1: It’s much faster.
We believe this alone is a sufficient reason to implement free pouring at your bar. It is certainly faster than pouring into a jigger and then into the drink, plus free pouring allows for very attractive pouring techniques. Another point in favor of speed is that with a jigger, it is impossible to pour from multiple bottles simultaneously, which is another way an experienced bartender will slow down.
2: Show your bartenders that you trust them.
Yes. It’s clear that bartenders could pour more liquor into each drink than they should to deliberately steal from you. They could also serve a double in a jigger and charge for one, hand out beers and "forget" to ring them up in the POS, or shamelessly drink your drinks while they are working… If you are worried that free pouring will lead your bartenders to steal from you, you have hired the wrong bartenders; free pouring is not the problem, it’s your human resources policy that needs to be addressed. If you trust your bartenders and give them the tools (like training them to serve using free pouring) to do their job better, they will appreciate it. Also, give your bar team the responsibility to ensure that inventory balances every day, and incentivize them well to make this happen.
3: It makes your bartenders look professional.
When a bartender is working at full speed, serving drinks confidently and chatting with guests, they look like true professionals and will make their guests enjoy their night even more. When a bartender pours one ingredient after another into the same jigger, contaminating from one drink to the next, spilling liquor, and making customers wait because they can’t serve as quickly as they should, the number of customers will be reduced to the number that can be served in a reasonable time. Those customers who wait too long will walk out the door and take their money elsewhere.
4: Bartenders can interact more with guests.
Assuming your bar is set up efficiently, your bartenders will be able to serve with their heads held high, chat with guests (yes, they are guests, not just customers), keep track of who is next, and offer new drinks as soon as they run out. All of this means more cash in the register, as your guests will be happy and stay longer at your bar, feeling like a friend of the bartender. Plus, they will recommend your place to their friends.
5: Your bartenders are free to do flair!
While advanced craft flair techniques can be applied to jigger service, free pouring allows for much more “play” and very creative working flair routines. Free pouring is precision and speed, but also an attractive technique to catch the guests' attention.
In summary
Of course, as a bar owner, you couldn’t just decide that free pouring is the way to go and let your bartenders start right away. Pouring accurately is a skill that requires practice to master and constant maintenance to keep the precision.
You will need to invest in training and a pouring accuracy kit: exact pour (these vary in price from a few euros to over a hundred, but it’s still an investment worth making). Another must-have is to implement a free pouring accuracy test system so your bartenders can check their precision and you can verify it at any time. Keep records of how your bartenders perform and turn it into a competition by incentivizing accuracy. Encourage staff to use quieter periods to practice their pours, including multiple bottle pours, bounce pours, cuts, left-handed and right-handed pours, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5QRTwSXkCs
If the USP (unique selling proposition) for your bar is high mixology cocktails, perhaps free pouring is not the most suitable system, as many of these recipes are finely balanced and rely on perfectly precise pours, while free pouring should have an accuracy of ⅛ oz above or below. In some cocktails, even that little can make a big difference, so consider this when thinking about free pouring.
That said, we personally love free pouring, and throughout our experience and practice of over 20 years, we have observed that it was possible to earn about double the sales using free pouring compared to bartenders who did not apply it. Double the sales. Bar managers, we leave you to think about that.
