What a mixologist is for, and when a cocktail list justifies one

In the UK the word mixologist is used less by bartenders than by the adverts looking for them. Plenty of the people doing this work call themselves cocktail bartenders, or just bartenders, and some find the other word a bit much. The job behind either title is the same: a bartender whose main output is mixed drinks made to a written specification, the same way every time, at the speed a Saturday demands.

Most of the work happens before the doors open

A cocktail bar that opens at five has usually been working since early afternoon. The prep list is the mixologist’s real shift, and service is where it gets tested.

• Syrups, cordials and shrubs made from scratch, labelled and dated, and tasted against last week’s batch before they go on the rail.
• Citrus juiced fresh for the night, because pre-squeezed juice from a carton makes a sour taste flat.
• Batched components for the drinks that sell in volume, so that a stirred drink needs one pour from a bottle rather than four.
• Ice in several forms: large clear blocks cut down for stirred drinks served over a single piece, cubes for shaking, crushed for anything served long.
• Garnishes cut, dried or prepared so they look the same at the end of the night as at the start.

Then comes service: Boston shaker, jigger, bar spoon, strainers, mixing glass, and the discipline of measuring every pour even when the bar is full. The whole point of a spec is that the drink a guest ordered on their last visit tastes the same on this one, whoever made it.

Why a bar hires for cocktails specifically

A general bartender can make a decent mojito. A venue starts looking for a mixologist when the cocktail list has become the reason people come in, rather than one page of a drinks menu. At that point the problems are different ones.

The first is consistency. When one person on the team makes the signature drinks well and the others make them approximately, the bar has a list that only works on certain nights. The second is margin. Cocktails carry more ingredients than anything else on the menu, and nobody costs them properly unless somebody owns that job. The third is the list itself: somebody has to design the next one, test it, write the specs down, and train the rest of the bar to make it.

The signs a venue has reached that point are usually visible from the bar. Guests ask for a particular bartender by name. The same drink comes back to the bar twice in a night because it was made differently. Waste is high on fresh ingredients because nobody planned the prep against the bookings.

Not every bar that sells cocktails needs this role. A pub serving a handful of spritzes and a house espresso martini can use good pre-batched products and a clear recipe card, and train its existing bartenders to follow it. Hiring a specialist into a venue that has no room for a proper list tends to frustrate the specialist first.

Where the role sits

A mixologist usually reports to the head bartender or the bar manager. In a smaller cocktail bar they may be the head bartender, running the prep list, the other bartenders on shift and the barback. They work closely with whoever does the ordering, because a new menu with an unusual ingredient is a supply problem before it is a drinks problem, and with the kitchen where a venue shares fruit, herbs or fridge space.

What bars look for

Technique is the entry fee: a clean shake, a stir that dilutes without clouding, accurate measures, a tidy station. What separates a good mixologist from an adequate one comes after that.

• They taste everything. A batch goes out only after somebody has checked it, and a drink goes over the counter only if it matches the spec.
• They can cost a drink and change a recipe when an ingredient goes up, without the guest noticing.
• They are fast with it. A beautiful drink that takes long enough to lose the table’s attention is a problem on a busy night.
• They talk to guests about the drink when the guest wants to talk, and not when the guest wants to talk to their friends.
• They write things down, so the bar still works on the nights they are off.

How people get here

Almost everybody starts as a general bartender or a barback in a cocktail bar and learns the specs of one list thoroughly before building their own. Drinks brands run training, and some bartenders enter competitions, which is one way to get known outside a single venue. From here the paths lead to head bartender, bar manager, menu development across a group of bars, or brand ambassador work for a spirits company.

Writing the advert

State the pay and whether the prep hours before opening are paid at the same rate as service. Describe the list honestly: classic drinks, a house menu written in the building, or a mix. Say roughly how busy the bar gets, how the tronc is shared, and when the bar closes. A cocktail bartender reading an advert wants to know whether they will be making their own cordials or opening a bottle of somebody else’s, because that is the difference between two quite different jobs.

Advertised pay across bar roles: bar pay

The general role this grows out of: what a bartender does

Cocktail and bar jobs posted by the venues themselves: browse jobs