Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Bartender Built a 7500 Monthly Side Hustle in Cocktail Consulting
Transcript
- Lucas: So today I want to talk about a bartender in Austin who built a seven-thousand-five-hundred-dollar-a-month side hustle in cocktail consulting. Luna: Cocktail consulting — like she advises bars on their drink menus? Lucas: Exactly. Her name's Mia, and she's been bartending for about eight years. During the pandemic, when bars were shut down, she started offering virtual menu audits to local spots. Now she works with about ten clients on a recurring basis. Luna: Recurring — so it's not just a one-off menu redesign? Lucas: Right. That's the key. Her model is a monthly retainer. For two thousand dollars a month, she does three things: a menu audit, staff training, and cost optimization. She also helps with seasonal menu rotations. Most clients sign a six-month contract. Luna: What does the menu audit look like in practice? Lucas: She goes through every drink on the list and evaluates it on three criteria: popularity, profitability, and prep time. She uses a system she calls DRAM — which stands for 'Drink Return After Minutes.' Basically, how much profit does each cocktail generate per minute of labor. Luna: I love that acronym. So she's applying a kind of unit economics to cocktails. Lucas: Exactly. She told me the average bar has about thirty cocktails on the menu, but usually only eight to ten account for eighty percent of sales. The rest are dead weight — they cost the bar in ingredient waste and training time. Her audits typically cut the menu down to about fifteen to eighteen cocktails. Luna: And the owners actually go for that? Cutting their menu? Lucas: Initially they push back, but she shows them the math. A shorter menu means lower inventory costs, faster service, and higher consistency. One client saw their pour cost — that's the cost of ingredients as a percentage of sales — drop from thirty-two percent to twenty-four percent within three months. Luna: Eight percentage points — that's huge for a bar's bottom line. Lucas: Big time. And that's the value she's selling. She's not just a cocktail snob; she's a profit driver. That's why she can charge two thousand a month. Luna: How many clients does she usually work with at once? Lucas: She caps it at ten because each client gets about a day per month of her time — one hour for the audit, a four-hour training session, and the rest for email follow-ups and seasonal planning. Ten clients at two thousand each is twenty thousand a month gross. Luna: Wait, but the episode title says seven thousand five hundred a month. Where's the disconnect? Lucas: Good catch. She started small. That twenty-thousand figure is her current capacity after two years of scaling. In the beginning, she only had three clients at twenty-five hundred each — that's seven thousand five hundred. She didn't want to overshoot. The seven-five number is her entry point to the market. Luna: Got it. So she gradually raised her rates and added clients as she proved results. Lucas: Exactly. And she's very intentional about who she works with. She only targets small chains — bars with three to five locations — because the owner is usually involved and can make decisions quickly. Single bars are too price-sensitive, and big chains have corporate procurement that's hard to break into. Luna: That's a smart niche within a niche. What's her background? Did she have any consulting experience? Lucas: No consulting experience whatsoever. She has a degree in English literature, actually. But she'd been running the cocktail program at a high-volume bar in Austin for four years. She knew the numbers inside out because she did the ordering and inventory herself. Luna: So she turned operational knowledge into a service. I think that's the core lesson — you don't need an MBA to consult; you need a repeatable process that saves people money. Lucas: A hundred percent. Her pitch is incredibly simple: 'I will save you more in ingredient costs and training time than my fee.' And she backs it up with a guarantee — if after three months her changes haven't reduced pour costs by at least five percentage points, she refunds the retainer. Luna: Has anyone ever taken her up on that refund? Lucas: Not once. She says the average reduction is seven points, so the guarantee is almost risk-free for her. It's a powerful trust-building tool. Luna: I want to dig into the training piece. How does she train staff? Lucas: She runs a four-hour hands-on workshop where she teaches the entire team how to make each cocktail on the new menu to spec — exactly the same every time. She also teaches them a few upselling techniques, like suggesting a premium spirit for an extra dollar fifty. Luna: So she's basically the secret to consistency. I've been to bars where the same drink tastes different depending on who's making it. Lucas: Exactly. That inconsistency kills repeat business. Mia's training includes a 'cocktail bible' — a binder with recipes, photos, and prep notes for every drink. She updates it each season. The bar keeps it behind the bar as a reference. Luna: And does she source any ingredients for them? Lucas: She also offers sourcing advisory. She helps them find better prices on spirits and fresh ingredients by connecting them with her network of distributors. That's actually where some of the cost savings come from. She doesn't take kickbacks, but it strengthens the relationship. Luna: That's smart — it makes her indispensable. If she leaves, the bar loses not just the menu but the supply chain connections. Lucas: Right. And that's why her retention rate is over ninety percent. Clients stay on the retainer for an average of eleven months. Luna: Eleven months is a long time for a side hustle client. How does she balance it with her bartending job? Lucas: She still bartends three shifts a week because she enjoys it. She structures her consulting work around her bartending schedule — mornings and early afternoons. Most client work happens between ten a.m. and two p.m., before her shift starts at four. Luna: So she's pulling in maybe thirty-five hundred a month from bartending and seven to twenty from consulting. That's a solid combined income. Lucas: She's actually planning to go full-time with consulting by the end of this year. Her goal is twenty clients at two thousand each — forty thousand a month. But she's being careful not to grow too fast. Luna: That's a big leap. What's her scaling strategy? Lucas: She's developing a digital training course for bar staff — a video version of her cocktail bible. That way she can train multiple locations without being there in person. She's also starting to hire other experienced bartenders as subcontractors for the hands-on workshops. Luna: So she's moving from a service business to a product plus service model. That's smart for scalability. Lucas: Yeah, and it reduces her time commitment per client. Eventually she wants the consulting to be more passive. Luna: I think the most transferable takeaway here is how she packaged her experience. Anyone with deep operational knowledge in any industry can do something similar — find a specific pain point, build a process, and price it as a retainer. Lucas: Completely agree. And the key is to start with a guarantee to build trust. People will pay a premium for certainty. Luna: If today was useful to you — and especially if you're thinking about turning your own expertise into a side hustle — the way these episodes stay ad-free is through listener support. It's a small way to keep the content coming. Lucas: Yeah, we don't run ads, and that's intentional. So if you've gotten value from episodes like this one, you can toss a few dollars our way at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Even a five-dollar coffee helps cover hosting costs and keeps us independent. Lucas: Alright — back to Mia. One thing I didn't mention is how she found her first clients. Luna: How? Lucas: She offered free fifteen-minute phone consultations to bar owners she knew from her bartending days. No pitch — just asked about their biggest challenges. Then she'd follow up with a one-page proposal. Three out of ten calls turned into paid clients. Luna: That's a thirty percent conversion rate — pretty good for cold outreach. Lucas: And she didn't need a website or a portfolio initially. She just used her reputation as someone who ran a profitable bar program. That's the advantage of consulting in your own industry — your work history is your credibility. Luna: One thing I'd add: if someone wants to replicate her model, they should start with a niche. Mia didn't try to consult on all bar operations — she focused specifically on cocktails. That clarity made her easy to hire. Lucas: Good point. And she's now expanding into a related niche: non-alcoholic cocktail programs. Several of her clients have asked for help with mocktails, and she sees that as a growing market. Luna: Smart — it's a natural extension and positions her as forward-thinking. Lucas: Alright, that's Mia's story. Next episode we're looking at a different kind of side hustle — someone who turned their knitting hobby into a six-figure business. Luna: Can't wait.