{"id":7179,"date":"2012-08-10T12:56:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T11:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/?p=7179"},"modified":"2014-07-28T19:33:40","modified_gmt":"2014-07-28T18:33:40","slug":"getting-personal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/getting-personal\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Personal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in the day when I first set out on my voyage of cocktail discovery and didn\u2019t know my vermouth from my vodka or my bitters from my bourbon, much of my judgement of how good a bar was was determined by the quality of service I received.\u00a0 In the main, I wanted those who served me to be affable individuals who delivered my drink efficiently and with a smile.\u00a0 Whilst I could spot a terrible drink, many of the subtleties between similar drinks were lost.\u00a0 Over time and with a lot of practice I learned about my own taste preferences and it wasn\u2019t long before I was correctly guessing the gin used in my Negroni<\/a> or rum in my Daiquiri<\/a>.\u00a0 With such knowledge came a focus on the drinks themselves, and for a period I considered the level of service to be second in importance.<\/p>\n

As time passed it became apparent that once I became skilled in picking out drinks from a menu that were likely to appeal to my taste preferences, the vast majority of drinks that I consumed fell into the \u2018good but not great\u2019 category.\u00a0 Occasionally I would hit upon one that would stop me in my tracks, making me sit up and take notice.\u00a0 But for the most part, the drinks themselves were broadly as enjoyable as each other and so much of the anticipation of what was to arrive in my glass receded.\u00a0 This was coupled with the realisation of the importance of service in providing differentiation between bars.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"moe\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On a superficial level most cocktail bars that would generally be considered to be decent offer a reasonable level of service; certainly they don\u2019t stand out as being bad.\u00a0 But hailing from the service industry myself, I know that genuinely excellent service means more than just being generally amiable.\u00a0 To be at the top of one\u2019s game what is required is to tailor the service to the individual; to make it personal.\u00a0 And it is here that we hit upon a problem: truly personalized service in even the most highly acclaimed bars is a very rare thing.\u00a0 The problem, it seems, is that too few bartenders and floor staff ask themselves the question \u201cwho is this customer in front of me, what are their needs, and how can I best meet them?\u201d\u00a0 The result; service that is pretty much the same irrespective of who you are or what you want.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, cocktail bars operate in the service industry and for those aspiring to be at the premium end of the market individual service is crucial to their long-term success.\u00a0 It might not be fashionable, nor easy to market, but let\u2019s hope that the next phase of cocktail culture moves on from obsessing about the drinks and onto getting personal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Cocktail Geek<\/a>
\n\"the<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the day when I first set out on my voyage of cocktail discovery and didn\u2019t know my vermouth from my vodka or my bitters from my bourbon, much of my judgement of how good a bar was was … Continue →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[817],"tags":[831,843],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7179"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14491,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7179\/revisions\/14491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialandcocktail.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}