I’ve always found it ironic that our business is to sell people alcohol, but we also have to make sure they don’t get too drunk. We want them to buy more so we make more money, but we can’t sell them too much because it causes problems—The worst being that they will kill themselves or someone else. The drunker they get, the more childish they become, and have you ever tried to tell a child they can’t have more of something they want? It doesn’t go well. At least children are tiny and tire easily. Drunk adults have a much greater capacity for bullshit and it falls on us bartenders to deal with it.
Cutting off guests who’ve had too much is one of the most common challenges bartenders have to face on a daily basis. It’s never fun, it’s never exactly the same, but if you are prepared and you approach the situation as an opportunity for good hospitality, cutting someone off doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
My guest this week, Andrew Meltzer, has had a lot of experience cutting people off and he had some great advice to share. Andrew was the 2016 World Class bartender of the year, president of the San Francisco USBG chapter and he is currently the beverage director at the brand new Noosh restaurant, where we recorded this interview. Before Noosh, Andrew managed 15 Romolo, an amazing Spanish focused bar in the North Beach neighborhood. 15 Romolo is a nice place, but it’s literally surrounded by strip clubs and dive bars with loud music. Not that there’s anything wrong with those places, it’s just that the neighborhood tends to facilitate over doing it and that spills up the alleyway through the doors of the bar.
Check out my interview with Andrew in the player below, on this page or wherever podcasts are found. Make sure to hit subscribe to stay up to date with all of our great conversations about the biggest challenges in bartending. Read on after the break for some more in depth advice about cutting off drunk customers.
We bartenders are responsible for the safety of our guests and we have an obligation to make sure nothing bad happens as a result of us serving alcohol. “Say that person goes out and causes damage or drives their car drunk and kills somebody,” Andrew said, “There are laws that make you liable for even the death or damage.” These laws are called Dram Shop Laws, and they are slightly different in different states or countries, but they generally place some level of legal liability on either the staff, the establishment or both for the actions of guests who are over served and cause damage.