Bartending is an athletic job when you work in a high volume bar.
By “high volume” I mean a room with a 480 person capacity and where there’s a long bar with two front bartenders, a dedicated service bartender with his own cashier serving five cocktail waiters, and the front bar is packed with four to five people deep and nightly deposits are about $3,000 to $4,000 per bartender.
Average well drink price $5.00 plus tax, average check size $39.90. ($301,305.77 total six month sales average divided by 7,551 receipts). Half a year is 182 days. There are two days off per weekend so subtract 52 days and we have 130 nights of work minus another 10 for vacation days – so about 120 nights at $2,510,88 average sales, which is slow $1,600 nights (Sundays to Wednesdays when it starts to pick up a bit) to cool crazy busy nights when you’re busting it as fast as you can move as long as the frenzy is on to rake it all in where you’re taking in over $4,000 in drink sales alone – no food at the bar.
Keep two pairs of comfortable rubber soled shoes (because there are wet spots on the floor and leather won’t do) with good arch support at the place you work and change into a fresh dry pair on your break. I’ve always used Knapp shoes – they used to be the official shoes of the NYC Police Department for their patrolmen. They were like nurses shoes, only black. Very comfortable, sturdy and provided excellent shock absorption and support. They weren’t cheap, but neither are professional construction boots. Get a few pairs like them now that you know what you’re looking for. They’ll keep a smile on your face.
It also helps to work out. You don’t have to join a gym. You can lift basic weights at home, do pull-ups, handstand pushups and one arm push-ups, and run 5 or 10 miles a day. One place I worked they had showers and lockers. I ran 7 miles to work and 7 miles home from work every day and night, and I was always on time because when you run there isn’t any traffic.
Mental Fitness
Don’t just keep your body fit though. Sharpen up your mental arithmetic skills too with some addition, multiplication, division and subtraction flip cards created for school kids. You may not be a mathematician, but there’s nothing like being able to beat a real mathematician to the punch doing simple arithmetic – and save time when a customer asks “how much” in a place where all the drinks end in weird, odd numbers because tax has to be added to the round figures on each – so a $8.50 drink now becomes $9.22 with 8.5% tax added, and they’ve ordered six drinks and the bar is packed. Do it in your head. 🙂
Fitness: Beware Bulking Up
If you’re a man and you lift weights you’ll want to look buff and gain size. Unless you’re 5’9″ or under though… that is to say if you’re about 6′ tall or over, and you’re working in a very busy bar you should know something I discovered as a result of my research.
Two architects specializing in bar design explained to me that bars are built to a standard height to accommodate 5’7″ workers. So if you’re 6′ tall you’ll have to bend down an extra 5″ every time you make a well drink, get a scoop of ice, pick up a glass and everything else.
Through my research I also discovered that the muscles in the lower back have a four day recovery period (unlike the biceps which require only 24 hours to recover, the abdominals which recover in 12, and the lats which take somewhere around 36 hours [I don’t remember precisely about the lats]). The constant minor wear and tear on your lower back will eventually accumulate and make you miserable. It happened to me. I worked out less, reduced my upper body weight by about 20 lbs (OUCH!) and my lower back pain disappeared.
RAISING THE HEIGHT OF THE SPEED RACK
As the speed rack (you know, that thing that the well brand Vodka, Scotch, Gin, Whiskey, Rum, Brandy, Tequila, Sweet Vermouth, Dry Vermouth and Grenadine are kept in) is at the proper height for a 5’7″ person, if you’re 6′ tall or taller you’re going to want to raise it to preserve your back.
Fortunately the speed rack is about 5″ to 6″ deep. What I did was place 2″ tall safety deposit boxes into the bottom of the speed rack on my side of the bar. The Hilton had dozens of extra ones in the cash deposit room. I purloined three of them to raise my speed rack’s height and used them for years as they rusted out over time.
You can do the same with whatever material you can find that will raise the bottles up an inch or two. I never had a bottle fall out. Be sensible. Try to make it rust proof. The ones I had were metal and rusted through over the years. 🙂
Site Author, David Jonathan Curtis: David Jonathan Curtis, a seasoned professional in his fifth decade of bartending and bar management, began his career in Midtown Manhattan, NY, tending and managing bars before diving into Manhattan’s bustling nightlife scene. Over the years, he has mastered high-volume, high-pressure bartending as the lead bartender in both iconic Midtown clubs and Wall Street bars, generating over $1,350,000.00 annually in personal drink sales. He has since extended his expertise to establishments in Georgia and now Tampa, Florida. David’s roles as a Bartending Instructor at the American Bartending School in Tampa, while maintaining a second job bartending, and his years experience of managing bars, and working as a Brand Ambassador along with his extensive professional library of over 1,000 bartending books, highlight his dedication to continually refining his craft. He holds a diploma in Bar Management and is BarSmarts certified by Pernod Ricard.
