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Speed Bartending – Scientific Bartending – Advanced Bartending

Speed bartending does exist but it’s exceedingly tight, disciplined, and follows an exact set of steps defined as the mechanics of drink building. A tachymeter is used by the bartender (in the beginning of their career) to refine every procedure, to measure the frequency of any regular event in occurrences per hour, such as the units output by an industrial process. A tachymeter is simply a means of converting elapsed time (in seconds per unit) to rate (in units per hour). [pullquote]*NOTE: This is about speed and accuracy, and in actual high volume places where the bartenders pour drinks and focus on relentless crowds, often from the moment they walk behind the bar until last call, phenomenal gains will be seen.[/pullquote]Saving 7 seconds in an hour means one more drink made. Doing that in 100 areas an hour means 100 more drinks made. Potentially $500 more per hour, potentially $4,000 more per night.


These are the precise steps and order of operations for speed bartending (also called scientific bartending):



a) Polish off drinks that are basically finished or need a garnish (scotch on the rocks).
b) Fill glasses requiring sodas, cokes, tonics, etc.
c) Pour toppings: roses lime juice, liqueurs, grenadine.
d) Short shake** drinks: collins’ etc.
e) Add garnishes and stirrers where appropriate.
f) Leave drinks requiring blending, or shaking and straining for last.
1) Sour drinks shaken first
2) Cream drinks and ice-cream drinks shaken or blended second (this is because cream takes longer to clean from inside the shaker glass and cup)



All steps in this discipline must be carried out daily and consistently throughout the career and will become easier over time. Other bartenders must not be permitted to share the station or they will sabotage your efforts to double production; this cannot be stressed more strongly.

NOTE: Each bartender will have their own speed rack order, their own drink building station, their own POS, and their own section of the bar to work. Each rack and station in the bar needs to be worked by one bartender or it’s a free-for-all mess, everyone climbing over each other, waiting on line behind each other – absolutely amateur, full of inefficiency, delay, frustration, and customer service slow downs which means fewer dollars flowing into the til. Think of the bar as a foxhole with a few soldiers in it. Each soldier has a side, each has weapons, both can fire at the same time as quickly as they can without waiting for the other soldier to finish using a piece of equipment.
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