BAR OWNERS – BAR MANAGERS – BAR TENDERS:
POUR CONTROL = COST CONTROL
If you plan to stay in business then you probably care a lot about how accurately your liquor is being poured. My guess, based on personal experience, and a good dose of watching the reality part of Bar Rescue that is bartender overpouring cluelessness and management’s unawareness, is that SOME managers and bartenders desperately need to get control over your liquor costs.
As a bartender I’ve free-poured all my life, and perform self-checks and regular tune ups to stay accurate. But now I’m teaching new bartenders how to pour, and there are struggles.
Proper and consistent bottle holding angle and pour spout direction make pouring easier to measure, but the problem is time – tempo – a “four count” for each ounce poured. That tempo IS teachable, and as a manager or owner, measurable while watching your bartenders pour!
I can stand and watch and KNOW just how much of each ingredient is being free-poured because I know my count, but what about new bartenders? Do they need help there? If you’re managing a bar, can you tell if your bartenders are pouring 2 ounces instead of 1, or 1¼ into customers’ mixed drinks all night?
For teaching purposes I installed a metronome app on my phone (and ordered a few digital/electronic ones – but the phone app “drum beat” option is better than the higher pitched tones from the ordered digital metronomes), and set it at 168 beats per minute.
What that means is that a single ounce pours for every four beats, or 1/4 oz each beat.
That trains the new bartender in the correct tempo at which to count — and, since everyone has a Smart Phone, there’s no reason why any bartender shouldn’t be able to learn proper pouring tempo in record time by simply playing and listening to the metronome and counting along from time to time (whether actually pouring at that moment or not) to nail the tempo!
OR you can do this: There is also some music that is 168 BPM. The one song I know of in particular that fits this bill precisely is “It’s a Hard Knocks Life” where those first 5 words (the first two are said so quickly that they count as a single beat) are at precisely that beat, and used to accompany a pour, are 1 oz – which is totally cool. “It’s a hard knocks” is 3/4 oz, “It’s a” is 1/4 oz, etc. 🙂
#FunFact Source Article (after looking up metronomes for pouring in Google, I found this with the research I needed to make it easy):
Beats-Per-Minute Pouring Method
Site Author, David J. Curtis: David Curtis, a seasoned professional with decades of bartending and bar management experience began his career in Midtown Manhattan, NY, tending and managing bars before diving into Manhattan’s bustling nightlife club scene. Over the years, he has mastered high-volume, high-pressure bartending as the lead bartender in iconic Midtown clubs and tended bar briefly in the Wall Street area, generating over $1,350,000.00 annually in personal drink sales. He has since extended his expertise to establishments in Georgia and now Tampa in Exclusive Platinum Service Awards Clubs, 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.