that's actually dialed in the way it should be in a professional setting not just in an at-home setting. Yeah and there's also like the whole process of figuring out how to become efficient at it as well when you're like in the weeds or whatever that's a huge thing that's some people frankly never get and those are the people get weeded out of the industry generally so at least you found out you could do both. I'm lucky it's worked out I did the the leap of faith and thankfully there's something below. And did you so when you first did that because the other thing I guess could have happened would have been like fuck I kind of hate this job and it's just like I just like making pretty drinks right or drinks that taste good so was there ever a moment where you're like I don't know if this is for me.
Honestly I really lucked out I think it was like there must have been a year into the industry but like the year into my first job the common time was when I first started going like you know maybe this wasn't a great day but for some reason I was able to just like keep myself mentally there where I left work happier than I came in I'm a big people person I love chatting with folks and I was just able to keep that energy up and then yeah it was it took about a year for me to have a day that really kind of like rocked me I had no idea even what happened but did it but I think because things went so well for the first little bit and I enjoyed getting my ass handed to me that little bit of like masochism of like no I need to be pushed I need to be I need to suck at this so that I can get better having that really helped to the start. And so you obviously kept entering in competitions and you eventually were the global winner of the 50 best bars Roku scholarship so tell us a little bit about that. Yeah so fun thing with the scholarship it's been running for three years now and I've entered into it every single year it was actually the first competition I entered in after I finished up world class that first round and I didn't do anything that first year I mean I entered didn't get far second year I ended up getting into the top 25 globally and in this past year I won and so it's a relatively new program it's for newer bartenders in the industry as well run through the world's 50 best bars and basically what it does is it takes one person and it gives them a series of stages that some of the bars on the world's 50 best list. The first year it was Drew Fleming from the Isle of Man who won he got a staj at the conant bar for two weeks and then katana kid for two weeks and then did some work with the Santorri Global Headquarters in at the time for another two weeks another year after that was a poorva from Sidecar in India she got some time at we was Sips and Alkimiko and then myself this past year I got to work with the teams at bar high five and virtue in Tokyo and then at maybe Sammy in Sydney and then because I cannot stand free time I decided to reach out to a few other bars and make a big trip out of it and ended up being able to learn from the team at Caracakers Cottage as well in Melbourne.
Oh well crazy yeah so talk to us a little bit about your experience sort of traveling around with this now getting this opportunity is incredible and then so talk to us a little bit about the different scenes in say Tokyo and Australia and Madrid like how are they different what did you like best about them what was it part you hated? I think it was it was really cool to see how like each classic is even balanced a bit differently for the palettes of each city in Tokyo everything like a base like a base gimler base daiquiri is going to be a lot busier a lot less sweet a lot more tart even then like what is typical it's very very dry acidic and spirit forward versus in Australia things are a lot sweeter a lot softer so you cut down the gab and you add a bit more sugar and that's kind of balanced more for their palate it's really interesting because I was bringing a few cocktails and doing like one or two of my own drinks at each bar except bar high five that's just doing us on behind the bar I went on Caracana the only two who make the drinks except regulars regulars decide if a bar back is ready to make a drink there it's the weirdest thing but yeah it's each country had a different level of balance for what they expected from a cocktail and it was very interesting to figure out how that worked and to take a drink that to my palate in Canada and to like my regular palate in Canada is considered like a solid level of balance but then in Japan it's way too sweet in Australia it's way too dry and nothing's drained between it so you have to balance to each country that's interesting I went like I wouldn't that's something I wouldn't have even thought about that like palettes I mean I guess in an extent of course palettes are gonna be different in different areas of the world but you don't really think about it I guess until you're in that situation yeah and there's a lot of like I would say there's a lot of politics going into that too because I mean Australia is quite isolated from the rest of the world so some spirits to ship there it's gonna be a lot more expensive to get a bottle of ginger Australia from the UK than it is from UK to Canada because that's the fly further there's gonna be more shipping costs there's gonna be more import taxes so you're not gonna want to use as much of it in a base drink right oh that makes sense yeah that's when you think about it that way it really does make sense I do remember weed was very expensive in Australia for the same reason that's what I remember from being the most extensive and the worst drugs yeah precisely that's so funny what was the biggest thing you think you learned from each of these trips to these different bars like or just give us a couple things that you feel really helped develop you as a bartender I think with high five specifically that was a really cool experience because high five is like the quintessential Japanese bar experience in my mind like when it's on carries on behind the wood making a drink and I'm very like very refined Japanese style everybody in who worked in the bar would open together have family meal and then close together and then we all stay an extra two three hours after close to just learn technique directly from when it's on carries on well just to like have that chance to like one on one on like the five different types of Japanese coffee shaking or like how to use an unthreaded Japanese style of our spoon the first like three days for me and typically for an internet bar high five the first like three weeks you don't touch a shaker or a spoon you're just practicing like Japanese pouring techniques which is like it was really really cool to have that experience of just like going back full into fundamentals full into basics and that was really fun I think like no no sorry I didn't interrupt you go ahead one of the things that surprised me most there culturally was that in Tokyo the way that they structure like bar growth and like ice promotions in a way is that the regulars decide when somebody's ready to bartend and that was something that I found really interesting because if you're a regular of a bar in Tokyo you're typically there five six times a week like regular being regular bar is like a big commitment and they've been going there a while I met a few of like a couple of them at bar high five when I was there because only there for one week but they would be there most of my shifts and it was really cool because a couple times they'd be like oh this is a new person there when I was on tell them why I was there and they'd say okay making a drink and for a regular bar back working at a Japanese bar when a regular says making a drink that is your one chance to impress them if you don't then they might take another three four years until they call okay making a drink at you but if they like what you made then they'll come back again they'll say okay why you make me another drink and it's them calling on you specifically to determine if you're ready to actually go behind the bar it's not the actual owners it's not the bar manager it's the regulars beside which was really interesting to me that's super cool and so I'm assuming that at one point you got called now I did yeah I remember it was like my second but I was my second or third shift of of six that's um I got called and then my last night as well I got called again I was like okay it was the same regular too so I got called twice by her and I was like okay I got it I made it I made it that's awesome can you just for our listeners and actually for me too frankly is that can you describe and explain sort of what you mean specifically by specific Japanese pouring and shaking techniques like what's how are they different yeah I mean so there's a very like interesting mystique around a lot of Japanese bartending I feel like it kind of got quite big in like social media that kind of stuff for a while with like bartending Japan cobbler shakers are a lot more common than Boston shakers and they have a lot of different specific ways that they use them so they have kind of they've built a bit of a different style of shaking or stirring in Japan based on the style of shaker that they use with us Boston shaker just want to get a good froth you want to get it nice and aerated for them there's going to be five classic styles of Japanese shaking depending on the spirits depending on the type of acid or type of cream and just hangout if there's egg whites and a lot of it has to do with the size and style of ice so a lot of bars in Tokyo use hand cut ice so before service every day we would get lots of ice and have a massive like soda knife like we were cutting noodles and we cut down each into like a typical like one by one by one and a half kinkoo or excuse me by two and a half kinkoo and we cut those down for service and for each style of drink they would stack them in the shape in a slightly different way which in like the context of Japanese bartending is supposed to impact how the the liquid moves through the container or how impact how it aerates it's the sort of minutia that for the majority of people you don't really notice and for me I can't quite say I fully can can appreciate if somebody has the difference of shaking for a white spirit versus a brown it's really cool to there is that level of theory and how practical it is is a bit up in the air for me well it's kind of just like how the Japanese do everything right though yeah so it kind of makes sense when you lay it out that way do you carry it or we're any of these techniques to what you do now? 100% I still follow the other practice regimen that I started off at bar high five just to kind of keep the skills up there I remember so with with Japanese bar spoons they're non-threaded so when you're stirring you don't have those threads to help with an easy smooth stir in your tin but there's a very specific motion that you're supposed to do you hold the bar spoon a little differently and you're supposed to have the spoon trace the entire way up your finger as you stir and it's not in the wrist it's kind of in it's all in the motion I forget the muscle here but like the one right above your elbow okay that's how you move to spoon it's kind of like the motion of opening a doorknob and I remember on the flight from Tokyo to Sydney I set up a small metal mixing tin and a bar spoon and this is like a it's like a nine-hour flight I didn't sleep I just sat there I had something going on the the Tv airplane TV and I just practiced stirring in that style for nine hours and the calluses I built that was absurdly painful and just downright stupid there's very much like a mantra of like you're supposed to hurt a little bit when you're practicing so that you build the muscle memory like when I was on it's like hit yourself in the chest with your shaker when you're shaking so that you have the muscle memory so when it comes to working behind the bar your body takes over and it's the sort of thing where I describe bar high five as a bit of a perfect bar in a very unique way not because I think it's like perfect in every way or it's the ideal situation but it's a bar that's so specific and so exact it that it doesn't have room for error and because of that everything has to be practiced and rehearsed and refined they have the same playlist from start to finish every single day so you know how far into service you are just by listening it's really interesting that way because they require perfection from humans which are inherently imperfect so you have to practice and you have to build that muscle memory so that you can keep it going wow that's crazy that's so I find that also interesting I also think that perhaps whoever was saying but side you on the plane probably thought you were absolutely out of your mind but I'm not sure you know my hands but I know like we're in a sitting watching probably like SpongeBob or something I have no idea okay so the other thing that we're gonna this is kind of there's no good segway here so just shifting focus but you're also very passionate about lgbtq plus issues and also how that affects the service industry it talks a little bit about how you combine these passions yeah so I have the honor of being the first trans person to ever win global bartending competition and that I am extremely proud of I'm actually even more proud of than I'm not the last because there has been other people of one since then but it's something that when I was growing up when I was a kid I did never see any role models except negative role models for trans people and because of that there's a lot of internalized beliefs around what it means to be trans and what it mean if I was doing brace that side of myself so I very much so in my entire life have wanted to become a good role model and to showcase people who do fantastic work but might not be within what is considered the classic norm and that was part of my my life my passion before I started the industry back when I was involved in politics and then it continued on once I got into the industry and so I kind of brought over a lot of that passion into what I did and I had to get my money's worth out of my political science degree so I decided to start thinking about like the philosophy of hospitality and the political power of bars and I was able to kind of convince myself in a way that I was still using my degree but I stand by it that's um I think that bars are an essential part of community building we are third spaces where people go to to see their community to relax after a long day work to engage with people to celebrate to more and whatever it might be and by tending a bar we have the chance to shape a community because when you're there the other people that are there subconsciously you see as part of that community because they're engaging with the same place they're engaging with the same thing they have probably have a shared passion of a good cocktail and so by shaping how you engage with a bar as a bartender and by shaping who is welcoming your spaces you're able to help shift who other people see as part of the community so that's always been a big part of what I do and what I am passionate about and it led into me engaging with things like the Toronto Cocktail Conference and that sort of stuff and talking about queer inclusion in hospitality and kind of highlighting queer hospitality and the uniqueness of it now it took about I would say two plus years for me to find another trans person bartending I was the only person in Edmonton who was outwards trans bartending and it took a while in Canada for me to see anybody else and I knew that that couldn't be because there wasn't anybody I knew that there had to be other people they just weren't being showcased or supported or uplifted so I decided to found a kind of independent cocktail scene called Places You're Welcome and my goal was to kind of give the same level of like spotlights and same level platform to queer and trans folks as regular like extracurricular as everybody else has no so I wanted to create that platform showcase those stories and build a community practice so that other people would know that they're not alone that there's a community out there that there's people doing the same work and there's people there who are willing to help so I started back in March of 2024 so this past year we've since launched three issues working on our fourth and we've been able to like engage with people from Australia to Hong Kong to across the US across Europe and showcase that there's people doing the work and that there's queer and trans folks that have been essential to the growth of this industry that just might not be as loud about it or they might just be kind of behind the scenes and not getting the spotlight but they have important feedback they have important stories to tell so that's been a big project of mine recently is kind of working in that and helping build that community overall and how do you think we're doing overall in the industry and on this level like obviously not great at the beginning if you couldn't think of another trans person working in the industry or know about one that's not great so like since you started doing this work have you seen improvements and like what else needs to improve too? Definitely seen a lot of improvements I'm lucky now that I have like a network of people across the world that I can call friends that I can like reach out to for feedback and that I've been seeing more and more people feel empowered and go for like engaging in conferences engaging competitions speaking up hosting seminars whatever it might be so I think there's been a lot of growth and I've been really really happy with the reception I've been seeing across the board when I have a conversation about like building a queer inclusive bar like what it looks like in terms of like the physical architecture of the space or in terms of like how you engage with people on a service level people have been perceptive I haven't had to face a lot of pushback and I think that's something that's really unique about hospitality is the core of what we want to do is make sure our guests feel comfortable safe and have a good time and if somebody says hey this is going to be a way that can help that then chances are people want to do that they don't want to alienate their guests at least from what I've seen is nobody outwardly wants to have people at their bar feel like shit and I think that's something that's been really beneficial in this I think there is also a business case that can be made and I do sometimes make that as well because there's something about being a dink water or a dink whack that queer people are doing do income with no kids and a dog doing a note to the cat that's what you have money to spend and you don't have to be upper soccer practice in the morning so you can spend a bit more time at the bar you know so there is a business case I never thought about that that's very on point going back to what you said earlier that just so we don't blow by it because I think it's very interesting when you talk about the physical architecture of a place and how to make that more queer friendly what do you mean by that so I think there's a few different ways to go into it one of the easiest and most direct is in terms of like water rooms for me as a trans one I typically use the ones watering but if there is a space that is not necessarily inclusive overall I am going to feel unsure and oftentimes I'll just not go to the water in the bar if I feel unwelcome there which means I'll tend to only have one round and then leave and go somewhere where I know I'm welcome but a place with like gender neutral water rooms if you're trans in any direction if you're in between if you're just you just have to pee it makes it easier so it's a sort of thing where having something as simple as a gender neutral watering where anybody can go in have instead of one sign saying men one sign saying ladies have one say toilets and urinals one say toilets and that sort of thing means that if I walk in on either side if I go into a men's room because I'm not sure if I like and welcome or if I'm going to be assaulted or have somebody cause a scene if I go into the men's room I might be the same issue either way I'm going to look out of place in whichever washing my shoes so having it just be toilets makes things a lot easier and then makes a lot of guests who might sit anywhere outside of that binary system feel a lot comfortable a lot more comfortable interesting yeah that's something I would obviously home to operate several bars never even thought about it so there's the problem right with getting the sort of advocacy out there is what is going to make these changes I mean I've kind of lucked out in the bars that I've operated have just single stall like single room bathroom so it's like yeah that makes things a lot easier but if you have like bathrooms that have like like you said urinals and toilets well if it was labeled that way then that makes it a lot easier for you completely and honestly building off what you said like I think a lot of people sit in a similar place as you nothing is done really out of malice but it's because people weren't really but in the know when making a statement straight ignorance yeah yeah in the classic sense of word failing is not an issue it's not like a big like I don't take it as antagonism it's the sort of thing where people just don't even know and I think part of me part of my advocacy and part of my role is to just be the person that says hey have you thought about this this could be beneficial and I find that most times people think oh shit I haven't let's try it out right so we're doing with what you're doing right now obviously advocacy is the big thing but are you thinking that you could explain it to maybe more consulting work in situations like that possibly I haven't done full direct like consulting on spaces I've helped people with like helping out small changes but I have not certainly done full on consulting he could be in the cards I find that a lot of my time right now I don't have the space to take on additional consulting stuff I mean I did the math not too long ago in this past year with everything with the scholarship and more traveling coming up soon I've slept in my own bed I think 40 percent of the year I guess it's been absurdly busy and then moving to a new part of the country and running my magazine which I'm lucky enough that was named a top 10 finalist for cocktail and spirits publication through the spirited words yeah talk to the magazine yeah what's up places you're welcome yeah so that's available online completely for free just with a recommended donation to the transaffirming legal fund of Alberta to help challenge transphobic laws from the government because it's actually illegal for me to play any sports in Alberta including chess it's and if I can join a rec center swim league so that I can just swim lengths and what how far it stretches is is very up in the air that's the sort of thing where if I was still in Alberta and I decided to enter a local cocktail comp somebody could probably call it call it call the government be like hey this is should be a sports and this shouldn't be allowed that's crazy well I mean if they're implying it to chess like that's I mean that's literally fucking the same like what are we talking about the way it's stretched out is is absurd how how much it carries well I look so now yeah I mean Dan also has the same problem with the only sleep in his bed 40 percent of the time but that's because he's usually passed out on the floor but that's true yeah I would say that's the other part of my life is I get home I make some dinner after work and I follow see on the couch so the bed has other problems but that's crazy that's a crazy amount of traveling um do you feel do you mind if I ask how old you are I'm 27 so you got a long way to go before full burn but because that was running it I'm making sure I get there fast yeah that's right yeah you're trying to vault yourself into burnout at the at the fastest possible pace but okay so you're like I now not as quite as worried about that for you but because you're still quite young and this is the time to do it when you're young and you can travel all over the world so talk us about you were mentioning before we start recording the year on your way to Hong Kong so tell us about that trip yeah so that will be happening in start of October I'll be there October 4th to 9th as part of the world 50 best bars they're doing a signature session with myself tree flening and a porta kooli the three winners of the world 50 best bars scholarship at call me out so all three of us will be slinging cocktails there in celebration of the scholarship and showcasing the unique opportunity that what that's it's been giving us kind of the the role it's played in our development as bartenders but that's also coming from you right after I leave Toronto so I'll be there from the 28th to the third as part of the world class global cocktail festival so it's gonna be another back-to-back set of traveling this time it should only be two weeks in a row not the full seven weeks in a row that it was last time so I'm happy that I get a quicker window to see my see my cats yeah that's crazy um so obviously you've done several competitions at this point and you've won the scholarship or whatever you are comfortable in the area of making cocktails when you go to do this thing in Hong Kong and you're like up with the other scholarship winners and you're slinging your own cocktails what kind of pressure do you feel about like creating cocktail for that event it's definitely it's it's unique I had the pleasure of doing a different 50 best signature session back in I think that was late March in Vancouver from North America's 50 best and I felt a lot of pressure there because it was literally just myself and then a bunch of full-fledged bars from across Canada so it's the sort of thing where it's I believe 12 different bars on the North America's 50 best or 100 best list all doing a pop-up rotating through the bar at prophecy in Vancouver over the course of the night and then just me being making cocktails and I think in that situation very much a lot of pressure of like here's this institution of like civil liberties or the cloak room whipping up cocktails like bars that have been around and well well traveled well awarded and then some random person from Edmonton who is just on the bar by herself but I think it's kind of hilarious but also extraordinarily concierge like just to walk in there and it's like just me no bar and so that was before I moved over to Montreal so I wasn't tied to BZU and now I'm working over at BZU in this upcoming one in Hong Kong I think because it is all three scholarship winners there is pressure to showcase the worth and the value of the scholarship overall but I think it's more so just like making sure people have fun it's it's a pop-up in every other sense of the word and making sure that people have fun people remember what they had people remember you people remember that at a good time because oftentimes they're not gonna remember the intricacies of the drink but they're gonna remember how you make the feel behind the bar so it's all about just creating that unique experience so for me that's gonna be channeling everything that you said and maybe Sammy had taught me so I'm gonna be bringing in the bubble guns and dancing and making sure that I am catching everybody's cameras so that we have a cute photo whatever it might be and it must get like the more you do it the easier that whole situation gets I can probably feel a lot less pressure with each event that you do you've done so many of them already hundred percent yeah each time it gets easier the biggest the biggest stress at this point for me now isn't gonna be being behind the bar it's gonna be how the prep is done leading up to it and I think making sure that you have cocktails that aren't gonna be absurdly taxing on the host bar is all you need to do right that's it yeah exactly Frank so go back and listen to that episode okay and from that one first fourth actually say hi to her for us while you're out there because she was amazing she was amazing guess amazing woman actually like good yeah and entrepreneur like just picking up and moving on and opening bar is crazy but hey hey we'll say we're listening to that uh so I remember listening to that specific episode in the middle of planning my move to Montreal all of them were getting through the nitty gritty and I was like, you know, this is possible, this can be done.
So this episode has a had definitely had an impact on me. Yeah, that's good. We're doing something around here. But she is very inspirational.
Like she inspired me. I was like, fuck, maybe I should move on. I'm very excited to get my head over that. So getting into the whole thing when you're talking about you're this woman in the competition and you're all on your own from Edmonton, which is the hardest stigma.
The trans part of the being from Edmonton part. I feel like I feel like it's the Edmonton part. I just think that even over your start, I don't even I'm like, I'm seeing myself say that a lot of like, why am I stigmatizing? I mean, I don't know.
I don't know. I have family looked at everything when I was growing up. So I used to go out there, but like I wasn't old enough to go to the bar. So you don't even know why it just people have this idea that there's nothing going on out there.
Yeah, it's I feel like really enough like I say Edmonton half jokingly, but there is that level of having to represent that city, especially with with James Grant having one world class when he was in Edmonton, being anybody representing Edmonton on Global Stage feels really weird because there's a level of expectation. Right. Despite it being a very small city, not a lot has gone out. But what has gotten out is very, very, very specific stylistically.
And then on top of that, there's me just being me, you know, I look like I'm a butch lesbian, like I'm gonna be walking up there like in a very specific style. And I think it's gonna be, it's always gonna be weird for whoever's there in one unexpected way or another. It's either gonna be the yalls or it's gonna be like the carabiner or whatever it might be. Right.
But at least that's hopefully at least that's getting better through some of the work that you've done yourself. So that's great. And I, like you being a fair amount of young me like in the bar scene that I grew up in, what about a totally different world for someone like you? Just an old boys club and like a lot of very inappropriate behavior at all times.
So at least you're growing up in an era where it's a little bit easier for you. When I think of all the work of people like Chris Cabrera, like people like that time of them done and like people like like Beckley or Kate and Stewart or Julie Reiner and creating that space. And I without a doubt could not have had the career I've had as of yet without the work they did years and years ago. Well, I think that you've put yourself in a position now where you're in an area where you can be someone that we look to to carry on that legacy.
So that must make you feel great. Completely. It's terrifying in the sense that I hope I can. I have very, very big shoes to walk alongside.
But fingers crossed I can not make it fool myself and hopefully make the world a little bit better. Well, I think you're on the right track. You definitely, you're an excellent public speaker. You're a great representation for everything you're trying to advocate for and clearly a very talented bartender.
So considering the way you came into this is very different. You had an amazing story for someone in the service industry. So we really appreciate you coming on the show and giving us some time here and tell all our listeners where they can follow you and everything you're doing. Yeah, you can find me at Non-Barnary on Instagram.
That's NON underscore B-A-R-N-A-R-Y. I like to make the joke that I am a trans woman suffering from too good branding too early on. I am binary, but I can't get rid of the good branding. I can also find places you're welcome at either placesyourewelcome.com or placesyourewelcomezine on Instagram.
It's free to access online. So definitely give a read. There's some really cool articles on that. It's amazing, Kelly.
Thanks so much for giving us your time. I'm blown away by everything you're doing. Like I said, do it now before you start getting serious burnout because I don't know how you're doing it. But we really appreciate you getting us this time.
I don't know how you found time for this. So good luck in Hong Kong and yeah, in Toronto. Look us up. We're just an hour away.
So yeah, show us some messages. Yeah, and thanks again for coming on the show. Absolute letter. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, thanks for talking. I'll put a link to all the social media and the studio show notes as well. Okay, thanks Kelly. Cheers.