From Nightclubs to Luxury Hospitality
Jannik’s career began unexpectedly when he was scouted at the gym and introduced to bartending. Starting in nightclubs, he developed a passion for cocktails and guest experience. His move to luxury hospitality at Hotel D’Angleterre’s Baltazar Champagne Bar reshaped his understanding of high-end service, where hospitality is about crafting unforgettable experiences, not just serving drinks
Taking the Leap: From Employee to Entrepreneur
Realizing late-night shifts weren’t sustainable long-term, Jannick took control of his career. After an employer rejected his request for a flexible schedule, he founded Copenhagen Cocktail Academy and later, SPITZE, a luxury event company. His journey into business ownership had challenges, but his focus on branding, quality, and networking helped him carve out a niche in high-end hospitality
Building a Luxury Hospitality Brand
Jannik shares key lessons for success:
- Brand and reputation matter: consistency and attention to detail set you apart.
- Networking is everything: past connections can open future doors.
- Presentation counts: from glassware to uniforms, details shape the guest experience.
Adapting to Industry Changes
The hospitality landscape is evolving with staffing challenges, sustainability demands, and shifting guest expectations. Jannick emphasizes adapting to trends like low-ABV cocktails and eco-conscious operations, and highlights the importance of strong leadership in today’s workforce.
Expanding Beyond the Bar
Beyond events and consulting, Jannick has ventured into retail with his own ready-to-drink cocktail line, showing how hospitality professionals can extend their careers into product development and brand building.
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Transcript
From Hotel Business to Event Management to Entrepreneurship with Jannick Gram
Auto-generated transcript; it may contain small transcription errors.
I asked the hotel if I were able to combine it and they said no you're either here or you're not here I really like that being able to just be in control of everything I could literally go from you know educating graduating and straight into the wholesale business The Passion of The Craft that we do especially as Benders or and as chefs you know providing extraordinary service and not just service that was a rare [Music] thing Yanik thank you so much for being here thank you
for accepting my invitation on for inviting me this crazy idea of coming to a podcast and not knowing that much about a podcast so basically what we are trying to to do in here is to give something back to the community is to with our conversation and with your experience in this industry to see how a bartender a chef a waiter go when they reach a certain level and they want to go next what they can do your profile is uh as I like to call
it as an entrepreneur you are going from here to there to there and you've done so much in the past can you do a very very short introduction of yourself let's say 5 minutes or 2 minutes of what you've done in a time box and then we can go back to in depth I'll try uh well Yanik name uh 38 years old two children married moved to the suburbs lives in a house started bartending in 2004 uh was basically just handpicked from a gym session by
guy called Rico and Then followed a couple years uh in nightclubs uh most famously in NASA white the white nightclub that was hugely popular in the early thousands 2000s um then um kind of got hooked on cocktails after meeting uh Ian to who used to run a very successful bar called the dive which basically were a cocktail themed dive bar that was open until you know 6 7 in the morning or as long as the crowd allowed it to be um and he kind of got
me hooked on the whole cocktail thing and also the the hosting you know creating an atmosphere creating a Vibe for the guests and and being you know present um at the same time the nightclub I was working at at that time called LS they had a lot of courses that were focused mainly on you know the teamwork uh the um the art of providing a customer experience that were're more than just providing a product you know one thing is you know Hospitality goes Way Beyond just
you know serving plates and drinks uh and uh and and that entire you know that that realm of service and hospitality and you know being there and creating something unique for the individual guests that that just fetched and just catched me completely I would say hooked and it was kind of a drug which this business can become H and I just took every shift everywhere I could get my hands on so I followed I was briefly at Hard Rock Cafe um worked for a beer bar
even worked at gay bar even worked uh you know uh wine bar and I I guess it culminated with me getting contract to go to Dubai and open a French Japanese cocktail and restaurant lounge spent a year there came back thought that I was wasting my life just you know working nights and um and wanted after discovering Dubai the natural interest of becoming a hotelier as a part of you know how to expand you know you spend four or five years just bartending then then you
think about what's next so I uh I entered hter School in Denmark completed that uh while working at 11:05 and mash the steakhous then um then I got a job immediately after actually I also opened another place called the lot I think that's an important part because I met a lot of cool people there among them a guy called Jeremy and when I finished Hotel school he was a part of opening basar Champagne Bar which is located at hotel D which is a famous 250y old
uh hotel in the middle of of uh of kuto um cop Pagen Square I could literally go from you know educating graduating and straight into the wholesale business uh and I spent three years there yeah also opening the hotel bar I kept um I held the very very exclusive title of executive bom manager I was so proud of it you have no idea and just being able to wear a tux every now and then when I at least a suit when I was working uh it
was very in my character I'd say at some point uh I started to uh you know flirt with the other uh with the other gender found a wife and we moved in together and we had a CH had a child and then we had a second child and uh having two children and still working you know Wednesday Thursday Friday also sometimes Sundays uh became a bit of a I wouldn't say a problem but it was quite hard because most of the other people that you meet
in your life they're day Walkers yeah um so in order to balance it out um I started to do private gcks mainly because um I I helped a lot of event companies and it was a good way of getting extra income next to the full-time job next to the house and the wife and the child and uh and the back in 2014 it just became too much to do both so I asked a hotel if I were able to combine it and they say no you're
either here or you're not here and that kind of you know kind of pushed me into try to do it full-time first year was relatively successful second year was not uh that it was expensive and then yeah that was that was when C Mak cocktail Academy got born um ran that for 5 years then another four years and then yeah then quit came back there was some Corona and uh start a new play business called spit which you obviously has been a part of it and
part which is my current business and then yeah as as you've been so kind enough to bring to this podcast also my own um RTD uh line and yeah now we're here so now we here that's a was that five minutes perfect it was a just an introduction for our listeners to see the whole journey how you started from which position you started and where you are right now and uh the one thing that I am interested and I hope our listeners are interested as well
it's uh the journey cuz you mentioned quite a lot of places and uh let's say yes you got to a point you got to a point where you end up in a hotel job let's go to let's say danger or the baltazar Champagne Bar where you were the executive uh bar manager where what kind of skills you you learn what kind of skills you need to enter into that position from when you are a bartender moving to a management position that's interesting I'd say first and
foremost is your people skills I mean the way that you're able to communicate in a respective manner so people also respect you and treat people with respect that's something you learn as soon as you get outside of the Danish borders because Hospitality when I left Denmark was kind of a obviously we had the measuring star restaurants we had five star hotels but it was more like uh people were there because it was a job The Passion of The Craft that we do especially as Benders or
and as chefs waiters as well you know providing extraordinary service and not just service that was a rare thing uh I mean we talk in 2008 now when I left Denmark and going into a a business in which you work with Japanese uh English Filipinos Indians Australians Italians and French people all in the same kitchen you know and all in the same setting you also get uh quite the cultural impact and learning and being able to switch in between personalities and and culture and uh personalities
it's it's it's a very very good way of creating a a very good feeling about yourself back when I came when I came back to from Denmark well my bar manager Georgio he was Italian he was actually an indicated accountant but he thought that was super boring so he started to do bartending instead when he was 28 so he had a pretty interesting profile but he was very good at uh you kind of you know providing some sort of feedback how how how would how would
I be able to to to be successful when I into management and he he said you just have to be on point of everything you know you need to know before they ask you and you need to somehow work much harder than everyone else because B only based on your work ethics people will respect you so naturally I just worked harder than everyone else which also had you know a price you were pretty much tired if you look at pictures of me 10 years back I
just constantly have you know wrinkles around my eyes you can see from my firstborn Christian and the picture I might be very happy but you could just see how sleep deprived I am and uh but it didn't matter because I loved what I did it was a passion for me and when your passion shines through and people can see how much you enjoy it you naturally attract people and if you can do that uh visually and you can do it with your communication you can do
it with your management style also always be be pretty pretty on point then people will see you as a future bet and that's how you get up the ranks but you would most likely in this industry become a manager when you're far far uh away from actually being ready so it's also about you know trusting yourself and you know trus in your instincts but also just take the decisions and just learn from all the mistakes that you do but I can't tell you how many times
I've been a situation which I'm not sure I'm taking the right decision here or ordering way too much champagne for given event or you know just especially when it comes to cost control and you but I kind always felt that being able to manage a team and building a team up so regardless of what happened to me the team will just fulfill the task that is you know the that is the Pinnacle of of the management part of of being a manager is that you could
basically step outside and everything will run exactly as smooth as when you're not there in Denmark it's hard because you usually you don't have that much staff you have you and maybe one or two others and you are the bar team so when you get into hotels is a different because there's a different economy then you have a bigger team and you also have HR and you have much more you have a longer list of possibilities in order to get your team motivated and you have
most likely you have a budget to also do you know uh social Gatherings and being able to invest in uh you know management courses and stuff like that absolutely so how uh how hard was it to to do this transition from the hotel from being behind the every night to work countless hours do your own business I believe oh well you tell me you're in the middle of it you I mean sometimes it gets lonely because if it's your own business you can you're more or
less only have yourself to be accountable for so it often happened that I would be working you know 24 hours straight for three days and then on Sunday when I thought I was be able to I would be able to just you know kick back relax but the time with the family I would get a call from the guy I had my uh let's say I had my inventory with and he said he would said I'm going to kick you out if your bartenders doesn't know
how to clean up after themselves so I forgot to make sure that they got rid of the trash in the proper fashion and was just put outside of the storage and the fers became in so that was you know small things that you because you were simply too busy to take care of it that would be the problems you know a recurring problem that you you not able to be doing everything yourself until you get to a point in which you can see that you finally
get you know a bit better economy and you get you know recurring guests and um uh your customer and clients base you know uh increases and you get much more you know steady business that's when you can start to okay I know that I effectively needs to need to have someone else help me in this one one of the hard parts of me is is delegating because you know that you have a very certain way of doing business you have a very certain way of doing
the drink you have a very certain way of putting up the bar you have a very certain way of dressing yourself you know putting on your uniform and you have a very certain way of doing your service MH so that meant that you just need to okay I need to just train people train train train train you know make just write everything down starting to do Sops uh exactly that you would do when you were a bar manager M but somehow when it's your own business
that's just things that you for my sake at least in my case it was the last thing I was looking for I no no I can do the most of this myself but in the end I was doing service behind the bar and having some bartending team taking care of the business four or five other places in the uh around town and then you just need to have you know some very very specific and very proper outlined uh um briefings so briefing became my obsession in
the end most part told me I never read the briefings I pretty much know what you want but the transition definitely was also that you don't have that steady income you constantly need need to see where you can save some money and bootstrap yourself because in the end you maybe have one or two gigs a month it will maybe maybe will be an income let's say 25,000 then the V needs to get paid and then you may have you have 20,000 left and then you then
you have to check check out your monthly expenses maybe have something for some accounting maybe you have something for the storage then it's another 5,000 and then you maybe you're looking at 10 12,000 after taxes oh actually before taxing taxes uh and then you you end up having maybe 3,000 to yourself because you need to leave some and and and so it the idea of of working it U working with the with the business next to the job in the beginning was were natural because you
you know then you can build up a little bit and then you can start to invest in a proper storage or maybe you could invest in a cars you don't have to rent a car every time you can invest in gear mobile bars glasses equipment um maybe even a better website so you can start you know attracting uh clients via Google and yeah so all of a sudden you became everything so you are the whole in the beginning you were just the manager taking care of
drinks making men use you know managing your team now you're the accountant you're the marketing executive you're also the legal adviser you're also the the service uh manager you're also the salesman you're also the director and you're also the HR so and and I really like that being able to just be in control of everything uh which is also why I wanted to be a hotel I mean own my own hotel because then I could just jump to each department and and be a part of
everything with but then again it end up being a specialist which which I I'm quite proud of but um yeah I guess that's that's just a fraction of the thoughts that goes through your mind when right before you you fall asleep at night when you start your own business yeah aside the SP which is the actual business right now with the events and all of the luxury events cuz you position yourself more into the luxury category and then uh you do consultancy if somebody wants to
to become a consultant as well do you believe you need to go through every single stage of The Business of Being Runner being bartender being head chef being everything or you can uh just go into one and then learn the other ones let's say in school or in another place is are you more keen to say okay if you want to become a consultant you need a lot of practice or you need a school or you need both combined how would you define it that's a
very good question because when I did my first consultancy I was very focused on the drinks um but also what I had mainly been doing drinks yes I knew how to run a kitchen I knew the food and wine everything I think you need to know you need to first of all look look at the business holistically so you can see what other areas will your impact touch right so as a consultant most of all you need some credentials someone need to someone needs to somehow
you know advise someone else to to get in touch with you in order to provide at business uh strategy or at Bar menu or whatever they need the help for but most Consultants they do a lot of of self-promoting telling everyone else that they are very good consultants and that's because they knew about the metrics behind the bar the bar menu they knew how to get the right supplier they know how to to present it how to visualize it and they also know know how it's
supposed to taste but in reality when you do consultancies it's mainly people that have no clue about what your expertise is all about and they want to pay you to teach them and so you can do that but the quality of your work will be a lot better if you know all the other stuff you know so being a being a Hospitality Hospitality consultant contrary to a bar consultant is two very different things because if I call myself a hospital Hospitality consultant because I would be
able to open a hotel when we sit in front of the architect trying to draw out what's what's supposed to be in this that I I I would know exactly where we would go for the kitchen for the lounge for the for the rooms for the housekeeping for the technical areas and uh parking valet everything but if you and if you want to do that you need to have some very high-profile people telling other high profile people that they need to contact you and sometimes you
just need to nail it once with the menu I guess the slow the easy easy answer will be yes you need to have you need to have worked in a kitchen you need to have been in front of house back of house you need to be you know at the very in the very bottom and to the very top and you've seen all areas of the business because that's also how you and that's can we we work in a business and an industry that has a
as a margin of flaws and you know it's very error prone so you then that's why we always have a lot of layers of management you know especially the Germans are very good at this that you have you know you don't know you don't have a bar manager you have a general manager then you have a assistant general manager then you have a lounge manager then you have a Chef the cine you have a bar manager assistant bar manager bar supervisor assistant bar supervisor just so
many layers because then you have a full focus on all areas so you don't spend too much money you always take care of your procurement you always make sure that uh the bookings are correctly informed and communicated that you know all dietary um criteria is is is met for the individual guest and you know so on and so forth so yeah it's you said uh you said at one point uh right now that you need to find high high profile people how do you usually find
them or where do you find them when you are let's say in a transition where do you find it your first client second client how do you get to that high profile people I mean the easiest is to call them directly you know but you don't always know who is willing to pay a lot of money for a private cocktail party or a huge wedding working in the most luxurious hotel in Denmark was a very natural way of getting you know getting personal relationship to the
guests so when you have all your regulars coming in they would always come in especially Thursday Friday afternoon was the perfect time for me also Wednesdays because Wednesday was a bit slow then you had a regular coming in Wednesday evening with a date or something like that and you would have a lot of very very personal conversations we also had a lot of uh of regular that were in the middle of their life crisis or in the middle of a divorce and stuff like that and
as a bartender especially on the slow nights which in my case were weddingday Wedding Day become you know the psychology evening I would be the the best friend their counselor the the the person to go to to just you know they could just pour their hearts hearts out and they could tell me everything I know stuff about people I shouldn't know and and and that's just that's the beauty of this industry that you in it it's much more way because if we compare to many other
businesses I think one of the most unique things about being in this industry is that you get to meet so many people and you get to talk to so many people and it and then allows you to travel it allows you to to get new experiences only because you made it very good drink y on a slow night because word of mouth is a very very strong fact in in our industry and everyone who talks about you know hey I was I was at balar the
other night and the B Center he was so such an amazing individual and I just felt I was the only guest there even though he had 400 other guests screaming for drinks I could just feel him or her you know and and that's been my I would say X Factor that I was able to to you know get under the skin of my guest and they would just randomly say hey it's my 40th next week I kind of wanted to do something would you like to
come by yeah then you come by you out there then you meet all his friends or her friends and then they get to love you and adore you and then they will tell their friends and their friends and then the next 40th and the next 40th or the 50th or the wedding or the you know C silver wedding diamond weding diamond will be impressive impressive um so it's it's first of all it it's about you know having the guts to just talk to your guest you
know in in the very beginning it was like just ask you know HV in Demar H you know or wh so what you been up to where did you come from which restaurant did you D at what's your name what you do for a living you know random questions and all you need to do is just and I always wanted to have a name tag because then people could remember remember me mhm but the you know in Denmark it's it's also something about security and stuff
like that but just strap on an name I I would like to have you know a huge ass sign maybe with my own handwritten handwriting you bar manager Jan because then people could remember me and then I would be able to you know proudly go behind the bar and just what can how can I make your evening spectacular right I got this new drink I want you to taste I got this new snack on the menu that is Chef has specifically designed for this um cocktail
and the same goes when when I started my own business and then okay I really want to do something from this account F and I would just call them say hey my name is Janik I do highend events focusing on quality products and Spirits can I drop by and and do a session for you just maybe four or five people for free and then you can check it out and maybe we can do a thing for you next summer Christmas party y absolutely I mean it's
a it's a very important thing to sum it up is more like how you leverage your your position your actual position for the future and creating this networking Network environment while being behind the bar I believe it's an important uh important thing that you have to do it cuz you also have to look into the future where I'm going in the next 5 years where I'm going in the next 10 years and you you it's a very natural thing to be very shortterm oriented in the
beginning of your 20s because you think about you know the next month the mix the next six months until you sit down maybe during your summer your summer holidays and you figure out why lying on the beach H I might not want to work nights more than a year or two how can I prepare for and then you start to become creative right a creative process is also a part it's a very vital part of being you know self-employed that you get ideas that could promote
yourself or your business but most businesses in the beginning is all about you it's not the business itself y everyone wants to invest in the people behind behind the brand or behind the business not necessarily the business itself unless you are some sort of tech tech savvy Enthusiast that has made you know a very unique formula then is the formula not you and that's when it becomes dangerous because then you need to figure out the legal ways of not being you know screwed over and which
is a another part of of being you know a part of of of the self-employment realm right but yeah I mean it's it's a bit of a I would say a corny saying but you net worth or your network is your net worth is becoming increasingly more apparent because especially because of social media and you can connect with people across the world within seconds right so we have the the Hotel Site cleared for the people as well and then we have the luxury events you position
yourself with speed and also with the old company which I call it the Legacy company the Copenhagen cocktail Academy that's actually how you you and me met a couple of years ago and started working together there's definitely a huge improvement from one company to another company how often do you look back and say we did this right we did this right and we did this not so right now we can do it even better with the new new company and how you used the all knowledge
that you have to put it into the the new new one and adapt it with the all of the social media and all of the the new things that appeared in the world the Gen Z and the new generation yeah New Generation Um daily I'd say I mean it's in every aspect um I mean now it has spezza has been started and we've done a lot of things but you also tend to um to you know walk down the same path and uh then you maybe
only do you know you only do a very narrow uh adjust adjustment from the first you know method that you used back then I'd say when it's also based on your where are you in life you know as as a as a father and and husband naturally I I I I I I have to you know somehow figure out how my private economy will be affected by starting all over would I be able speak because I had a two-year Hiatus from the industry and then came
back and then I wanted to come in you know Full Throttle so how do I do that you know in my opinion in my in my mind I mean I thought okay I need to have a massive website portfolio I need to I need to expand and the only Co because cocktail Academy was about cocktails and very much just cocktails and in order to you know expand the business portfolio or the service portfolio to a to a much larger you know broader category of services so
it could be you know consulting or we could do food we could do event management I also looked at how how should I you know divide this and how would it be easy for the for the for the potential client to go into the website and just with no less than three clicks have the service that the person were looking for for for the planning it's also how can I make sure to be successful enough within the first year and get enough traction and enough clients
to pay myself and my employees and my vendors and my um and my taxes I mean I would it was a I would say a let's say that I did 15 mistakes when I did my first business I did 11 of them all over again when I started spizza and because it felt right I I mean sometime I always trust my God feeling and I can literally see every time that I went against it it just cost me a lot of money actually it just cost
me a lot of money and time and that's that's you know time is money mhm um I'm not afraid of making the same mistake twice but when I do it I I really you know I pan myself just what you did it again man why would you do that you know exactly how this is going to to end so why would you go do it one more time and then it's sometime sometimes I believe that if I do this one more time it can be for
the greater good or it can create some sort of hype about a specific thing that I want to promote I just Al also if after all we can see that especially after Corona that all these quick fixes you know quick businesses you know small businesses that just become a business because you have a nail and you have a hammer and you have a piece of wood they almost vanished right it's when people start new businesses today it's a there's an architect designing everything there's a proper
budget a proper backing there's a proper website there's proper management there's proper Staffing and I kind of felt that if if everything isn't proper from day one I would lose traction which meant that it cost me a fortune to start you know I mean we were quite successful the first year but we spent all the money every penny on making sure we had the beautiful highend mobile bars that we have you know everyone was dressed nicely that we have that perfect glass so everyone was just
that spizza always make things spizza right so also naming it spizza were another thing you know we can never do wrong you know never ever it's like the World Cup final every time we do something even the little things right even if it's just 12 people i' said I what the main thing that I did different is that I tried to be much more aware that I wouldn't um that I would be more present that I that that I I would make sure that instead of
just you know thinking this will this this will sort out itself uh itself at some point then make sure that I don't have all these loose ends I I think that's the biggest Improvement I made that I make sure that everyone is taken care of we have communication all around no one is Left Behind either staff or vendors or anyone how um how about moving cuz when I said in the beginning you are an entrepreneur you had this amazing experience before now you have the the
active company with the event and then how did this product came came in CU all of a sudden you have the hospitality businesses and then you come up with the idea of making your own product which is not the the only ones cuz I know you have your own line of spirits for the speed yeah exactly this is something separate Services is a it's a very difficult business to scale uh it's p business so it takes time to to to you know gain the knowledge attraction
one of the things that were interesting is that we had you know let's say we had 400 clients in cocktail Academy we would just contact everyone again just with the new name and say hey uh I'm back in the business I know you haven't heard from me in two years now it's called SP we can do everything right I think we only managed to get like 10% back so going from a revenue close to 10 million we had to [ __ ] around in the midst of you
know one 2 million which is not a lot for for full-time business um so so naturally also because um I kind of briefly touch upon this during Corona because at that time you know it was all about you know online web shops and the only way we could provide businesses was packing stuff and that's that's where I started to experiment with the with with the bottle Cocktails so uh I was working on that project whilst doing as spizza uh I just need to find the perfect
combination of making cocktails that were would be tasting good and freshh and never run out don't and without uh without any shelf life so um it took some time to find the right vendor um I would say to write Distillery to be able to do this I found one in Spain through a you know a mutual friend of ours Daniel and I visit the guys in bilau and talked about how can we do this so we did a lot of flavorings and back and forth and
this became the free product to begin with um and it's out there now so um and the thing is when I launched this I thought I was quite happy with it now I don't now now I want to improve them you know massively as ah we can do this and this and you know the more you taste your own product the more tired you get out get of it but also the downi which has been a drink that I first started making at bosar it's just
been the drink that everyone has talked about so the drink itself became customer magnet right so you did you make the the downtown heavy yeah that was me we always have it when we visit bide did you really make it yeah I did really make it and then you know with different tweaks and and it's still one of the most popular CS I'm quite sure that Remy who's the current bar manager at basar he's still sick and tired of making drink at least that's what he
tells me uh I thought it would be a natural line extension also Warren Buffett once said don't invest in businesses you do you don't understand and I I have a natural creative spirit that I just need to start something new I love to start I love the the beginning of the process and the beginning of businesses I would like to make a hundred more businesses so it's much more about the entrepreneurial Spirit but I don't want to make a business that I can't somehow see a
direct sales um sales path or sales uh you know Source uh or Revenue stream so having speed Su side doing events why would I then offer a glass of wine when I could offer a glass of yanning strings which is this this product is B basically made so you can just P fill a glass with ice and pour it over and it will have the same you know flavor profile and drink profile as an Atif or you can shake it and enjoy it as a cocktail
or you can top it up with champagne and enjoy it as a sprit so it's also wanted to do a product that is not the same as every every everyone else out there in most products today is just supposed to be you know first of all it's refrigerated so it has a shelf life and you can open it and drink it and it's done this you can open and you put back in the fridge you can grab it again and you can use it as a
mixer you can use it as a a cocktail and Sil and the other versions that I just mentioned so yeah it just had to I just had to start it so it it felt it felt very compelling when speed were up and running that okay let's launch this as well they two marry um each other quite well or they fit each other quite well so you know so it's two businesses that can you know create Revenue um for for each each other so those two businesses
the Downtown Abby and the spe agency they came after 2 years pause period yeah exactly how was it that pause period cuz most of the bartenders chefs waiters you know you are at your lowest moment when you say I we going to quit this and I will never come back to the industry oh I've been there but I I think when when you as a partender when you get to the point in which you say I have no future in this then it's because you're in
a job that you have nailed everything then you can you know challenge yourself and try to apply for a job in a much more competitive or high-profile bar that's also why it ended up being luxury because I had to I started pouring beers and a c at a vegetable Cafe and then ended up Shing Champagne For The Ambassador in his private home and that was you know that was a six-year Gap from the first po to the last Shake If you may say so you need
to constantly challenge yourself also with competitions you know competition is a great way of challenging yourself also because if you're successful you get to travel yeah and as Bon is we get to travel a lot when everyone else paying the bill we get to visit a lot of restaurants when everyone else paying the bill if you just very good at your craft and you if you you need to be very canny yeah obviously you need to be very creative um and just be I'm looking for
a word in English forgot n nous you need to be very curious uh when when looking for better ways to do your drinks to improve your knowledge the more you know the more you can relax and that's all as you become older but then again I always try to make sure that I wouldn't fall behind on any parts of life so I managed to to find I was lucky to find my wife in in a very young age and get a child in a very young
age also the second child I even have another child coming in which is you know was supposed to was supposed to be a girl but now it's another boys are three boys now but then again you know that I have my safe base at home I have my wife who supports me and that's that's the longevity that I would say that's most of the longevity behind my um most of the reasons why I have such a longevity in this business because my base at home were
uh you know has been a steady uh and and a rock started uh from you know day one and then so at a certain certain point you just can't you don't feel that you can get to know and and you you feel that you're much more qualified to do the job than all your managers you don't feel the owners they good enough to to to provide you with any more knowledge or skills that's when you go to competitions when then you win all the competitions or
at least you maybe you do good then there's only one way to improve yourself and that is to start your own business that I mean that came naturally to me otherwise you get to a a super low point in your life as Bartons in which you will start to figure out maybe it's time for me to get a real job you know but bartending is a real job it might not be a real job in the beginning because it's all about partying and drinking but it's
has has moved so much further from that point if you ask me even the die bars today they it's still a job yes we work nights but we provide excellent Services we provide experiences it's uh it's show business I mean it's not different from an actor or a doctor or a nurse or a singer I mean they work nights too yes sometimes we work very late nights but that's a choice you just need to make sure that first of all stay stay fit stay healthy stay
away from all the Temptations and then you know make sure that you have a base I'm quite sure that's a 100% uh a part of My Success I mean it's easy to say it obviously it's much easier to say it than a everything I'm saying right now is very easy to say but it's still it's still it's still long hours it's still you know you need to never quit I mean that's the thing that you the Dark Side of all this is that you work so
hard for so long and it's not it's not just hard because you you don't get that much sleep it's also physically very hard you know working 12 15 hour shifts 4 days 5 days 6 days in a row for years for a normal person that would sound absolutely insane and I'm gladly admit that uh I might be a little bit insane in order to be a part of this but that's kind of the beauty of it I think the insanity becomes the the team spirit MH
which then becomes the the the the the the the Nana of service right you can clearly see when you've been at an event in which you have pinpointed and you know selected the right team members or just yourself for that for that matter you can just see the guests they they feel that oh you can kind of it's almost on a it's almost like on a Quantum level that that you have increased the awareness of how good a service experience can be and if that becomes
a drug and a passion you kind of you will end up ignoring that you did maybe get four or five hours you did get four or five hours of sleep when I got my second child for for eight months straight I slept less than eight hours between Wednesday and Sunday because you you came back home around 45 in the morning you went back up at 7:00 to do your daddy duties and it was back to work because you had your own business so it was cocktail
Academy from 9:00 in the morning until 1200 then a quick gym session and then hotel and then you did that 4 days in a row four weeks a month yeah you every fifth Saturday were my day off you you do that when you have your own business but when you are behind the bar The Temptations are High I mean in our line of work the tempations are super high and easy accessible I know I know you never went to to that part but how would you
see it now how can you stay away how you manage to stay away for all of the tempation I think most of all it's about limiting yourself to one or two drinks mhm instead of four to five drinks and this is actually it's there scientific proving that you teach your body to enjoy things you know so if you if you get a flavor if you get a taste of whiskey and you start enjoying Whiskey on a regular basis you would naturally crave whiskey when you have
finished a sh eight 10 hour shift or a beer or a wine or a Negroni Negroni has always been mine I still crave a Negroni but but the less I drink it the less I want it the same thing with with sugar because you know after all it's sugar from from the base thing that we serve is sugar you know alcohol come from sugar so it's it's it's it's it's a part of the addiction and alcohol is supposed to be a product in which you enjoy
as a as a sophisticated drink something that will highlight flavor that you wouldn't be able to create without the addic addition of alcohol that's that's that's the Craft part that comes in that you use you use syrup that is made of sugars you use juice that has natural sugars then you use spirit that has sugars in it as well so becoming addicted is very easy then you also become addicted to the vibe you become addicted to the people and the people maybe have a certain energy
that attracts you let's say you find your significant other you know the one that is on the same energy level as you you would naturally be drawn to be spending more time with this person and this person might have a very I would say loose um relationship to alcohol then it becomes easy to to do the same downfall for yourself and you end up saying why would I spend so much time with this and and the moment that you maybe refrain from spending time with this
person the person will naturally just disappear also in terms of how the people you meet in the industry will affect your your way forward so if you can see this guy he is he's in the industry from the all the wrong reasons he you know he does Bad Business he he has a he he maybe it's not even alcohol it's also drugs or maybe you know some other stuff that you wouldn't know about it can also be sex it can be everything but if you can
keep it to a sophisticated level which was why I always kept trying to go into places that would have a very you know have a certain level of of service because then I knew that people were there for the professional skill set for the professional part of the industry then so I've never been prone to addiction but I've always been you know wanting to go out and have a party but I always waited until the Saturday yeah I would go out on Saturdays because then I
wouldn't go out and have to go to a shift um the day after because I would have Sundays off so I think I always but then again I've always you know taken care of myself you know going to the gym or going to soccer practice or hockey practice I always made sure to stay stay healthy so physically I always try to manage myself which is also incredibly important because then you don't feel feel the you don't feel the same you know load on your body when
you get your sleep when you don't drink that much and you get to the gym you actually feel energized and you look forward to come to the shift and you can do that four or five times in a row throughout your 20s and your 30s but then it becomes I'm turning 40 next year I can feel that having shifts two three days a week which if and then also taking care of all the other aspects of my life that will be too much from from a
longer for a long long term it will so much for short term is different because then you can still be in it and be happy about it that's that's the at least the best advice that I can give that you know monitor the people that you spend time with in the industry go for places is in which you know you can learn something when you can't learn anything then move to the next you know pedestal and just move on up and then when you think that
you are the smartest person in the room start your own business even beforehand it can also just because you found that perfect area for your most most people or most bartenders dream about owning their own bars but very very good bartenders aren't necessarily good business owners so it's also about do you even have what it takes do you want to work that much or is it just easy to just come to work do your job then [ __ ] off and then be off when you're off which
is also something that has now become much more relevant because back in the day you'll be working constantly right all the time when you were off you were doing master classes or you would meet for your with your colleague for a beer or two or you would go out to other bars and visit other bars MH when you go into uh when you go into industry today you you can have a full full functioning Day Life next to your bartending career because uh the economy is
is better at least people are much more uh um I would say guests are much more uh prone to spending more money in bars and we' be able to raise the bar on salaries and also you know health care and personal uh uh personal needs and um the unions have gathered more and more attraction also in hotels but also you know restaurants and bars so you're pretty much taken care of so you can have two threee maybe four shifts a week and then have a full
functioning day life in which you can study you can spend time with your friends you can work out you can even have a second job on the side right so being professional in the industry today it's it's pretty easy also we have gotten almost the same attention as chef we're still not quite there there's still a long way of of regarding drinks the same way as food but being Bender today on a professional level is equally as adorable and I would say impressive as being a
a professional chef how uh how would you see after postco uh thing I mean in Denmark the way that I see it it's you the industry was okay was great covid came a lot of people realize that they can do something else and I see a gap of two three years how do you you see the new ones coming in do you see any new ones from a business perspective where you have to hire stuff or from a bar as a consultant where you need to
to find people that stays in the industry how easy is it now compared to 5 years ago yeah it's a lot different the new generation it's um they have a lot of opinions and they also know their rights so you need to be it's a lot more micromanagement you know banter five years back it could be very sexist it could be very you know it could be brutally uh or just brutal it could be very brutal in terms of how to treat people uh also with
the ranks uh and you know the hierarchy and you need to ref especially on a management level you need to be so much more aware of how you you know present yourself and your business and how you communicate and also communication it's a lot you can't just throw out a video it needs to be visual it needs to be audio it needs to be you know you need to teach people in three different ways five different ways you can see the same in elementary school kids
you can't put everyone into the same box anymore everyone needs you need to talk to each and everyone in the room to know that okay this guy he likes his bar station to me like that that waiter needs to have all these things lined down in front of him in order to perform the work and then you need to have much more of a visualization of this is where we are this is where you want to be and that's just the staff part but it's a
whole another level when it comes to the guests because you you're being judged in a completely different way now first of all not many people likes to drink alcohol the same way that used to do so you need to take care that you need to make sure that you have non-alcoholic versions or no low versions you need to have wine from different aspect you need to have natur natural wine organic wines you need to have new world old world the food needs to be able to
be presented in lots of different ways because you have pescatarians you have um uh vegetarians and you also have vegans and you're some some people have you know some other diet they can't J nuts or or lactose uh so there's so many things um the beauty of this is that you get much more knowledge you get to learn much more about how you can make a business that is almost flaw flawless and then there is the footprint in terms of the uh environment that you that
we you know that we take care of our trash that we take care of our staff in a way that we do you know the way we use resources and the way the ECG uh the ECG report which apparently is something that that's coming from us or coming for us so yeah I I would say you need to be much more it's hard to say Flawless because you do make flaws mhm and you and you will eventually you would see yourself in the industry in the
is in this industry as being you know I have a responsibility MH so responsible business administration is much more present now that at that whenever I think when you if you want to start a business today make sure that you really want it and do it proper the first time you will make a lot of mistakes but learn from them and move on no no regrets right mhm whereas before Corona it you could do everything halfway through and still be successful it was a lot easier
before Corona because people were I would say less frightened today we're so afraid of everything we're afraid of sugar we're afraid of Wars we're afraid of Finance we afraid of so people just you know it's and that's just a cultural thing you know 're afraid of other people because we have been you know locked behind the screens and now we need to come out of our our our our cozy uh living rooms at meeting people the same way so I mean when I met my wife
it was about I like that girl I will go up to her and talk to her face straighte hey you look amazing may I buy you a drink now it's not now I would stand next to her and just check out if she's on Facebook or on Instagram or tint and then stri right and then or is it left I actually don't know and then maybe she will do the same hey I'm right behind you you I already got pre pre-confirmation that we are able to
talk to each other and yeah I wish but and that's a negative part I I wish for the future that people would be less negative and just you know stay on the positive side and then talk to people they saying wait that we would talk to everyone else and if you [ __ ] up just say hey sorry I [ __ ] up let's move on yeah all right Kenny thank you so much for being here I have two more questions for you before wrapping uh this podcast up and
um the way that we like to do it and the way that we did it before on this podcast it's one question we ask everybody the same question and the other one it's a personalized question for you which one do you want me to start with let's do um let's do the um the the question every let's do the personal personalized question then we finish with the perfect if we do the personalized question you have tremendously a lot of uh insights into in this industry into
the hospitality industry but if you have let's say right now you Yan gr never worked into this industry you are from another industry and you want to come in into the hospital what would you say in 2024 2025 is the easiest way to come in that's a good question um I mean the easiest way is always to to just offer yourself um I mean first of all you need to identify where you want to work you might not be qualified but then you can start in
the lower ranks then you can if you want to do a restaurant you can start by doing the dishes and then just work super hard and you know be be be smart about the way you communicate with the with the people and you need to start to take courses and everything um if you want to do obviously if you want to be a chef you need to train yourself as a chef uh but it's it's about being really persistent let's say that as I mentioned earlier
georgu my former buy manager when I worked in Dubai he was an accountant he started by being a barback at a two two Star Wrestling restaurant hakan in London so he was just barbacking and through barbacking he learned about the cocktails he learned about the the the logistics he learned about vendors he learned about supplies he learned about produce he learned about you know recipes he learned a story about sing and then he just worked harder than everyone else but he was also spending a lot
of time studying so he studied all the stuff that he got so his skill set and his knowledge became much more than everyone else much faster but then again back to you work harder than everyone else but you also you know you show the people around you that you really want this and it's very easy for the for the manager in which you're trying to you know sell yourself to that okay this guy is's just always there or this girl is constantly on time maybe she's
even coming in two three hours before service just to prepare or even just maybe clean the bar so it looks extra good and then it's it's it's basically just continuing that pathway until you get to the point in which you uh you feel that you this you nailed it that's uh that's great and the one that I'm asking every single person is what keep motivates you to stay in this industry or work behind the bar that's a good question but I mean it to me it's
it's it's the guest experiences um I I have to say it's it's it's it's very you know it's also my ego I guess um when I'm in front of a crowd that I know that I've I've made a many you or made us made an experience that I'm proud of and then getting the standing ovation or getting all the you know all the feedback which usually is super positive I can't get in out of that M yes it's still you know working uh working hours is
sometimes a bit of a hazard but you know yeah we'll manage we just plan differently we make sure to have several teams you have a night team you have an opening team you have a operational team uh yourself with good people but I I'd say it's it's about first of all I get easily bored in in a normal job to me in this in this time that we live in there's no such thing as a normal job anymore you define yourself uh it's all about you
uh personal branding it's much more you know uh it's it's much more present than having you know a business so you can you know create create for yourself what makes you happy and what makes me happy is happy guests relations between two people in a physical setting that's what and that's actually the the that's the entire that's the business uh style of of spizza is to create relations between people in a setting in which we are the stage managers we create the environment we create the
UN the universe and the service that will connect you with the brand or with the product or with the other person and that's such an amazing way to actually to finish this conversation as well and to let the the viewers or listeners think about this uh whole industry and uh as I'm telling everyone we would like to have you swell back maybe in an year maybe in Faster I'll be more than so we can see what happened in Sp what happened with Yanik what happened with
the Yan's drinks and all of the other projects that you might create in the meantime there might be some other ones but yeah I try to my wife told me that you can you can only have three projects at a time otherwise you won't be able to you know spend enough time for to make them successful I would say maybe it's actually just one project that have three ongoing projects but yeah I'll be happy to thank you very much thank you without further Ado thank you
so much anik and thank you Manuel looking forward for the next time me too thank you for joining us for this episode of barox the podcast this episode was produced by Mi Paul and I Manuel Li to thanks to M Media Company please find us on YouTube Spotify and wherever you are getting your podcast be sure you subscribe and rate US thank you hey he hey hey