If the forum doesn’t mind, I wanted to start a topic unrelated to genitalia. Is anyone here a bartender? How long did it take you to complete certification (in terms of hours)?
I Bartend for a catering company,no cert required!!very nice extra income and its fun as hell to bartend weddings…
I’ve been bartending for five years. What do you mean by a certification? If you mean like a bartending academy, it’s about $500 and 40 hours. Don’t waste your time or money on a bartending school. AT BEST they only give a base of which to build on when you get a bartending job. They are the laughing stock of the F&B industry. If you really want to learn to bartend the easiest way is to get into a chain restaurant when they are first hiring for a new store and they will train you. If this isn’t possible where you live, start out waiting tables somewhere, then work up. Everybody has to pay their dues sometime. Also to get hired as a bertender in ome of the better spots it helps if you’re a girl and have big tits.
CMC if you are big try and get a job as a bouncer/beertender. That’s what I did in grad school.
Work the door at the beginning of the night. Once the place fills up then pour beers and shots (80%) of the business where I worked. Then you’ll learn on the job. If somebody asks for something wacky like a fuzzy navel let one of the experienced guys make it.
Yes, I was referring to the classes you can take. I didn’t realize they were so terrible. Why such a bad rep?
You can always do what I did in school. Go buy or borrow a book on bartending, read it, memorize it, then start applying for jobs. When they ask about experience, do what lots of bartenders did for their first jobs: lie! Make up some bar or restaurant from your “home town” that nobody ever heard of. If you book-learn well, you shouldn’t have any problem getting comfortable with all the various drinks, especially since most drinks ordered are very simple, and you don’t need a book to know how to open a beer…
They have a bad rep mostly because of all the knuckle heads that graduate from there with a cocky attitude thinking they’re all knowing after 2 weeks of training. BTW most of their job placement stuff is taken right out of the classifieds. Also no matter how much experience you have bartending you won’t usually start out behind the bar. You’ll start waiting tables, bouncing or bar backing then slowly worked into the bar.
duece gave you good advice, you’ll probably have to start out as a bar runner or some similar job and move your way up. As someone else mentioned, get a bartending book and become familiar with it so that you can jump in when the opportunity comes up. Even then, many bars do things a little differently and often change drink recipes a little. Don’t bother with the course, it’s a waste of time and money
I did the training at the Minnesota School of Bartending and I completely thought it was worth it. Yeah, it cost me like $200, but I could make that up in a weekend. All it all, it took me about 25 hours. I would just head in for a couple of hours in the evening until I got through it all.
As for being a bar back and whatnot, I never had to do any of that lackey work. But I also didn’t just apply to some downtown club. I found a job posting at the school (there were usally about 30 of them at any given point) and I went out and applied. I found a job within about a week.
In all seriousness, I highly recommend bartending school for anyone who is thinking about it.
i never went to bartending school. learnt everything on the job over the last 5 years. i have done the works; lacky, bartender, bouncer, manager in big night clubs (biggest in my country) and local pubs. as fornot doing the lacky stuff, thats half the job. bartenders who cant change a keg or are too good to wash glasses are cocks, and it will probably reflect in the way they serve customers. theres nothing worse than a pretentious bartender.
as for bouncing, the money is usually better, but no tips (unless you do the dodgy “let-people-jump-the-que” thing). also getting your face smashed in sucks ( i have never had it happen thank god but i know of guys much bigger than me who have).
working in a bar is all about service. make the customer have a good and safe time. it not about pouring fancy cocktails (although it does pull the girls/slappers)