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Hiring effective and competent restaurant managers is tough...you screen for interview skill instead of work ethic. And you are asking people to trade their marriage, their holidays, and their shot at a family for a title that pays less than a good Friday section. Brian Crossan is the Director of Operations for Table 301 Hospitality in Greenville, South Carolina, a 500-employee group built around Soby's New South Cuisine, and the sole owner of Camp Modern American Eatery. He started as a server who said he'd stay six months.
This episode is the operating manual he built on the way up: how to spot the wrong hire in one shift, why the manager everybody loves is often the one who has to go, how a four-day work week changed a culture. If you run a floor, a kitchen, a bar, or a P&L, this is the conversation your last three bad hires were trying to tell you to have.
Expect to learn:
Links:
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:
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
Steve Schneider, Marine veteran, 19-year Employees Only alum, star of Hey Bartender, partner at Sip & Guzzle with Shingo Gokan, and now holder of the number one spot on North America's 50 Best Bars, is our guest today. He didn't chase fame or accolades; he showed up, took at-bats nobody else wanted, and stayed when the work got hard. This episode covers craft cocktail history from the flair era through molecular mixology into today, the real economics of bar partnerships and passive income, how to train a staff into a culture they've never seen, and why hospitality skill outlives drink-making skill.
Expect to Learn:
Links:
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:
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
Ivan Usov, flair bartender, two-time USA Flair Champion, Roadhouse World Flair tandem champion, cocktail caterer, and creator of the Easy to Flair online school is our guest today. There are three or four formulas for building a drink and everybody already has them. What actually moves income is presentation, positioning, and a willingness to pay for skills instead of gear. This episode covers flair bartending and competition economics, moving from a small Russian town to St. Petersburg to New York, wedding and corporate event catering, brand partnerships and cocktail content production, building a personal brand across three Instagram accounts, hiring help, and the hard financial ceiling waiting for every career bartender.
Expect to Learn:
Links:
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:
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
The cocktail landscape was bleak for time. Rye whiskey was down to a handful of brands. Orange bitters were a regional New York oddity. Pimento dram meant a trip to Jamaica. Swedish punsch, crème de violette, real Zubrówka…every one of them came back because specific people went looking, made calls, and refused to accept "we don't carry that." Ted Haigh is one of those people, and Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails is the book that put dozens of dead drinks back on menus.
Expect to Learn:
Links:
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:
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
You know Barolo. You know Barbaresco. You might even have a Barbera by the glass and a Gavi for the guest who wants "something crisp." Piemonte is so much more though, it has 60 denominations, around 80 registered grape varieties, and a white wine boom that Barbaresco producers themselves are scrambling to supply. David Way spent four years mapping all of it for The Wines of Piemonte, treating every denomination with the seriousness usually reserved for the two famous ones. In this conversation he lays out the varieties worth stocking now, the economics that decide what gets planted and the labeling problem strangling small appellations right now. If you're selling Piemonte off a mental picture built from Barolo, Barbaresco, and a vague sense that Moscato exists, this is the episode for you.
Expect to Learn:
Links:
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:
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
You’re learning about wine, so you memorize soil names like galestro without ever learning what galestro actually does to a wine, and you wonder why your tasting notes, your wine list descriptions, your Instagram captions, and your staff trainings all sound like everybody else's. Sarah Heller MW passed the hardest wine exam on earth at the youngest age anyone ever has, and she'll tell you plainly that it didn't solve the problem: nothing is a silver bullet. The fix wasn't more breadth. It was specialization, and it was learning that being a wine person first and a communicator second is exactly why most wine content dies on arrival. This episode is about Italian wine, wine education, wine writing, and the Asian market. However,underneath all of it, it's about the difference between accumulating information and actually having something to say.
Expect to Learn:
Links:
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:
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
Most bartenders treat the jello shot as a joke: a college-party relic, beneath the craft, unworthy of a real spirit. There are some that give it the respect it deserves though. Booze-set gelatin has existed for centuries, shows up in Jerry Thomas, and demands the same skills your cocktail program already has: clarification, dilution math, gelatin ratios, flavor balance, and restraint with high-impact spirits like scotch and mezcal. Jack Schramm went from Milk Bar barista to head bartender at Booker and Dax and Existing Conditions, learned juice clarification directly from the Dave Arnold of Liquid Intelligence lineage, then lost his bar to the pandemic and rebuilt the whole skillset inside a medium nobody was taking seriously. Solid Wiggles now runs five full-time employees, ships nationally, and does it all without a liquor license.
Expect to Learn:
Links:
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:
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
Your current perception of hard cider is fundamentally broken. You treat it like a cheap, sugary alternative to beer or a consolation prize for the gluten-free crowd, completely oblivious to the fact that authentic cider is a sophisticated, terroir-driven wine. By settling for mass-market commercial brands loaded with residual sugar, you forfeit access to one of the richest agricultural traditions in the world. This episode is the ultimate corrective: a deep dive into cider production, sensory analysis, and ancient orcharding techniques that will redefine how you build menus, pair food, and perceive cider.
Expect to Learn:
Links:
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:
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
Most people don’t think of making their candy boozy…big mistake. Kate Mikkelson has spent years mixing these two bedfellows batch by batch, from Ramos Gin Fizz marshmallows to Fernet mint patties to a martini candy she still hasn't cracked. In this episode she breaks down the actual variables: gelatin blooming ratios, sugar syrup temperatures, when to add alcohol so it doesn't burn off, and then turns to the other half of her work: proving with data that the world's bar awards have a geography problem, and building the tool that fixes it.
Expect to Learn:
Links:
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:
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
Most bartenders believe their back bar already covers the world: whiskey, rum, gin, agave, brandy. That map has a hole in it the size of five continents. You’re missing spirits distilled from tree sap: coconut palm arrack from Sri Lanka, raffia palm ogogoro from Nigeria, lambanog from the Philippines, maple acerum from Quebec. Brian Hoefling introduces "dryads," the category name he coined and the subject of the first book ever written on tree sap spirits. From a 2023 Tales of the Cocktail seminar that wouldn't end to Thomas Jefferson writing George Washington about maple spirits, Brian makes the case that the next mezcal-style category boom is already underway.
Expect to Learn:
Links:
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:
As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.
Cheers
From the publisher's feed