Bartending is a diverse and fast-paced role. It can often feel a little overwhelming when you first jump into it — constantly talk to customers, craft cocktails, cut garnishes, pour draft beer, handle financial transactions, work late hours, organise products and keep your space clean. But at the core of bartending is attitude and being able to assess your situation for what it is. If you’re want to be a bartender, learn these essential bartending skills and become the most valuable asset in a bar.
Memory skills
The best way to improve your memory is to expose yourself to new ideas and experiences. This is a general way to keep your brain in shape. As a bartender, you should keep in mind how to make common cocktails and the drinks featured on your bar’s cocktail list. If you constantly have to ask customers for clarification or look up their requests, it will likely be a waste of time and make you look unprofessional. One of the best ways to improve your memory is to frequently practise making cocktails with the correct tools, glassware, and ingredients. It’s also important to remember regular customers. To create and maintain regular customers, you should know their names and what they usually like to drink.
Good attitude
This is the hospitality industry and every bartender should remember that. To be successful, you should keep a good attitude (no matter how bad your day is) and treat every customer the same. Simple things like smiling and greeting when a patron sits down and thanking them as they leave can make the biggest impressions.
Cleanliness
Bartending is about the full customer experience, which means cleanliness is essential. If your bar is sticky and smells of stale beer, it’s bad for business. Whenever there’s a break in the action, you should organise your area, wipe down the bar, and clean your bar tools. These apparently little things leave a great impression and can often be done on your way back to the tap.
Cash handling
Cash handling is very important, particularly during busy nights. In order to move quickly and properly ring in every sale, you have to remember drink prices and be fast with counting and calculations. To master your bar’s drink prices, ask if you can take home a drink list so you can properly memorise the price of each item. If you want to make your count more accurate and faster, you may take out a stack of 100 singles from the bank and practise rifling through them while keeping an exact count.
Professionalism
Above all, it’s important for you to project a professional attitude and appearance. If customers had a great experience at your bar, they’ll trust you and come back again. Keep conversations friendly, wear clean clothes appropriate for the establishment and maintain a professional attitude to create an environment that patrons and management alike will appreciate.
To know more about the job, observe how bartenders at the top bars and pubs in Australia do it.