Top Five Business Books for Bartenders
Photo by Brogen Jessup
Alright, everyone as promised I am going to lay my top 5 books that ALL bar managers/owners should read. Those of you that know me, know that I am always reading, in fact, I credit much of my success in the bar biz to my reading habits. That is not just of how much insight you gain from getting your read on, but also because its one of my favorite ways to unwind & refresh the mind before going to bed at night.
Now let me preface this list, first by stating something I have always found strange. Let’s say a bartender was going to do a tiki bar, one of the 1st things they would do is pick up some tiki books & learn everything they could about tiki drinks & history. Now that same bartender decides to do an agave bar, now they would do the same, except focus on books on tequila & mezcal.
However when a bartender becomes an owner or a manager, they rarely if ever read a book on business or leadership. This is largely because we don’t fetishize those aspects of the bar biz, however, it is folly as the fundamentals of business can be universal no matter what you are selling. With that said, let’s jump into the books, in no particular order of course.
CREATIVITY INC BY ED CATMULL
This book is not only one of my favorite books because it deals directly with managing creatives (aka bartenders.) It is written by one of the founders of Pixar, so if I trust anyone to provide some helpful tips on how to create & nurture a work environment that promotes creativity & maximizes your talent, this is the book. In fact, all of our R&D sessions at my bar are rooted in what I learned from this book. I cannot recommend it enough.
A COUPLE OF MY FAVORITE QUOTES FROM THE BOOK
"The responsibility for finding and fixing problems should be assigned to every employee, from the most senior manager to the lowliest person on the production line."
"You are not your ideas, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged.”
GOOD TO GREAT BY JIM COLLINS
Good to Great is one of those books that took so much of what we all already know deep inside, but put all in one place. This book essentially just reminds you that a successful bar is all about your staff & that the only way it can achieve its full potential, is by focusing on not only finding & thoroughly training your staff, but by creating an infrastructure for them to operate in without you having to micromanage anyone. That way you can tend to the system rather than managing each & every individual. In addition, tolerating thieves, liars & slackers, does nothing except chase off good employees. Because good staff won’t put up with that.
A COUPLE OF MY FAVORITE QUOTES FROM THE BOOK
“The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake. The best people don’t need to be managed. Guided, taught, led—yes. But not tightly managed.”
“The only way to deliver to the people who are achieving is to not burden them with the people who are not achieving.”
The checklist manifesto by atul gawande
The Checklist Manifesto is incredible and will humble you in many way, as the other is one of the country’s top-tier surgeons and his work has helped to save countless lives simply by getting medical staff to work off of a checklist. No crazy technology. No cutting edge app. Just a pencil and paper. There are so many moving parts in a world-class cocktail bar that everyone subscribing to something as simple as a checklist is what allows you to free up your mind & focus on other things, rather than who topped off the orgeat at the beginning of the shift. You just know it was done, because someone signed off on it. Killer book & only 200 pages or so.
A COUPLE OF MY FAVORITE QUOTES FROM THE BOOK
"They calculated that, in this one hospital, the checklist had prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths and saved two million dollars in costs."
"Discipline is hard...We can’t even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at.”
the e-myth revisted by michael gerber
Now this book is not for everyone. By that I mean that it was not written for the craft environment necessarily. It was written to automate & dumb things down. However, I found it extremely helpful when I was 1st opening Polite years ago, because it helped me dumb down & automate things that are simple, yet important. Such, as ice cutting & ordering produce. This book also helps with a lot of advice on delegating. Hiring the best people, yet not trusting them with any responsibility is the height of foolishness. By trying to do everything as the GM, you will only burn yourself out, while at the same time, your best staff will get bored & feel under stimulated.
A COUPLE OF MY FAVORITE QUOTES FROM THE BOOK
"It’s easy to spot a business in Infancy—the owner and the business are one and the same thing."
“If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!”
sacred hoops by phil jackson
If you have read all of these stories & are thinking to yourself “these all sound cool, but I probably won’t read any of them,” then this book is for you. Cause its about basketball & more importantly the championship winning Chicago Bulls. Quite possibly the best lineup in NBA history. But I digress. This book is a quick read & beyond fascinating, but go beneath the surface & you quickly realize that this book is a crash course in Leadership 101. It beautifully illustrates how to manage egos, coordinate talent & lead a team to victory. I recommend this to everyone, but mostly to those of you that aren’t the type to actually read a book on business.
A COUPLE OF MY FAVORITE QUOTES FROM THE BOOK
"Before the final game, the Disney organization asked Jordan if he would do one of their “What are you going to do now?” commercials. He said he’d do it only if the ad included his teammates.”
"Success tends to distort reality and make everybody, coaches as well as players, forget their shortcomings and exaggerate their contributions."