Fraser Campbell
Global Ambassador, Dewar’s
Fraser Campbell loves bringing people together. After setting up the Melbourne Bartender Exchange, and subsequently the Global Bartender Exchange, he explains how his own failures have created stepping stones for success.
You would be forgiven for thinking the only way to become a success in this industry would be by winning seven major cocktail competitions, followed by opening a multi-award-winning bar in New York, then writing a best-selling book on pairing Champagne with diamond necklaces.
Having been in this industry for the past 20 years, I can tell you sincerely that none of the above have been the golden carrots I have chased to succeed. (I may still yet write a book on pairing whisky with deep-fried chocolate bars, however.)
Obviously as bartenders, we bring people together. We join the dots between the audience of strangers scattered along the bar. We spark the match of conversation, and watch the room catch fire, like a moonshine-laced flaming domino rally, with less casualties. Usually.
When it comes to great ideas, sometimes you have them, and they solve apparently obvious problems that are embedded in your psyche because one year you decided to go to Australia with no job lined up.
So here are two successive problems, one which planted an idea, and the other which squeezed the idea out like an anchovy exiting an olive at high speed:
1) Moving to Sydney in 2008 and being unable to find a bar job despite having nine years of bar experience, then having to resort to selling hair coupons on the street for 100% commission.
2) Running a cocktail bar in Melbourne three years later and suffering through a drought of well-trained bartenders, and spending days texting, emailing, and sending smoke signals to send for help.
During the days of the latter problem, I woke up at 5am one morning and created a Facebook group to pull together the Melbourne bar scene in one place. My first post was very much akin to: ‘Eh, where’s all the bloody bartenders by the way?’ The next post was complaining about the price of limes. The group caught fire quickly though and raging debates about the correct garnish for an Old Fashioned ensued.
The Melbourne Bartender Exchange started with around 200 members; today it hosts somewhere around 67,000. Most of those members have been bartenders who had landed from overseas, often lining up jobs and accommodation in advance like clever cookies.
After launching the MBE, the madness properly took hold. With my pal Hannah Keirl, we decided to start the Global Bartender Exchange because launching 200 Facebook groups for bartender communities around the world seemed like an incredibly sane idea at the time.
We did not think twice about investing $20,000 AUSD into building the concept into an app either, because we honestly hated saving money and we were just feeling giddy about our idea. It was naturally a financial black hole in the end, but it was only a proper failure once we gave up on it. Who knew about server and maintenance costs?
Despite all this, I highly recommend failure of this scale. Part of the reason that I now travel the world advocating whisky (or for now host zoom calls), is because I showcased that I am in my element when I am bringing people together. In this case, by exhausting every avenue to build the world’s largest online network for bartenders.
At some stage during your hospitality lifespan, you will perhaps pour the elements of the industry that get you all gooey over the parts that grind your gears, to actualise your own ideas and build a platform that will take you where you want to go. However, fear not for failure my friends – the shards of shattered idealism make for exceptional stepping stones too.