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Serves You Right
Serves You Right episodes
- #136 Manny Hernandez: He Lied to Get Hired. 20 Years Later He's in the Top 10
Manny Hernandez of Stokes Adobe in Monterey, California, one of PUNCH's Best New Bartenders of 2024, explains why barbacking is the real bartending school, why learning the classics beats chasing trends, and why awareness separates great bartenders from average ones. He covers going from dishwasher to cantinero, from trauma to a cocktail menu built on memory and Mexican heritage.
Expect to Learn:
- Why Manny calls barbacking the best school a bartender will ever have
- The one year path he uses to move barbacks to bartender, and what they have to master before they touch a shaker
- How he gets soy sauce into a mezcal and Scotch cocktail without it tasting like dinner, and why the dose is everything
- The skill Manny says matters more than any cocktail, and the worst night of his career that taught it to him
Links:
- Manny on Instagram: @mezcalito_manny
- Stokes Adobe
- PUNCH: Recipes From the Best New Bartenders of 2024
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk to people in and around the service industry space. I'm looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in bars. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess that can be a life working in bars, and help others that are feeling similarly. Check out the Podcast Website Here and get in touch with me!
Classic Episodes You May Like:
- Doug Frost MW MS
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- Steve Schneider & The Best Bar in North America
- Edward Slingerland's Masterful work on Intoxication
- Andrew Hurley of Vegas.Wine
- Chris Tunstall of A Bar Above
- Tony Abou-Ganim
- Bobby "G" Gleason
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
43 min - #135 Katie Stryjewski: You Didn't Know James Bond Was a Bird Nerd Too
On this episode of Serves You Right, Katie Stryjewski, the PhD ornithologist behind Garnish Girl and garnishblog.com, explains why cocktail garnishes work as a quality signal guests read instantly, how edible flowers and cocktail presentation built her Instagram following, and why trendy garnishes like activated charcoal and unfamiliar flowers raise real cocktail safety questions for bartenders. She shares a scientific approach to palate development that works for home bartenders and bar teams alike, the research habit that separates cocktail history from repeated myth, the story behind her illustrated cocktail book for bird lovers, Make Myna Double, and so much more!
Expect to learn:
- The single tasting rule, borrowed from the lab, that trains your palate and your staff without buying another bottle.
- How to stock a party's worth of edible flowers for about $5 at a big box garden center,.
- How a blog with four readers turned into a real following, and which visual choices consistently pulled the most attention.
Links:
- Katie's blog
- Katie on Instagram: @garnish_girl
- Make Myna Double: Cocktails for Bird Lovers
- Cocktails, Mocktails, and Garnishes from the Garden
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk to people in and around the service industry space. I'm looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in bars. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess that can be a life working in bars, and help others that are feeling similarly. Check out the Podcast Website Here and get in touch with me!
Classic Episodes You May Like:
- Doug Frost MW MS
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- Steve Schneider & The Best Bar in North America
- Edward Slingerland's Masterful work on Intoxication
- Andrew Hurley of Vegas.Wine
- Chris Tunstall of A Bar Above
- Tony Abou-Ganim
- Bobby "G" Gleason
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
32 min - #134 Frederic Yarm: Too Proud to Barback? He Did It at 41
If your plan is to skip the barback shift, win with the prettiest drink on the menu, and let the cocktail do the hospitality for you, listen to this episode. Frederic Yarm was 41, a biochemist by training with zero restaurant experience, when he started as a barback in Boston. Today: a bartending career in year thirteen, two cocktail books, and the CocktailVirgin blog, still posting almost daily in year nineteen. In this episode of Serves You Right, Fred breaks down what the post COVID bar industry lost when its senior bartenders left, why $16 to $20 cocktails built on two days of prep are pushing regulars to drink at home, and why the barback shift is still the best bartending school in the building. And so much more...
Expect to learn:
- The one line that ends a guest's night before you ever have to say no, and keeps their dignity intact.
- How Fred led his entire brand program in staff trainings one month, and the move so simple it amazed his boss.
- Why the best drink on your menu can't outrun a bad first three minutes, and the hourly role that controls them.
Link:
- Frederic's Instagram @fredericyarm
- CocktailVirgin blog
- Fred's books, Drink & Tell (2012) and Boston Cocktails: Drunk & Told (2017)
- Always a Barback, Fred's essay
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk to people in and around the service industry space. I'm looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in bars. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess that can be a life working in bars, and help others that are feeling similarly. Check out the Podcast Website Here and get in touch with me!
Classic Episodes You May Like:
- Doug Frost MW MS
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- Steve Schneider & The Best Bar in North America
- Edward Slingerland's Masterful work on Intoxication
- Andrew Hurley of Vegas.Wine
- Chris Tunstall of A Bar Above
- Tony Abou-Ganim
- Bobby "G" Gleason
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
1 hr - #133 Maggie Kane: Food Insecurity and Hope in Restaurants
Free food doesn't exist. Somebody always pays. Sometimes though it's not the person eating. For eight years, a cafe in downtown Raleigh has let complete strangers walk in, order a full breakfast, and pay whatever they want. Minimum price: $3. By every rule of how a restaurant is supposed to survive, this one should have closed in its first year.
Maggie Kane is the founder and executive director of A Place at the Table, Raleigh's first pay-what-you-can cafe. A Raleigh native, she graduated from NC State in 2013 and went to work for Love Wins Community Engagement Center, a nonprofit serving people experiencing homelessness. A Place at the Table began in February 2015 as pop-up meals around the city and opened its permanent location in January 2018.
Expect to Learn:
- The real revenue split that keeps a restaurant open when a third of customers pay next to nothing
- The hidden sequence of costs, deposits, credit checks, first and last month's rent, that turns one missed paycheck into an actual address problem
- The one habit Maggie wishes she'd started in year one instead of year six.
Links mentioned:
- A Place at the Table
- A Place at the Table on Facebook
- A Place at the Table on Instagram
- Maggie Kane's TEDx Talk, "Food for Thought, Choice and Dignity"
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk to people in and around the service industry space. I'm looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in bars. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess that can be a life working in bars, and help others that are feeling similarly. Check out the Podcast Website Here and get in touch with me!
Classic Episodes You May Like:
- Doug Frost MW MS
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- Steve Schneider & The Best Bar in North America
- Edward Slingerland's Masterful work on Intoxication
- Andrew Hurley of Vegas.Wine
- Chris Tunstall of A Bar Above
- Tony Abou-Ganim
- Bobby "G" Gleason
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
36 min - #132 Ashwin Muthiah: Is a 100-Point Wine Actually a Red Flag?
Ashwin of Unpinned spent seven years in vineyards across Italy, Greece, Georgia and beyond after his sommelier certification left him convinced the curriculum was teaching one percent of the world and calling it the whole map. In this episode he breaks down wine additives and the ingredient-labeling loophole, why the 100-point rating system is pay-to-play, what the Court of Master Sommeliers systematically leaves out, how indigenous grape varieties like Xinomavro, Assyrtiko and Saperavi deliver more wine per dollar than anything in Burgundy, and the specific buying heuristics one should use: independent shops, importer tracing, an obscure producer association mark.
Expect to learn:
- The one thing a honey bun wrapper has to tell you that a wine label never does, and what winemakers legally add once nobody's checking
- Why a high critic score makes Ashwin less likely to buy a bottle, and the three-part reason behind it
- The exact math on what a winemaker actually earns per bottle, and the price floor that math forces on you
- The symbol on European labels that signals an independent producer and the two other filters that work when you can't read the language
Links:
- Unpinned wine course: code IND50 for 50% off for Industry Workers
- Unpinned on Instagram @unpinnedwine
- Unpinned bottle shop
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk to people in and around the service industry space. I'm looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in bars. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess that can be a life working in bars, and help others that are feeling similarly. Check out the Podcast Website Here and get in touch with me!
Classic Episodes You May Like:
- Doug Frost MW MS
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- Steve Schneider & The Best Bar in North America
- Edward Slingerland's Masterful work on Intoxication
- Andrew Hurley of Vegas.Wine
- Chris Tunstall of A Bar Above
- Tony Abou-Ganim
- Bobby "G" Gleason
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
53 min - #131 Juli Norris: Why Do Guests Forgive Bad Food, Not Bad Service?
Most restaurant owners think their problem is food cost, when their actual problem is that they've never built a system anyone else can run. They hire managers who show off instead of asking questions. They chase a labor percentage they only hit in busy season and panic when the slow months arrive. Juli Norris, chef, restaurateur, and consultant to the mom-and-pops most consultants won't touch, built two restaurants in one building that are busy at opposite times of year, staffed by the same cross-trained crew, on a scratch kitchen with real hiring standards and a rule about ignoring nothing.
Expect to learn:
- The labor number she targets across both concepts and the honest reason she only hits it part of the year
- How a dank basement with sewer pipes and string lights became her fine dining room, and the piece of leverage it bought her upstairs
- The single hiring filter she uses that predicts whether a manager will burn out or build
- What she does to a busy service, on purpose, when she sees her kitchen getting buried
- The consulting client who kept slicing steak the wrong way...
Links:
- Kasa Restaurant & Taphouse | Instagram: @kasataphouse
- Lorèn | Instagram: @lorenbistro
- Juli Norris on Instagram @whatachefeats
- Savoi Hospitality (Juli's consulting company) on Instagram: @savoihospitality
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk to people in and around the service industry space. I'm looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in bars. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess that can be a life working in bars, and help others that are feeling similarly confused and/or lost. Check out the Podcast Website Here and get in touch with me!
Classic Episodes You May Like:
- Doug Frost MW MS
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- Steve Schneider & The Best Bar in North America
- Edward Slingerland's Masterful work on Intoxication
- Andrew Hurley of Vegas.Wine
- Chris Tunstall of A Bar Above
- Tony Abou-Ganim
- Bobby "G" Gleason
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
1 hr 3 min - #130 Austin Gardner: Missing the Same Rioja 3 Times In One Night
Today’s guest, Austin Gardner, is impressive. He is, at the same time, age 25, floor sommelier at One White Street in Manhattan, Advanced candidate, and the wine educator behind a fast-growing TikTok and Instagram following. In this episode he breaks down the exact three-stage study regimen he uses, why being the youngest person in the wine room is a commercial advantage instead of a liability, how he funded and found his study group without a single industry connection, and the blind tasting failure that still makes his coworkers laugh.
Expect to learn:
- The exact three-stage study sequence Austin uses for every wine region
- How he passed Certified with no tasting group, no mentor, and no wine scene, using something already sitting behind the bar at his restaurant
- Why the memory technique behind his hand-drawn maps works even if you can't draw, and the specific thing it does that flashcards can't
- What actually happened when his beverage director handed him the same wine three times during service, and what it exposed about tasting under pressure
Links:
- Austin on Instagram/ TikTok
- One White Street — Tribeca, NYC
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk to people in and around the service industry space. I'm looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in bars. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess that can be a life working in bars, and help others that are feeling similarly confused and/or lost. Check out the Podcast Website Here and get in touch with me!
Classic Episodes You May Like:
- Doug Frost MW MS
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- Steve Schneider & The Best Bar in North America
- Edward Slingerland's Masterful work on Intoxication
- Andrew Hurley of Vegas.Wine
- Chris Tunstall of A Bar Above
- Tony Abou-Ganim
- Bobby "G" Gleason
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
45 min - #129 Paula Agganis: 5 Minutes of Confidence Started This Restaurant
Chef Paula Agganis runs Paula's at Courtland Club in Providence, Rhode Island: a Greek and Eastern Mediterranean residency inside a landmark cocktail bar, and she does it with no culinary school, three staff, two induction burners, and a spreadsheet she inherited from another chef. This episode is a working blueprint for the restaurant career nobody maps for you: constraint-driven menu development, local farm sourcing that actually pencils out, brand identity built with real artists instead of AI slop, burnout boundaries that survive a real service schedule, and the psychology of failing in public with your own name over the pass. If you're a line cook, bartender, sous, or first-time GM waiting for permission, this is for you.
Expect to learn:
- The cost comparison Paula ran between local farms and her broadline supplier, and why the result removes the last financial argument against sourcing locally
- Why she asked an illustrator to start building her brand identity before she was offered the job
- How she designed an entire menu around what her kitchen can't do and why one property of Mediterranean cooking made the constraint an advantage
- The one question a former manager taught her to ask about every protein on the menu, which changes how you order forever
Links:
- Courtland Club
- Paula’s on Instagram: @paulas.providence
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk to people in and around the service industry space. I'm looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in bars. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess that can be a life working in bars, and help others that are feeling similarly confused and/or lost. Check out the Podcast Website Here and get in touch with me!
Classic Episodes You May Like:
- Doug Frost MW MS
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- Steve Schneider & The Best Bar in North America
- Edward Slingerland's Masterful work on Intoxication
- Andrew Hurley of Vegas.Wine
- Chris Tunstall of A Bar Above
- Tony Abou-Ganim
- Bobby "G" Gleason
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
48 min - #128 Calliope Draper: How Do You Reach Nationals Without Ever Bartending?
Most people entering the bar industry think the sequence is fixed: get hired, survive two years of bad habits, learn technique from whoever happens to be on shift, and then maybe compete. Callie Draper ran it backwards and it worked better. Callie learned bartending as a guest from a world champion, entered Diageo World Class with zero shifts behind her, and made national finals before she'd ever been on payroll. This episode covers competition strategy, cocktail construction under constraint, mentorship, building a bar career in a small market, running an independent hospitality magazine, and the labor statistics for trans workers in Canadian hospitality that reframe what "industry culture" actually means.
Expect to learn:
- The competition-entry rule set that forces better drinks than an unlimited bar does and why Callie still uses those constraints on menus with no rules at all
- The one trait Callie says can't be taught, and the specific question she asks new bartenders before recommending a single book
- The two-step order she builds every cocktail in: get it backwards and you end up with a technically correct drink nobody orders
Links:
- Callie Draper on Instagram: @placesyouarecallie
- Places You're Welcome magazine
- Email: [email protected]
- Cantina Concha — agave bar, Old Port, Montreal
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk to people in and around the service industry space. I'm looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in bars. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess that can be a life working in bars, and help others that are feeling similarly confused and/or lost. Check out the Podcast Website Here and get in touch with me!
Classic Episodes You May Like:
- Doug Frost MW MS
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- Steve Schneider & The Best Bar in North America
- Edward Slingerland's Masterful work on Intoxication
- Andrew Hurley of Vegas.Wine
- Chris Tunstall of A Bar Above
- Tony Abou-Ganim
- Bobby "G" Gleason
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
51 min - #127 Alberto Antonini: A World of Wine in One Life
Alberto Antonini is a Tuscan winemaker and one of the most in-demand consultants in the world, with a résumé running from Frescobaldi, Col d'Orcia, and Antinori through client work on several continents. In 1995 he co-founded Altos Las Hormigas in Mendoza and made Malbec the whole thesis when every serious producer in the region was convinced great wine required French grapes and small French barrels, what he calls the Bordeaux colonization. He was right, and he'll tell you honestly how much of it was luck. A fascinating look at an accomplished and kind winemaker.
Expect to learn:
- The one word Alberto wanted to be when he was five years old it isn't "winemaker," and it explains everything about how he works
- Why he uses raw, unlined concrete instead of small barrels, and the specific climate condition that decides which one your wine actually needs
- What he tells his own paying clients about the value of his advice, a line he admits could cost him the contract
- The reason Malbec was considered a second-tier grape by the very people growing it, and what changed his mind in a single tasting
- His diagnosis of the industry's current slump, including which vineyards he thinks should be pulled out of the ground entirely
Links:
- Altos Las Hormigas (Mendoza, Argentina)
- Poggiotondo — Alberto's family estate in Tuscany
- Pedro Parra’s Episode
Service starts now.
Follow the show: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube
I talk to people in and around the service industry space. I'm looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in bars. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess that can be a life working in bars, and help others that are feeling similarly confused and/or lost. Check out the Podcast Website Here and get in touch with me!
Classic Episodes You May Like:
- Doug Frost MW MS
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- Steve Schneider & The Best Bar in North America
- Edward Slingerland's Masterful work on Intoxication
- Andrew Hurley of Vegas.Wine
- Chris Tunstall of A Bar Above
- Tony Abou-Ganim
- Bobby "G" Gleason
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
36 min
About Serves You Right
From the publisher's feed
Most bartenders are great at their jobs and have no idea what to do with that...
Nobody tells you that the skills behind the bar: reading people, building experiences, thinking fast under pressure, are actually worth something. They just hand you a shaker and hope you figure it out.
Serves You Right is for bartenders who are done drifting and ready to do something. Every episode, host Andrew Roy talks with the people who are currently doing something inspiring, and pulls out exactly how they did it.
Your career behind the bar is the starting point. Not the ceiling. Let's make some drinks!