Oklahoma City Chapter of the United States Bartender’s Guild
At around 10 o’clock at night, the day is just beginning for many bartenders. Crowds swell around the bar with patrons clutching fistfuls of dollar bills or tapping a credit card, anxiously awaiting service. Bar backs flutter like bees under dim fluorescence, trying to stay out of the way while restocking beers and washing out spent shaker tins. After last call, the staff is there for another hour or two, mopping the floor of spilled drinks, counting down the cash drawer on the bar top, all the while contemplating what few late-night options are left to satisfy their empty and grumbling stomachs.
Shaking cocktails and pouring beers probably seems like an effortless job to anyone who’s never worked in the service industry, but the labor can be both mentally and physically taxing. It’s also alienating to live like a vampire when your friends with traditional lifestyles are happily hitched to their normal 9-to-5 schedules.
Since 2015, an organization has existed in Oklahoma City to affirm purpose, community, and validation to these misfit moneymakers of the night. While the United States Bartender’s Guild was founded fifty years ago in California, it’s a fairly new presence in our locale.
Current president Alex Larrea was vaguely aware of its forming while he worked at his first serious cocktail gig. While Alex, who had recently moved to the city from Stillwater, was learning the fundamentals of craft bartending, a coalition of some of the city’s most elite bartenders, such as Jeff Cole and Chris Barrett, would meet on the patio at the since-shuttered Matthew Kenney restaurant, Tamazul.
Flash-forward to today, and Alex has gone from learning how to properly build an old-fashioned, to building and managing bar programs, to leading an entire organization of bartenders who are seeking purpose in their community.
One of the first things Alex seeks to define is why our city needs bars in the first place. “If you were determined enough, you could throw a really badass cocktail party by yourself, with no help, and put that together at your home. And I see people do that, so why would you go out?” he asks. “The reason people go out is us...it’s our hospitality community and the experiences we provide.”
The Oklahoma City chapter of the USBG is an organization where that hospitality community can come together and strengthen themselves in myriad ways. It’s almost like a prism that collects the focused light of its coterie of drink-slingers and refracts their passions out into the city.
Alex describes the OKC USBG chapter as having three solid tenants: networking, camaraderie, and education.
“We all work weird hours, we all sacrifice to live this life, so it’s cool to have a support network,” he explains. “Not just for whining about common guest issues, low tips, or stuff like that, but on a more important level. We all have problems with our personal relationships. People struggle with drug and alcohol abuse. People have problems maintaining a healthy work/life balance, so that camaraderie through the Guild is really important.”
The camaraderie, while obviously important on a local level to connect bartenders with each other, also works on a national scale. The Guild can help people get into big national contests and conventions, like Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans or Camp Runamok in Kentucky. These events act as a kind of petri dish where bartenders from all over can meet, learn, and exchange ideas in a setting that is very much like an adult summer camp.
For education, the OKC USBG chapter acts as a conduit amongst brands, distributors, and the people who are selling those products. The ocean of beer, wine, and spirits is vast, and whether a bartender is new to the seas or seasoned to the industry, there is always plenty to learn.
“A lot of bars don’t train on basics of whiskey and wine,” Alex laments. “They don’t train on the difference between ales and lagers. They’ll maybe do a few tastings, and then they’re off to the races. It’s rare that you can get a whole staff together to put together a training.”
That’s where the Guild can jump in to provide classes that are open to the public. The more bartenders know about their products, after all, the better suited they are to sell them.
In addition to bolstering its own community, the local Guild is committed to charitable acts. For this last summer’s Negroni Week, a national campaign from Italian aperitif maker Campari, Oklahoma City’s USBG held an event that raised almost $3,200 for charity, doubling what they raised in 2017. In addition, every month they hold a Bartender’s Smackdown, where local bartenders compete in friendly competitions to raise money for non-profits.
Whether they’re looking to mingle, learn, or help out their neighbors, hospitality workers in the metro can rely upon the OKC chapter of the United States Bartender’s Guild, and our entire community can benefit from that.
> For more information about USBG OKC, check out usbg.org, or email usbgokc@gmail.com
