Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Putting bartenders back to work — virtually
Overproof’s CompanyToast offers online cocktail events — delivery included
South Florida’s hospitality industry may be sputtering back to life even if bars — as of now — are still closed. One new nonprofit aims to put bartenders back to work … virtually.
Companies and groups can set up live-streaming, hands-on, happy hours through CompanyToast, which delivers alcohol, mixers, ingredients and bar tools to the door of the participants. The bartender then hosts a virtual cocktail-making event.
“Bartenders now need to innovate,” says Nick Nistico, national program director for CompanyToast. “The industry is not going to be the same. Bartenders need to change and widen their skill sets. But I’ve always said, good bartenders are able to do anything.”
So far, CompanyToast has signed on almost 300 bartenders. “I see that doubling and tripling in the coming months,” says Nistico. The Miami-based CompanyToast is a nonprofit arm of Overproof, which bills itself as a business intelligence strategic planning platform for the beverage alcohol industry.
They have plans to roll out this bartender-gig employment initiative nationwide, according to Marc De Kuyper, Overproof ’s founder and an 11th generation member of the family that started De Kuyper Royal Distillers in 1695.
“The goal is to re-employ 2,500 bartenders nationwide,” De Kuyper said from his Wynwood office. “I would be happier with 50,000, but let’s try to be realistic here. We looked at 15 or 16 cities that we want to [expand] to, like Portland, Seattle, Boston, San
Diego, Nashville. We’ve found bartenders there we’d like to partner with. They are called ‘influencers’ within the bartender community.”
How much is the virtual bar tab?
Nistico said banks and law firms have shown a great deal of interest in booking a virtual happy hour. The cost averages $50 to $55 per person. He predicts that in the next 90 days they will produce “a few hundred” livestream/ interactive happy hours. Bartenders can earn anywhere from $150 to $500 per event.
“One bartender might be packaging and building kits,” Nistico explains. “Another bartender will be doing home deliveries. And another bartender will be executing the online toast. I was with a bartender driving around for seven hours making deliveries and he made about $300.”
“What I see is the longevity of this,” he adds. “I think this is the future of consumer tasting and engagement in our alcohol beverage industry.” (Nistico co-hosted a Sun Sentinel web series in 2016.)
How this all got started
Overproof, just a year old, was all set to make an official debut just before the coronavirus shut everything down.
“We were supposed to launch on March 30 at this big industry conference in Portland of craft distilleries,” De Kuyper recalls. “Obviously that got canceled. Then the pandemic hit harder even and the lockdown happened. We decided we couldn’t launch for another couple of months. But then we started to think: What could we do with all those bartenders that couldn’t get a job?”
So he created the nonprofit Overproof Foundation. And from that sprang CompanyToast.
“We deal in technology and software primarily,” Nistico adds. “But we’re also creating new jobs. We have not furloughed or fired anyone from the day we started. We’ve only been hiring and we continue to hire.
“Being a lifetime bartender, I really responded to the opportunity to do something majorly impactful for the hospitality industry. That was really it. Years from now when bartenders are talking … and someone asks, ‘What were you doing during the pandemic? Did you bury your head in the sand or did you go out and do something?’ We can say we did something.”
“Being a lifetime bartender, I really responded to the opportunity to do something majorly impactful for the hospitality industry. That was really it. Years from now when bartenders are talking … and someone asks, ‘What were you doing during the pandemic? Did you bury your head in the sand or did you go out and do something?’ We can say we did something.”
— Nick Nistico, national program director for CompanyToast