A little bit of taking myself lightly

Bartender Vince movie premier.  

Juicing lessons from this weekend birthday party

I'm always looking to improve something in my services.   Recently I received an electric juicer.  I wasn't sure how using it would work out.  Mostly due to power needs.  Wasn't wanting to always need to plug into clients outlets and use their electricity.  Just seems a little wrong for me. So I read the power consumption needs of the juicer and it requires about 20-30 watts.  Next I pulled out the portable power/ car jumper I have and use to run my digital picture frame.  Turns out my power supply will out put up to 200 watts of power.   So I used my portable power source to run my juicer.  It used up 25 watts while juicing lemons and about 23 when juicing limes.   I needed to juice 3 times during the night without any issues from the power source or the juicer.   This made it possible to make 32 ouces of juice in about 10 minutes as opposed the hand juicer which takes a lot longer.   More efficient is always a plus.

I also have to say how excited I was when 2 guests at the party were checking my availability for dates in August to bartender their parties.   They loved my drinks, and my services.  I was even able to get out and dance with one of the guests.   So much fun and great people.  Just like family.  Hopefully the 2 dates will work out and I can help them with their events.

Willy Wonka Wedding Weekend

This weekend was a very unique wedding.   I bartended a Willy Wonka themed wedding that was really cool, colorful, and had some of the most warm hearted people I have ever met. I brought in my full bar set up.    Cocktails were themed and enjoyed by all.  It was a long drive to Escondido so I made the weekend out of it.  Visited local areas and enjoyed some R&R.

Some business lessons.  Estimating the amount of supplies needed is really hit and miss. It seems my estimates are high resulting in extra bottles and mixers.   I would like to get a better estimation going but cant seem to find much information on it from other bartenders in the business posted on the web.   Bevmo, wedding sights, books, all have differing methods of estimation, but they seem to mostly focus on the alcohol portion and not much on mixers, garnishes etc.   

Anyone have suggestions on better and more closely estimate the shopping list?

Any help is much appreciated.

Looking back on the wedding bliss

The last wedding I bartended was incredible.  Not only was the bride and groom two of the sweetest people I ever met, but their family and friends were too.  There were lots of raving comments of the drinks.  The signature cocktails were an incredible hit.  

On looking back I would say the night was full of golden nuggets of learning opportunities.  

1 - make every effort to see the venue prior to the event.  Their venue had wood floors in the area the bar was set up.  Thinking about this I wanted to protect the floors as best I could so the family would not be charged any fees.  I went to pep boys and purchased 2 rubber backed absorbamt mats. The are about 3x4 fr so they protected the whole area well.  

2 - take time out to take pictures with the people there.  They will have fun and you have promotional materials.  

3- don't dismiss technology.  I had my ipad at the bar. I used it to take photos and video of the party.  Now I uploaded it all to Dropbox so the couple can have them for their memories.  Also a bridesmaid used my ipad to log into her yelp account and gave me a review on the spot.  My ipad was PICELESS that night. Mm

4- know the surrounding area.  It was necessary to go out and purchase some extra supplies so knowing the closest store location was important.  

5- the fist two hours of service are the busiest.  The crowed slows down after that.  

6- there was still more left over supplies than I would like to see.  I need to fine tune my estimation sheets to better calculate the supplies needed.  

Till the next post.

Raising the bar and toasting your spirits!