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We got this info from Shaun McGuire, a 20-year industry vet who's also recently begun career coaching for bartenders.

From Shaun's time in the industry and his time coaching, he's realized that almost all the problems bartenders face fall into 5 categories:

1. Personal life and work balance. This can look like a lot of things: getting work stuff asked of you during non-work hours; relationship problems with friends or your partner; feeling like you don't have any free time.

2. Money—future financial planning. Virtually no bartenders have employer-sponsored retirement accounts, so all their saving is up to them. How to do it, where to start, how to cap spending—bartenders often have trouble with all these things.

3. Bad work environment. Could be a bad boss, bad co-workers, or even abusive customers.

4. Alcoholism/substance abuse. This is a big one, especially given how much access we have to alcohol in our industry and how easy it is to have a drink, either professionally or socially.

5. Money—the amount you make. Given the data he's collected he doesn't think there are a lot of bartenders out there that aren't making enough money. But what he knows from experience (and I know from my own bartending experience) is that it can feel sort of magical how quickly money disappears. In other words, it's almost always the outflow that's the problem, not the inflow.

Shaun also cautioned that it's super common for folks to feel more than one of these at once, and not uncommon for them to feel all of them at once.

So, what to do? If you're unhappy as a bartender—or if you're a manager/owner and you suspect one of your employees is unhappy—use this list to see if you can trace your/your employees unhappiness back to one of these core problems. Once you know what the problem is, you can begin to address it.

And if you'd like Shaun's help doing so, reply to this email and I can get you in touch with him.

Check out the interview clip for more from Shaun about how these problems manifest, his coaching approach, and also how they fit into the bartender career progression he's started thinking about (honeymoon phase ➡️ adolescent phase ➡️ mature phase):

Why it works

Customers can order more quickly, meaning your bartenders can serve more customers, faster.

How it works

• On their own, without the help of the bartender, your customers can read your full-info Print Menu (includes beer descriptions, ABV, etc.) to hone in on what to order.
• Then they can step up, look at the TV Menu, and just say “I”ll have a number 4” to the bartender.

The interaction is finished and significant time saved—no asking what's on tap, no samples, no back-and-forth about what to order.

This time savings can add up quickly on a busy night, and the more time saved means the more folks served per hour. And that means more sales.

David Hayden of multi-state chain Up-Down says this phenomenon "works out to thousands of additional dollars on a Friday or Saturday night."

How can I do it at my business?

You could do this manually. Google the beers you have, copy the info you need, drop the info into your Print Menu doc and your editable TV Menu, then adjust the design as necessary.

• Alcohol sales underperform during Cinco/Derby weekend. Craft Brewing Business reported that alcohol consumption fell year-over-year during one of Spring's historically biggest weekends. I saw plenty of revelers out and about, but it would certainly fit with the overall downward trend of alcohol consumption.
• World Beer Cup winners crowned. Last week Indianapolis hosted the Craft Brewers Conference. It's an industry trade show, but during the event the winners of the World Beer Cup were announced. You can check out the full list of winners here, and if you just want to know who won in your state, Google "local breweries world beer cup" and your local paper will highlight the local winners.
• Too much CA wine. Decanter ran a story from a CA winemaker about the glut of grapes and wine the state's currently dealing with. Perhaps Trump's tariffs—if they actually go into effect—will help with some of this, but it seems even that kind of increased demand won't fully solve the over-expansion problem.