The Bar Business Podcast: Smart Hospitality & Marketing Secrets For Bar & Pub Owners

How to Run a Profitable Bar Without Being There Full Time with H Joseph Ehrmann

• Chris Schneider, The Bar Business Coach • Season 3 • Episode 182

Share episode

You didn’t open a bar just to get stuck fixing toilets and covering last-minute call outs.

But if the business falls apart every time you’re not around, that’s not ownership, that’s just another job.

H Joseph Ehrmann spills how he built a bar in San Francisco that runs profitably while he lives states away in Boise.

We’re talking team retention for over 17 years, systems that don’t rely on hero shifts, and how to stop letting short-term fires kill long-term growth.

If your bar still needs you to survive, this episode shows you how to fix that.

 What You’ll Learn
🌟 The system tweak that let him move states without losing control
🌟 Why his managers never left and what most owners overlook
🌟 The hidden price of fresh juice that’s killing your margins
🌟 How a dive bar pivoted into a cocktail destination mid-recession
🌟 The real reason most bar teams burn out or bail
🌟 What bartenders do that quietly ruins customer retention
🌟 The data tool he’s testing to catch problems before they show 

🔴 Connect with H Joseph Ehrmann 🔴
🧑‍💼 Owner, Elixir SF | Partner, Fresh Victor | Consultant at Cocktail Ambassadors
🌐 Website: www.cocktailambassadors.com
🍸 Bar: www.elixirsf.com
📷 Instagram: @elixirsf
📘 Facebook: Elixir Saloon

🔴 Learn More About Fresh Victor 🔴
🌐 Website: www.freshvictor.com
📷 Instagram & TikTok: @freshvictorcocktails
📦 Order: Available via Sysco, US Foods, PFG or direct shipping to lower 48

🔴 Learn More: 🔴

📌 Want a personalized bar growth plan?
Book your FREE STRATEGY SESSION here
→ https://barbusinesscoach.com/strategy-session

🚨 Want a stronger team and better bar culture?
Grab the free Bar Culture Workbook now
→ https://barbusinesspodcast.com

📢 Get FREE ACCESS to a group that understands the bar business
→ https://www.facebook.com/groups/barbusinessnation

🚀 Snag my book "How to Make Top-Shelf Profits in the Bar Business!"
Learn 75+ strategies to run it more profitably
→ https://barbusinesscoach.com/book/

Our Partners:

QuixSpec Bar and Restaurant Intelligence
Business intelligence that actually works! Make confident, data-driven decisions that directly impact your bottom line.
https://www.quixspec.com

Dining Alliance
Dining Alliance helps foodservice operators of all sizes unlock real savings and earn CashBack through our industry-leading rebate program.
https://mydiningalliance.com/register/easy/?c=cjps&segment=Restaurant

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:00:00  It's all about creating those systems. And if you don't take the time to create the systems and have a vision for the long term, you're just going to always be scrambling for that immediate short term problem you have to put in. It's like investing. You have to put in a little bit every day in the long term solution, in order to reduce the amount of the short term problems you're always facing.

Chris Schneider 00:00:23  Hello and welcome to the Bar Business Podcast, where we help bar owners increase profits, attract loyal guests, and simplify operations so you can avoid burnout and finally enjoy your life outside of your bar. I'm your host, Chris Schneider, the bar business coach. Today on the podcast, we have a fantastic guest. It's just airman. He owns Elixir in San Francisco, which he's owned for about 20 years. But it's a bar that goes back, I believe, and he'll tell me if I'm wrong here, but it's the second oldest bar in San Francisco. They have like a 166 year history. So he bought that bar 22 years ago and really Reinvented it into something amazing.

Chris Schneider 00:01:01  But he has a great story that we're going to dive into here. Everything from his bar to really pushing craft cocktails around the country. He is one of the people that we can thank for bringing us the whole concept of fresh juice, fresh syrups, innovative cocktails. And recently, though, he had a little bit of a flip that we'll talk about where he went from. Make all your own strips to weight. Maybe you should buy some juices and syrups because, well, it's more efficient and we'll get into why that's the case. And his new product line, or a product line that he's working with there, I should say. And we're going to talk really about the evolution of the bar industry kind of in the first quarter of this century, because H has been involved in all of it, from, from from 2000 kind of to today and how this industry has developed. He also has an MBA. International business experience has been in multiple CPG companies over the years. And so this is going to be a kind of a crazy conversation where we're going to be able to touch on a lot and get into a lot of depth on things that matter to bar owners.

Chris Schneider 00:02:04  So H thank you so much for being here. Hopefully that introduction did do some justice, but feel free to fill in any gaps that I left there.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:02:13  Thanks. It's great to be here. Yeah, my it confuses me sometimes.

Chris Schneider 00:02:18  To start us off. I want to start by talking about your bar, because this is obviously the bar business podcast. But tell me if I'm wrong here. Elixir has been in existence since 1858. and it I think it burned down in the fire or got hurt in the earthquake. I forget which, but I know it was rebuilt around the turn of the century there. And you've had it for the last 22 years. So what has a what made you want to buy a bar in the middle of San Francisco 22 years ago, but also kind of tell us what that 22 year journey has been like? Yeah, it.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:02:50  Did burn down in 1906 along with the rest of San Francisco. So Anyone who knows their.

Chris Schneider 00:02:57  History.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:02:57  There. There was a saloon on that corner since at least 1858.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:03:02  That's when I dated it back to over the last 22 years of history. Research I've done on the play, on the place. We're also a one block from the Mission Dolores church, which is where San Francisco really started in 1776. So as that neighborhood grew, we were on we're on the end of the first commercial strip there, so it wouldn't really go back any much further than another ten years. 1848 Gold Rush. That's, you know, 40, 48, 49. The city just boomed in population, but we were in that heart of it. So a long history. It's it's one of those bars that has been a number of different things, all kinds of different ownerships and names. So it's not a the, you know, hasn't been elixir since 1858. It hasn't been the same family or anything like that. But what I did when I bought it was to, retell its story to to bring its story to light. Basically, nobody had in it that long history had ever dug into the history and told those stories.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:03:58  And so when I saw I was looking for a bar to buy in 2003, and I and I wanted a neighborhood bar, that was the model that I wanted to go after. And I found this bar that was dilapidated and forgotten and needed a lot of TLC. And I had a background in construction as well. In my early days of bartending in my 20s, I was also working as a contractor, and so I built houses. I've done every job from roofing to electrical and painting, and so I kind of general contracted the whole restoration of the bar itself. And in that, I met somebody who knew a lot of the history, and he brought that to light. And I just over the years, it kept adding to it. So it's got an incredible history. And I added to telling the story and the history while changing the projection of it and creating our own history with it, because I was really bright place and right time. I happened to, to, you know, the innovations that I, I may have been responsible for in cocktails and such came out of the need to improve the business and do something different.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:05:05  I opened as a neighborhood bar, competing with my other neighborhood bars and in a way, playing down to them. They were lower cost. really great bars and, you know, great dive bars. But, the dive bar didn't concept, didn't turn out to be very profitable. And so I leaned into my culinary background and started making, using those techniques to make cocktails, doing, research on cocktails. And it was all at a time when others were just starting to do the same. So, I mean, Gary Regan's Joy of mixology came out the same year I opened the bar. I ordered that book a couple years later, and then Gary became a friend, and Dale DeGraff became a friend, and Tony Abu Ghanem and Steve Olson and these guys became my mentors as the industry were, was coming up. And, it was a combination of. Understanding the cocktails and understanding spirits while leaning into my MBA background and trying to improve my business. So all of that kind of happening at the same time.

Chris Schneider 00:06:07  So I think for a lot of people, us and let's be honest, when we're talking early 2000, like I was in high school, so I wasn't in the drinking, scene at that point because I was too young. But a lot of folks, I think, would be very scared to say, okay, I, I have this neighborhood bar concept, and now I'm going to go more into this cocktail world that is just just coming around. And so what gave you the, the just the security to say this pivot makes sense? Because I feel like a lot of folks get really scared of pivoting a concept.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:06:42  You know, in many ways where I'm kind of back at it after 22 years because I bought in 2003 at the bottom of the Dot bomb economy when,, you know, I had a dotcom job that brought me to Silicon Valley because I had I had an MBA. I had been living in Europe. I came back because my father died suddenly, and I ended up in software during the dotcom days and eventually in an international position, which got me recruited to San Jose and moved me to California.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:07:10  But that job only lasted nine months before everyone lost their jobs there and it was the tail end. Like when I got hired, people were already losing jobs and then it didn't last that long. I lost my job and I was like, I've been trying to get to California all my life. I'm not going anywhere. So, but, you know, multi-lingual marketing international executives were were the ones that were, you know, lining up at Starbucks and in bars because we weren't coders and only coders were kept their jobs. And so nobody wanted to hire me and help pay my MBA debt. So, after a couple of years of flying around and trying to start a soup company and a couple of other things, I finally said, you know what? Everybody's in bars. I'm going to open a bar. It's about time I never. I always like a lot of people, you know, in my generation. Especially in Gen X, you know, we we grew up bartending as something you were doing while you were doing something else.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:08:02  It was never a focus on on bartending as a career. and I just but I always knew that I wanted to because I had worked in 18 different bars and restaurants between 1986 and 2003. all over the country, you know, like everyone, wherever I went, wherever I was in school. Boston College Thunderbird. You know, I was a ski bum in Vail for four years. Everywhere I went, I just. You bartend to make money and and figure other stuff out. And I always thought ownership was something I would do in retirement. And then suddenly I'm like, okay, well, there's not a lot of other business and bars are making money, so it's time to open a bar. So I leaned in and and formed a company, raised capital, hunted around, found a, found a property that worked for my vision and what I wanted in a neighborhood bar. But then a couple years into it, the whole neighborhood bar thing wasn't profitable. And I still had this NBA debt. And I was like, all right, I need to do something different.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:08:58  So that's when I decided to take a chance and think of that trajectory. Trajectory. It was 2003 to 2005 coming out of that horrible economy. Like I always said, there were in 2003, there were two week waiting lists for outbound one way U-Haul rentals. People were fleeing San Francisco, and that's been happening for the last couple of years again. And we're at that point again where the economy is horrible in San Francisco and where it's recovered and recovering in a lot of other places. We're still trying to climb out of that because of Covid. And so it's as challenging now as it was then, and I had to pivot if I was going to make money or get out. And so I took the big chance on making the cocktails and providing a higher level experience of at a higher cost at a price point in my neighborhood, which didn't fit in that neighborhood at the time. And so it was a gamble, but it literally paid off in six months. It was a big gamble, and I made the right move and everything turned around, and I just caught the right wind, the right time, and got caught up in a movement that opened a lot of other doors and opportunities for me over the years.

Chris Schneider 00:10:05  And now one thing that I think if we told people this, which I'm about to tell people this, but everyone's going to think this is absolutely, probably the craziest thing they've ever heard, which is that you have this bar in San Francisco, you live in Boise. And so that's a little bit right. Like if your cooler goes down, you're not going to the bar. I mean, you might, but it's going to take you hours and hours and hours of travel to get from where you are to your bar. But I also know that you have a management team that's been around for a really long time with you. That is partially what allows you to be able to live and manage a bar remotely. And I think for a lot of people that are probably listening to this podcast, one of the things they've always wanted to know or thought were impossible was how do I manage a successful bar from a thousand miles away, or however far it is? I don't know how far it is from Boise to San Francisco, but I know it's far.

Chris Schneider 00:10:54  So how did you build a management team that allowed you to be able to do that?

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:11:01  I think it was, but I built a culture that my manager, my now managers, bought into early on and then owned it and continued to lead it. So two of my managers have been with me for 17 years, and the other one's now going at seven, going on eight, I think my lead bartender, and I think that, you know, as a human resources fundamental thing people talk about no matter what businesses is that it's more expensive to replace people than to keep them. So whatever you can do to to keep them and keep them involved and, and, you know, passionate about it is important. And that means creating a culture not just within your bar for your customers, but for your team and supporting them. And in many ways, I almost didn't learn that lesson early enough. It was one of the other things that turned the business around 2005 was that I realized that I had spent the first two years, too focused on the product and and my systems, and not focused enough on my people.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:12:08  And when I realized that I had bad people who were bringing in bad customers, I fired two thirds of them at the same time that I threw out all of my artificial syrups and started shopping at the farmers market. So it was a dramatic change in many ways. But and in those kind of realizations, when you're down, are the are kind of the key to turning around. And, you know, you hope that the changes you make are going to catch. And that's that's what it did. And, those guys are amazing. And they're not just part of the reason that I can live in Boise. They are the reason I can live in Boise. They're they, they love the bar in the community as much as I ever did. If not more, they've been running it. Face to face longer than I have. The people know them more than they know me, so I'm kind of more of a marketing face that they'll see on our Instagram or, and, you know, or read about in the press because they've also they're humble people and they've they've also never really wanted the spotlight as much as I try to throw them in it.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:13:05  Because we were getting a ton of press over the years, I would always want them to get that press. And, you know, like Shea, my general manager, was, you know, I it was pulling teeth to get him featured in Whiskey Advocate magazine once and he beautiful photo of him making a drink and then you know Nick he he you know, he got him into a hearing thing that sent him to Singapore and, you know, like opening those kind of doors and those kind of opportunities for them has always been something I've wanted for them. And, they really are salt of the earth people who just wanted to serve their customers and create great experiences. And that's really what it comes down to. When you've got a team that'll do that, and they inspire the customers to keep coming back for it then. And you can you take care of them as much as you can? They stick around.

Chris Schneider 00:13:54  Absolutely. And but I mean, let's be honest here, I did 17 years to keep two managers for 17 years is like almost unheard of.

Chris Schneider 00:14:02  Right. So if they're if there was one, for lack of a better way to put a magic trick to keeping a manager around that long because I know everybody's going, okay, I, I think I have loyal managers, but there's no way they're going to be here for ten years. How do you. Is there any one thing that comes to mind?

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:14:19  Communication. You've got to understand their position, what they need in their lives outside of the bar and continually try to adapt to that and provide it. you know, generally when anybody leaves, it's it leaves your company. It's because they, they either need growth. I mean, we've lost I can't you know, the downside is we've lost countless people because they hit a ceiling. You know, we we trained great bartenders. We we they love it. They learn all kinds of stuff. They learn about business management as much as how to maintain mint without letting it wilt. You know, every little detail. But then they get to a point where they can't go up because the managers aren't leaving, so they move on to management positions and other places.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:15:05  And and I have always loved that, as have they. Like, you know, we've got we've got an elixir alumni that are that own their own bars now that have become brand ambassadors, have traveled the world, they've, you know, gotten into lots of other situations because of their time with us and that having, you know, spread your family out into the industry like that is another, important thing to do, I think.

Chris Schneider 00:15:29  Absolutely. And that's, you know, I mean, I, I've said this a number of times on the podcast, but I think if you have a small bar, the best thing you can be is the trainer for everybody else's. Right? Because there is, to your point, there's always a ceiling there. but when you can bring folks in, train them, right. Give them the skills and then watch them go somewhere else and and use what you taught them to do. At least for me, that's always been a very rewarding experience.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:15:52  Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Schneider 00:15:53  Now I want to pivot a little bit, from a lecture to Fresh Victor, which is a company I know that you are involved with. you had a friend named Ken who started it. But it's interesting to me because you we've talked about kind of the start of your career in elixir. You you were the one out there pushing hay, fresh juices, squeezing yourself. Make your own syrups. And you've kind of pivoted over time from that with fresh Victor to, hey, sometimes you don't actually want to make your own juices, and it's it's can be a smarter idea to buy them. So why the pivot?

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:16:28  Well, you know, I think the pivot is actually more like it goes back to as, cocktails were taking off and I had other opportunities presented me. I was I was offered an opportunity to help launch a spirit company called, Square One Organic Spirits. And at the time, the founder of that, company was a fellow alumnus from Thunderbird. And she had heard about me and I heard about her.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:16:55  We got connected. And I was also doing some groundbreaking stuff from the bar business then, and that we were in 2005, we became one of the first 50 certified green businesses in San Francisco, let alone a bar. at the end, as I always said, I think we were the first bar in the country to get any kind of official government green certification, which we still have to this day. and so working with an organic spirits company and, you know, I was shopping in the farmers market. I was making everything natural. Everything was about quality ingredients in an all natural approach and, a green mentality. And so that worked out really well with square one. And that took me on the road around the country at a time when I was getting a lot of press. So then I was landing in markets like Boston and Miami and Washington, D.C. and New York, where the cocktail scene was up and coming. And it was a time when I was, I got to go talk to them about vodka, which nobody wanted to buy.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:17:50  At the time, I was trying to sell them on organic vodka and teaching about organic spirits, but I was also teaching bartenders how to squeeze limes and make simple syrup. And that was something that, you know, and put down the artificial ingredients. And that was the day. Like, that was the thing we needed to do was teach people how to make fresh, use fresh ingredients, make them, process them, use culinary techniques. because there wasn't anything good on the market. And, and all the way back then, I knew Ken. Ken McKenzie's the founder of fresh Victor. He and I were friends. He had a tequila company back then, and through all those years he had a number of different tequila companies, and he learned the same kind of messages about freshness and what was important to people in order to move tequila, what was important to people, and making great drinks, because spirits were predominantly moved in cocktails, not necessarily shots. You know, a good tequila in particular. We were teaching people how to enjoy tequila, what good tequila was and how to make great cocktails with it.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:18:46  And he came up with this idea in and out promoting his tequilas that, you know, we needed a a fresh mixer that could satisfy that need, but also be convenient for not just consumers but for professionals. And honestly, the technology wasn't there. I was I was teaching people how to squeeze lines and make simple syrup because you couldn't buy it in a bottle. And the evolution of technology in those years led to the ability to produce really good, high quality juice and not have it be destroyed in the process, both from a flavor perspective and a nutritional perspective. So we have kind of nailed that. And we've now put it in a bottle. And and so when Ken had the idea to launch this company and asked me to join. I was all in. I said, this just makes total sense. It's. It's stuff that I can lean into and messages that I can deliver, and ways that I can connect with the industry to help them not only make better drinks, but have better pals.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:19:49  And ultimately, that's our value proposition with fresh victory for bars and bartenders is that you can execute really excellent drinks and have better financial results as a as a result of it by using Fresh Victor. And it's a it's a hard message to get across because bar owners and operators don't tend to want to hear you when you start talking about pals for some silly reason.

Chris Schneider 00:20:15  You know, I mean, I having done this podcast as long as I have and talking about pals as much as I do, I really feel for you in that because it's it's not the conversation people want to have, but it's often the conversation they need to have. now along those lines. So a lot of times you would think, hey, if I fresh squeezed juice myself, that should be cheaper than buying it. Right. I think that's just kind of the knee jerk reaction most people would have in their heads. But why does buying mixers actually lead to better efficiency from a PNL perspective than doing them yourself?

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:20:46  Because you have a lot of variability throughout the year? First of all, a box of limes or 200 lines in a box, and you buy that box in January at the low point in the growing season, and you could be paying as much as 75, 95, over $100 a case for that box.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:21:03  And not only are you paying top dollar, but it's yielding less juice and that juice is not good quality. Later in the year, you may get down to $30 a box, but, you know, you have complete inconsistency of price and quality throughout the year, and output. And that's just in limes. And, you know, so we have a Mexican lime and agave and a lemon sour, the two core sours of any program, lemon lime. But we have seven other flavors also that, you don't want to bother, Other. It's juicy, like our cactus pear and pomegranate. I don't know if you've ever juiced cactus pears or prickly pears. Not a fun endeavor. And pomegranates. You know pomegranate arrows as well. It makes a mess. It's. It does. It's hard to get all the yield. And so whatever those, you know, the different product is, there's an argument for it that we have as to why it creates efficiency and and more consistency, not just for your PNL but for your customer experience.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:21:59  Like jalapeno and lime in particular. Jalapeno. Every jalapeno is different and you need a different heat level, different flavor. And every bartender is different. So if you're slicing and muddling or infusing your jalapenos or make spicy cocktails or, you know, spicy margaritas are second only to margaritas and sales right now. So if that spicy drinker gets two different drinks, they may not order the third. Or they may not come back. And so different things like that, we provide a much better, more consistent customer service or customer experience with our products and without sacrificing quality. And people will tend to look at that and say, okay, well, it's $0.28 an ounce, which is our national average price or cost. When you buy through a distributor and you know, they just look at that as a Cogs issue. But it's not just a Cogs issue, it's a labor issue. It takes you time to set up a juicing station, juice, sterilize bottles, clean the bottles, fill the bottles, label the bottles, close them, seal them, clean up the juicing station, put it all away.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:23:03  That is time that really adds up. And if it's fine, maybe you're high volume and you have a system that's all set up, or you even have a zoom X, you know, if you've invested and all that, well, fine. But you know, your zoom X is going to break your your people need to be trained when it comes to using fresh vector. All you got to do is open a bottle and make the drink. And that's going to be consistent no matter who's coming through your doors and employees and, and you know, and your customer is going to always get that great, high quality, consistent drink. So it's really a complex set of problems that our products solve. And, and it by being fresh and refrigerated. It it just does. It goes back to that freshness argument. It doesn't it doesn't matter. It's just so much better than shelf stable basically.

Chris Schneider 00:23:51  Oh, 100%. And I think, you know, the the piece you, you touched on there with the labor involved because I remember, you know, 2008, 2010, 2012 when, when everybody was getting in that craft cocktail movement and suddenly you had these bartenders that were spending just as much time making syrups and juices as they were actually bartending.

Chris Schneider 00:24:14  And that's I mean, I think that was probably the peak of of the craziness before everybody calmed down a little bit. But it got to a point where really, from a labor perspective, it was almost impossible to maintain the quality that people wanted in cocktails. Details.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:24:27  Yeah. And the consistency. Consistency is big.

Chris Schneider 00:24:30  100% I mean. And your point about especially with something spicy and you're muddling how opinions and stuff, consistency there is going to make all the difference. Right. Because if it's just a little bit too spicy one time, people are not gonna want to order that drink again. Yeah. And because and.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:24:46  After they, you know, when you're bringing in your bartenders to do all that work, maybe when they're, when they're, you know, that they might be passionate about it. They love, you know, and they're learning. They're learning processes. They're doing stuff. All of that stuff is good. But and in a lot of states where, you know, not like California, you may get by with very low labor rate, like not in, you know, in California we don't have that.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:25:06  We're paying top dollar for people to, to juice stuff as much as do anything else. So, you know, we're always looking at how to decrease those labor expenses because labor expense is what's going to kill you.

Chris Schneider 00:25:18  Yeah. I mean, I don't I don't even know what your minimum wage is anymore. But like where I am in Indiana, it's still 213 for tipped employees. But you try to pay a bartender 213 for 2 or 3 hours to juice stuff. They aren't going to work for you for very long.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:25:31  Yeah, no, we're at 19, 19, oh six or something over $19 an hour.

Chris Schneider 00:25:36  That is that is tough. That definitely changes a lot of the math. and speaking of math, because you have this MBA, you you work on the juices, which are a way for people to help their panels and stuff. But I know you also have implemented some really different interesting pieces of data analysis. And one of the things that you had mentioned when we were talking before was NPS scores, which I am a huge fan of.

Chris Schneider 00:25:59  But you've potentially found a way you're piloting a way to, do these totally differently. So a how are you doing them? And B, what do you see as like the value of having an NPS score that you're getting on most of your guests?

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:26:14  Well, to be honest, I haven't I'm playing with it. I haven't implemented it yet. But it kind of gets back to this idea of me being in Idaho and the idea of working on your business, not in your business, but the fact that I am physically removed from the bar keeps me from, you know it. It keeps me from spending my time fixing the broken frame or the toilet or, you know, going down a rabbit hole and adding more decor because I always say I'm still decorating after 22 years. I'm always moving things. Every time I come to town, I put up a new frame. Take something down, you know? And when I was there, I would tinker. You know it. It's it's a passion project.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:26:51  And so I'm always trying to make it look better, be better and all that. But being here, I can't do that. So I have a leaned into the idea of, trying to figure out more of the technological tools to be used to help improve the business. And so I have implemented a better inventory system, tied that to a POS, you know, work with a POS system that integrates with my inventory system, which integrates with QuickBooks, working with a CFO to drill in on our numbers and improve processes and figure out where we're where we're bleeding and you know. So listening to your podcast, I get a lot of good ideas on on things I'm not doing where I'm falling short even after 22 years, things I should have done 20 years ago that I'm not still not doing today, all of those things. And so when I discovered NPS, it was the first system business system that I had studied since doing my MBA in the late 90s, when I was studying manufacturing and looking at lean, lean manufacturing and concepts and other kind of management principles that were developed at these, you know, at the big, consulting firms.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:27:58  And that's where NPS came, I think it came out of Bain, if I'm not mistaken. and for those that know, it's that idea, it's that question that you hear all the time now, no matter what, where you spend money is, on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to refer us to your friends? Is what it comes down to, and what do you do with that? And basically, if you score an 8 to 10, then then that person is a promoter who's going to go out and promote your business. And anything under they're a detractor and they're going to detract from your business. So you can figure out who your promoters are, and you can rope them in and get them to promote your business. You build up this base of rabid fans and it becomes viral and your business grows. And so, I went down the rabbit hole, read the books, listen to a bunch of podcasts. and I created a the survey. I put it on my website.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:28:48  People still aren't really using it because I haven't really promoted it. And then another friend of mine, from grad school, started a company called Vero Terra, and she's got, they've got some video equipment for analyzing people. Walk out the door, just give a thumbs up or thumbs down what your opinion of your experience was. And so we're just launching that now, and I'm going to be working with her and her team to see how I can better implement these ideas to understand what my customer reaction is, because I even like I bought the little things he put around the bar that you can tap your phone to and, you know, add a Google review. I'd put I'd printed out little business cards to put in check presenters so people can go fill out the survey, or they can or they can go to Yelp or Google and leave us a review. And I'm that's all part of this process. I'm tinkering. I'm, I'm seeing these new things that are out there. And, you know, sometimes it's 100 to $200 investment to just see if something works.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:29:43  Get the get the staff to use it, get them to give the cards to people and tap and get more Google reviews. And that's supposed to drive more traffic. You look at all these things, there's so much of it, and I wouldn't have time to go down all these rabbit holes if I were at the bar, because I'd be, you know, running to an antique shop to go find another cool old whiskey bottle that I want to put on the shelf, and wasting my time doing that instead of improving my business.

Chris Schneider 00:30:05  Oh, so so maybe part of the secret to to having time to really work on your business is just to live in a different state. but yeah, I think that's it's so cool, though, how you're, you're looking at all these different ways to gather your data and then you're just trying them, right? Because I think for a lot of folks, they get stuck in the analysis paralysis of, oh, I want to do something, but I have to pick the absolute right thing when I think what you're pointing to in reality is that you're never really going to know.

Chris Schneider 00:30:33  You just kind of have to try something and see if it sticks or not.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:30:36  And it's just like, you know, evaluating POS systems, right? Your old POS system goes down. It's time to to upgrade. You got to go out and see what what else is out there, how they're all working. What's the functionality, how they compare? It's a major project. Like you have to be organized. You have to be focused. You have to look at all the competitors, look at the prices. How long is this going to last, you know. And if you do that, and that's a major thing that you kind of have to do in a bar and a POS, you know, that's that's just the reality of that. It's a very key piece of technology for a hospitality business. But then all these other things maybe are not as key their bells and whistles. That can add little points of value here and there, but you still need to research them and but eventually, you know, you just got to pull a trigger and try something.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:31:20  Because if you just keep researching, you don't get anywhere. You got to be like, okay, here's the top three that I found. I'm going to throw a dart. Let's try this one. See how they do. How are the people? How's their technology? What's the value. You know. What kind of data am I getting at it? Because it's, you know, garbage in, garbage out.

Chris Schneider 00:31:36  Absolutely. And that's that's something that that I really hope that everyone that listens here has gathered over time. Because garbage in, garbage out is the reality of all data, right? If your data's no good, you can make the best decisions based on it. But they're still bad decisions.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:31:50  Yeah. And many of those.

Chris Schneider 00:31:53  I think if you're I mean, I think that sometimes people in business have this magical idea that if you're successful and you've been doing it for a long time, that you haven't failed. I think the trick is that you've failed a lot. You've just done it more frequently, and you know how to bounce back from it because you never invest too much in each failure.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:32:09  Yeah. It was early on. I forget who it was I was reading. Well, you know, my first semester, my MBA was a classic. You know, every successful person has fallen down at least seven times. I can't remember who I said that, but it always stuck in my head.

Chris Schneider 00:32:21  Speaking of that, I got two questions here for you. Before we start to wrap things up, the first one being you've been at this for 22 years. You've put in place a lot of systems, you've tried a lot of things. You've in a lot of ways helped to change the way that bars operate in the United States. What is something that you would tell someone who has a bar that's been there a year or 2 or 3 that they should absolutely focus on that they probably haven't even thought about yet?

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:32:46  I think, you know, part of it comes just an old man syndrome, too, like looking back on a lot of things in my life. When you when you're, you're new to something and you're into it, you're you have a very short vision.

H. Joseph Ehrmann 32:59  You're looking at what's. And you often have to I mean, a lot of it is like this. This needs to be solved by tomorrow. This problem is I'm bleeding money here. I've got to fix this. Now. Those thing have to be tended to. But if you like, the idea of just having patience and a long vision is something I really wish somebody had slapped me around 20 years ago and said, you're going to have this bar for 20 years. And I always I did have a long vision. I imagined having this my whole life and giving it to my daughter. And, you know, that was the plan was creative. It's like a Michael Gerber and, you know, says, you know, build good systems and hire good people to run them. And that was the idea, build a little engine that could put out some money, and I can hold on to it for a long time, and that'll allow me to do other things. But in order to do that again, get getting back to Michael Gerber and his philosophies and, the machine, the myth is his book, The Myth Revisited.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:33:54  And, you know, read that it's all about creating those systems. And if you don't take the time to create the systems and have a vision for the long term, you're just going to always be scrambling for that immediate short term problem you have to put in. It's like investing. You have to put in a little bit every day in the long term solution in order to reduce the amount of the short term problems you're always facing. So fix those. Fix that toilet. Fire that person who's stealing from you. Do those short term things, but at the same time invest in in a technology that's going to give you efficiencies. And even if it's going to take a six month implementation, keep chipping away at it, keep chipping away at the things that will provide long term stability and reduce headaches down the road.

Chris Schneider 00:34:44  Absolutely. I think that's a great message. And now last thing I'm going to ask you before I let you go, when we're looking at the future of the industry, because you've been so involved in where the industry has gone in the last 25 years, what do you see kind of happening in the next 25 years? Any big shakeups or changes that you're thinking might happen?

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:35:02  You know, the immediate one that everyone's talking about is the is the shift in drinking.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:35:08  you know, this is a drinking business and people have stopped drinking. So there's the naysayers who say, you know, say people have stopped drinking. And the more reality, I think, is that drinking is changing and you can't ignore it. You have to embrace it. I wrote my first non alc menu in 2012 when my wife got pregnant and she complained that she had nothing to drink in my bar. So I was like, I've got all this nice fresh produce, I can make really good flavorful drinks. And at the time I was also, I'm a I'm a consultant to a number of different things, and I was a consultant on the chef's council for a company that develops new products for CPG companies. And I was hired for a lot of, all the liquid projects. Basically, somebody wants to create a new grab and go drink that you can pick up at 7-Eleven. I help formulate some of those flavors and those concepts. And so rolling that kind of mentality from the CPG world into my non alc menu was, was key in creating great drinks that that are enjoyable and attractive for people that are not drinking alcohol, whatever the reason.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:36:10  And now ten years later. Plus it's, you know, it's all the rage and it's it's a reality of the business. It's not just something you can take as a, as a. Well, maybe I'll do that. You have to do that. You have to have a variety of drinks on your menu. And, you know, elixir is a is a whiskey bar or braided is one of the best whiskey bars in America. And the whiskey industry is in a downturn. There's a glut of all kinds of whiskey, not just bourbon. It's, you know, there's a glut of Scotch, there's a glut of whiskey around the world. There's distilleries closing, unfortunately. And it's a cycle within the in the whiskey industry to the effect that, the industry is very well aware of it. Whereas, you know, you look at the agave industry and it's got its own challenges with 8 to 10 year growing cycles on agave plants and, you know, bastardization of ingredients and taking down the giants because they're, you know, what's happening now.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:37:01  Talk about them not producing 100% of each industry is going to see these shifts and stuff that have to do with the with the product itself. But you have to understand where the drinking public is going and adapt to it. And as I say to my team, we're not a drink vending machine. We are a gathering place. And you'll hear that people talk all the time about hospitality. It's all about the hospitality. It's about the customer experience. It's making sure that everyone who walks through your door has a great time, whatever that time is, you know, whatever that is by their terms and trying to discern that and feed it. And that's true. That's what it comes down to. So if we, you know, we have a beautiful room. Elixir is a is a gorgeous Victorian room, but it's lighting and mahogany and everything. so that's a draw. But you have to have a menu that offers something for everybody because every group is diverse. And if they're all going to stay there and be happy, you have to have something that for some everyone to, you know, do it.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:38:02  I think that's a big thing that, you know, talking about like a long term vision. I don't know where this is going to go and I don't know that anybody does. So we have to play the short and mid-term game and figure out, you know, what is. I'm I'm on my way out as Gen X. Like what is you know, Gen Z a lot of talk about that. They're they're just getting started. Gen Zs got several more years of people to turn 21 in the next few years. My own daughter is the tail end of that into Gen Alpha. And so she's 13, you know, like there's going to be continual change. The economy is challenging. The politics. Everything's challenging right now. I mean, it always is, but particularly right now. So how's that going to affect things in the next 2 to 5 years. So that's kind of where my concerns are now, how people are drinking. How do I get them to use more fresh Victor? How do I get them to walk in my door more? And what are they looking for? And so I think that's the thing.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:39:00  You had it again, it's like researching the POS. It's you have to research, you have to keep an ear to the ground and, and see what's happening, because this is a volatile market right now, and in order to survive it, you've got to be agile and creative and consistent.

Chris Schneider 00:39:15  I think that's a great note to kind of wrap up on, because hopefully people feel good about the concept that, yeah, things are changing. Yes, we all know it, but quite sure where it's going yet like and just you have to roll with it because I think that's really true. with the changes we're seeing in Gen Z, because they're not like they're definitely not like Gen X, right. And so when you think about Gen X phasing out and Gen Z phasing in, they're two totally different markets. Compare not not even close. but with that, because our time is pretty much wrapped up I am sure some people are listening and they're like, hey, H seems like a really cool guy and I want to know more about this fresh factor stuff.

Chris Schneider 00:39:52  And I kind of want to check out his bar because it sounds like a really cool spot. Because it is. So where can people learn more about you? Where can people get info on your bar and where can they get more info on Fresh Viktor?

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:40:04  About me cocktail ambassadors.com is my consulting site's got more stuff about me. and that, you know, basically I always said my consulting work is me getting paid for being me, so pick my brain. elixir is elixir SF. Com elixir SF on Instagram and elixir Saloon on on Facebook. We've yet to go into TikTok. again. Gen Gen X problem. I'll get there. And then fresh. Victor is fresh Victor fresh Victor cocktails on Instagram and TikTok and, hopefully soon I'll get a YouTube channel going with that as well. I'm going to be doing a bunch of bartender advocacy work. coming up, new programs are in development. but you can order through fresh Victor. Com and have it shipped right to your door 50 through 48. Lower the lower 48.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:40:49  we distribute through cold chain distributors like Sysco and US foods and PFG and stuff like that. So if you want to order it for your bar, you can ask that or just reach out to us through our wholesale website, the portion of our wholesale business on the website as well. You can order right from there directly to your bar. we ship at Fedex two days in insulated boxes and all that.

Chris Schneider 00:41:08  So fantastic. So we're gonna put all that in the show notes. And if you have not looked at elixir or Fresh Victor like go down, click the links, look at them because there's some really cool stuff going on with both of those and just some really good examples of things you might want to think about for your bar. But with that, this has been a fantastic conversation and I thank you so much for being here. I think it's really cool how we could tie, customer service and the PNL together and really go through what a crazy story you've had over the last 25 years. So again, thanks to you just so much for being here.

H. Joseph Ehrmann  00:41:44  No problem. Thank you. It's an honor. That about.

Chris Schneider 00:41:47  Wraps it up for.

Chris Schneider 00:41:47  Today. If you enjoyed today's insights, make sure you like, subscribe and leave a review. If you are ready to take your bar to the next level, schedule a strategy session with me by clicking the link in the show notes below. Until next time, have a great day and we will talk again later.

Head Shot

Chris Schneider

Host