Friends & Pretend Friends

Not really a post but a bit of a moan. I am sure that most of you have experienced this a million times as I have, but it still bugs the buggery out of me – Pretend friends. You know the type, they are the people that you know but dont really know, you might have spent some time at University with them in the same class, you might have once worked with them before you moved into the industry – these are the people who instantly think they can skip queues or get free drinks just because they have some vague recollection of your name.

I truely hate these people, they turn up on a busy Friday night with three of their actual mates in tow and waltz straight up to the front of the queue and then they do one of two things. 1. They stand there awkwardly trying to start a small conversation, whilst their mates who have been ‘promised’ free and wait-less entry, look at you with hope. This is irritating and never works (on me at least), surely this is just embarrassing or 2. they walk up, give you a nod and say

“alright mate, there’s 4 of us, er… any chance (nodding at the door) we can errr… you know….get in?”

to which I always answer

“Yep no problem buddy, join the queue and pay up like the rest.”

Why! Why do they do this? If I knew somebody from school that I hadnt seen for 5 years who worked in a butchers, I wouldnt expect a free couple of sausages, so why do they do it in your business!??!??!

Your actual friends tend only to be a little better, I am sure that you have had a situation or two with mates playing up, when you know they wouldnt if it was a shoe shop. Now dont get me wrong I do normally look after ‘proper’ mates, its just why do they seem to think it okay to act like a dick because they have the excuse of being drunk. I had a friend who decided that whilst the bar was closing up and I was cashing up in the office, that he would try and get served again just because he was a mate of mine. If he had come up to me and said something along the lines of “Any chance I could grab another drink mate” then he would have probably been told that it wouldnt be a problem if he waited for everybody to clear off first, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. He decided to barrack the barmaid for ten minutes, leaving the member of staff in that position of do I tell the manager mate to f*ck off or do I serve him? Fortunately she chose the former. The next day after hearign of his antics I decided that I would pay him a visit in his place of work. In I strolled into Lloyds TSB to see a heavily hungover friend struggling to do his work at his desk, I sat down and started the following conversation -

“Morning”

“Alright mate, I am feeling rough this morning”

“I would like a loan please”

“What?” He was slightly puzzled at the lack of small talk and especially as he didnt deal with loans.

“GIZZ US A LOAN, GIZZ US A LOAN, GIZZ A LOAN”  I started loudly, attracting some unwanted attraction for my hungover friend.

” What you doing? Shhhhh”

“GIVE A LOAN GO ON GO ON!”

“Shhhhh what you doing?”

“Exactly what you did in my place of work last night”

I found this hysterically funny at the time, but it did have its point and I can assure you he hasnt played up again….yet.

Brahma

Brahma is the Hindu God of Creation, but considering the nature of this website I would be running at some what of a tangent if i started writing about that. So I will give you a brief review of something a bit more relevant – Brahma is a lager from Brazil.

Many of you would be forgiven for not ever seeing Brahma never mind tasting it, but surprisingly its not a new product infact it celebrates 120 year in 2008 – admittedly it hasn’t strayed far from its homeland until fairly recently. Brahma however is the main lager in Brazil and can be found all of the country.

So getting to the important part… What does it taste like? Well if you could imagine a blend between Michelob and the ill fated Fosters Twist then you wouldn’t be far off. Brahma has a full flavour just like Michelob as well as a citrusey flavour that doesn’t dominate. The citrus flavours aren’t anywhere near Corona levels but its there just enough to remind you of its latin heritage and also there burning the back of your throat when you’ve drunk 14 of them.

 Will it be a big hit in the UK? In my opinion no, yes it is a great tasting lager, it has a unique bottle which fits perfectly in your hand so that you can perform keepy uppies on the Copa Cobana and it is strong enough to allow you to forget all the times Brazil have beaten us in the football but….. its just not different enough to establish itself in the UK market and with the lack of any driving promotion behind it, it just wont fly off you shelves.

 Jimmy Stars -

Supermarket Clamp Down

Finally the Supermarkets are under the spot light for something that we in the industry have been for ages, and hopefully this will only help the on trade. Binge drinking has always been the fault of the late night economy when a great proportion of the problems are generated at home because of the supermarket deals. Monitoring how much somebody drinks has always been a big point that has governed our operational aspect of the trade, and rightly so, we ensure that the person who has had too much to drink either doesnt get served anymore or doesnt even get through the door – Yet Supermarkets are happy to sell the local pisshead, 48 cans of Stella for £20, hiding behind the theory (excuse) that they have sold them with the belief that he is having a party and not propping up the door of the local bookies with urine stains growing rapidly in his trousers.

 Asda today have announced that they will stop selling alcohol between midnight and 6am. Wow!! Please note the massive amount of sarcasm in the “WOW”. The industry has been in decline for a number of years now, with very few of us out performing the year on year like for like sales. I understand that there has been a number of significant changes to our business including the smoking ban and the license reform, however I believe that the combined effects from the license reform and the supermarkets offers are hugely responsible for this down turn in trade.

Tips No. 1

Top Tip – Will be a regular post, and sometimes these top tips will be bloody obvious and I assure you I am not trying to teach Grandma how to suck eggs. If you have any Top Tips then please send them to : bartenderblogs@gmail.com.

Line Cleaning -

If you do your line cleaning on a Monday morning, then make sure that half way through the evening shift on Sunday you disconnect your lines. This will allow you to start running dry the lines and instead of wasting this on Monday morning, you can sell it on Sunday night. It is perfectly good beer so why waste it!! The down side is that you may piss off regulars as you may run out of the product on the Sunday night – so gauging when you do it is crucial.

Carling Cup

To those unfortunates who have actually been returning and reading the blog daily, to all 4 of you I am sorry for the lack of updates. There have been a couple of chaotic days!! So for a brand new website to falter its surely better to do so at the start when nobody reads it. Every attempt will be taken to ensure a daily read. So moving forward…..

The Carling Cup – I am a Spurs  fan so I am extremely interested this year and here comes another reason to love the job. Blags, freebies etc. A couple of years ago I worked for a small independent in Swindon (ohhhhhhhhhh Swindon, a town origionally called Swine Town due to its connections to pigs – Really am puzzled as to why they bothered changing the name!). The Bud rep was doing his rounds, doing the normal spiel about moving the position of Bud in the face fridges as this would miracoulsy add 376.5% to the turnover!?!?, now being a free of tie premises I asked why should I? Obviously he came back with this old adage that every rep will – “The more we sell the more you make!?” I am sure he isn’t devoid of the fact that this also applies to the Becks, Stella and any other product, but he still spouts the same. Unhappy with this response I push for what I can get from him………

“Well… I could get a couple of tickets for the Carling Cup final for you? Would that make you reposition the bud?”

Honestly! As easy as that. I would run around the venue naked selling Bud if I got some free tickets!! And that was me off to the Carling Cup Final in Cardiff for Chelsea vs Liverpool – result.

I will warn you that either the rep from Bud was either two weeks into his job, two weeks from ending his job or he had been drinking far too much of his own product. Getting freebies that aren’t naff plastic moulds to plonk on the end of your bar are rare, so to get such a top blag for a simple request was a bit of a dream situation but what it does show is how easy it is for the big cooperates to get these tickets. Tottenham and Chelsea have been allocated just 30,000 tickets each, that means 36,000 have gone to corporate sponsors and taking the name of the trophy into account, most of the sponsors are from the Alcohol industry.

So when a rep does come in don’t let him walk away without an extremely good incentive – a flashing set of VK badges isn’t good enough!!

 

I work for a national chain at the moment and I have spent the last month trying to contact our Coors rep, trying to get my hands on a pair of tickets, but I think either you all know what I have just wrote and have beaten me to the punch or he’s on holiday!

Happy Blagging

The legendary first Post.

Being charged with writing the first post of a new website…… An honour? A job nobody else wanted to? Probably both, if not more so the latter.

Out of all the countless subjects and topics that are directly connected to late night industry that I could of chosen, I am going to answer the one question that I get asked by all of my mate outside of trade, a question that I am sure you have all been asked by either parents or girlfriends/boyfriends….

“Why do you do it? Why do you work all those unsocial-able hours?”

So why do we do it? We do work all the key nights of the year, the New Years Eve parties,  Christmas Eve, the World Cup finals and any other night that people may want to celebrate. Below is a list of disadvantages and advantages to working in the industry.

Disadvantages -

• Working every Friday & Saturday night
• Missing the big celebrations i.e. New Years Eve etc
• AFD’s (All Fu*king Day) a shift that no other industry would ask of.
• Dealing with the drunken general public, to be fair the general public are a pain in the ass at the best of times but after we have stuck 8 pints and 6 shooters in them, they don’t reach the top of the Christmas card list!
• Mates who ring and ask if you fancy going out on a Friday night, and then getting stroppy as they are not aware that this is like asking them to go out on the piss on a Monday morning. Its the business end of the week!!!!
• Labour controls (A subject sore for all staff in this industry)
• Money – A friend found out my wages once and said that I earned at least 50% more than him, which pissed him off, until I asked him if my 85 hour week had equated to 50% more than his working week!

Advantages -

• Its a Tuesday and whilst everybody else is working I am not, meaning that the golf course is quiet, the shops arent heaving and everybody else is at work.
• I never pay for a drink!
• I am a fat 27 year old with a fiance well out of my league.
• I have worked with thousands of people all of over the country, meaning I could probably get a free beer in a number of towns up and down the country.
• Where everybody goes to have fun is my place of work, outside of the staff for Alton Towers I am not sure how many people can say that.
• I am protected by doorstaff for 40 hours of the week, that’s in the same area as Roman Abromavich!

Both of the lists above are by no means exhaustive but the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for me anyway.

So that is the first post, a little uncertain to whether it lives up to the title but it is complete. I know that there are interviews and product reviews coming in the next couple of days, so pop back have a read and post a comment or two.

Cheers

Da Da Da Daaaa

It would appear getting a drum role to play when you opened this first blog was a little beyond our expertise, so excuse the rather strange and audibly disappointing title. Computer skills aren’t our specialised subject anyway.

This website/blog has been started with a team of people from the late night industry, with several decades of cumulative experience. The working experiences range from launching a small independent bar to world renowned flair venues to back street boozers to high street brands.

We hope to create over time a website that will cover a multitude of subjects to help and entertain our hospitality brethren.

So return, learn and enjoy.