The bartending industry is like a university campus, there are girls, booze and parties. Every campus has there own fraternities, the jocks, the geeks and the frat boys. Similar to this industry, there are fraternities that we all belong to in one way or another. These "frats" can be divided into three areas, the "pub tenders," the "flairers," and the classics. Sounds like gangs out of "Grease," everybody fits in somewhere.
The "pub tenders" encompasses all bartenders who work in the high volume end of the market. They are the nightclub guys who are up until 5 am in the morning serving drunks as quickly as possible. "Pub tenders" are the masters of the midnight hour; they can pump alcohol over the bar faster than anybody else. Often they are the ones that serve us when we drag our lowly over worked butts into the bar at 2am in the morning. I suppose you could say they are the football frat boys, the athletic ones who work hard and party even harder. This is where most people start their careers and it is sometimes where people go back to end their careers.
Now the next two frats are always a subject of much debate in terms of who is better and why. Neither is better or worse than the other and both take considerable skills and talents. Flairers are a special breed of bartender that takes a great deal of hard work, training and perseverance that many of us can’t be bothered trying to accomplish. I know flair tenders who train for 6 hours a day, their day begins shortly after breakfast. They train their bodies like a professional athlete all for the show they will put on that night. Flairers like the Delpechs, are at the top of their field and make a fantastic living out of it. Although I also know plenty of flair tenders that can’t bartend and most of all wouldn’t be able to make a decent cocktail to save their lives.
That brings us to the fraternity that I belong to. What you would call the nerds, the true mixologists. The guys who night after night and day after day are studying cocktail books to keep at the top of there game. We are like the flairers but we use our minds over our bodies. We train our memories to remember as many classics, flavours and techniques as we can. We are just as showy as the flairers but like our more reserved lifestyles. Being apart of this frat is hard work to get recognition, as the general public watches a flair bartender and says wow, ooohhhh. Most people get a good cocktail from a bartender and they just think that’s your job, they don’t think how much time and training go into it. But it’s all worth it, we have a longer life span than most bartenders and we usually make better tips.
What fraternity do you belong to? Does it matter? We are all from the same school of training and we all are here for the same reasons. How we do our jobs and where doesn’t matter, its all about the brother and sisterhood of the bar industry. No one is any better than the next bartender and you should never judge someone on which frat they belong to or the job they do.
