Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Bartender Built a 6000 Monthly Side Hustle in Cocktail Consulting
Transcript
- Lucas: So if you've ever ordered a craft cocktail at a nice bar, you've probably wondered — how do they come up with these flavors? The smoked rosemary, the clarified milk punch, the hyper-seasonal syrups. Luna: I definitely have. And I always assume there's some genius bar director behind it, someone who's been doing this for decades. Lucas: Right, but here's the thing — sometimes that genius isn't an employee. It's a consultant. And today we're talking about Maya Chen, a bartender in Austin who turned her craft into a six-thousand-dollar-a-month side hustle by consulting for bars and restaurants that don't have a full-time mixologist on staff. Luna: Maya was working at a high-volume cocktail bar in downtown Austin, making decent money in tips, but she realized her real value wasn't just making drinks fast — it was designing the menus and training the staff. Lucas: Exactly. So she started offering that service on the side. She'd go into a restaurant that had a mediocre cocktail list, and she'd revamp it — create six to eight new drinks, source the ingredients, write the specs, and train the bartenders on execution. Luna: And what did she charge for that? Lucas: She started at fifteen hundred dollars for a full menu overhaul, which took her about twenty hours of work. Then she added a monthly retainer for ongoing menu updates and staff training — another thousand bucks a month. Within six months, she had three retainer clients and a couple of one-off projects each quarter, hitting about six thousand dollars a month. Luna: That's impressive. And she did this while still bartending full-time? I'm guessing that meant a lot of late nights and early mornings. Lucas: Absolutely. Her day job was nights and weekends behind the bar, so her consulting work happened in the mornings and afternoons — meeting with clients, sourcing ingredients, writing recipes. She basically worked seven days a week for about a year. Luna: I'm curious about the non-compete side. A lot of bartenders have agreements that say they can't work for competing establishments. How did Maya navigate that? Lucas: She was careful. Her main gig was at a high-end cocktail bar, but her consulting clients were mostly restaurants that didn't compete directly — they were more casual, or they were in a different neighborhood. She also made sure her side hustle was structured as a consulting business, not as moonlighting as a bartender for another bar. That distinction mattered. Luna: So she positioned herself as a business consultant, not as a freelance bartender. Lucas: Exactly. She created an LLC, had a contract, and billed for 'cocktail program development' — not for making drinks. That legal framing helped her feel comfortable and kept her above board with her employer. Luna: Let's talk about the skills she brought. What made Maya effective as a consultant? Lucas: First off, she knew her ingredients. She had relationships with local distilleries, farmers, and specialty syrup companies. That meant she could source unique products that a typical restaurant manager wouldn't know about. Second, she understood pricing — she helped clients set cocktail prices that covered their costs and still felt reasonable to customers. Luna: And the training component is huge. A menu is only as good as the person making the drinks. Lucas: Exactly. Maya would spend two or three shifts training the existing bartenders — showing them proper shaking technique, how to batch ingredients efficiently, how to garnish consistently. She said the biggest mistake she saw was inconsistency between bartenders: one would pour a two-ounce pour, another would free-pour a three-ounce pour. That kills your margins and your quality. Luna: So she was basically teaching basic business operations. That's a skill that translates way beyond bartending. Lucas: A hundred percent. And that's the core insight of her story — she took a skill she had developed on the job and repackaged it as a service that businesses would pay for. She didn't need a business degree. She just needed to recognize that her knowledge had value beyond her current role. Luna: I think a lot of people in hospitality could do something similar. Line cooks could consult on menu engineering. Servers could consult on table service flow. The opportunities are there if you frame them right. Lucas: And the demand is real. Restaurants are struggling to find good talent, especially in the bar program. A lot of places can't afford a full-time bar manager who costs fifty thousand a year, but they can afford a two-thousand-dollar consulting fee once a quarter. Luna: Maya's story also highlights something about timing. She started her side hustle in early 2024, right when the hospitality industry was still recovering from the pandemic labor shortages. Lucas: That's a good point. She saw a gap — bars needed creative, consistent programs but couldn't hire the talent. She filled that gap as an outsider. It's a classic freelance playbook, but applied to an industry that doesn't usually think about consultants. Luna: And now she's actually thinking about leaving her bartending job to do this full-time. She told me her goal is to hit ten thousand a month by the end of this year. Lucas: I think she can do it. She's already got a strong portfolio, a clear pricing model, and a growing referral network. Plus, she's doing something she genuinely loves — she's not just making drinks, she's building entire programs. Luna: Before we wrap, I want to touch on something that comes up a lot in these stories — the support system. Maya mentioned that having a few listeners who chip in on Buy Me a Coffee made a real difference in her early months. It's not a huge amount, but it helped cover her LLC filing fees and some initial marketing materials. Lucas: Yeah, and that's something we hear from a lot of side hustlers we feature. A small recurring contribution can take the edge off those early expenses. For us, listener support at Buy Me a Coffee dot com slash fexingo is what keeps this show ad-free and allows us to keep finding stories like Maya's. Luna: Exactly. It's not about big donations — it's about a community that values the content and wants to see it continue. So if you've gotten value from the show, that's one way to give back. Lucas: All right, back to Maya. One thing I love about her approach is that she didn't try to undercut the market. She charged premium rates from the start — fifteen hundred for a full menu — and she didn't negotiate. She said if a client balked at the price, that was a red flag that they wouldn't respect her expertise. Luna: That's a confident move. And it worked because she had a strong portfolio of her own bar's menus to show. She could say, 'Here's what I've done, here's the revenue impact, here's why it's worth it.' Lucas: Right. And she tracked results. For one restaurant client, she redid their cocktail list and their bar sales went up thirty percent in the first month. That's a number you can take to the next client. Luna: So for anyone listening who might have a similar skill — whether it's cocktail consulting, menu engineering, or something else entirely — what's the first step Maya would recommend? Lucas: She says: document everything you do at your current job that creates value. Write down the processes, the recipes, the systems. Then ask yourself: could another business pay for this knowledge? If the answer is yes, you've got a side hustle. Luna: That's a great note to end on. Thanks, Maya, for sharing your story. And thanks to all of you for listening. Lucas: We'll be back next week with another side hustle that started with a skill someone already had. See you then.