Well…last Saturday happened to be another successful night for myself! I was hired to bartend a wedding reception of over 125 guests. I brought with me another bartender and we had a tip jar out. Within 5 hours, that tip jar had seen $987.00! Needless to say, it was a great event!

In this article, I am going to discuss some of the principles and techniques that I put into use in order to make this ordinary night into an extraordinary one.

It’s a Wedding

Most importantly, this was a wedding and they can be your most lucrative events. Why? Because everyone is happy, loves to drink, and you can almost always expect to have a tip jar present. At this particular event, I had a large tip jar on the bar that I baited before hand, and never let get more than ½ full!

A Second Bartender

To handle the large crowd of 120 drinkers, I brought along a second bartender (of course I charged extra for this). But there are two reasons why a second bartender will help you: first off, he/she will take off a lot of the workload and the wait-time for drinks will be much shorter. This means you don’t have any unhappy (and thirsty) customers!

But more importantly, if you choose the right bartender, you can have a partner whose energy you can bounce off of! When you have someone else who is also outgoing and very personable, your confidence levels will increase and you will perform much better behind the bar.

Establish Rapport

By establishing rapport, we were able to loose the image of “hired help” and become more like another guest at the party. There are several techniques we used to do this, including using names, physical contact (handshakes, high-fives, hugs, etc) and coming out from behind the bar to talk with our guests.

We would prepare a bunch of shots for our guests and then make a toast for everyone and drink! This works well because it really brings the group together and creates a sense of belonging. We are controlling the environment by ordering the shots, calling the toast, and drinking first.

We also strike up interesting conversations with our guests that show we are very personable and (hopefully) intelligent. Either way, our guests are impressed and can’t leave the night without showing their gratitude one way or another!

Shameless Solicitation

If none of the above worked, we would resort to what I like to call “shameless solicitation.” We would say things to our guests such as, “If you think your drink is good now, just wait until you tip us…I’ll hook you up!” Nine times out of ten, the guest would reach into his/her wallet/purse and hand us cash!

Or, if someone just tipped, we will make a big scene! We grab his drink and add more liquor, or a few extra limes, etc and make sure the rest of the guest sees what we are doing! “This is what you get when you tip!” In this instance, we are setting the social norms for the party: if you want a drink, you gotta tip!”

Flair/Magic

And lastly, we performed a few flair and magic tricks at our event to keep our guests entertained. The flair is all easy and quick moves that you can do when you are slammed at the bar and can actually help you work faster.

The magic is designed for times later in the night when the line at the bar is slow and the guests are drunk. Both the magic and the flair are excellent crowd pleaser’s and always result in added tips into the jar!

In Conclusion:

There really are a myriad of principles and techniques that I implemented last Saturday, and this is just a brief summary. If you are interested in learning more about the methods described above plus many, many others, you can discover more on my website: www.TipAttraction.com. This is a website for bartenders who want to learn more about how to increase their tips!

I hope you enjoyed my post and that you can use some of the principles suggested during your events! If you have any great tactics, techniques, or tricks that you use to get more tips, don’t hesitate to post them in the comment section and share them with the group! Thanks!

Cheers,

James Wedmore
Bartend-4-Profit
www.BartenderforProfit.com

I had to say that it was one of the most fun and easy events to date! We got to flirt with a bunch of the women while pouring them Cosmo after Cosmo, and then we simply sat back and watched the movie.

How We Blew our Tips minutes AFTER our Event…

So we got paid easy cash for just a few hours of work (and a see a movie!) and to celebrate, we all went to the bar next to the movie theatre and decided to spend all of our tip money! We event met up with a few of the girls that had put the event together! Well…things got a little out of hand and we ended up buying round after round of Patron shots for everyone. Ironically, by the end of the night, we had spent ALL the money that these woman had paid us that night…on them!

Well, What’s the Lesson James?

As you may know, I always try to incorporate a “lesson” or tip into each of my bartending adventure stories. Today’s lesson is NOT to prevent blowing all of your hard in tips on buying everyone rounds at the bar…that’s always fun! No, actually the lesson I have for you is to try establishing a higher level of rapport with your clients and their guests. Stop thinking of yourself as just a “bartender” or a “member of the staff.” The perception you have of yourself will be congruent with what people perceive you to be.

So instead, put yourself on the same level as your guests. The way you hold yourself and the way you talk to them will affect their perception of you. Simply pouring drinks and repeating your “how may I help you’s” and your “thank you’s” is BORING and IMPERSONAL.

The entire night, we struck up interesting conversations, flirted, and joked about the movie! Why? To make them like us…so we will get paid better AND increase our chances of future gigs!

What does this have to do with the story?

So, I know what you are thinking: “What does Rapport-Building have to do with this past bartending event @ the Sex in the City private screening?” Well simple…the three girls that went out for drinks with us afterwards had INVITED US to go out, not the other way around. Because of the relationship we built with them in just two hours, they were inclined to ASK us out for drinks. Ah the perks of our occupation…I will save the details of what happened at the bar for another post

To your bartending Success,

James Wedmore
Bartend-4-Profit
www.BartenderforProfit.com

P.S. If you are looking for more information on how to build rapport with your clients, guests, and customers, check out www.BartenderforProfit.com for more info!

So..quick post here, but I just had to log this one! Its all about a little incident that went down while I was bartending a 50th Birthday Party at a client’s home last Saturday evening. I’m not gunna lie, I have had some crazy stuff happen to me while bartending, but there’s a first for everything,and this was another…

…oh the “Pains” of being a Bartender!

So I show up and this beautiful home and get right to work doing what I do best: Getting People Drunk! The client who hired me is a married woman who had just turned 50 and tonight was her big night. She was my contact over the phone when we originally booked the gig, so I had gotten to know her fairly well. Well, her drink of choice was a Cosmopolitan and maybe I was making those just a little too strong, because you are not gunna believe what happened next…

…I always recommend to my bartenders to leave your confined space of the bar from time to time to wander the party asking guests for refills and cleaning trash. This way you become more personable to the guests (more tips!) and you show the client that you are working hard (even more tips!) Well, while I was on one of my little explorations through the party looking for people I could better assist, I was approached by the host (and birthday girl) of the party.

She gives me a little smile and then drops her crumpled up cocktail napkin onto the floor. “Oh, can you get that for me?” she asks…and I obliged.

Well…as I bent over to grab the napkin (thinking nothing of it) a loud SMACK noise suddenly fills the entire living room of the party as I feel this woman’s hand slapping my ass. Followed by the sound of her hand making contact with my behind was an ear-piercing “WOOHOOOO!”

As the stinging sensation sets in, I stand back up in shock to see every guest (including her husband) looking in my direction..awkward!

Well…it really was all in good fun and I did have a blast the entire night. I usually have my clients eating out of the palm of my hand…some show their appreciation with kind words, others with a bigger tip, or even a great big hug…yet now I find that there are those that express their gratitude with a sharp slap to the ass!

Its not everyday I get a spanking from a 50 year old woman on her birthday!

by Dhale Bautista

Ok, I know its ALMOST June, but this is a NEW Blog and I just have sooo many stories that I would love to share with you guys and this one happens to be about this past New Year’s Eve!

Well, we all know that December 31st is the craziest night of the year-everyone does something on this LAST night of the year! Well, needless to say, I DOUBLE my rates for this highly-desirable evening…and people easily pay it…(plus TIPS!!) I even employeed 4 other bartenders that same night for those high rates! But this story is about my gig…

So, it is 6:00pm and I show up to a beautiful home and was greeted by the host who was more than thrilled to have me serve his friends and co-workers. He directed me to a “Grand Room” where a 30 foot bar graced the entire West wall. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen…and for the next six hours, it was all mine!

Well, as the party got under way, I found myself busy as ever! Over 100 VERY THIRSTY guests lined the entire length of the bar demanding my services for another round. Even though I was covered in sweat and working my tail off to serve guest after guest, I couldn’t help but notice my tip jar overflowing with CASH! It made all the work worth it!

I became so busy that I stopped working entirely and only helped those guests who had cash in their hands. The demand for my services increased so much, that people were waving $5 and $10 dollar bills in my face just to get my attention.

The Best Part…

The best part came when two gentlemen decided to fight over me. One man said to the other, “Hey! James was helping me first!” while the other retorted, “Whatever! James likes me more!” they went back and forth for some time in an attempt to prove who I liked more. Let’s just say it was difficult to determine who I liked better since each gentleman continued to drop twenty after twenty into my tip jar as the repeated the same drunk phrase, “No! He likes me MORE!” I made over $200.00 in less than 2 minutes…and it would have been more but their wives grabbed them and took their wallets away before they could donate anymore to my cause.

I walked that night with over $900 in tips (not including my DOUBLE base rate). Even though I was a little upset for missing out on an exciting night of New Year’s festivities of my own, realizing I had just made over $200 an hour (..isn’t that how much a lawyer charges?) so I couldn’t complaint to bad. The question I asked myself was: “I wonder how much money I would have LOST had I NOT worked tonight!”

The Lesson Here…

So what can you take away from this story? FIRST: understand the important of Scarcity and Demand…New Years Eve is the BIGGEST party-throwing day of the year! Your services will be in High-Demand…you MUST increase your rates (minimum 2x) SECOND: In this biz, your money is made with the tips, so how hard are you willing to work? Are you up to the challenge of 6 hours of straight bartending for 100 guests? If it pays off $900…I’m sure anyone is!

Until next time, here’s to your Bartending Business Success!

Cheers,

James Wedmore
Bartend-4-Profit
www.BartenderforProfit.com

What is a Pleasure Party?

You may be asking me, “Please tell James, what is a Pleasure Party?” Well, I’m no Picasso, but I will do my best to paint you a picture. If you remember the classic Tupperware Parties of the 1950’s where a group of “housewives” got together (no men allowed) to examine what containers could best preserve their leftovers, than you should not have a hard time imagining what takes place at a Pleasure Party.

Fast-forward 50 years, and these (desperate) housewives are longer swapping cooking secrets and showing-off their best tupperware set. Instead they are playing with various sex toys, lotions and lingerie…although many things have changed over the years, one rule still remains the same: no men allowed..oh except for the bartender (your’s truly).

So believe it or not, last Saturday night I found myself the only man in a sea of estrogen-charged women playing with vibrators, strap-ons, and other interesting devices, and my one job: get these women drunk! Life couldn’t be better!

I won’t go into all of the details of the evening, but I will say this: how many of you can say you and a married woman played “Light-Sabers” with two light-up vibrators? Yes! I lost to a woman in all-out duel-to-the-death battle where our weapons of choice were women’s pleasure toys! Classic…

I did feel like I was trapped in 5 hour episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County, but I didn’t mind much. Needless to say, it was a great night! But then again, I struggle to think of a night bartending that was actually a bad night! Ha ha! I love my job!

I hope all of you are working events that are both extremely fun and memorable! I know I will quickly have more to post, but until then, take care!

Cheers,

James Wedmore
The Bartend-4-Profit System
www.BartenderforProfit.com