Wind Your Fucking Neck In

As I approach ten years as a bar owner, I’ve found myself in a in a reflective, bittersweet mood.

I’ve had the privilege of working alongside some truly exceptional bartenders. I’ve also crossed paths with my fair share of arseholes. Often enough, these two qualities coincide. I love this industry fiercely, and I wouldn’t swap hospitality for any other career - yet there are times when I find myself fighting off a surge of frustration and ennui at the whole shooting match. 

Sometimes this feeling steals in at the very moments I should be enjoying myself the most: an awards ceremony marred by dark mutterings about brand vetoes and flawed judging processes, or a well-attended industry get-together tainted with ripples of unpleasant rumour. Sometimes it’s the grind of industry social media that makes up the majority of my feeds these days. The posing, the preening, the obsequious flattery, and worst of all the humblebrags. Seriously. I think if another of my friends or acquaintances declares themselves ‘humbled’ to have won an award I am going to go full Larry David on them in the comments. Sitting between Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson Mandela at a dinner party? Definitely humbling. Stepping in and sliding through a fresh dog turd on your way into an important job interview? Also humbling. Picking up a gong for most sustainable garnish programme? Not humbling you idiot. 

I think most of what really gets my goat comes from one place: the tendency for people to take themselves too seriously. Whether it’s the brand ambassador smouldering out from their brand-adorned profile picture as if from a glossy perfume advert, or the competition bartender who’s just been flown halfway around the world for a showcase competition final explaining their ingenious sustainability scheme to filter grey water using activated charcoal, it fills me with the overwhelming impression that our industry is eating itself. It’s important to remember that – outside of a small circle of bartenders, brand people and perhaps a very few dedicated cocktail connoisseurs – even the leading lights of our industry are almost entirely unknown to the general public. Even a stint on TV making Bloody Marys for guests on Sunday Brunch is hardly going to turn you into a household name.  

I think some people in the industry believe that what happened to restaurants in the nineties and noughties (celebrity chefs, TV shows and multi-million publishing deals) might yet happen to bars in the twenties. I’m afraid I don’t buy it. The fundamental difference between cooking and bartending is that everyone has to eat. Hundreds of thousands of people probably consult a recipe book two to three times as day, something even the louchest of home cocktail enthusiasts would struggle to do with their favourite boozy tome. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good idea to build a following in the bar industry, and good books about bars and bartending will always have a keen audience, myself included. Just don’t expect a big audience outside of your Facebook friends list. In the immortal words of Nidal Ramini, “wind your fucking neck in”. 

Hell, in War on Terroir, the industry even has its own satirist. WoT elicits mixed reactions and many complain it goes too far and gets too personal at times; and whilst I certainly hope I never get important (and/or conceited) enough to find myself skewered directly, I think those who feel uneasy are missing the point. The best political cartoonists and sketchwriters in the media pull no punches, and spare no-one, be they genius or fool. Anyone who aspires to take themselves seriously should prepare to be satirised. 

There is of course a flipside to all this frippery. For every bright-eyed, bushy tailed aspirational startender who boasts their second place in a regional Disaronno comp in 2007 on their 4-page CV, there’s a laconic, self-deprecating seen-it-all-before drinks slinger who prides themselves on “average drinks and shit chat”. So laid back they’re horizontal, they’re probably flexing a moderate to serious drug habit, they’ll do almost anything to avoid taking themselves seriously. 

Although these are the people I generally like to hang out with, there are times that Laconic Slinger fills me with more despair than Competition Guy. The fact is, if there was ever a time to take ourselves seriously as an industry, this it. As I write, the entire hospitality workforce is being tarred with the ‘unskilled worker’ brush by a Home Office bent on enacting a populist political agenda of immigration control. I’m not going to get all political on you, but our industry is in the process of becoming collateral damage. 

It’s not just the immigration implications (grave though they may be) of this attack on hospitality that worry me. I feel we might be in the beginning of a fight for a soul of the industry; by devaluing the very nature of a job in hospitality, they discourage even those they are prepared to allow into the profession from joining it. Of course it’s undeniable that there are plenty of unskilled workers in hospitality; nine days after my 18th birthday I walked into the pub at the end of my road to ask for a job. That same afternoon I was pulling pints and polishing glasses. Badly. Needless to say, I had no inkling in that moment that ten years later hospitality would be my life.

The problem is that for too many – in the public and in government, 18-year-old me is the image that comes into their heads when they hear the word ‘bartender’. 

Humility and self-deprecation are all very well, but I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of you reading this would classify yourselves – in one way or another – as highly skilled. Be you Competition Guy or Laconic Slinger – or anywhere on the vast spectrum between these two stereotypes – you’re likely to boast an array of character traits, techniques and accumulated knowledge that set you at least on a par with many better remunerated and more traditionally prestigious professionals. They’re unlikely to make you a fortune, nor will they make you famous outside of the circle jerk. But boy are they are important. So let’s take ourselves seriously; let’s seek collective recognition for what we do day in, day out to make the UK the one of the best countries in the world to eat, drink and be merry. They won’t know what they’ve got til it’s gone.