Take a look at the lives of Central Florida bartenders.
Whether you’re lazy, social or looking for a better alcohol selection than your fridge, sometimes you want to go out for a drink. Someone has to hand you that drink, laugh at your jokes and possibly take your car keys. And in Florida, that person is only required to be paid $5.08 an hour plus tips.
I set out to see what gets these people out of bed in the afternoon. What drives them to sling our suds? How do they earn our tips? And can I please have my car keys back?
Taylor Bulloch Stonewall, 741 W. Church St., Orlando
Having won Watermark’s “Best Local Bartender” in 2015 doesn’t seem to have gone to Taylor Bulloch’s head at all.
Working the upstairs bar of this oftslammed club near the Lions’ soccer stadium in downtown Orlando, the tall man from Tallahassee says, “I personally would prefer a busy bar but also relish the quieter times so I can spend more quality moments with the patrons.”
Getting to know people is the best part for Bulloch, known in the local music scene as electronic musician Pressure Kitten. “I have developed some wonderful relationships over the years.”
Bulloch, 46, is a 26-year bartending veteran and his venue presents some unique challenges. “One of the most challenging things for me to deal with on a busy night at Stonewall is trying to keep people out of our merman tank,” he says. “People are always trying to jump in it. I don’t blame them. It is a very inviting, cool feature.” He’s right. It looks like a see-through, square Jacuzzi and I want in.
But he cares less about the free spirits than he does about ending smoking. “Cleaning ashtrays is yuck.”
Bulloch is a professional, serving through even the loudest din. “The loud music is something that a nightclub bartender simply has to put into the back of their head,” he says. “Except when a song you love plays. Then you dance.”
Audrey Maynard Lil Indies, 1036 N. Mills Ave., Orlando
The bar at this intimate Mills 50 hangout is very linear, making for an orderly ordering process. Navigating the wealth of high-end and exotic liquors behind the bar is what makes this work a challenge.
“It’s important to pay attention to what you’re doing in and out of the job,” says Audrey Maynard, 22. “A lot of the bartenders I know do a good job of studying and learning on their own time.”
Lil Indies is, as the New Hampshire native describes it, a “high-volume craft-cocktail bar.” In other words: “Making sure that you’re outputting a quality product within a particular amount of time.”
The Orlando resident has only been a mixologist for the last year, but her hands find the right bottles practically by sense memory.
Maynard would like to speed things up even more. She asks patrons to stop ordering drinks single file. “If everybody knows what they want at the same time, that saves you time and saves me time.”
There are perks to a job that requires this much knowledge. “The creativity that you have here,” Maynard points out, “being able to have complete control over what you make.”
But doesn’t she want to change anything about her patrons? “You mean besides making them better tippers?” she responds.