Beverage consulting is one of those craft trades that bars may not always consider. When Mikey Ball decided to come back to New Zealand after living in the UK, he sought to help the industry he grew up in become better. Through a raft of experiences and seeing how international bars operate, Mikey has ended up in a position with two very well known Kiwi brands to help elevate their offerings, Scapegrace and East Imperial. Take a read of his story as a beverage consultant and how he advocates for making the hospitality industry a better place. Not to mention pizza, late nights in the tight knit Auckland scene and maybe a slice of experience.
Sarah: How did you end up working in hospitality and what is your current role in the industry?
Mikey: I ended up in hospitality as a means to an end. I was studying at the time and hospitality was just one of those first jobs. I think my first hospitality job, I really didn't care about it. I was doing it purely to earn money while I was studying architecture. And then I ended up jumping back into it, funnily enough.
I started in Christchurch and then I ended up jumping back into it in Auckland purely because it was something that I already had on my CV. And from there I met a few people and got relatively passionate about it.
I ended up working 60 hours a week behind the bar. I wasn't very good at doing that as well as what was supposed to be 60 hours a week of an architecture degree. That's how they switched out, but I guess probably all for the good in the end.
I don't ever see myself going back behind the bar. I guess that’s a good thing. My current role is a few hats. But my major hats would be with both Scapegrace and East Imperial. And both in relatively similar roles, off the back of bartending. I haven't been behind the sticks since for a while.
The roles are essentially in product development or the creation of products, both at Scapegrace and East imperial. And off those roles also working in the advocacy field. I basically get to make and play with all the fun shit. Then I have to teach you about it and tell you how good it might be or how crap it might be.
The connection between bartenders and marketing is what the advocacy piece is. It's really cool to be able to be working in a training format, something that I've always really enjoyed. That's where it is. Lots of distilling, lots of liquid making. I guess I was lucky to stumble upon it with a couple of projects when I first came back. But my main thing when I came back to New Zealand was to build a New Zealand first consulting piece.
I did a lot of consultations for bars, whether they didn't really know what it was or not. What I'd been learning and what I'd been surrounded by in London was very much this kind of refined and thoughtful process of production around syrups, spirits and flavours.
That all became something that was really useful in the commercial beverage field. I think that's where it all came from, which is really nice. I know a couple people have come back from overseas and gone, hey, there's definitely a gap in the market. I think now more than ever Kiwis are more receptive and taking on training and understanding that maybe other people can offer something who have worked in the field for a long time. They might have some insight as to how they could make their business better, do things more sustainably or produce things in a more thoughtful way and make them way more badass and delicious.
Sarah: That's what I guess one of the aims of putting on a bar week as well. I know we talked to you about it when we first came back to New Zealand and I don't think we were quite ready to undertake that yet, or I don't think we had enough connections. But it'd be cool to have a bit more of a community in New Zealand nationally.
Mikey: I think there’s always been little bits of connection between cities. Auckland's big enough to try and travel between centres, let alone, Aucklanders being close with people in Wellington and Christchurch. People who have been in the industry for a long time know people across centres but the reality is, we're quite sparse, we're quite spaced out and it's not as tight knit.
Sarah: What is your favourite cocktail or drink you've been served?
Mikey: I don't know. There's a few. I think a lot of them are from nostalgia points of view and situational. We’ve both worked in these places that make wonderful, delicious beverages. But the reality is I think a lot of it is down to the experience. It doesn't necessarily mean that the drink has to be proper legit.
Just before we left London there was a place which is now very popular called Three Sheets. And they did this real simple house made carbonated French 75. I think a French 75 is probably one of my desert island drinks, if anything. Because champagne is that way. And it was like methode. It was clear and served with elderflower as the garnish. Probably one of the first really simplified drinks that was literally poured from a plastic bottle.
And I was like, as much as I don't like this, I really love this. And the situation was great with me and Jade. And the bar stuff really awesome. It was a small little place where there was five or six seats at the bar. We met the owner. His wife was there, and it was just the perfect situation. It was really cool.
Sarah: Favourite dish to eat at the end of a hard day.
Mikey: Oh man. I think it's probably always been if we're talking after bar service, I think it's always probably been, the reality of it all….
Sarah: Pizza?
Mikey: Yeah.
Sarah: Any particular pizza?
Mikey: I'm vegetarian now, but it probably would have been something pepperoni. Probably something relatively simple. Otherwise a dirty old kebab would have been pretty awesome as well back in the UK. The kebab shops were pretty good.
Sarah: Favourite venue in New Zealand and why?
Mikey: To be honest, it would actually be Panacea in Auckland or the latest place I just went to this week, which was Dee's Place in Wellington, which was actually really quick.
Sarah: Oh, they just opened, right?
Mikey: Yes. I fit it out and just kept it really simple. But Panacea I love. The staff are awesome. They're people I've known through the industry before and it's awesome watching them go, “I'm going to build a bar.” And then to watch Danny actually make it happen and put it out. Not to mention, churn out some awesome drinks.
Sarah: What is one thing you wish you knew when you were starting out in hospitality?
Mikey: I wish I knew how much hospitality would affect my body, probably in the initial part. I got mad into running at the end of 2020. I started the healthy West coast thing, and I just kept going from there.
It took me two years to get to a point where I could go for a run longer than 5Ks and not feel like my knees were gonna pop out of their sockets. After 15 years of standing on my legs and having zero upper body strength from doing nothing but shaking cocktails.
I still get sore wrists and bits and bobs. Some of them probably from snowboarding as a young kid as well. But I think a lot of it is the toll that hospitality takes on your body, and off the back of that the drinking piece as well.
I drink a lot less now, but that's just general life. The volume that we used to drink was really fun, I'm not gonna lie. We'd suffer for a day or so afterwards, and the reality is, I suffer way more now. If I'd have known way back then maybe I would have been smarter. Probably not.
You've had a baby, so you're a superhuman anyway. But it’s the fact that you can walk out of the hospital and it took me maybe four years to stop going to bed at 2am. When we had Lochie, I was still relatively comfortable in getting up and down throughout the night. I used to be relatively helpful. I'm still a bit of a night owl now. Although I'm really good at falling asleep at 10:30 and sleeping through, but I can still be up all hours if need be.
Sarah: What are the best words of wisdom or something that somebody's taught you?
Mikey: Probably when I was leaving London, I contacted Ryan Chetiyawardana, who was part of the Lyan group (Dandelyan). I asked if I could catch up with him. I knew he did a little consulting. I said I wouldn't have a clue how any of this works. How do I charge myself out? And how does this all work? And he said never sell yourself short for what you do.
You basically want to set yourself at this line and if it doesn't seem to work over a long period of time, you're potentially doing it wrong. But the reality is, if that's what you feel your worth is at, then set it. The biggest piece he taught me was that fact.
We're working in a craft, a creative field, right? He likened it to someone like a photographer who can charge a set rate for a period of time. Then you can say these are the things that a photographer offers. This is how I have my offering. That was one of the best pieces of advice I ever had. Treat it like a photographer from IP all the way through to the products you produce, you sell everything. What you create is yours unless somebody wants to buy it off you, which is more expensive.
And you can cost yourself out like that because at the end of the day, you've spent 15 years learning to do this. As quick as you do a job, whatever it is, that's what that worth is. That's what your hourly rate is and why it is quite high in that creative field. That's probably some of the best advice I think I’ve ever had, and I'm pretty sure he finished that with saying don't go and open a bar.
Sarah: I don't think it matters which industry you're in, but everyone gatekeeps money advice. Which is super frustrating. We found that especially when we were trying to open the bar, that nobody would give us actual real advice when it came to finances. So that's cool he did that.
Mikey: I've been really open. There's three or four people who are now current consultants in New Zealand who have asked me for things and I've said, here's my NDA, reword it. Here's the MOU I use. This is how I put it together. They've asked questions and I’ve been super open. I tell them about what went well for me, what went terribly, and it's a lot of terrible. But there's also a lot of learnings that you can have, especially in a completely different field.
The big part was treating it less like a business and more like a creative. That was the easiest way to skin it because you're walking in like a photographer, but you're making drinks or you're showcasing your creativity through teaching.
Sarah: Which we're hopefully trying to change to be more supportive than just competitive. I think there's better things to come out of that.
Mikey: There's definitely a cultural piece there. Kiwi's can be quite potentially brash and very confident. Case in point, the brick wall I hit when I first got back. From a consulting level, but more so just coming back asking if I can help with trainings. Can I build some trainings with your staff? And I’d have a sit down with people and would ask what sort of budget they had for training? The amount of people that said, no, we don't have a training budget. We just train our staff ourselves. But training staff yourselves, you're still spending money. That’s a budget.
So how does that work? And people didn't get the whole idea you do invest in training, but are you investing in the right training? Is that the right type of training for the venue? Are you teaching your ethos in the best way? You'd hope only you know that ethos in the best way, but the reality is maybe you don't. It's always good to have, but I think people do get their backs up because maybe when you approach a venue, they think that you are testing them or saying that what they do is wrong, when in fact actually it's usually the opposite.
It's usually hey, you guys already do some really awesome stuff. How can I help make this next level? It's always been a hard market. I think it's gotten less and less open since I was a young bartender. That's the hardest part because I started in an era in Auckland where it was very open, a lot more community across bars.
I think a lot of what helped was probably that 24-hour license piece. Where a lot of venues were open till six, so there were a lot more staff going out after work. Sunglasses on in Cartel. Everybody from Auckland hospitality about my age, we would probably be across two bars in Auckland. We would either be at Cartel or Sweet at three o'clock in the morning. That was the norm on a Friday and Saturday, even sometimes a Sunday.
There was very much a community which seems to be lacking in Auckland now, probably more so than it did. But I see it quite thin in a lot of cities, to be honest. Christchurch is always really strong, but Christchurch is strong.
Sarah: They've got a good community.
Mikey: Christchurch is really open book. I really like it. Wellington has ebbs and flows of really tight, big hospitality groups, and then quite miss matched. Because it's not so big, people easily fall out with each other and vice versa, and I feel like, Auckland's a bit like that too.
Sarah: I think there's little pockets in Auckland.
Mikey: Yes. The hard thing is there's probably more keen people in Auckland to try and make it work than there probably has ever been. There's some effort that needs to be put in, and to a certain degree, it's where you put it that's the hardest part.
Sarah: Like what we're doing. I think we've actually had a really good reception so far. Just from people messaging and saying this is really cool or asking to be on the wait list. Hopefully it's a good turnout and a good chance for people around the country to meet each other as well. We're going to run some competitions with some brands that some people from around the country will get flown up to Auckland for during the event, which will be cool.
Who do you think is one to watch in the New Zealand bar beverage industry?
Mikey: Jason Clark will probably be one that I would put a little flag on because that guy's crazy and he always wants to be doing some form of new project. And I think he's definitely working on something that New Zealand probably does need at the moment. We haven't talked, but from what I can gather, it's going to be quite cool. He's definitely one to watch, always has been.
I would say a few of the young guns in Christchurch would be ones to watch. There's heaps going on. It's nice to see there's a level of creativity coming out there as well. I think it's been a while in New Zealand since we've seen people doing top quality collabs with brands.
And we're starting to see a lot more competition pieces coming out as well, which means, there's going to be a better stage to see what is happening in the industry in New Zealand. There's a huge era, not just because of COVID, but in the years pre COVID, where a lot of the big brand competitions disappeared off the face of the earth in New Zealand.
And whilst I'm not a huge competition bartender advocate by any stretch, I've competed in my bartending life. And I think a lot of what I learned was awesome stuff. I would never say I was a competition bartender per se, but it's definitely a great way of doing exactly what you're looking to do. Building and driving a community and pulling everybody together. And also scaring the shit out of yourself with the things that I’ve learned, the competitions I've been in and thought, this has been really fun.
Then you're sitting out back or you're on a plane to somewhere and you're like, why the fuck am I doing this? Like, why the hell? That I decided that this was a good idea to go and stand out there for seven minutes and potentially make a dick of myself. I think it's the challenge piece.
Sarah: We just went to Nicaragua. And that was so cool cause they just flew me over as a supporter. But the coolest group of people, the most nervous I've ever been to watch anyone compete. Because there were so many people there, about 200 watching. It was such a fun competition. We came away from that with so many more connections than we previously had with bartenders all around the world. It was so much fun. I really like that about competitions
What is the most in the weeds you've ever been as somebody working in hospitality?
Mikey: I don't know. Cause there's obviously physically in the weeds, but there's also feeling like you're absolutely in the weeds. It would have to be at Dandelyan. We used to run a system where we'd have two ice wells with two staff on. Number one ice well would look after the whole bar top. Number two ice well would make all the drinks for the other 120 seats in the room. And then usually the head bartender would run the pass. So often I would be running the pass. On a Friday night we would often make up to 900 drinks. We'd get absolutely pummelled.
I think the most I've ever been in the weeds in my life behind the bar would have definitely been Milk and Honey. Because you were sole bartending for a room that could hold up to 60 people and everybody in the public hours. So pre 10:30, everybody can come in for a two-hour session.
If you're working the floor, it's the absolute weeds because you're basically back-to-back every single table, all different timings. And you're basically doing it by yourself too. Or two of you. Taking orders, running drinks, making sure everything is cold, or you'd get sent back by the manager if it was wrong. And then the same behind the bar. Not only are we getting loaded with dockets, but you have to round bills perfectly. If the manager decides he wants to stand at the bar and watch you, you have to make sure that everything's going onto the tray in the perfect order. You do your absolute best bartending, whilst getting absolutely pumped and not get any drinks wrong whilst being the busiest you've probably ever been in your life. I think those would be two pretty big examples. I love that. I miss the weed's life.
Sarah: Do you have a hospo horror story? Or funniest customer interaction.
Mikey: My horror story is quite good. This is how delirious I think a lot of people got at the point where we were trying to prep at Dandelion. We started doing some dumb things. One of our drinks had mushrooms as a garnish, thinly sliced and they were doing it in the kitchen.
We had a mushroom dish that was thinly sliced and had parmesan. It was delicious. It was a raw mushroom dish. We ended up using those mushrooms as a garnish. Of course we ran out. They stopped making them for us because they said they don't have time to make all these mushrooms as a garnish.
So we started doing them. We asked them how they were doing them and they were doing them with the deli meat slicer. Kitchens were really good with that kind of thing. I've never been very good with mandolins and meat slicers. I never cut myself on a mandolin, but they scare the living shit out of me.
Flash forward to a prep session and I was just minding my own business doing little slices of corn. We did little corn rolls and we're toasting them. I literally just went through the mushroom and I actually took the top of this finger here. I was spraying blood through the prep room. Jack, who at the time had gone to get something from the other prep room, by the time he'd come back, there's blood everywhere.
The meat slicer is still going and I'd gone down the hallway to go and find the meat slicer. He stayed in the hotel. And even the guy who was with me on his first day was getting all green on me. And I got quite green too. It was all a bit of a kerfuffle. I went with our GM to the local hospital, arm in the air, all strapped up.
I've still got the scars to show with the top of one of my fingernails, it's on a bit of an angle. But the top of my fingernail doesn't quite stick to my finger anymore. That would be my only horror story. You can't stitch the tip of your finger, eh?
Sarah: Green Mikey. Oh no. I have a very healthy fear of mandolins and meat slicers because I've seen that go wrong more than once.
Mikey: Anybody out there who decides that they want to cut really soft things with a meat slicer, unless you're a chef and you've been doing it a while, that is a stupid idea.
We all assessed it afterwards and asked why the hell are we doing this? We could have done this a much better way, even just by hand. Everything was cut by hand after that, obviously.
Sarah: That could have been your biggest lesson that you've been taught. Do not use a meat slicer to slice mushrooms.
Mikey: Biggest lesson? Biggest moving forward, you get told a lot of stuff by a lot of old school bartenders. I guess there was one that always sat in my head. Always be humble. I think once you lose your humbleness it's always a slippery slope. For me, that’s perfect. I'm not necessarily a loud, outspoken, showy bartender.
That humbleness means that you're more approachable. The more I thought about it, the more I understood that actually helps build somebody else's experience. You're there for everybody else. At the end of the day, you're getting paid to make sure everybody else's experience is great.
If you enjoy it, awesome. That's wicked. You should hopefully. And that's why you do what you do. Always stay humble.
Sarah: Always. That's good advice for us to finish on, Mikey.
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