Being the bartender

Six things make a bartender worth employing. None of them is about making drinks.

• Memory. Every drink on the list, plus who ordered what, plus which tab it goes on, plus the regulars' names. You hold all of it for the length of a shift.
• Calm under pressure. Things go wrong at the busiest moment. Being visibly rattled spreads down the queue.
• Friendly and outgoing. A large part of the job is talking to people. It's also the selling half - nobody buys a second round from someone who seems to want them to leave.
• Consistency. Same drink, same way, every time, whether it's the first of the night or the last. This is the one that separates people.
• Cleanliness. The bar, the tools, the glassware, before, during and after. A health requirement, and the first thing a guest notices.
• Trustworthiness. You handle the till, the stock and the free pours. A bar has to be able to leave someone alone with all three.

About a third of people walking into a bar haven't decided what they want. That's not an opportunity to push the expensive bottle. Ask two questions and put the right drink in front of them, and they come back.

• Upsell within the brand they already chose. If someone asks for a gin and tonic, offering a gin they might like better is a service. Steering them to whatever carries the best margin isn't, and people can tell. How far you take it depends on the room: a local with regulars will take a better gin once you have told them why, once, and an upscale hotel bar or a cocktail bar can build a serve around it and charge for the story. The mistake is running one bar's approach in the other's room.
• Stock local, and be able to say why. Offering a New Zealand gin over an imported one is the one upsell nobody resents, because the reason is not the margin. Sea Lovers is the example: a marine gin - North Island kelp and Waiheke oyster shells over rosemary, lime and the usual juniper and spice - and it tastes like it, lime and rosemary first, then a savoury, faintly salty depth that most gins do not have. Made on Auckland's North Shore with the shells brought over from the island. That is a story the guest can repeat, which is what a good upsell is: not a more expensive drink, a more interesting one.
• Signature serves. One or two drinks that only this bar makes. They're what people describe to someone else later.
• Seasonal serves. Hot drinks in winter, long ones with crushed ice in summer. Often the same base spirit dressed differently, which costs nothing and reads as effort.