Eater recently published an article featuring Nickel City bar manager Amanda Carto, who put together a very helpful guide for bar owners and bartenders who need to close down their businesses immediately. Her advice, shared on Facebook, ranges from giving away produce to staffers and food shelters, concealing bottles of alcohol before locking up, emptying out and cleaning draft beer lines, to making sure to help out staffers who might be unemployed as a result of the closure. Please see her suggestions below.
- Get rid of all perishable produce. Give this to your staff that wasn’t able to shop while they were keeping the doors open, then link up with a food shelter that will need these supplies for anything leftover.
- Pack up your booze & double check your security! It may feel weird to do this, but take your bottles down from your back bar and place in a hiding spot. If you have large windows, definitely make sure nothing valuable is in eyesight. This is to discourage looting. Change security codes. Take any and all liability of “theft” off your staff so they’re not brought to question by the police, causing more unnecessary stress on your team.
- Empty out your beer lines. If you have a draft cocktail or beer system, run your lines and make sure nothing is left in them. Clean them out. Be prepared to do a chemical/acid clean on them before you operate again. Leaving anything in your lines is going to ruin them, and the cost to replace your lines is going to be insane if you choose not to take these steps.
- If you are a business owner and have an accountant or accounting office, make sure your staff’s information is correct and offer to help them file for unemployment, or simply just to it for them. It’s the biggest load off of your employee’s shoulders to not have to navigate that circus.
- Stay calm. Don’t panic. We’ll get through this. Share any and all tips and tricks with your fellow bar folks so we can keep our spaces and equipment at its best so we can have an easier reopening when this is all said and done.
Jameson Whiskey is also pledging $500,000 to support the charity of the United States Bartenders Guild.
