Shows
Drinks At Work with Sam BygraveHow Byrdi's Samuel Thornhill created the 2023 Drink of the YearThe Drink of the Year Awards is my favourite event of the Boothby events we do each year, and it’ll be back again in November 2024 for the third year. For this episode of Drinks At Work, however, I’m talking to the bartender behind the drink that took the number one spot on the top 50 last year. That is of course Samuel Thornhill, he’s the head bartender at Melbourne cocktail bar Byrdi, and we talk about how he developed the drink, Bad Apple, why it took over a year to get right, and why he almost walked away f...2024-01-3030 minDrinks At Work with Sam Bygrave“Brands follow the money.” Charlie Ainsbury, Darren Leaney, and Mariella Menato on the future of drinksThis episode we’ve got something a little bit different. This is a recording of a panel chat that I hosted the other week in Sydney at Paramount Liquor’s Future Proof Forum. It was a great night, a number of different distilleries and brands were on hand offering samples, and we had a great audience to listen to three of the talks on the night. This one you’re about to hear was about future proofing our industry — on the panel was Charlie Ainsbury from Proof & Company, Mariella Menato from Denomination Design, and Darren Leaney who is the head of...2023-03-1536 minDrinks At Work with Sam Bygrave“We weren’t mates.” Sean Baxter on how he went from bartender to co-founding one of Australia’s best ginsMy guest on this episode is Sean Baxter. Sean began his working life as a bartender up in Brisbane, before moving to Melbourne and eventually getting into the brand side of things as a brand ambassador. It’s that experience which stood him in good stead when he and business partners Tim Boast and George Georgiadis began Never Never Distilling Co in 2016. Since they first released their gin in 2017, they’ve won numerous accolades, and become something of a bartender favourite. Their gin is all about the juniper, and they went out with the aim of...2023-02-2832 minDrinks At Work with Sam BygraveWhat does Krystal Hart look for when hiring an ambassador? ‘Passion.’ My guest on this episode is Krystal Hart. In this chat we get a look under the hood of the brand ambassador life. Krystal is the national bartender engagement and trade advocacy manager at Campari Australia, and one of the leading lights of the bar scene in this country for over a decade. Krystal stepped into the brand advocacy side of the bar business in 2013 with a gig for Diageo’s Reserve Brands portfolio, but before that she worked in some of Brisbane’s best cocktail bars at the time: Sling Lounge, The Bowery, and Canvas to name but a few...2023-02-1527 minDrinks At Work with Sam BygraveThe bar as showroom: Barney Toy’s bar Clipper makes money many waysMy guest on this episode is the owner of Clipper in Auckland, which is talked about as the best cocktail bar in New Zealand: His name is Barney Toy. Barney is originally from the UK, but has spent a lot of his life working bars in New Zealand. Clipper debuted in 2019, but then a pandemic came along. We don’t really talk about the pandemic and lockdowns in this chat, but it’s interesting to note how the time of covid spurred the creation of multiple revenue streams for the bar — so that they are not...2023-02-0837 min