Staff Well-Being and Sustainable Spirits with Tim Etherington-Judge

Discover the untold challenges and triumphs within the bar industry as we chat with Tim Etherington-Judge, the innovative mind behind Healthy Hospo and Avallen spirits. From Cornwall to his global stints in New Zealand, India, and Africa, Tim's journey is nothing short of inspiring. Our conversation sheds light on his unwavering commitment to mental health, employee wellness, and sustainability, touching on the often-overlooked hurdles that hospitality workers face daily. Tim's insights are essential for anyone invested in fostering a healthier, more sustainable work environment.

We delve into the darker side of the hospitality industry, critiquing the toxic culture perpetuated by figures like Gordon Ramsay and reflecting on Anthony Bourdain’s regrets. The episode highlights the severe health risks tied to night shift work, classified by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen. Together, we discuss practical strategies to mitigate these risks and improve overall bar management. Tim shares the tangible benefits of investing in staff well-being, illustrating how happy employees lead to higher retention rates and customer satisfaction.

Our discussion also ventures into the realm of sustainability in the spirits industry. Avallen's dedication to producing environmentally conscious Calvados sets a benchmark for others to follow. We explore the ecological impact of single-use materials and the importance of transparent sustainability practices. With innovative packaging solutions and a strong stance against corporate greenwashing, Tim exemplifies how businesses can protect the environment while thriving. Join us as we uncover actionable insights and foster a community dedicated to a positive future in hospitality.

Contact Tim:
Healthy Hospo
Avallen Calvados
Tim's Instagram
Tim's LinkedIn

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Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

You're listening to the Bar Business Podcast where every week, your host, chris Schneider, brings you information, strategies and news on the bar industry, giving you the competitive edge you need to start working on your bar rather than in your bar.

Chris Schneider: 0:20

Hello and welcome to this week's edition of the Bar Business Podcast. I'm your host, chris Schneider, and today we are joined by Tim Etherington-Judge, who is the man behind Healthy Hospital and Avalon, which is a spirits company located out of Normandy, france. Tim has a lot of global hospitality experience. He's worked both behind the bar and in bars and restaurants, and also on the distributor side, actually working internationally for Diageo, supporting our industry, and his journey, which I will let him tell because there's no way I could do it justice, but his journey that he has gone through has led him to really focus on two key areas within the hospitality industry, which are mental health and just overall employee wellness and sustainability, which are two topics that, unfortunately, we really don't get a lot of chance to talk about, that, probably, across the industry, we should be talking about a lot more. So, first of all, tim, thank you so much for being here and, as I mentioned earlier, rather than let me mess up your background, I'll give you the opportunity to fill us in on your story.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:31

Give me the opportunity to mess up myself. Thanks, thanks, chris, and I'm really really excited by the opportunity to speak on your podcast, so thank you for that. I'm going to keep it short because, kind of my history is the least important part of what we've got to talk about today, so it's like the beginning. I grew up in Cornwall, which is a very rural touristy area in the UK. It's the only bit of the UK that really has a lot of palm trees and golden sand beaches if anyone actually believes that but because it's so touristyy, you know, the first jobs you get are in hospitality. So since the age of 14, um, I've been working in hospitality and it's taken me all over the world.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 2:13

So, studying in cornwall, uh, then took a big shift out to new zealand, which is where I really fell in love with cocktail bars and the art of the cocktail. So kind of worked my way up through a series of bars in New Zealand to be a head bartender and running the top bar in Auckland, new Zealand, and in 2009 was the New Zealand Bartender of the Year, which is kind of like being the world's tallest hobbit, because there's not a great scene at the time. There's a really high quality scene in new zealand, but there weren't many of us um from new zealand, um shifted over to india, um so got an opportunity to go and work at the taj mahal palace hotel in mumbai, which is one of the world's great hotels, and just learn hospitality from a group of people who I never thought I would have the opportunity to. I'm not sure if anyone remembers or you remember, but back in 2008, there were a bunch of terrorist attacks in Mumbai and I think many of us have kind of watched the news, watched it unfold live and heard the stories of the staff at the hotel risking their lives to save their guests. You know, for me I thought hospitality was putting down a napkin, you know, a glass of water and eye contact when anyone walked into the bar. And then here was the stories of people like literally risking their lives and jumping in front of bullets to save complete strangers. And I was was like now, that's a level of hospitality that I want to go and understand and learn, and I want to go and learn from these people who earn, like you know, 80 a month. Um, they've got so much to teach um, so I went out there, spent three years in india and that's where I joined Diageo, had an amazing time in India, traveling across the whole country, fell in love with the place, the people and especially the food From India.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 4:19

I jumped across, I said Diageo, but became the ambassador for the luxury ambassador for sub-Saharan africa, so again got to uh travel all across this incredible continent, um, everywhere, from kind of ghana, nigeria, across to kenya and uganda, down to south africa and and just fall in love with uh, I think, a continent that a lot of people don't spend enough time in. And then from uh, then from africa, I joined the global reserve team as the global ambassador for a little known american whiskey called bullet. Some of your listeners might have heard of it, uh, which is an amazing job, but basically a lot of that job was um traveling and babysitting tom bullet as we traveled the world together, which was an incredible experience. He's a really charming, lovely gentleman and a lot of uh. The conversations that we had and the learnings I took from tom then kind of passed on into my my current uh brand avalanche. So, yeah, so that's kind of it. And then I guess one of the big reasons why we're talking today is the um, the launch of healthy hospo, uh, which is something I never really considered until it happened.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 5:35

So, you know, I had this global ambassador role, which is a, I think, for many people in the industry, um, or at least the, at least bartenders that are listening to this, it's one of the jobs that a lot of bartenders aspire to. You either aspire to becoming an ambassador, and the global ambassadors are at the top of that tree, or you aspire to becoming a bar owner, and these global ambassador roles in particular have a lot of benefits, um, but there's also, like with any job you're at, you have a lot of highs, but you also have have the lows as well. Um, and after six years of of travel, traveling the world and doing a hundred plus flights a year, um, the, the terrible nutrition from kind of constantly eating either at airports or room service or in restaurants, um, the loneliness which is, I think, is not discussed enough amongst the, the brand ambassador community, because you, especially as a global ambassador, because you you're constantly traveling on your own, um, you know, meeting with people, that your relationship with them is is, uh, transitory at best. Right, you might see them on a good day, you might see them, like, three or four times a year, a lot of people you you will see once and never again, um, so you've got these kind of always, uh, very transactional relationships with them. And the people that you do have strong relationships with, kind of quite often because you're never at home, you're always traveling, and those relationships kind of, uh, deteriorate over time. So there's that side of it.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 7:16

Um, exercise you know, I'm a big sports guy, so I love to cycle, I love to run, uh, and that gets more and more difficult because you're constantly jet lagged, constantly on the move. Even though I'd always take my running shoes with me, often I would find myself just too tired or not just I have the time, because you're constantly going from like airport to hotel, to event to hotel, to, and it all started to take a toll. What was keeping it all together was we had a really, really good team at the Azure up until 2016, when there was the usual corporate restructure, which every company seems to go to every few years, yeah, and the team that was really strong and kind of holding everything together was dismantled, um, and that was the kind of the safety net was taken away, um, and things came crashing down pretty hard, um, after that and it all came to a head in november 2016, um, whilst I was at the Athens Bar Show, where I attempted to commit suicide in my hotel room. After a particularly tough and a few months and particularly insane amounts of travel and me just not seeing a future, I think that I'd lost all hope that anything was going to improve and I was kind of trapped in this place that had become, personally, for me, very toxic, and I think it was that lack of hope that led me to that, and so it was only a packet of prescription-only painkillers and a bottle of bourbon that I attempted to end everything Thankfully, not successfully, but it was also.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 9:12

That was the moment that really gave birth to Healthy Hospital. It was coming through that particular night and kind of waking up in the morning feeling extremely lonely, uh, in that hotel room and not really knowing where to turn or who to talk to, that I wrote a post on facebook, kind of that safety net of of like talking publicly but without actually having to to talk to anyone, um, in person, person or respond to anyone and putting that post out on Facebook in 2019, no, sorry, 2016, led to the kind of the birth of Healthy House. But it was. It wasn't the response I was looking for, which was kind of lots of messages and love and support, and I got hundreds and hundreds of those from people. It was all the message, the private messages I got from people who told me their stories. You know, like friends, uh, colleagues, peers in the industry, complete strangers, just reaching out to me and saying thank you for for talking publicly about this.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 10:21

I've been going through something similar, or this is my, the experience I've been going through, and back in 2016, no one was talking about health and well-being in our industry. It was still and it's very much being brushed under the carpet. We live in this hedonistic industry where everyone's having a good time and if you're not having a good time, don't talk about that, just take some more cocaine or have another shot. And so that's what kind of led me to launch Healthy Hospital. It was understanding that I wasn't the only one in the industry suffering, that a lot of people were suffering in silence and no one was talking about it, no one was doing anything.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 11:02

And what kind of man would I be if I turned my back on the industry? You know all of the doctors and the therapists I was seeing were saying that you know this industry is toxic and it's not good for you. You need to to step away from it and go and do something else. And I was just in the back of my mind. I was just like, but I can't. You know, this industry has given me so much, you know, it's allowed me to travel the world, it's allowed me to have incredible experiences. It's made me like my entire friends network, um and I. You know what kind of man would you know kind of man would turn his back on all of that and just walk away, be a very selfish um guy? So I decided to try and do something, to try and change the conversation around health and wellbeing, and that was the launch of Healthy Ospo back in 2017. I had no idea what I was doing.

Chris Schneider: 11:56

I still don't, but I wanted, I wanted I kind of I wanted to start something that I knew that I had to try at least to change this conversation around health and well-being in our industry For sure, and I think that's really important because, thinking back and just looking at hospitality as a whole, to your point about all the stories you were told, this affects way more people. Bad mental health issues and and just the difficulty of the industry affects way more people than I feel like anybody actually realizes I would say it affects at some point.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 12:40

It affects everybody, everybody in our industry goes through it at some point.

Chris Schneider: 12:44

And the thing is like, if you think about, probably the moment that I thought maybe we'd have more conversation was after Anthony Bourdain, because that was high profile and it really helped point out some of the issues.

Chris Schneider: 13:00

But one of the things that surprised me was that we had a microscope, if you will, an intense focus there for a moment, and then it just kind of faded away. Yeah, and we had that attention, we had that push to make things better, but nothing actually really got better. And so, with Healthy Hospital, obviously your mission is to help make things better and to promote health and wellbeing and to help people out. And I think one thing that's really important is that we to have this conversation because there isn't the attention on it that there should be we got to start by defining the scope of the issue Because, to your point, I really think the issue is much larger than people give it credit for, and so one of the things that I've heard you quote before is that bartending is the 13th most dangerous job in the world yes, that came from the uh department of labor statistics.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 13:56

That's a us based stat and in that report being a bartender is more dangerous than being a police officer, an on-duty police officer. And police officers have guns and they're dealing with criminals with guns and you know, we all know, about the gun situation in the US and yet you're more likely to die at work being a bartender than a police officer. It's just insane. Like no one should be at risk of dying purely in the service of serving hospitality, of serving drinks, serving food.

Chris Schneider: 14:37

Right, because our whole industry is based upon making people have a good time, exactly, exactly. And if we're really going out and making people, making sure folks have a great time, and we're providing hospitality and we're helping people celebrate the wonderful things that happen in their life, how then does it come to us where we have these issues? And it's it's. Why are we not celebrating along with people? I guess could be the question.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 15:06

I think it's. You know, we've had this idea that our industry is the party and we always need to be at the center of the party. But you know, if you go out partying way too much, it gets tiring, it does way, you know, and it catches up with you very, very quickly because you're you're not recovering sufficiently to be able to um, to party that hard and I think there's also.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 15:33

You know, our industry has this, this attitude that you know, anyways, has done that we are uh hedonistic and life is always good, and maybe it's because, uh, salaries are not good you know we don't work in a very well-paid industry. Some there's a lot of studies that say it's the worst pace, worst paid industrial sector um in the world. Uh, and maybe that's another reason. You know, we we keep telling each other that we're having a great time because it makes up for, um, the fact that we don't get paid very much.

Chris Schneider: 16:13

Well, that would make sense yeah, there's a lot of.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 16:17

There's a lot of different aspects and I I don't think I can pick out a single one. Um, you know it comes from uh is the male toxicity within our industry, the, the peer pressure. I think the peer pressure is particularly toxic, you know, just to have another shot to, to get as drunk as possible, that we share. We share stories of of uh, misadventure and outrageous antics and we champion those um, and then I also think there's a big part of the, the celebration of bullying in our industry through the likes of um gordon ramsey. I think there's a lot to to answer for.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 16:57

You know the fact that that the most famous chef on the planet has built a career out of bullying people with no remorse. Right, you know antony bourdain. You know, in his later years, after he he kind of left behind being a professional chef and became a tv personality, was very uh, regretful and apologetic about the way that he treated people in kitchens because he didn't know if he'd gone back he would have done things differently. Ramsey shows no remorse, continues to build his career on just being a bully, and I think that culture, that kind of, is well ingrained in our industry, whether it's in restaurants or in bars takes a long time to change, especially when the people that we see, who are deemed to be the most successful, are the ones that are engaging in that behavior.

Chris Schneider: 17:56

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Tim Etherington-Judge: 18:42

Wrong, but something along the lines of working at night is just as cancerous as lead paint so the world health organization uh dubbed the night shift working um to be a class 2a carcinogen um which is the same class of carcinogen as lead paint, and we all well know the dangers of lead paint and we avoid it, we don't use it anymore because it is such a well known carcinogen.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 19:16

But and it all stems down to the lack of sleep and the amount of the disruptive sleep that we get when we work in hospitality, because we also have the difficulty or the challenges of we don't have regular shifts. If you are, say, a night security officer and you're working night shifts, chances are you've got the same shift right. You have to be on. You know you start work at 11 pm and maybe finish at night shifts. The chances are you've got the same shift right. You have to be on. You know you start work at 11 pm and maybe finish at seven in the morning and every day is the same.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 19:52

So what you can do around that is, you can build a sleep schedule. You can build your life around those hours because they're consistent and you know monday to friday you're going to get the same hours. Probably having hospitality is no one has consistent hours. Well, very few people have consistent hours. You know the number of bars and restaurants that I speak to. We work with that you know you will get your rotor for the following week on sunday evening. So even like you don't even know, know what you're working next week and the chance of you having consistent hours are zero. And that's the problem.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 20:32

When you're working these inconsistent hours at night, your sleep is so disrupted. There's some great work by the world's leading sleep scientist called Matthew Walker into the impacts of disrupted sleep and it's frightening. You know it's uh, just one hour, so I just, or two hours of sleep. So going from eight hours on average to six hours, um, you will reduce the amount of uh, what they call uh, killer cells in your body that attack cancer cells. So the protective cells that will go and attack cancer and protect you from that are reduced by up to 70%.

Chris Schneider: 21:14

That's shocking. The craziest one of all that is crazy.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 21:18

So you live in the US and you have daylight savings, right. So twice a year we change the clocks for a reason that makes no sense anymore in our modern, in our modern world, right, but to give you an impact of, uh, how important sleep is to our health every year, when the clocks go forward and we lose an hour of sleep the following monday because it happens on like a saturday night, sunday, the following day, on the monday, there was the following day.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 21:46

On the Monday, there was a 24% increase in the number of heart attacks over any other day in the year and there was a massive increase in the number of car accidents as well. Because sleep is so important? Because when we sleep we get a form of heart medication. We get, um, our brains go through like a cleansing process which, if we don't get like slowly, there's a. There's a compound called beta amyloid which builds up in our brain during the day and then when we sleep at night, um, that's cleansed through our brain.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 22:21

It's kind of, if you imagine, like a city, right A city during the day everyone's busy, hustle, bustle, there's lots of kind of like garbage builds up on the streets, all the rubbish and the litter, and then at night the cleaners come in and kind of clean everything. So the next morning the city is nice and clean again, ready for the day. Imagine that's what our brains are like. But if we're not getting enough sleep, there's not enough of those cleaners coming through to clean the city and then over time things just build up and build up and build up, and that chemical beta amyloid has been linked to some horrible diseases like alzheimer's and other brain degenerative diseases.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 23:01

So sleep is is super important and it's even more important in our industry because we work at night and also because we're drinking, and alcohol impacts the quality of our sleep, so it affects some of the brainwave patterns as we sleep. So, whilst you might be asleep, the quality of that sleep is dog shit, and there's a lot of evidence to show that one of the reasons that hangover is so bad is because it's such disrupted sleep. So, yes, you're asleep, but you're not getting the quality refreshment and recovery of the brain that we need. I mean that's one of the reasons why we feel recovery of the brain that we need. I mean that's one of the reasons why we feel so terrible the night after a big partay.

Chris Schneider: 23:52

So when you really put all that together, we have a lot that we're struggling against, right?

Chris Schneider: 23:56

Because, you're partying, you're drinking, you're not sleeping well, you're doing the same thing over and over and over again and for a lot of folks in our industry, that becomes, unfortunately, really a downward spiral. Absolutely Right, it just gets worse and worse and and um, you know, I know, one of the things that happens, especially in the bar business, that none of us like to discuss, is alcoholism, and it just becomes easier and easier to drink because you're you're falling further and further in this sleep drink cycle. Yep, and so healthy hospo. You started essentially to try to find a way to stop all of that yeah, exactly and and to push back against it.

Chris Schneider: 24:35

And you've been at this. What about six years? I want to say uh yeah, officially 2018.

Chris Schneider: 24:42

We launched unofficially early, late 2017 okay, so, so a little bit over six years and you have created with healthy hospital an organization that is not just for the uk or or for any geographic area. You have a international reach and you have folks on your team with healthy hospital that are literally scattered around the world, whether that's the UK or Italy or New Zealand. So just to fill everybody in a little bit, what's that journey been like in just building that organization out and and kind of a little bit of the backend of that?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 25:19

It's. It's been both the most rewarding work I've ever done in the industry and some of the most challenging and frustrating at the same time, because I think a lot of people recognize the need for it and when we manage to impact people positively, it's unbelievably rewarding. I've had more than one person come up to me and tell me that I've that the work we do at healthy ospo saved their life. You know, and when you get, you know someone reaching out to you like that, you know it makes it all worthwhile and you're like what. You know the whole reason, you know everything that I started and all of the hard work in that one single comment has been a reward.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 26:07

But then, on the other side of it, despite all of the people knowing that it's a good thing and we need to do it, the take up of Healthy Hospital and the take up of our work and what we do is painfully slow by the industry. You know we still ignore our health and well-being and, uh, you know so many places we speak to or we try and talk to like now it's just we're not interested or we don't have the money or it's more important things to do, like replace our bar stools, so it's still not taken seriously and which is hugely frustrating because you know we're not trying to be the fun police, we're not out there like wagging fingers at people.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 26:49

Oh, you shouldn't drink. Oh, drinking is bad. Um, and you know the other drugs that our industry is is renowned for. Um, you know you shouldn't have fun. Oh no, that's terrible thing. You know we're trying to take a preventative approach and say, like, you know, if you're smart and you do things the right way and you put yourself, your put your health as a priority, um, you can have a long and successful and brilliant career in this industry. You know, we try and hold up as inspirational figures people like peter durelli I'm not sure you've come across, but very famous guy in the bar industry who's like 847 years old now, I think, and he's well into his, his 80s, yeah, uh, was the head bartender at the savoy hotel for the longest time, has been a bartender for over six decades and is still contributing to this industry at a very high level. It's still going out, it's still active and I'm like don't you want to be like Peter, if you love this industry so much?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 27:59

as so many bartenders tell me they do to be like peter, aspire to have a long, brilliant, impactful career. You know, and the reason that peter can do that is because he, you know, he puts his health first right. You know, he does yoga every day, he eats a vegetarian diet, he sleeps very well, he chooses when and where he's going to party, because he doesn't go out every night. He doesn't drink every night, but, trust me, when he does go out he will drink all of these young bartenders under the table. He is a monster, but he can do that because he prioritizes his health right and he knows when is the right time to go hard and when is the right time to recover and invest in his health.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 28:45

And that's what we try and say to bartenders. And then, from the business side of things and this is why I think I get most frustrated that business operators don't pick up on this more is health and well-being is the single that. So the health and well-being of your staff is the single biggest investment a bar owner can make in their business. And I think I wish that more bar owners and bar leaders within the industry would acknowledge that and pick up on it, because no one ever came to a bar because you have the best menu or you have top of the range fridges or you have nice bar stores. They come to your bar for how your bar makes them feel or how they feel when they're in your establishment. Because people go out for those experiences. One of my old mentors God rest his soul, gaz Regan, always told me that the job of a bartender is not to make drinks, it's to make sure that everyone that comes into the bar leaves happier than when they arrived.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 29:50

So the job of a bartender is to make people happy, you know, and if one bartender can make 10 people happy on a night, imagine what a million bartenders can do. And a million bartenders can change the world because we can make people happy. You know, you can only make people truly happy on a consistent basis, night after night after night, if you are happy yourself. It's the old analogy, right? You can't you can't fill a cup from an empty cup. So you need to make that you make sure that your cup, your martini glass, your cocktail shake or whatever um is full, so then you can then fill other people's. So it's about kind of taking time to to make sure that you're flowing full, so then your energy can pass on to others so real quick.

Chris Schneider: 30:34

I want to get your take on why you think bar owners in particular are resistant to these sorts of things. Because I talk to a lot of bar bar owners and if you go on Reddit or you look online at what they say, everyone complains I can't find good staff, people quit on me all the time, my overhead is too high and a lot of that is obviously you have a bad culture and that is why you're not maintaining employees. But why do we spend so much effort and I don't know that there's an answer to this but why do we spend so much effort on I'm losing people, I have to hire people, I can't get the right people, and not effort on maintaining those teams and making sure our people are healthy and keeping them engaged and in the industry?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 31:25

that's a great question, um, so I think part part of it is is that it's hard to build good culture. Um, you know it's easy to easier to go out there and treat your staff like shit, just um, you know, shout at them, push them, expect more and more from them, um, because also, that's you know, the way the industry has been showing to us on TV. So it's hard to build a good culture. And also, I think it's not something that has ever been considered before there's not many people out there running courses on how to look after your people, about leadership and management, especially in the buyer industry. I think a lot of our training. We've become very reliant upon brands delivering training for us, and brands don't care about your business. Brands don't care about the leadership or culture within your business.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 32:13

Brands care about your staff knowing about their brands and selling their brands so brands will come out and they'll go like yeah, let me, let us tell your staff about the history of whiskey and the the difference in hemicellulose content between an american oak and european oak and how that impacts the flavor of whiskey some shit that the customers in your bar will never care about. Maybe one guy with a very long gray beard that comes in once a year will care about. But you look at those businesses that that really really well, on a consistent basis. They are the ones that invest time and effort and money into their teams. There's a business here in the UK called Hawksmoor. They have one in New York as well. It's a steakhouse and they invest an enormous amount of not just money but kind of energy and time into their teams. Their staff turnover rate is next to zero. Like I know people that have been all of my friends that I know that work there have been there for 10 plus years. They build their business around their staff well-being, um, you know. So their their recruitment rate costs are super low. Their staff turnover rates are super low.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 33:33

Their uh customer, um, oh, I always say to baron, this is the most important customer you can possibly have in your business is the returning customer, because that's the customer that you have not had to invest any of your marketing budget to bring into your business.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 33:52

That's also the customer that's an advocate for your business, because they've had such a good time the first time they came that they've come back and the likelihood is that they're going to come back with somebody that hasn't been to your business and they're going to go away and talk about your business to their friends, to people and we are all influenced by our close circle of friends. They are the most influential factor in where we go, what we drink and what we eat. So you want to try and make sure that every single person that walks in through your door comes back again. Want to try and make sure that every single person that walks in through your door comes back again. Not that they spend as much money in your restaurant as possible on that single visit, because if they walk away feeling like they've been screwed, they're never coming back and they tell their friends that your restaurant or but your bar screwed them over.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 34:37

But if they have an amazing time, then they're going to come back, and they're going to come back time and time again and they're going to work as an ambassador for your business. It's like free marketing. It is you know, and it's the most impactful form of marketing.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 34:49

It's way more impactful than a social media campaign or, you know, putting up some adverts around town um so trying to kind of convince owners that take some of that marketing budget and invest it into your staff and into your teams, Because if your teams are healthy, happy and having a good time, your customers are going to be having a good time. You know, we've all been into bars and restaurants where the staff are flat.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 35:17

They have no energy and you're like what's wrong with the staff in here? And the vibe in the whole place just sucks. And you're like what's wrong with the staff in here? The vibe in the whole place just sucks. And you're like do I want to come back in here? It's not giving me the good time that I want when I go out and I'm paying for to have a good time. Right, we're not just paying for the drink, because if we were just paying for the drinks.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 35:34

there would be vending machines everywhere and there would be no bartenders. We would just go and put money in the machine, in a machine, um, and you know, trying to get that across. But I think it's also maybe quite a new concept, or maybe a concept that's been forgotten and we need to.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 35:51

We need to bring it back and we need to kind of re-understand what hospitality the genuine word of hospitality really means. You know, it's not squeezing as much money as physically possible out of our guests from the second they walk in the door. It's providing them with genuine hospitality. It's so good that they want to come back because they feel that it's a safe and fun space for them to spend their time and their money in.

Chris Schneider: 36:21

Absolutely, and I think that's something that you know most people that I have on the podcast and most of the conversations I have. That's the reoccurring theme, right Is that hospitality has to come up before everything. Yeah. And I'm a finance guy, I'm a numbers guy. That's the part of the industry I work in, and so I like to talk numbers, but none of the numbers matter unless you have the hospitality, and you cannot have the hospitality unless you have a happy, healthy team. Exactly.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 36:47

Exactly, and if you want to talk numbers, you know we can look at the cost of recruitment right.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 36:53

Staff turnover. You know for most, most venues, their number one cost center is their staff. And you know we were looking at some numbers and for, say, uh, an average bartender, an average bartender leaving your business will cost anywhere from 15 000 to 25 000. That will cost your business for them leaving through the, the revenue lost in the business by that person leaving, the recruitment costs of bringing someone back onto the team, the lost revenue from getting that staff member up to speed as they come into the business, like 25 grand and that's for a junior staff member. If you're looking at senior management or head chefs, you're talking like $100,000 a year in costs Now spending like 10% of that cost to keep those people in the business. You know, say you're a head chef. The math is simple there, right?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 37:53

The math is so simple, right? Why the fuck would you not do it Well?

Chris Schneider: 37:57

especially with bartenders, because you think you know you have a bar, you have 10 bartenders. The average turnover rate, at least here the us, is about 70.

Chris Schneider: 38:06

So seven of those 10 you're going to replace yeah and so so if that only cost say that cost you 20 grand a piece well, that's 140 000 a year wasted training and and doing all these things and having a worse customer experience, and you can't grow a business if you have. You know, seven of your 10 bartenders are different year to year. You're not providing a consistent experience for your guests. No, exactly, and a little investment to keep them healthier and happier and to promote their well-being in that regard becomes very, very cheap.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 38:42

Oh, absolutely, being in that regard becomes very, very cheap. Oh, absolutely. And that's that doesn't even factor into the calculations the costs of increased absenteeism through staff and poor health presenteeism, which is obviously not discussed in our industry. Enough of people being at work but just going through the motions, not giving it 100.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 39:00

You know, as a borrower, when your staff you're paying staff to be at work, you want them to give 100. If they're only giving 60 because they're tired, they're not feeling good or they're just generally grumpy about the the culture within your business, you're only getting 60 out of them, but you're paying them for 100 right so again you're losing money there.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 39:22

Right it's, it's a, and they say presenteeism is a much bigger loss to business than absenteeism. And it's just mad that, like I can't think of another industry that would tolerate staff turnover rates of 70, I don't even know how businesses, how you can stay in business when you're replacing 70% of your staff over a year. How is this even possible?

Chris Schneider: 39:49

The only way I think it's possible is that we've all gotten used to it and unfortunately we've all accepted it and rather than and this is a problem, I think in the industry as a whole. But a lot of times we run up because we have these small companies right. You know, most bars are independent. Most of those places employ 10, maybe 20 people. They're small operations and it makes the owner so used to. I have to be the plumber, I have to be the mechanic. I have to be able to fix the fridge. I have to be able to cook, I have to be able to bartend. Plumber, I have to be the mechanic. I have to be able to fix the fridge. I have to be able to cook, I have to be able to bartend that. We get really good at plugging holes that exist, but don't take the time to say why did that hole exist? What is?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 40:31

the actual underlying problem yep, exactly, or is there a member of my staff that's really good at plumbing that can come and help me out? Um, it's just something. Again, the hawks, more do you know. They find the interest and the skill set of the people you know and they promote them up through the business because you know, if you're great at plumbing and the bar owner comes and says, hey, I need some help, can you help me with this? Um, yeah, of course I'd love to help a lot of people. You know they want to indulge in their passions and I think you know it's I don't know, I know we also like, if you know, if you're a small bar owner, it's your dream, right, for most people it's their dream to own a bar. Um, something they've really aspired to. So surely you'd want to make it fun. Surely, like when you're at work, you'd want to make it fun. Surely, like when you're at work, you'd want to surround yourself with people that want you to be there, that you enjoy the company of, and when you're there, you're having fun and you feel like a good time.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 41:35

My wife is a sommelier in a local venue in town which I won't name. Um venue in town which I won't name. But when her, the owner of the, the venue, comes in, all of the staff are just like oh, for fuck's sakes, this is going to be awful and they all hate it, hate him being there. And I'm like why? Why would you? Why do you even have the business in the first place if you make your staff feel so terrible about being there and when you go in, your staff are so on edge and miserable about you being there that no one's having a good time right and it makes no sense to me it, was it because it can't right I mean there's.

Chris Schneider: 42:15

There's no way that we can talk about why we have toxic queer cultures. We can talk about why we have toxic work cultures. We can talk about how the industry has promoted those for years, but I cannot think of a single way that you can justify some of the toxic work cultures that we just accept as being normal.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 42:33

No, even like from from also. But there it's. It's just how you treat humans and being a good human, you know, even if you don't give a flying crap about that, surely the financials of it, the black and white numbers on the page, show you that investing in your staff is this the best investment you can make, and it doesn't have to cost anything. All right, because you can take money from another cost center and invest it in your staff. Right? You go like oh, we change our men. I work in bars. Right, so everyone's got oh, we change our menu every three months. Great, change your menu every six months and take that money that you would have invested in many development and spend it on your stuff. Not a single one of your customers will care that you only change your menu twice a year instead of four times a year, but your customers will care that your staff are much happier and having a better time, giving a better customer experience.

Chris Schneider: 43:31

And I think something that is worth pointing out in that part of the cost. With Healthy Hospital, you guys have a lot of I know you do in-person training, but you also have a lot of online courses that are available, and those online courses tend to actually not be very expensive. I know you have a whole set of them that is for free, for specifically targeted towards bartenders and people that work in the industry to help them out, but then most of them I think we're what right around five pounds.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 44:02

So we've just changed our pricing structure, so all the foundation courses we do we've made more free to access now, and those cover a variety of topics from sleep to nutrition, to mental fitness, to exercise, to burnout and a variety of other subjects. And then we have a series of expert level courses which are written by kind of world renowned experts on a number of subjects, and those are five pounds for the course. So great value, I think, at least Absolutely. And when it's free, why would you not want your staff to get involved in them? We have them online. We also have them in app format, so on your Apple phone, your iPhone or your Android phone.

Chris Schneider: 44:52

Do you have many people that work those into their training programs?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 44:58

Not enough. I would say Not enough.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 45:02

I wish that we would get more, because they're a great tool. We can come and do in-person trainings and we do a lot of in-person trainings and they're very impactful for the people who are in the room. But, as you know, in an operations-focused industry it's very hard to get everyone in the room. You can't close the bar in the middle of service. Go, excuse me, we're just gonna um do a training on sleep for an hour. Just just entertain yourselves, customers, while we're going to do a training, um. So having those digital formats allows us to reach many more people and also act as a kind of a resource that people can tap into at any time. Yes, it's always there.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 45:43

You can't don't just have to wait until we turn up and to run a course you can kind of constantly. Maybe you came to a course and then that information is all online for you still to access so what for everyone that's listening?

Chris Schneider: 45:59

what tim just said is you should move, you should work his programs into your induction program when you onboard people.

Chris Schneider: 46:06

Set them up for success and make sure that you're cutting off the bad habits and the bad health at the beginning. Because you know and I think if I was, it's been a while since I've been on the bartending side of things right and kind of in that employee position. But I know personally, if I went into a job and they said, okay, here's your training, but as part of your induction, as part of your training, we're going to help you with some things that are great for your health and and force you to look at some of this stuff, I would feel better about working there oh, absolutely absolutely right, because they show they care it's.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 46:41

it's all about that culture that we've been talking about for how your menus are laid out and the seating plan in your restaurant and making sure the service is perfect. But if your culture sucks, your business will fail Absolutely. One of my favorite stories, kind of coming out of the COVID era, was all the stuff that 11 Madison Park sorry, 11 Madison Avenue. Did you know when the restaurant was closed and how? They asked themselves you know we are a restaurant for the rich. You know it's incredibly expensive to come to this restaurant. Um, but how, as a restaurant, during this time where no one can come to us, how can we give back to our community? You know, and they kept all their staff on board and then they created the, the community kitchen. You know, and they were delivering michelin star quality food and that world best restaurant quality food to homeless people across new york, people attending food banks.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 47:58

I mean, it's something they continue to do to this day and that doesn't do anything, that doesn't bring any money into the business, but from a culture perspective, like chefs going home at the end of a shift, like knowing they've done something, they've contributed positively to society that they've impacted people's lives that are, that are much worse off than them, you know, rather than just making food for the wealthy, and that's a kind of a culture that, I think, makes a lot of people aspire to, want to go and work there, and once they're working, they have to stay there.

Chris Schneider: 48:34

Well, it's the kind of culture that, at the end of the day, also make sure that your guests are getting the best experience. Yeah, if your team is getting the best experience. Yeah, because if you don't have a great, you know, guest experience is key among everything, but to have a great guest experience, that team experience has to be in place. Yeah, right.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 48:54

One feeds the other. Yeah, and it's taking that old adage of the customer is always right and saying no. Because that that that simple phrase has led a lot of poor managers in our industry to put the the customer on a pedestal and criticize staff and and not make staff feel valued by the company. You know when it's truth is, the customer is sometimes right, but you should always back your staff because the customer will go and the customer that's that has an issue and is arguing and uh and belittling staff and complaining chances are that that customer will never come back to your business again, ever right. But your staff member will come back tomorrow and the day after and the day after and the day after, um, and so you want to make sure that they feel supported. Maybe they're right they're not always right either, you know.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 49:52

I'm not saying the staff member is always right but they need to feel supported um so I think, flipping that narrative on its head and and saying that the customer is not always right and the customer is always, for some reason, when people walk into hospitality venues, a lot of people become entitled pricks. They do Perfectly normal people, perfectly polite, normal, reasonable, friendly people. The way that they'll talk to service staff in a bar or a restaurant is so out of character and I don't understand the psychology behind it, but I've seen it firsthand.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 50:33

I've had to tell friends and colleagues off before their behavior. In bars and restaurants there's something about the psychology of when you're expecting service. The way you treat those people is um it's different it is.

Chris Schneider: 50:49

But again, the if you have the good team culture, if, if your team has the tools to be able to deal with that and and they know not to take it personally and they have the, they have a good mental health base position, you're never going to get rid of the asshole customer. That's one of the things in our industry that none of us like but all of us have gotten very used to dealing with. But when you have personally the tools to deal with that better, you can hopefully get the customer not to be an asshole. But if you can't, at least you survive the interaction.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 51:27

Yeah, exactly. So we talk about mental fitness and resilience. So, rather than using the term mental health which, uh, is a term that's used a lot these days, but for us it it kind of embodies things going wrong so people are going of associate mental health with therapy and the illnesses that come along with mental health, whereas we say like, let's let's reframe that phrase into mental fitness, and so it's about being mentally fit all of the time. So, you know, our approach is very, uh, preventative. So, rather than waiting for shit to happen, let's make sure that that shit doesn't happen in the first place, you know. So, sleep well, eat well, do some exercise, make sure you have a good circle of friends, that kind of stuff uh, none of it's rocket science, it's all very basic. But, as they say, common sense is far from common. Um, it's very true. And then, very basic, but, as they say, common sense is far from common, um, it's very true. And then you know, we talk about resilience a lot. That you know.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 52:28

And one of the professionals who worked with this amazing guy called Peter Milijev. Um, with him, we teach people how to build what he calls a shit hit fan toolkit, cause at some point the shit will hit the fan right fan toolkit, because at some point the shit will hit the fan right. That that is a 100 statement of fact. But it's all about what happens. How do we cope when the shit hits the fan? What do we? You know what's our strategies for dealing with those moments and how do we resolve them.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 53:03

And that, I think, is is a really important part of what we do is building that resilience because, as you say, you will have the arsehole customer come in. But it's, how do you deal with that arsehole customer you know? So often yeah, you've worked in the industry like post shift everyone is just bitching about those arsehole customers. Oh, yeah, yeah, and everyone's forgotten the great customers that have come in that have been like really complimentary and really nice, but that one customer that came in that said some shit words or treated their staff like that's what we focus on. So it's you know how do we build that resilience toolkit to make sure that you're not taking it home from work with you and letting it impact your sleep and your, your mental well-being well, and that's that's huge, because the more, the more resilient all of us can be in this industry, the better off we are, because it's there's a lot getting thrown at us day in and day out, exactly, and it's the how to the communication strategies to diffuse those.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 54:00

Those moments as well are really important rather than let them escalate, which I don't again. How often are frontline staff and our industry taught communication skills? You just expect everybody to be great communicators, when a lot of people are not great communicators because they found their way into hospitality, because it's a low bar of entry. You don't quite often the only qualifications that you need that you have two arms and two legs yeah you know, and sometimes you don't even need two arms or two legs.

Chris Schneider: 54:33

When you're one arm or one leg, you'll still get a job, and you know, the other thing too is that a lot of us in this industry we got into it when we were 13, 14, as a first job and I don't know I I mean, I can tell you right now, when I first started in the restaurant business, I did not intend to stay in the restaurant and bar business right, most of us we did it as a thing and then suddenly we were like trapped, yeah, and so it's, uh, it's, but it's partially because it's a wonderful industry.

Chris Schneider: 55:04

It probably is, yeah. But to your point, that also doesn't mean that we necessarily have the same I hate to say it this way, but it's true the same educational base that exists in a lot of other industries. We don't have the same tools, we're just kind of thrown in and we grow through it and figure it out for ourselves as we go. Yeah, and I think one of the great parts of industry. We're just kind of thrown in and we grow through it and figure it out for ourselves as we go.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 55:23

Yeah, I think one of the great parts of industry is that we do have a very diverse staffing set, you know, and it does have a low barrier entry, so people from all cultures and all backgrounds and all education levels can come in and find a home within our industry.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 55:38

And I think that's a wonderful thing, but from a training perspective, we don't have a lot of training and, as I said before, a lot of that is because it's relied on brands or any training that is independent often is based on technical skills. Let's teach a bartender how to make a great martini, how to make a manhand, how to shake, cut, do all skills. Why are we not teaching bartenders how to talk to people?

Chris Schneider: 56:08

It's a far more important part of their job tools to be able to work through everything in the industry. Yeah, because because that is really so important and it's and it's, you know, like when we started this conversation just it's something we don't do enough, and it's it needs more attention and it needs more owners, like we talked about, with the cost of replacing people and the turnover that we face. More folks need to be focused on it and willing to invest in it, because you do have a better customer environment. You take care of your guests better when you do those things.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 56:53

Yeah, and as a buyer, owner, you're going to make more money and your costs will be lower. Your margins will increase. So why the hell wouldn't you do it?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 57:00

It literally, is one of those win, win, win win scenarios. You win as a business owner, your staff win because they're having a better time at work and your customers win because they get a better experience when they come to you. But I'm like, who's not winning in this situation? The, the, the health care industry, and the, the health insurance industry, and those are two very powerful industries in the US.

Chris Schneider: 57:31

Hey there, bar owners, it's Chris Schneider, the bar business coach. Are you tired of the daily grind and ready to skyrocket your profits? I've got the solution. With my coaching and consulting services, we deep dive into menu management, team empowerment and business optimization. Instead of slogging away in your business day in and day out, washing dishes, covering for employees and working 60 plus hours a week, picture this a thriving business that runs like clockwork, whether you're there or not, letting you enjoy the successes that you've dreamed of. Let's make it happen.

Chris Schneider: 57:59

Visit barbusinesscoachcom to schedule your free 30-minute strategy session with me, or you can book a session just by clicking the link in the show notes below. Together, we will turn your business into a profit powerhouse, because at the Bar Business Coach, our only goal is to help you spend less time working in your bar and more time working on your bar. One of the other things that you're big on is sustainability, and so it's also something in the industry that we hardly ever talk about. Yep, and you have really focused on sustainability through Avalon, which is your spirits company, and you're doing. Um, I, for the life of me, can never pronounce that word, right, is it Cavalados, calvados, calvados, calvados, okay, which is an apple-based spirit and you're doing it out of Normandy in a way that is very unique.

Chris Schneider: 59:06

And that is really sustainable compared to how all other liquor in the world essentially is made. Yes, and if I'm not mistaken, your goal is to be the most sustainable spirits company in the world.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 59:18

That's the plan. We've certainly won enough awards to be able to justify it, seeing as Grey Goose won one award for the best tasting vodka in the world and they dined out on it ever since. I think that was like in 1999, and they continue to tell people they're the world's best tasting vodka, right?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 59:34

um uh, yeah, so the, you know, with avalanche it was my lifelong. You know, I grew up in the countryside, very close to nature, so for me environmental protection, um, has been extremely important my whole life. You know, when you see something so beautiful around you, you want to protect it. So being able to take my experience from being behind the bar and my time at Diageo and put that into a brand with an incredible partner in Stephanie Jordan, has been a dream come true. We didn't set out to make a Calvados. We set out to make the world's most sustainable drinks brand or spirits brand.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:00:18

But knowing that all alcohol with the exception of Air Company vodka, which is made from captured CO2, all alcohol starts its life as an agricultural product.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:00:32

Yet when we look at sustainability in the drinks industry, we mostly talk about what happens at the distillery and the room and packaging and we kind of ignore the agricultural impact.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:00:45

Unless you're a wine maker, wine industry really understands it's very connected to to the vineyards and the terroir and the soil and they understand that what happens in the soil and the state of the soil impacts the flavor of the final product. So we went back and we said you know, if we're going to be true to this mission, we've got to go right back to the start of agricultural product, of alcoholic production. And it doesn't start at the distillery, it starts in the fields, the orchards, the vineyards, the plantations. And let's go back to that and ask the question, which we don't know if anyone else has asked, but what's the best ingredient to make alcohol from from an environmental perspective? So let's forget category, just the kind of number one defining characteristic, because people go, I want to launch a rum, I want to launch a tequila, I want to make a gin, which then locks you into that raw material you're going to use.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:01:42

so let's find out the best raw material from the environmental perspective and let that, Let that research, guide us to what we're going to make. So we looked at cereal grains, sugar cane, agave, grapes and apples across four metrics of carbon emissions biodiversity, water and pesticide, fertilized use and the apples of Normandy came out on top in every single category. And then we were like, ooh, we're going to make a Calvados aren't we?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:02:16

There's a category of alcohol I need for any drinks, but within that we saw a real opportunity to create a young, modern take on the category that's very much aimed at a bartender's and mixed drinks as a category, it's really kind of cornered itself into a digestive world and people just don't drink like that anymore. You know, maybe like in the 80s, 70s and 80s, that was, you know, a a serious occasion. For the number of people that kind of after dinner got like, oh, I would like a, that was a serious occasion. But the number of people that kind of after dinner got like, oh, I would like a neat spirit to follow my dinner is diminishing. Yes, people want to drink cocktails and spritters and highballs. So we wanted to make a liquid that was very much tailored for that cocktail scene but really led the industry forward on sustainability, starting with the most sustainable raw material we could possibly find side with the apples is the biodiversity you're getting in Normandy and how it's apples but it's also wildflowers and it's a lot of.

Chris Schneider: 1:03:39

This is to help bees and bees survive. Which is a huge issue that not enough people talk about in general is we're losing bees and we're losing pollinators, which is terrible for the environment. But you found a way to tie the booze to the apples, to the wildflowers, to the bees without the.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:03:59

Without the bees, there's no apples. Yeah, so without the bees, there's no apples, there's no avalanche. So it's also a little bit selfish that we're protecting our business. Um, but you're right, like if you, have you ever been to ohio? Yeah, uh, is it ohio? I know iowa, where they have all of the corn uh both of them, but iowa is yeah famed, famed for its corn. Or, as donald trump famously said liquid, not gold. No, not liquid gold. And I'm like pretty sure gold is just not liquid gold that's true too but you can.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:04:36

You know you can drive to where they grow the corn and I went to when I was at with bullet in kentucky, getting onto the back of the truck and 360 degrees, you can only see two things, and that's corn and the road that you drove along there's no, there's not a tree, there's not a bird, there's not an insect, it's just corn, and that is really unnatural and it's really bad for our environment in so many ways. Um so, when you come to the orchards in normandy because what makes them really great is not that they're an apple orchard per se, but it's that they're a traditional apple orchard apples can be grown and are grown in the us and across china in a monoculture kind of fashion.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:05:24

So single species in a huge area, nothing in between, maybe some grass in between, and then pollinated by honeybees. The orchards in normandy are very small. You have multiple species of apple within an orchard. There's a large distance between the rows of trees. So the reason for having multiple species in the large row is if one species of apple got infected, it wouldn't move across the entire order because the next species over would be a different species and it would be a significant distance away. So even if the the disease did transfer the chances are, because it was a different species that it might be uh, it wouldn't be vulnerable to that disease as the other ones, which is the risk that tequila faces all of the time, because it's one genetic variety of agave, you know. So if something happens to that genetic variety, the entire crop could be wiped out.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:06:27

And then in between those, those rows, you've got um wildflower meadows, grass and wildflowers, which is very important to help the health of the bees, because we rely on wild bees. We're not bringing hives into the to the orchards, okay. And then around the outside you'll have hedgerows and quite often you also have pear trees in the orchards as well, and those hedgerows will have different species like blackberries. You also have pear trees in the orchards as well and those hedgerows will have different species. Like blackberries, you'll have different trees in there, maybe some hawthorn bushes. So again, it's just, you know, it's not as biodiverse as a wild forest, but from a farming system.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:07:03

It is beautifully biodiverse and regenerative and all of the good things that we need from our agricultural system, rather than stripping the land from as much nutrients and life as possible and then replacing that with fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides, which then seeps into our water systems. Then our water becomes polluted, our rivers and oceans become dead zones, all in the service of making the fossil fuel industry as much money as possible sure, um, and so that's.

Chris Schneider: 1:07:39

I just think that's so cool because I personally I love nature. I live out in the woods, I'm kind of a country guy myself and it's uh. There's something so magical about natural environments and the way they work and the way that nature has worked for centuries to be able to interact with each other, right when every plant, every animal has a purpose, and being able to for lack of a better word capitalize on that right. Because you are capitalizing on it, you are making money off of it, but at the same time you're making a product and making money in a way that's not negatively impacting nature. And what's great to me is, to your earlier point, you're doing it from, you know, the start of the agriculture through the end product, and one of the things on the end product that's really cool that I have not seen anyone else do and you had mentioned there are a few other folks that do it but getting away from glass bottles. Yes.

Chris Schneider: 1:08:38

And so tell us a little bit about that, what it's like, and also what's it like using a paper bottle behind a bar, because I feel like a lot of people you say paper bottle, they're just going to freak out, but what is that actual experience?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:08:51

Sure, let's be clear Single-use glass is the problem here. Single-use glass is the waste product of the environmental aspect that our industry doesn't really want to talk about. It's starting to slowly, thankfully, but I would argue that single-use glass is worse than single-use plastic. Yet we are all aware of the issues of single-use plastic and I have this conversation often that you know people talk about.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:09:28

Plastic in the oceans is the number one kind of topic that comes up. Yet plastic in our oceans is not even in the top three risk factors to our oceans. The number one factor that our oceans are at risk from is climate change. So we can kind of move away from simply use plastic and take it all out of our oceans. Move away from single-use plastic and take it all out of our oceans, but ignore climate change and our oceans will still die. The vast majority of life in our oceans will die because we haven't impacted climate change. But if we tackle climate change first, we can then get to single-use plastic once our oceans are safe. And there's also an amazing number of people out there doing incredible work to remove plastic from our oceans. You know whether it's the ocean cleanup project?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:10:16

or even mother nature, right, mother nature. You know, there's microbes, uh, in the oceans that have now adapted to eating plastic. Your nature is incredible and it will adapt, um, beautifully so. And what I'm not saying is that that single use plastic isn't a problem. What I'm saying is that glass is worse, because glass has an incredibly high embodied uh carbon footprint, because we have to take sand, and we have to take sand from beaches, um, you know. So we're using digging up our beaches to make glass bottles, and there's a staggering amount of glass bottles made every year. It's something like even our industry makes like nine bottles per person per year for everyone on the planet. There's some sort of like. It's like 70 million single-use glass bottles just for the food and drink industry per year.

Chris Schneider: 1:11:07

I believe it.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:11:09

Which is nine bottles per person per year. Single use. That sand has to be melted down at incredibly high temperatures and those furnaces at present are only able to be fired by fossil fuels coal or oil or gas. And there's a high water content as well used to make those gases, those bottles. So not only is there a high carbon footprint and it's as a very rough calculation, it's a one-to-one so for like.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:11:36

So in america, like one pound of glass that you've made, you have one pound of co2 emitted into the atmosphere through the production of that. Oh, wow, um. But it goes beyond just the production of the bottle. So then a lot of people will say, yeah, but glass is infinitely recyclable. You know, technically it is, but there's very few 100% recycled glass bottles out there. Most will contain a percentage of glass bottle and the ones that are super, super expensive and super white are complete virgin glass. But the recycling of glass is also incredibly energy intensive. So the savings that you're making from recycling the glass are very small, maybe like 20 saving um in energy costs. And our industry is incredibly wasteful.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:12:27

In fact we've got more wasteful over time, you know, as our society in general has become a very disposable society and we just put stuff in the recycling or throw it in the bin rather than reuse it. And the spirits industry is the worst because we have the least circular systems available to us. So, you know, looking at solutions that are either much more lower impact when it comes to single use so, for example, the paper body you just mentioned or, even better than that, looking at circular systems, because the beer industry has had circular systems forever and we're well used to seeing them, working with them, experiencing them in kegs. You know, a brewery doesn't throw the keg away once it's empty. Right, you know it'll take it back, clean it, refill it. That's a circular system. It's fantastic. But until very recently, until the launch of Eco Spirits, those circular systems didn't really exist in the industry. You might have like a local distillery, you know, selling some bulk in every fillable solution to its local bars but, on a larger scale that didn't really exist.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:13:38

So we work with a company called eco spirits, um, on those circular systems as well. And then our paper bottle, which is, uh, really exciting and gets lots of attention. Um, so it's a describe it simply, it's a bag in bottle. So we familiar with like wine and it's bag in box, you know, box wine it's a similar concept to that.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:14:00

So you have a, a cardboard box that's in the shape of a bottle with a pouch on the inside that holds it. Um, the reason why this is good and better than something like a tetra pack you know, so we're used to going to the, the supermarket and getting our juice in a tetra pack is that tetra packs are layers that are bonded, glued together, which makes it very, very difficult to recycle them. Because you've got to be able to recycle it. You've got to unbond all of those layers to get the separate materials out, which is resource and time consuming to recycle. So that's why almost all Tetra Pak is not recycled. Our bottle is simply a cardboard shell with a pouch suspended on the inside, so you can separate the two. Once it's finished, the cardboard goes in your cardboard recycling as if it was just a piece of paper you know some paper and then the pouch goes in your plastic recycling and so both, both elements are recyclable.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:14:58

And then, from a production perspective, uh, the bottle only weighs 80 grams okay so it's insanely light and when bartenders pick it up for the first time they're like, oh, this is half full and you Nope, that's an unopened bottle and it was a what. Can't believe that. It's fun to see bartenders freak out for that, but it's got one sixth of the embodied carbon from production and one fifth of the water footprint of a single use glass bottle. Oh wow.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:15:27

So from a recycling perspective it's much better. From a production perspective it's much better. You also have uh slightly lower transportation emissions because the the bottle is a fraction in most glass bottles will be 500 grams and above. We have a very light glass bottle for us which is 450 grams, but that's very much on the light end of glass bottles.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:15:51

For spirits, you know, and there are some some glass bottles out there that hold spirits that are well over a kilogram um you know, but the paper bottle weighs 80 grams and then beyond that you can have loads of fun with the design and packaging, because you've got the entire bottle to play with. So you're not just limited to the design on the stickers, maybe two or three stickers on the bottle and you can play with the whole bottle and have a lot of fun with it and if, for anyone listening to this, go look up avalan and look at their bottles, because they're to tim's point.

Chris Schneider: 1:16:24

The bottle designs themselves are very cool. Thank you, um, and it's it's. It does definitely have a different feel to it uh, just looking at it than a glass bottle because, to your point, it's printed all around but it it definitely would make it a showstopper behind a bar right, it's a bottle that your eyes would be drawn to, for sure absolutely.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:16:43

And then just I've just to answer you the second part of your question. So, um, so if you have it in the well and you're picking up by the neck all the time, it's not going to last very long, because the weak point of the bottle is the neck. It's not the fact that it gets wet, because it holds up really well, actually against some water, um, but the neck gets a bit wibbly, wobbly. But where we found it it's really good is it has great standout on the shelf. People like what's that?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:17:15

but for bars any bar that batches cocktails using the paper bottle with avalanche is a massive advantage because once you've emptied it it just breaks down into a flat piece of cardboard and a very small pouch, so the volume of the waste is extremely small, whereas if you're using normal glass bottles, so the volume of the waste is extremely small, whereas if you're using normal glass bottles, right, you are getting a bin full of glass bottles unless you have on site a machine to grind them down into sand, which I know makers Mark did for a few bars for a while, but I don't know any bars that have those machines anymore.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:17:47

So from a batching perspective it's actually really really good. So we've kind of trying to say to bars now like if you don't have the eco spirits, which is the best solution for batching, take our paper bottle, because it's significantly better from a just from a waste perspective for your venue. And you've worked in bars, you know the the issues that bars have with the waste generation because brands just push the you know, we just push the have with the waste generation because brands just push the.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:18:11

You know, we just pushed the responsibility of the waste down onto the bar and we go like, yeah, you buy our stuff but we're not responsible for the waste. That's your problem now. You know where do you put the bins. And then the noise at night. You know, especially in cities. Now you're not allowed to empty your bins at night because they're so noisy. You don allowed to empty your bins at night because they're so noisy. You don't have any of these problems with the cardboard bottle.

Chris Schneider: 1:18:33

Well and especially, I feel like it's uh, unfortunately, in the us. It's how recycling works, very state to state, county to county, area, area, right, and I know, like um, my bar was in indianapolis but my options for recycling were basically zero.

Chris Schneider: 1:18:53

I was left in a position I could have thrown everything in the back of my truck and driven it somewhere because I didn't have a spot to pay for even a recycling bin, so everything went into the trash, not necessarily because we wanted to, but just because that was the only real conceivable way to do it at the volume that we were doing. Yeah, um, and to your point, I don't know how many beer bottles I threw away. Oh, yeah, you know, I mean thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. Yeah, yeah, and having something that would be better.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:19:31

Each one of those beer bottles has got maybe 250 grams of CO2 embodied in its production and then, if it gets recycled, more CO2. I know that some states a perishingly small number have bottle return schemes. Yeah.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:19:49

But I know that Bernie Sanders was a big advocate for that a bottle return scheme so you can use the bottles again, again, um, and especially with beer, it's a much simpler process. I remember when I used to run bars in new zealand. Some of it new zealand famously, has like 750 mil um beers okay, we call them tallies and they're very kind of like kiwi brands. They're loved and they've been around forever. Things like lion red and by caddo draft. But those models would come.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:20:19

You know we were super high in cocktail bar but we would order them because it was a like the fun, playful beers that we had and people loved it. Right, they would come in for you know, 25 manhattan and then they would have like a four dollar like giant beer next to it and people loved it. Those bottles were really cool. So on the bottom of the bottle you, they would have like little notch glass notches and a virgin bottle. There would be 10 of them, uh, and then you, we would keep the bottles with the crate and we'd keep the crate and then when we get our beer delivery they would take the bottles away and every time a bottle would go back to the brewery and get used, cleaned and reused. They would just sand off one of the notches at the bottom of the bottle. Okay.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:21:04

So those bottles were used 11 times in total and that is just a really simple way and every time you're using it you're reducing the footprint and also you're going to kind of you get the bottle and you'd be like, oh, there's only one notch left on this bottle.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:21:18

I wonder who else is drunk from this bottle right you know, maybe someone famous maybe margot robbie drank from this bottle, or leonardo dicaprio, or something you know and it's just a really good way that the beer industry is so far ahead of spirits when it comes to sustainability from its packaging perspective, from beer kegs or to reusing bottles. And we do have the systems. We can do it. Um, if we want to, we just choose to throw things away and pass responsibility onto someone else mm-hmm that is for sure.

Chris Schneider: 1:21:51

True, now with um I've, alan, I know from your website. One of the other things that you talk about that I want to touch on real quick, cause I think it's it's an interesting conversation, is the concept of greenwashing Ooh, yeah, and, and a lot of companies out there making things seem greener than they actually are versus your approach, which is just, this is what we do and it's as green as it can be.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:22:15

Yeah yeah, uh, be transparent. You know it's words like green and recyclable. If I ever see the word recyclable again, or a company claiming that their products are recyclable. Um, so, unfortunately, sustainability has become like a buzzword for marketing and a key trend. Um, so every brand wants to be seen to be sustainable, because they'll get criticized if they're not right. Um, and there's been very little legislation and regulation around any of these terms or what companies do. So companies have just said all sorts of things. You know I saw a green awards the other day where coca-cola won an award for their sustainability. Like, they are the single biggest producer of single-use plastic bottles in the world and they have all of the resources in the world to change and make a positive impact, and yet they choose to do precious little with it.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:23:19

Um, you know, and we see all sorts of terms. You know brands claiming to be sustainable, yet using industrial monocrops. Um, you know, using relying on pesticides and fertilizers, lying about their products, because in our industry, we have to tell a frighteningly small amount of information about our product to the end user of the product. I own a drinks brand, so I'm aware of the legislation and the legal requirements that we have to put on our bottle the minimum legal requirements. We don't really have to say anything at all, apart from the category it is. It's ABV, where it's made. Don't have to tell people what it's made from Right. Don't have to tell people the ingredients in there. Don't have to tell people anything about its environmental right. I have to tell people the ingredients in there. I have to tell people anything about its environmental. Don't have to tell people how to deal with the waste, the sustainability, how it's made. Um, so for us it was.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:24:20

We really wanted to set a gold standard of. You know, this is as good as you can be and this is where everyone should aim for. I think when you have a company that's at the top, it gives the other companies something to aim for. Like, you know, patagonia probably the archetypal top of the top of the tree company that every company, no matter what industry, you know, wants to be more like patagonia, and we're trying to be that for the drinks industry.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:24:46

So it's about going beyond minimum legislation, um, avoiding all of these terms that we know are green, like, I'm sure that that you know the brand, brand managers and marketeers and these, the people that that do all this greenwashing. They know that they're greenwashing because you know they're smart people, right. You know when you're not being 100 transparent or truthful about something or you're using language to be a bit murky about your product and we try and go above and beyond. So there's some. You know there is new legislation coming in, um, in europe at least.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:25:26

I'm not sure what it's like in the us that's putting legislation in place to try and stop some of the greenwashing terms. So now you won't be able to get away with our bottle is 100 percent recyclable and you're like that's just a bland statement. You know you won't be able to use terms like eco-friendly and other stuff like this, and you won't be able to use terms like kind of net zero or climate positive without publishing your strategies or publishing the data. You know for us we are. We call ourselves climate positive, um, because we, through our production process, we remove more co2 from the atmosphere than we produce, but we publish all of that data. You can go on our website.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:26:10

You can find all of our life cycle analysis, all of the calculations, from the liquid to the bottle, to the packaging, also to the transportation, everything that we say about is published online. You know our b corp scores. All of our donations to to charitable organizations is all public for everyone to see and we don't hide it away.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:26:32

We make it front and center, so you might go on our website and you might go like oh, that's a pretty website, I just want to learn about some drinks and find some recipes, that's great. But you might want to go in there and do a deep dive, and so you can kind of click through all the links and you can find all that information on there. We're trying to be very transparent. You know we're the first brand that we know of that's put all of our environmental information on the back of the label so you can find our carbon footprint, our water footprint, the ingredients that we're made from um on the label and going above and beyond just minimum legislation to to try and set a gold standard.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:27:07

You know we're not perfect. We make a lot of mistakes and there's lots of stuff that you know. If we had more money I would like to invest further in and hopefully down the line we will be able to invest further into those things. But you know, for the size of company we are the budget we're trying to do the best that we can and be as transparent as possible about both the good things that we do but also the things that we're not so good at and the areas that we have to improve.

Chris Schneider: 1:27:34

Well, and for everybody listening, you should go check out the website because, a it's a cool product but B to your point, there's way more information on there than you would see on almost any other website. You know, it's the difference between most spirits companies. I feel like you go to their website and it's like oh, this is our story. We get corn from here and we get barley from here and we make this. And then it's cool when your story goes way more in depth about the actual production process but also the impact of that and how it works and why you do the things you do. So if anyone wants a good example of what a sustainable spirits company looks like, that's the website to check out. It's totally different information wise than what you see in the rest of the market.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:28:23

One of my favorite parts is if you go through it, we hid all the bees. We didn't hide them, and there's bees all through the website, because we do a lot of education around, uh, wild bees, so we don't just talk about honeybees. So we talk about bumblebees and mason bees and leafcutter bees. So you can click on the bees and you can find like a little bit of information about all those different bees.

Chris Schneider: 1:28:41

That's one of my favorite parts, personally of the website I did not find that when I was on there earlier.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:28:45

Yeah, so when you see a bee, just roll the cursor over the bee and a little bit of information will come up about the bee. Oh cool.

Chris Schneider: 1:28:54

Well, with that, we've talked for quite a while.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:28:57

I did warn you.

Chris Schneider: 1:28:59

You did, you did and it's been a fantastic conversation, thank you. But with everything we've touched on, is there anything that we have not hit on that you think it's important for people to know regarding sustainability or health and hospitality? Any of the top, uh, I think?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:29:15

I think we've covered most of it, I you know, for anyone listening, what I would just just really ask is just kind of really invest in your staff and your team, um, within your business. It's the single most important investment you can make towards the success of your business. You, it's the single most important investment you can make towards the success of your business. I love this industry to death and it's given me so much and I just really want to see businesses thrive. I want to see the industry thriving.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:29:43

I know it's been an incredibly difficult time through COVID and now cost of living crisis and this kind of never-ending wealth gap between the ultra wealthy and everyone else. But you know, hospitality is such and I sometimes I don't think we realize what an impactful and important sector it is to society. So invest in your staff, invest in your teams it really is the best thing you can do for your business and also list Avalent in your bar. It will make your bar more sustainable. To be more sustainable in a bar, the single easiest and most impactful thing that you can do is not switch your menu to being a vegan menu or install solar panels on the roof. It's just to buy sustainable products. So do some research. Buy sustainable products, the easiest and most impactful way you can improve the environmental footprint of your business.

Chris Schneider: 1:30:46

Well, I think those are two great notes to kind of wrap us up For everybody that's listening though. Um, in the show notes we will put links for healthy Haspo. We will put links for Avon. Is there any other contact information or anything that you want people to have as far as getting ahold of you?

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:31:02

Uh, that, that's all there. If you want to follow me on Instagram, it's ginger bitters, um, but I you know, but I'm fairly easy to find online.

Chris Schneider: 1:31:11

Well cool, so we'll make sure that's all linked in the show notes. If you want to learn more about Tim, get involved with using healthy hospos, courses and things for your team, or are interested in expanding your spirit selection to include things that are more sustainable. But with that, folks, that'll wrap us up for today. Tim, thank you so much for being here this has been again just a wonderful conversation.

Tim Etherington-Judge: 1:31:36

It's a pleasure. I've really enjoyed our chats.

Chris Schneider: 1:31:39

I have as well. It's great. So all of the insights from today, you know. If you enjoyed them, make sure you like, subscribe, leave a review. As I mentioned, we'll have all of Tim's contact information for his various activities and ways that you can find all that in the show notes. If you have not, go on Facebook, join our Bar Business Nation Facebook group, because that's a great community we're trying to build of bar owners to help other bar owners and to really promote cooperation in our industry, because, in addition to health of our team, health of bar owners can be a little choppy sometimes, and so that's a community where we're trying to collaborate and get people together to help that. And again, all those links will be in the show notes. So with that, guys, until next time. I hope everybody has a great day and we will talk again later.

Announcer: 1:32:30

Thanks for listening to the Bar Business Podcast. I hope everybody has a great day and we will talk again later.