Happy Friday! I don’t know about you but I am definitely not well lately. (See: the world, the country, personal life events, etc.) The hospitality industry is notorious for being pretty underwhelming when it comes to benefits and stable work environments. I feel like this is a borderline “chicken or the egg” situation but restaurant workers are definitely not taking sick days, they’re working insane hours, and they’re not taking breaks way more often than employees in any other field; so maybe it makes sense we’re all a little crazy? Are we drawn to the trauma that is the industry or is the industry capitalizing on our exceptional ability to work under extreme circumstances?

This week we want to ask: are any of us okay?

Before we really get going we want to remind you of the incredible Tequila Festival happening at Ember & Alma Cocktail Bar in Marlborough, MA. Lui sent out a separate newsletter with all the details and how to get your tickets for the event. This Festival will be hosted by Lui & our friends from Goodjuice. There will be tastings for 15+ different tequila brands, 4 unique cocktails, delicious appetizers and finger foods, a bit of education, good friends and a ton of fun! Click here to buy your tickets now before they sell out.

You know what would help to make all the heavier things that we like to talk about here go down easier? Some high quality rum.

Straight, on the Rocks, or Crafted into a Cocktail, this Rum Stands Up

How could I forget about Privateer?

I’m late to the game yet again on a perfect viral meme moment to tie into this newsletter. I think however, it’s been a blessing in disguise. I know everyone was drowned in memes surrounding a certain affair being exposed at a concert fairly recently, but I don’t want to capitalize on the pain that the whole event caused for those involved. What I recently stumbled upon is that one of my favorite local rum distilleries is surprisingly connected to the whole scandal.

I realized when I stumbled upon this article that I haven’t had any Privateer Rum on my liquor shelf for far too long. It also made me want to highlight the distillery and bring some well-earned positive attention their way. Massachusetts is actually home to a fair number of rum distilleries. Considering that sugar cane doesn’t grow this far north it initially was a little surprising to me. Most of that is a result of the deep and oftentimes troubling history surrounding the rum industry. For the sake of brevity I won’t be doing a deep historical dive on that this week but we did briefly address rum’s human impact in a past newsletter. Suffice to say that Massachusetts - and New England - have loved the spirit since colonial times.

The Privateer Rum distillery was founded by Andrew Cabot in 2011 and the name was inspired by his ancestor of the same namesake. From their website: “the original Andrew Cabot (1750-1791), was a merchant, rum distiller and successful American privateer during the American Revolution.” The company is dedicated to making rums using high quality ingredients and not adding any sweeteners, flavors, or spices to their products. With so much focus on transparency from spirits companies lately it’s important to note that these standards were set when Privateer first started; they were ahead of the curve on that one. They have some really incredible offerings in their portfolio and it’s definitely worth picking up a bottle. Whiskey lovers check out the Navy Yard and everyone should try the Tiki Rum because it is super fun in cocktails.

So Bartending is Like the CrossFit of Career Options...?

How bartending stacks up against other careers in the “calories spent” category

It comes as no surprise that bartending burns a lot more calories than sending emails and making phone calls. Depending on the type of bar and the volume of business on a given shift, bartending can be very physically demanding. It’s definitely not at the top of the list of most physically demanding jobs but it’s not at the bottom of the stack either. It’s difficult to give any solid numbers on just how many calories are burned doing pretty much anything (the variation from person to person alone is impossible to account for) but I found some averages and plopped them into a graph for my fellow visual learners.

This is calories per hour worked by the way, which is why I said being a bartender might make you want to quit the gym. Bartending isn’t always a standard 8 hour shift. There are rare occasions when a bar shift is shorter, but I would argue that most bartenders see more than 8 hours in one shift, and that’s not counting working a double at places that are open for multiple meal times.

All jokes aside, not only is bartending a workout, bartenders (and pretty much every other restaurant worker) don’t typically get regular breaks. So on top of burning all those calories most of those people don’t have any time to replenish them during their shift. These extremes aren’t actually very conducive to staying fit. Many studies have concluded that being consistent with the quality, amount, and timing of when you eat is correlated with more sustainable weight management.

For all the physicality involved in this industry there are also bound to be injuries. A study done by The Local Bartending School (LBS) lists many of the common health problems reported by bartenders themselves. The study is actually very interesting and the sample size is pretty impressive, so for any research-oriented minds I’m linking it here. Included are also reports on mental and social health of the respondents and although it wasn’t really surprising that doesn’t make it okay either.

Escaping Health Fads and Focusing on Actual Wellness

What can we do to make this industry healthier in the long run?

Many of our recent newsletters have mentioned how the growing cultural health movement has been changing the landscape for bars and restaurants from a business standpoint. While the business-end of this industry evolves to cater to health-minded guests what is it doing for employees?

According to the study mentioned in the previous section done by LBS there are some very glaring impacts to mental and social health when it comes to bartending and work in the service industry in general. The best way to show this was just to take a screen grab from the website because there is so much that needs to be taken into account when we talk about the toll this industry can take on every aspect of life.

Anyone in our readership that has worked as a bartender, server, or kitchen staff member is likely to look at this list and essentially nod and think “yeah that tracks”. Which is a little devastating partly because it’s awful so any of us have felt these things but also because our acceptance of this as the norm is allowing it to continue. This isn’t something we can fix overnight. We need to make sure we are talking about the hard things: substance abuse, sexual harassment, and general loss of self. These aren’t things that are exclusive to our industry but talking about all of it through the lens of bartending and serving with other people who are experiencing the same things gives those experiences a level of credibility they can’t ever have standing alone.

Change is happening; it might happen in small pockets at first but once the standard is set it will inevitably become more and more common. One example is how New Orleans-based restaurant group LeBlanc + Smith is championing paid parental leave for their employees. Bartending is not always the best career for parents and a major reason is because society hasn’t really ever considered bartending a career, period. Although service workers make up the third largest segment of laborers in the U.S. only 16% have access to paid family leave. Both Lui and I know how much work goes into building a family and taking care of children. We also both know that the people that can handle the kind of stress and multitasking that makes for incredible bartenders, servers, and cooks are the same kinds of people who have kids.

Best Video We Saw This Week

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This felt like it fit a little to well with the flow of this week’s content not to share. I truly love a video that reflects the inner thoughts we would never act on actually happening. There’s almost a catharsis in it.

Quick Hits:

• Famous speakeasy Please Don’t Tell is opening it’s first new concept in almost 20 years. It’s a multi-concept project but the current and future features are setting the stage for an incredible collection of bites and sips.

• Another list of how employees and employers can help with the mental health impact of the service industry can be found here.

• More resources for bartenders and service workers needing some mental health resources specific to the industry.