.png)
We Recover Loudly - Serving Essential Hospitality Conversations
Welcome to We Recover Loudly the podcast.
In season one, the mission was to spark conversations about addiction, recovery, and drinking cultures within hospitality. What we found was that these topics are closely linked to much bigger issues that we face in the industry, which truly deserve our attention and a space to be discussed. The podcast has evolved to delve into important matters surrounding addiction and recovery, as well as significant themes like burnout, sexual harassment, gender imbalance, mental health, chronic illness, stress, and eating disorders—the list goes on! This podcast isn’t just for individuals in recovery from drugs and alcohol working in hospitality; it’s for anyone who has dealt with challenges, tough working conditions, or health issues related to their experiences in this industry, who want to hear inspiring stories of strength and recovery.
Each episode features a mix of personal stories from myself and other incredible individuals who are currently in the industry or connected to the industry via a mental health space. We engage in conversations with hospitality leaders who are paving the way in providing training and resources to cultivate healthy workplace environments for their teams. This podcast aims to be a welcoming platform for everyone to share the challenges they've faced while working in hospitality and how they’ve overcome them... loudly!
So, let's turn it up and get loud, because when we recover loudly we stop others dying quietly.
We Recover Loudly - Serving Essential Hospitality Conversations
S2 Episode 023 - Ian Blessing - From Sommelier Excellence to Alcohol-Free Innovation
In this new episode Shell speaks to the fabulous Ian Blessing, creator of a groundbreaking line of non-alcoholic cocktail bitters, 'All The Bitters'. A former sommelier from the infamous French Laundry, he co-founded the company with his wife Carly, crafting the bitters from organic, wild-foraged ingredients, which offer flavour as well as functional health benefits.
The discussion explores the demanding expectations placed on staff in restaurants like The French Laundry, and the mental and physical toll this environment can exact. Ian opens up about the camaraderie he felt amongst colleagues as they pushed to reach the near-impossible standards daily, and how he found himself turning to alcohol as a coping mechanism. They talk about the growing recognition of mental health and addiction issues in the industry, and the critical role having non-alcoholic alternatives for customers play in creating a supportive work environment.
They also discuss how important a strong No/Low drinks program is for businesses, and the essentialness of featuring non-alcoholic drinks prominently to boost sales. Ian has a fantastic resource on his website to look at if you are hoping to increase your drink menu that can be read following this link –
https://allthebitter.com/a/blog/crafting-a-non-alcoholic-cocktail-program
Tune in for a rich, engaging conversation that spans hospitality, sobriety, and innovation and make sure to check out All The Bitters in your cocktail creations!!!
@allthebitter
@ianjamesblessing
For more information on We Recover Loudly and to reach out for speaking engagements or support email hello@werecoverloudly.com
@werecoverloudly
www.werecoverloudly.com
This episode is brought to you by our proud sponsors:
Low No Drinker Magazine @lownodrinkermagazine
www.lownodrinkermagazine.com
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of we Recover Loudly. Today, I am joined by the wonderful Ian Blessing. Now, ian is a hospitality veteran. He has as many years experience as I do, actually, in the restaurant industry, most recently a sommelier at the French Laundry which if you don't know who the French Laundry are, then get off the podcast and Google them and he was also the wine director at the Bouchon Bistro in Napa.
Speaker 1:Following the decision, though, to live an alcohol-free life with his wife and his business partner, carly, who he met in wine country, ian co-founded All the Bitter, which is a line of non-alcoholic cocktail bitters made by hand with organic, wild-foraged and functional ingredients, which is a line of non-alcoholic cocktail bitters made by hand with organic, wild foraged and functional ingredients, which we're going to talk lots about in this episode.
Speaker 1:The business has been recognized as one of the spirit business's top 50 innovative it's a horrible word to say innovative spirit launches of 2022 and um. So far, the products have won over 25 awards from major spirit competitions, which is incredible. You know it's a mainstream product, uh, and can be found in renowned bars across the us, including death and co in los angeles. We have the lovely axel jump on here who used to work at, uh, death Co Alex not that long ago, um and Trick Dog in San Francisco, and I'm pretty sure we've got it in a few bars over here in the UK, or if we don't, we certainly need to. I know I've seen in your bitters in Club Soda.
Speaker 2:Yeah by the way, thank you for having me on hi and hi welcome um Club Soda are amazing, wonderful places and, yes, we've been included in their cocktail menu since they launched about two years ago and we're on the shelves there and it's the easiest way I think to think about it is cocktail bitters are like the spice rack for your bar cart. They are essentially liquid seasoning used in small amounts, like a pinch of salt or pepper, to add complexity to drinks, to heighten flavors, to balance flavors and to balance elements that are in a drink specifically sweet and sour, which most cocktails have some kind of sweet or sour element. The bitterness in cocktail bitters helps to balance those things a bit. But there's also a functional basis to help with any number of conditions or to help with digestion or your kidneys or livers, liver, singular, as a daily tonic and eventually we're getting into the history real quick, but eventually bitters transitioned into being a cocktail ingredient, from a medicinal ingredient to a cocktail ingredient and we've kind of. So we make a bitter that's alcohol free. I'm jumping all over the place here.
Speaker 2:Most bitters are alcohol based, so alcohol is a great solvent. For the same reason that vanilla extract is made with alcohol, vanilla extract is 35% alcohol, because alcohol is a great solvent. It's really good at pulling out flavors from herbs and from other ingredients, and it's really good at preserving things and creating shelf stability. Most bitters are made with alcohol and creating shelf stability. Most bitters are made with alcohol. That means that folks who don't drink may not be able to use cocktail bitters. Everybody has a different tolerance.
Speaker 2:Bitters are used in very small amounts in drinks. You're adding them a couple dashes at a time. That's not enough to get anybody drunk. So there's plenty of people who are in recovery, who are sober, who are totally fine with adding a couple of dashes of alcoholic bitters to, let's say, a glass of sparkling water. It's not going to get you drunk, but fair enough.
Speaker 2:There's plenty of people that don't like the idea of adding essentially 45% alcohol to their otherwise non-alcoholic drinks, and we wanted to create an option that mimicked is the wrong word, but that could be used in place of traditional alcoholic bitters that maintained a similar flavor profile to classic bitters like Angostura and orange bitters and Peychaud's bitters.
Speaker 2:We wanted to make something that could be used in place of those that anybody could use, regardless of whether they consumed alcohol or not, and we really wanted to bridge those two ideas together bitters used as a flavorful cocktail ingredient and bitters used as a functional wellness tool, and so we've incorporated a pretty broad spectrum of functional herbs, things like dandelion root, burdock root, milk, thistle seed, holy basil, ginger all these ingredients that are really good for you into our bitters that are intended to flavor drinks but also give you kind of a functional benefit at the same time amazing the quantities of those additional ingredients, being that they're in bitters, which is in that concentrated form, are they more intense in their kind of flavor as well as their functionality yeah, so there's I.
Speaker 2:I think the best way to kind of explain it is if you were making. There's different categories of bitters. So there are digestive bitters, which is kind of what we're talking about in the 17 and 1800s. Those still exist today. People are still making bitters like this that are intended primarily for digestion. They're not intended to flavor drinks, they're intended as an herbal supplement, a dietary supplement. For those you would include as much of the raw ingredient as you could. You're going to pack your liquid to herb ratio is going to be as densely packed as possible because you're formulating that for medicinal function.
Speaker 2:Cocktail bitters, on the other hand, aren't necessarily packed as densely with raw ingredients because you're not aiming for a functional benefit. You're simply aiming for flavor and you can get enough bitterness and you can get enough of the flavor of those other botanicals, those spices, those herbs. You can pull that flavor out pretty easily in alcohol. You don't need to pack it all the way full of herbs to create a flavorful cocktail bitter using alcohol. Because we don't use alcohol. We use vegetable glycerin, which does work in extracting flavor and it does work as a preservative. It is shelf-stable but it doesn't work as well as alcohol does. So we've had to do a couple of things that kind of tie into the functional benefit of our bitters. We have to pack them as full of raw ingredients as we can just to get a similar level of flavor compared to alcoholic bitters. Our containers are as packed as we can get them with herbs and roots and spices. We can't fit any more ingredients in there. They're as densely packed as they can be because we want to get as much flavor as possible and glycerin isn't as good at extracting flavor as alcohol is. That also kind of ties into the fact and we don't call our bitters are not a dietary supplement. They're not a herbal supplement. We don't. We're not prescribing them for you know any kind of issue.
Speaker 2:But the ingredients that we've chosen are genuinely beneficial for digestive health, for liver, for your gut health, for stress even. There's the connection between your gut and your brain and an upset stomach means that you're going to be stressed out. If you're stressed out, it means you're like when your stomach is in knots. It could be because you're stressed out. It could be a mental issue. There's a connection between those two things.
Speaker 2:We also include a number of ingredients that are genuinely beneficial for stress adaptogens like ashwagandha, holy basil, schisandra berry, things that are good at helping our bodies to not stress, in terms of like I've got a million things going on, I'm so stressed out. What people self-medicate with a glass of wine to help you with your stress. It doesn't have the same function, right Like if you're we say we're so stressed out. Taking adaptogens like ashwagandha isn't going to make you not stressed out in the sense that we typically think about stress if that makes sense more like stress on your body, your body's stresses being tired, your energy levels, your gut, the number of different external stresses that we put on our body on a daily basis. Adaptogens help our bodies mitigate those stresses. So we've included all these ingredients that are really wonderful and really beneficial. We don't market it as an herbal supplement or a dietary supplement, but we do want to get as much functional benefit out of this as we can, which is why we've packed our bitters absolutely to capacity with these functional herbs.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I think it's really interesting that you're saying those things about bitters and the benefits of them and especially with the gut, health and the liver. You know all things that alcohol is not traditionally um associated with when we talk about good kind of gut, health and liver and um. So it's kind of nice that you've almost reclaimed the bitter for good, um, because it is a big part of a lot of our traditional cocktails, um. You know, when cocktails first began, when cocktails were first um created, you know it was a very simple formula back then of alcohol, bitters, ice, um. You know that's why they called an old-fashioned. You know an old, old fashioned is effectively one of the oldest fashioned style of cocktails. And with producing something new now, have you got a particular serve that you are like? This is the all the better.
Speaker 2:Classic cocktail serve now honestly just bitters and soda. It just simply mixing a few dashes of bitters into sparkling water, um is is super refreshing, it's interesting, it's more fun to drink than just a flavored sparkling water, you know, than a canned seltzer made with artificial flavors and, um, you know, we drink plenty of flavored seltzer but it gets old after a while. Bitters and soda is really the same idea, like, if you like flavored seltzer, it's the same thing, it's just better. It's it tastes better, it's more interesting, it's more complex. It has benefits to it. You've got gut health benefits that you don't get drinking regular.
Speaker 2:You know flavored seltzer, um, and you feel like you're making yourself a cocktail but you're not really doing anything right. You're like dashing a few dashes of bitters into a glass and pouring sparkling water on it, um, so you, you feel like you're making something you know it's fun to make but it requires zero effort. Um, that really bitters and soda is kind of our signature serve, I would say. But there are a number of fun other you know fairly simple cocktails. Lemon, lime and bitters is a favorite. It's an Australian classic that in Australia is typically made with lemon lime soda and lemonade and cocktail bitters. We prefer to make it with fresh ingredients. I like fresh lemon juice, fresh lime juice, simple syrup, bitters and soda water and it really just kind of tastes like an adult lemon-lime soda. It tastes more like a sophisticated version of sprite, you know more or less, but it's more interesting and more fun like a handcrafted sprite exactly, yeah, the the adult sprite a more sophisticated lemon lime
Speaker 1:soda essentially careful, because coca-cola will be listening and they will steal that idea now they will you watch you wait.
Speaker 1:Um, I love I think, personally bitters. Exactly like you say, when you use bitters, you do feel like tom cruise. It is an ingredient that can really not only elevate your drinks, but it's something that does. It's something that is a little bit different and a little bit special, um, and, like you said, adding it to soda water. So you know, there's no sugar involved and it's. It's a really easy way to get a little bit creative without necessarily spending a lot of money on non-alcoholic ingredients and things like that as well, which, again, is sometimes something people have concerns over. Um, I can't let you sit here and not talk about working with the great Thomas Keller, so take me all the way back. When were you working with him? Was it 15 years ago or not quite that long ago?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no. I started at the French Laundry in 2016. And my wife and partner, Carly, was there in 2014 or 2015. She started two years before I did. She trained me, so I got hired as a food runner. I had worked in restaurants for 10 years prior to that and had started as a food runner, started as a host and worked my way up through restaurants, host to food runner, to server to manager. I worked in the kitchen for a while. I had worked nearly you know every position in restaurants, up to running restaurants and started at the French Laundry as a food runner Again, kind of you know, went back to the bottom of the totem pole, which is what you do when you when you start at a three Michelin star restaurant like the French Laundry, and it was incredibly humbling.
Speaker 2:It was an amazing experience to go back to the beginning and to be the new guy and to know less than everybody else that was working around me and to really have to work incredibly hard just to deliver plates of food. You're not just taking a dish from the kitchen and dropping it off on a table and saying, here you go, enjoy. You need to know every single thing about that plate every single thing about the lamb, where the lamb was raised, who raised the lamb, what the guy's story was that raised the lamb, where the vegetables on the plate came from, who grew them, where they were grown, what the preparations were, what the sauce was called, what the history of the sauce was. And the menu changed every single day the menu changed. There's nine courses on the. The menu changed every single day. The menu changed. There's nine courses on the menu and it changes every day. And so you've got half an hour before service to learn the menu and it's going to be an entirely new menu. You don't get to like learn one menu and then go into work every day and you already know it all. You really have to learn all of the components, all of the producers, all of the. You know, hundreds of possible ingredients that the restaurant uses, and be able to go in, hear the menu presentation and then look at every single plate, all nine plates, and identify what's on there, how it was made, what the process was, and be able to explain that to a guest and to answer any question that a guest could possibly have about that dish.
Speaker 2:So for a year, you know, I went home and at the time I was studying wine. I wanted to be a Psalm Um, but I spent a year doing nothing but studying food. I put all of my my not all of, but I put most of my wine studies on hold and started studying food, started learning about, you know, classic French cuisine and cooking, and it was absolutely amazing. It was a life-changing experience. It was a ton of fun.
Speaker 2:It was incredible to work at that level with people who were so dedicated to what they were doing and were so good at what they did, and to be part of that, that like choreographed dance, and to to to feel, you know, one day in the first couple of weeks like you know, I don't know if I can do this You'd go home every day and say I'm not coming back tomorrow, Like that was insane, I'm never going to get this, I'm never going to get good at this, but you, it, it. It creates two different people. I think you can either kind of give up really early and really quickly and realize maybe this isn't for me, this is too challenging, or it's a challenge and you know, you, you, you put your head down and you get good at it, because if you don't get good at it really quickly, you're not going to survive, and it totally changed who I was and who I am as a person and as a hospitality professional, and was absolutely just a blast and a ton of fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I've been lucky enough not to work in three Michelin star, but I've been lucky enough to work in some very good restaurants in london, and it's it's definitely that everything you've just described.
Speaker 1:I really miss, um, that culture, though, that they have crafted within that restaurant, the fact that you have the motivation to go home and to want to study and to be the best. You know, how do you think that they, how do you think that all happens? Because and the reason I'm asking is that over here and I think I believe the same over with you guys we have got a recruitment crisis. We are really struggling to encourage people to come to the industry, and yet, you know 2016, that wasn't that long ago. You know, and I know for a fact that there were lots of restaurants and I'm pretty sure, sure, I'm sure that it's still like that there where you've got people who desperately want to start as food runners and be a part of it. What is the magic that they have that some other places aren't quite managing? What do you think it might be?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's hard to say, but there's. There's something about. It takes a very specific type of person to want to work at a restaurant like that. Most and I don't I'm not saying this disparagingly at all, but most people working in your more standard restaurant would not cut it and don't don't want to be working at a restaurant like that. You know we were working 12, 14, 16 hours a day, going home, studying and waking up the next day and doing it all again while under extreme pressure and getting I don't want to say yelled at, but being talked to sternly, possibly being yelled at by a chef, by your co-workers, by the other food runners you're working with, by the captains. It's an incredibly demanding environment. Most people are not going to want to work in a place like that. You could go work at any other more casual restaurant and make just as much money and work less hours and be way less stressed out.
Speaker 2:I think it takes a certain kind of person that really just wants to be a part of that. And what is it they want to be a part of? It's an incredibly cohesive unit. It's an incredibly beautiful service to be a part of, the act of. And I haven't even gotten to the wine part yet, just my first year as a food runner.
Speaker 2:The act of dropping those dishes off at a table and the act of clearing those dishes with your coworkers and your team, it's a sport, that's the best way to describe it. It's folks that might have some kind of competitiveness. To them it feels like a team sport, it feels like choreographed dance, and when you do it right, it's really fun, it's really gratifying, it's really satisfying and it's really fun to do it right. And if you can't get there, if you can't excel at it and do it right, then it's it's not fun and you're not going to make it Um, but if you want to be a part of that experience, then you work really hard at it. Um, you know, otherwise it doesn't work. If if one of the members of the team you know is falling down, it doesn't. It's not as pretty as it should be, and so everybody works really hard to get there, to get to that level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's like an adrenaline junkie and you're right, it's that, it's the, that adrenaline high of sportsmen and that connection between each other in the, the knitted, the close knittedness of the group that you know you kind of have to all be facing in the same direction to succeed, um, which is really really powerful yeah, there were times and this is like a really specific example, but this kind of I think it epitomizes for me the joy of working there would be.
Speaker 2:Let's say, there's a table in the middle of the main dining room and there's six people sitting at that table. Normally you would take three people at least to clear the dishes from that table and maybe one person sees the table is ready to clear, so they go and they get two more people and everybody walks in at the same time and I know where I'm going, person two knows where they're going, person three knows where they're going and you all go at the same time and you pick up those dishes and you walk back to the kitchen. Really simple, right, like that, doesn't? That's like you're clearing dishes from a table, so what? But it's such a beautiful, fluid experience from a guest perspective. You're just sitting at that table and all of a sudden all your dishes are gone and you didn't even notice that anybody was there, because everybody kind of swoops in, you know, really quietly, everybody's coming at each dish from the right direction. So there's no, I'm not sticking my hand in somebody's face Like you're all very careful to like bring your hand in the right way. You're not sticking your your hand in. Say, two guests are holding hands, two guests are having a conversation. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm looking and talking to my wife as a as a as a staff member. I'm never going to reach my hand in between those people because that would be breaking their moment. So I'm going to go around, I'm going to not interrupt their conversation. So that's how service goes normally.
Speaker 2:There are times where, say, there's six people at that table, right, maybe six staff members all at the same time would go to collect those dishes. And it would happen. It not even planned like six. Like one person is walking down the stairs, one person has just dropped a dish off at another table, one person is walking past the hallway and then the two other people that planned to go in and clear that table all make eye contact at the same time and, without saying anything, everybody looks at that table and understands that that table of six people has six dishes that are ready to be cleared and everybody goes in without planning or any communication. All six staff members walk in and everybody picks up one plate at the same time and walks away, and so in one split second, the people at that table have all six dishes cleared all at once. And it wasn't planned. It was six different staff members, each non-verbally communicating from different places in the restaurant and getting there all at the same time. And that moment is electric.
Speaker 2:And again it sounds ridiculous Like who cares, you're just clearing dishes off of a table. But from the guest perspective that's a pretty wild experience to have six people clear your dish right away. But they think it's planned right, they just think that's what you're doing. But those six people, those six staff members, just made that moment happen out of nowhere, because they all happen to be in the right place at the right time and feeling getting to be part of that feeling is what pushed me to excel at the basics of the job, at learning the purveyors and the culinary techniques and the ingredients and the dishes.
Speaker 2:Those are all things that you had to learn. You had to know you had to go home and study or else you couldn't be a part of the team. But once you were part of the team dishes those are all things that you had to learn. You had to know you had to go home and study or else you couldn't be a part of the team, but once you were part of the team, it's like you're on. You're on the Harlem Globetrotters, like you're playing basketball, but you're playing for show and people get to watch and cheer you on and it's, it's, it's uh, you know, it's an incredible thing to be a part of.
Speaker 1:It is. You just just took me right back, and when that magic happens, there's just nothing like it from any part and that ninja style just going in, getting out, it's really, really something that is very special. And I can't remember who told me now that there was a study done with people in a kitchen environment and it was connected to people with neurodiversity, which we know is very much, very, quite prevalent in our industry. It's something that I've discussed on this podcast a lot being diagnosed as ADHD myself recently, recently and, um, that part of the reason that we have such an ability to communicate is because we, that we we can communicate on a different frequency, and it's something about like the frequency of people with neurodiversity will sync you up, and that's one of the reasons why we have that kind of incredible ability to not only read a room and read that situation, because we've also got the gift of hypervigilance, because we're always waiting for the next kind of attack. But again, when that all gets combined, it's quite magical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that hypervigilance, that sense of awareness, and that was kind of one of the things that was talked about more than anything was the importance of awareness and the importance of everybody on the team.
Speaker 2:You know, 15, 20 employees on the floor at the same time are all hyper aware of everything that's going on, of their station, the station next to them, what the staff member next to them is doing, station next to them, what the staff member next to them is doing, what everybody on that team knows, where every single table let's say 15, 20 tables everybody on the team knows where every single one of those tables is in their meal. The chef should be able to say where is table three and any of the seven food runners should be able to say they have three bites left on their salad course. Because you need to know everything that's going on in the restaurant at any given time. And it's a really incredible mindset to get into because it opens up a world of possibility, of possibility. It opens up a world of what you can do when you're constantly surveying what's going on around you and you're constantly aware and mindful of of what's happening around you yeah, and I think I love that.
Speaker 1:I really love how you've described your experience of um, of working in that environment, because I think sometimes our industry, we get labelled as an unskilled workplace, somewhere to go if you didn't do well at school, if you are not very good, and actually it's incredibly. You know there's an incredible intelligence behind all of the things that you've just described and I love that. I think that's one of my favorite bits of the industry.
Speaker 2:In fact, you know, your average person that tends to label hospitality professionals as unskilled, or you know, asks a bartender what they really want to do. You know with their life, or you know, so what do you actually do? Or you know you can't make very much money, right? And then people are shocked that like we actually make a decent amount of money and then are mad because we like didn't go to school for it, right, put that same person in in that restaurant job, in that bartending job, in that service job, and they would probably flake. And and let's, let's just consider your more standard casual restaurant Restaurant service is hard, it's really hard.
Speaker 2:There's a lot to do. You have to deal with a lot of personality types. You've got to deal with a lot of different guest types and situations and problems and it's a lot of orchestration and remembering things and keeping yourself busy and always doing the next right thing for like six hours, eight hours, nonstop. You can't fumble. If you fumble, everything goes down. You need to know what's going on with six of your tables all at the same time and every step you take needs to be in the right direction and if you take a misstep, everything kind of crumbles um, and especially at the level of a restaurant like the french laundry. Uh, it's, it's not easy.
Speaker 1:It's, it's really really difficult yeah, and I suppose then the other side of that, you know, which is something we talk about a lot on this podcast, obviously, is the stress, it is the exhaustion, it is the constant pressure. You know it is the weight of an entire restaurant and that this goes for three michelin star as well as on michelin star but as well as other restaurants. You know our environment is is constantly putting on pressure because of the nature of the job and therefore, as we, like I say we discussed in this podcast, there are often cases of addiction, drugs, alcohol, all been done out in plain sight, because it is the only way that is kind of known to deal with that kind of pressure. And I mean, you've worked in some environments where that that pressure is as high as it gets. It's probably the equivalent of being a brain surgeon in terms of pressure Over your career. Was there ever something that you were aware of within the industry, with people that you worked with?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you know, from the moment I started working in restaurants I was already. You know, the question of alcoholism and substance use disorders in restaurants is kind of a chicken and the egg situation. You know, do do restaurants create substance use disorders? No, um, they absolutely do not, but they are a incubating environment for them. I would say they are incredibly stressful environments. They are a team sport. There is a level of camaraderie, there's a level of, you know, we're kind of going into battle tonight together. You know the 20 of us are going to going into a fight together and whether you win or lose, you know it can be cause for for drinking. Um, you know, we, we drink to celebrate, we drink to commiserate, and no matter if it's a bad shift or a good shift, there's a drink waiting for you at the end of it. Um, the, the timing of it kind of helps to push that aspect along. You get off your shift at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night, which is the time that it makes sense to go to a bar and drink.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of aspects of working in a restaurant that do kind of fuel alcohol abuse. On top of the fact that alcohol is present, there's literally an area of the restaurant full of alcohol. Anybody can have access to alcohol, you know, whether a bartender or server, like there's alcohol everywhere. So it's interesting, I don't know. It's hard. I think that a lot of people in restaurants are probably aware that they have a drinking problem, but it's kind of accepted, it's normalized. Overdrinking in restaurants is normalized work and you don't work again until five o'clock the next night so you can over drink, you can drink until you know the wee hours of the morning and sleep your hangover away and wake up and do it all again the next day. Like there's a lot of aspects of it that kind of lend themselves to being able to essentially hide a drinking problem. You couldn't get away with that in an office environment, but you can get away with it in a restaurant. So it's heartening to see that, especially over the last couple of years, the restaurant industry has maybe not officially, but like there's a lot of little factions all over the place that are starting to talk about mental health and starting to talk about substance abuse and starting to offer resources and starting to just starting to have that conversation and and I hope I see it happening, I'm a product of it and I see a lot of, a lot of people doing the same thing that it, at some point it clicks and you go oh yeah, okay, there's a problem here.
Speaker 2:Like I was functional, you know, I was able to get to work, I did my job well, I excelled in my job, even. You know, I rose through the ranks, um, and did that all while being a full fledged alcoholic. But at some point you go, I can't do this anymore. For me, it was having kids. For me, it was the realization that I had a five month old and I couldn't keep drinking the way that I was drinking.
Speaker 2:Before, it was fine working in restaurants, like, again, I was able to do my job.
Speaker 2:I wasn't drunk at work, like I was, I was fine, I was a fully functional human being that made a fool of myself outside of work hours, but when I had a five month old kid, yeah, that that's not.
Speaker 2:That doesn't work anymore, that's not cool. And so that was kind of the wake up moment for us, for both me and my wife Carly, and we both got sober at the same time. We both quit drinking about four years ago, and now it's really, really wonderful to be able to use our skill set in flavor and beverage and hospitality, to offer a non-alcoholic alternative, to offer sophisticated adult beverages to people that either don't drink, and to continue to be able to work with groups that are making, that are trying to create a presence within restaurants to share that. Hey, you know, if you have an issue, that's okay. Like there's resources out here for you, there's people that you can talk to. If you want to make a change, you can make a change. And to be present now and available for people especially for me personally, that work in hospitality and to be a voice and to be somebody that that people can talk to if they need to, is is really wonderful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really beautiful. It's like you kind of you're writing that next chapter and that next chapter is completely different from what it could have been had you not made that decision. And we see that day after day, not just in our industry, you know, across just in life. And there is something really powerful about being able to almost take control of that narrative by making such a big decision, especially when you're still within the industry, as you are, you know, and as many of our previous guests have been, and there's something, but there's something kind of very healing about it.
Speaker 1:I was speaking with a friend earlier today who asked me how I look after myself when I do what I'm doing in terms of the podcast as well as the other stuff and supporting people. And I said to her to be honest, every time I do an episode, every time I speak to somebody, every time I do something, I feel a part of my heart and my soul is healed Because it not it I. You know that it's Patrick. I can never say surname. He's gonna hate me one day when he comes on here Patrick, mahalvani, mahalvani, he's got he's part of. I've Got your Back. That you'll probably be able to say his surname, play um.
Speaker 1:You know he thought he did a piece where he said you know, did restaurants break people? No, did you. Did people come to restaurant, the industry broken or did the industry break them? And um, for me I I guess I don't really know still, um, I think it was probably both, but by doing this work it's the most beautiful kind of part of that healing journey and that kind of paying it forward exactly in the way that you've just said. So I'm really grateful that you were able to do that, because I think that the work that you're doing and the products and everything it's really exciting. So well done, ian.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's nice to be able to kind of stay within the same general realm as we were before and to create and offer a product that is that is genuinely helpful and and helps people drink differently and live differently yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And speaking of which, one of the things I'm really passionate passionate about is the no and low drink options that we have in restaurants and bars and educating team members, because I think the missing link here is that we've got quite a lot of places now bringing in these products, putting them on the back bar or putting them on the menu, back at the back of the menu, where the kids food is not explaining to anybody what they are. Or you know well, I've got a non-alcoholic beer on. What's the problem? It then doesn't sell. Well, I told you it wasn't going to sell and it almost becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy, and then what happens is that we don't get the continued expansion of these incredible products to become most mainstream.
Speaker 1:And for me, a big part of that is empowering businesses to bring these products on board, because I also think it will have a ripple effect in terms of changing our culture of excess. And all of that. And the reason I've gone into this little speech is because I saw you speaking not that long ago as part of a panel regarding tips for restaurants and for bars to upgrade their low and no offering, and I was hoping you could maybe share a little wisdom with us, because I really enjoyed what you and Derek and everyone was saying. I think it was really really interesting. So give us some tips please.
Speaker 2:Well, funny timing, I am actually writing a blog right now that I'm sure will be published by the time the show goes live. It ended up being way more in depth than I planned Initially it's almost 5000 words. It's a very comprehensive guide on creating, expanding, promoting, executing a no or low alcohol program in your bar or restaurant, um covering everything from a lot of the things that that panel covered that you mentioned. Um, everything from menu formatting, how to how to how to put things on your menu, and that's a big one and I'll share that here because it's important, the the the biggest. No, and what you just mentioned is putting those drinks on the back of the menu in the same section as the iced tea, lemonade and soda, and we don't see it a lot, but we see it enough. I saw a menu at a pretty nice cocktail bar recently that had their thoughtful, well-crafted, $14 non-alcoholic cocktails in a section called et cetera on the back of the menu that had lemonade, soda and tea.
Speaker 2:As an adult, as a 38-year-old man, I'm not looking at that section. I don't need to look at that section. If I want a Coke, I'll order a Coke right, Like I don't need to go.
Speaker 1:You don't go like, thank God, they've got Coke everybody. I've seen it on the menu.
Speaker 2:I'm not looking at the soft drink section to see what kind of soft drinks they have. I'm going to order a lemonade. I'm not going to order a lemonade. I don't like lemonade. I'm going to order a Coke or a tea, or a water or coffee.
Speaker 1:I'm just gonna say it's a waste of menu space you've. You've just made that point, like yeah, why are we writing?
Speaker 2:these things down. Putting it in that section does nobody any good, and if somebody actually wanted to order that drink, they would then feel like a child, because they're ordering from the same section that has the kids drinks, right. So even if you find it, you feel you feel othered is a good way to describe it I feel like a child ordering that drink, so I'm probably not going to order it. That's the one big thing to not do. There's a few ways to format your menu that are great.
Speaker 2:I think there's a couple options that make sense. One is including your non-alcoholic cocktails right alongside every other alcoholic cocktail and simply putting a note that says non-alcoholic. Just like we have our veggie burgers in the section of burgers, we have our gluten-free alternatives in whatever section has the rest of the like. You don't just have like a gluten-free menu. That's on the back, that's next to the kid stuff. It's like hey, bummer for you, you don't eat gluten. Here's a little box for you, it's on the menu with everything else and it just says gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan yeah, I love that idea any other indicator to let somebody know what a dish is.
Speaker 2:you can do the the same thing with non-alcoholic cocktails. The other option is to give it its own section, but it's really important to put it on the same side of the menu as the alcoholic cocktails. Don't put it on the other side and ideally put it before the alcoholic cocktails, which does a couple of things. Most people that are drinking non-alcoholic alternatives are not sober. 80 something percent of people that are buying these products still drink alcohol. Those people aren't looking for necessarily some of them might be, but a lot of those people aren't necessarily looking for a non-alcoholic cocktail section. They're going to be looking at the cocktails, guaranteed. They're looking at the cocktails because it's the first thing on the menu. It's the first thing they look at. Putting a non-alcoholic cocktail section with that or in front of that means they're at least going to look over it. They're going to see it. They might skip past it to the regular cocktails. That's fine, but at least now they've seen it and they know that that option exists. So after they have one drink, two drinks maybe they have to drive home. They still want another beverage because their party is still drinking or they're having a great conversation and they want something in their hand and they'll remember. Oh, I remember seeing there were some non-alcoholic cocktails there.
Speaker 2:If you put them on the back of the menu with the kid stuff, that person has no idea that even exists. I might go looking for those things because I don't drink. I might go look, search for your menu, looking for a non-alcoholic option, but somebody who still drinks might not necessarily be hunting for that. So putting that section prominently at the beginning of your beverage list, of your cocktail list, ensures that everybody sees it. And to your point earlier, if you don't advertise it, it's not going to sell. If you don't put it on your social media, don't do an email about it. Don't put it on your the sandwich board in front of your restaurant. Advertise the fact that you are serving a non alcoholic cocktail or non-alcoholic beer, because people don't know that this is an option. This is still relatively new. This is all a few years old. A lot of people don't have any idea that non-alcoholic whiskey even exists. So if you don't tell them that it's on your menu, they're not going to order it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I really think the way that currently the view is of the type of person that drinks a non-alcoholic drink you've just perfectly kind of highlighted is this person who is an addict, who is recovering, who was down and out and has managed to pull themselves from the bottom of a pit just to come to the restaurant. And you know, and, and, and, the, and the assumption of that stereotype, where the actual reality is that that is not the people that I mean there's some of them, but that is not the bulk of the people that are coming into the venue and ordering those things, those drinks. They're people who, you know people, people who want to go and order a drink to get drunk also probably don't need a menu. They'll order a Long Island iced tea because they think it's the strongest thing on the menu. You know what I mean. Like again, wasted menu space here.
Speaker 1:People, there is this weirdly annoying assumption that people who don't drink don't also want to be treated in the same way that people who do drink, and it is a huge miss.
Speaker 1:You know, like cam media came out and said that there is a projected 800 million pounds lost to tap water sales because people were just like, well, there's no other option, I'll just have a tap water because I'm not gonna waste money. Um, you know on just like you know just another elderflower, and you know lemonade. And I was reading just earlier it's something like I think it was 3.6, 3.7 million people from the same survey that cam media did, um, said that they wouldn't go to a venue because of poor, no, or low options, you know, and again, that's a huge amount of people. Imagine if those 3.7 million people came in, had two or three drinks that you know eight, nine pounds a head, like that's a mental amount of money and it's really not hard to do it well and to do it right. I just think that we're just slightly missing a trick when it comes to the education side of it, which is what I can hear from you as well, is what you're also really passionate about and that's a really important idea.
Speaker 2:In the question of why should we put non-alcoholic drinks on our menu? It's not necessarily for the sale of that one non-alcoholic drink. Like, I'm not going to beat around the bush, they are not going to be your top sellers. Your non-alcoholic cocktail is not going to outsell your alcoholic cocktails. It's not. It's going to be in the lower portion probably of your beverage sales, of your cocktail sales at least, but it's going to sell. You're going to make money on those drinks.
Speaker 2:The bigger reason to offer those drinks is inclusion. It's to get in a party that wouldn't have otherwise gone there if you didn't have those drinks on the menu. If I'm looking at two different restaurants and one of them has a non-alcoholic cocktail and the other one doesn't, I'm going to bring my party of four people to the place that offers me a drink. I'm not going to go to the place that says, yeah, you can have water. First of all, I'm not going to go there. Second of all, if I was there, I'm not going to give you any money because all I'm drinking is water, but I'm going to bring my entire party Out of principle.
Speaker 1:You're like I'm not ordering a Coke out of principle.
Speaker 2:No, what's the point? I'm going to bring my entire party to the restaurant that has a good non-alcoholic option and we are all going to spend more money because my group that's drinking is going to have another round. Because I'm comfortable, because I'm taken care of. A group of three people isn't going to have three or four rounds if one person's not drinking, because that's really awkward that one person is left out, that one person's drinking water while the other people enjoy their margaritas or whatever. If you offer a non-alcoholic option, that group is now more comfortable. That group will stay longer. They'll have another round because their friend gets to drink with them. They're just not drinking alcohol, they get to enjoy something sophisticated and delicious.
Speaker 1:So it's not just about and do you know what Half of that group might then also half of that group might also actually then move over to non-alcoholic, because there's also, you know, like we were just saying, it's the assumption that just because you drink now you're not going to ever go for the non-out, but actually you're again. You're just closing off sales, yeah, and, and it just feels so obvious. But sadly, like you said, you know, we're still kind of a little bit in its infancy, but it is getting better. Definitely, my other I mean my other pet peeve is when they put one non-alcoholic item yeah, on it's. You know there's a non-alcoholic beer, and they look at you as if to say, but there's a non-alcoholic beer, what is your problem?
Speaker 1:And I find that very frustrating, especially because you don't know what people used to drink, and there are people in recovery who actually, like for me, for example, I would really struggle drinking a non-alcoholic gin and tonic at the moment. I used to drink a lot of gin, um, I'm never say never, but for me currently I'd probably find that quite difficult um versus beer. I never used to drink beer, so now, bloody love a non-alcoholic beer. So I'm actually I'm well catered for. But even that, you know, like just assuming because you don't drink. You're therefore going to it's like poor bloody vegetarians who used to always get mushroom risotto or a stuffed aubergine, or eggplant, as you call them, you know and you're like well, what do you mean? You don't like an aubergine? What's what? You're vegetarian, sure do you eat mushrooms. It feels a little bit like that sometimes, which, again, it's just such a shame, it's such a miss I think it's.
Speaker 2:It's easy put on, put one beer, put one non-alcoholic sparkling wine and one cocktail, and now you've got a drink for every occasion, for every type of person and for every instance of why somebody might want to drink. Let's say you want sparkling wine to cheers with. It's a celebration. That's a great option. Say you want something non-fussy, that's your beer. Say you want a cocktail before your meal because you love having a sophisticated cocktail and that doesn't require a ton of space or a ton of work. That's one bottle of wine, one bottle of beer in your fridge and one bottle of tequila on your back bar. That's three spots in your bar. That has hundreds of spots, hundreds of placements. You're taking three of them, right? So sure, maybe space is tight. Kick out your lowest selling beer and replace it with a non-alcoholic option. Kick out your lowest selling wine and replace it with a sparkling wine. The sales are probably going to be similar to whatever the lowest selling option was. That you axed, right, but it's going to bring in a clientele that wouldn't have otherwise come in without that option.
Speaker 2:Interestingly, like we've seen and I'm sure I'm guessing it's the same in the UK I don't know, but almost every restaurant down to fast food places now have a vegetarian option. Everybody has a meat alternative. Everybody has a gluten-free alternative. The percentage of people that don't drink is way higher than the percentage of vegetarians or people who are gluten-free, like every restaurant has said. Okay, yes, we need these options on the menu because we have to cater to inclusive diets and inclusive references. But there's a way higher percentage of people that don't drink, or drink less, or just aren't drinking today than there are vegetarians and people who don't eat gluten. So there's even more potential upside than there is for those food alternatives, and I think I mean yeah, it's like, I think it's.
Speaker 1:I want to say it's something ridiculous. Like between two, two, three percent of people the population, are vegan and yet look how we cater. And I think it's five percent. It's definitely less than ten, but around five, six percent of people are gluten intolerant. And again, oh my god, if you do not cater, and quite right too, but if you do not cater, like that's it, wherein you know, we've just said one in three visits to the pub is not alcoholic, which was recently um reported again by cam media, and like that's literally one in three and a half people, one, you know in like in the?
Speaker 2:u US, 30% of people don't drink at all and the next 30% of people have less than one drink a week. 60% of the US has less than one drink a week, doesn't drink on most days. The next 10 or 20% has like one drink a day and then 10% of the population has seven plus drinks a day. There's so many people that don't drink. There's such a huge, huge potential demographic uh, of non-drinkers. Um, especially when you, yeah, compare it to gluten-free or vegan or even like vegetarian, you might get up to like 10 or something of the population. I mean, if're being generous, like there's, there's way more non-drinkers than there are vegans and and gluten-free eaters.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It's it's the change is happening. It's, it's obviously. We've seen. We've seen a ton of it in the last couple of years. It's not stagnant by any means. There's a ton going on in the product space and in the restaurant space, but I think we're still kind of waiting for that aha moment, for it to really click widespread, for all of the detractors that you know say well, why can't you just drink water?
Speaker 2:It's like, because I don't want water. I drink water throughout the day. I'm going to a restaurant to have a nice meal, I want a nice beverage with it. I can drink water when I get home and a lot of people still just don't quite get that. But we will get there at some point in the next couple of years, I hope, where everybody will click for everybody.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, our time is coming everybody, don't you worry, our time is coming and it's really great. You know, I think, the things that you're doing and the way that they, you know the products that you're creating, which are elevating these ingredients, you know, and making experiences for people you know, kind of make do. There's something about familiarity with ingredients. When you come to non-alcoholic um cocktail making it, there's a comfort in it and I think having like these products, like your own, like like all the bitter that bartenders can play with, and it feels normal, suddenly you know again, that's a really great way of kind of opening up this non-alcoholic world. You know it's because it's not actually different. The only thing missing is the ethanol and, let's be honest, it doesn't taste like anything. But you know, so you're all right. Last question what is next for all the bitter?
Speaker 2:well. Next is really just continuing to scale our production up and to really solidify what we're doing. We make everything in-house. We're not using co-packers or co-manufacturers. We make everything ourselves, and the demand over the last couple of years has been nuts and it's just myself and my wife and we have a couple of very, very part-time employees starting this year that help us out. So it's been a challenge to keep up with the demand here and around the world. So the next step over the next few months is we're moving into a larger space, we're adding more tanks, we're going to start hiring employees and we're really going to kind of dial in our operations and our production and honestly get ready for that, that boom, that aha moment that's coming in the next couple of years. At some point soon, every bar and restaurant is going to need going to have a non-alcoholic cocktail menu and we really want to be ready for that when that time comes, because they're all going to need bitters 100.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm so excited. Um, thank you so much for your time today. Um in, I hope you have the most wonderful time over here in the uk. I'm sure that noah and the club soda gang will definitely look after you and Scotland, of course, and I'll pop all of the details of All the Bitter in the show notes. But if anybody does want to seek you guys out, what's the best ways to find out about your products and stockists and ways of ordering?
Speaker 2:Our website is the easiest way just allthebittercom, and then on Instagram, allthebitter as well. We share lots of updates and behind the scenes footage and we have a lot of fun on our Instagram.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Well, thank you so much, ian. I can't do it. I keep wanting to do the pun and I can't do it without laughing. But I did want to say that my my evening has been made all the bitter for this conversation there you go. I just can't get it out without laughing. It's perfect.
Speaker 2:How many?
Speaker 1:times do you get that?
Speaker 2:To be honest, I assumed you were going to go with a blessing pun, Cause that's usually that's usually what I get is is a pun on.
Speaker 1:So I will. I will happily take an all the bitter pun any day. I've got another one. Season two is going to be all the bitter for you being on it. Perfect, I'll edit the other one out. I love it thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 2:Thank you absolutely, it's been so much fun.