A career bartender

Robert Biermann (you can call him Bob) has been tending bar for the better part of 30 years. He’s worked in five-star restaurants, smoky third-shift taverns and a few places in between. He spends Monday through Friday at My Office, a cozy bar in downtown where he works the lunch shift. He serves up a few beers, pours shots and cracks jokes with some of the regulars while his wife runs a small kitchen and passes out hot plates of pulled pork sandwiches and homemade potato salad.

You’ll also find him a few times a week at Bacchus, working under the tutelage of master mixologists Nick Kosevich and Ira Koplowitz (we’ll get to them later in this podcast series), founders of Bittercube and magicians on the bar scene.

As a career bartender, Bob has picked up a thing or two about successful service. Customer service begins with sincerity, or as he says, “you have to care about your customers.”As a bartender, you must always be the voice of reason and should never be afraid to cut someone off if they’ve had too much already. And don’t get drunk behind the bar, please and thank you.

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