Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Bartender Built a 15K Monthly Side Hustle in Cocktail Consulting
Transcript
- Lucas: So you walk into a bar these days, and the cocktail list is three pages long. Thirty, forty drinks, each with an ingredient list longer than a grocery receipt. Luna: Yeah, and half of them are just… not good. Overcomplicated, or they all taste the same because they're using the same base syrups. Lucas: That's exactly the problem that a bartender named Mia spotted. She'd been working behind the stick for about eight years, mostly in craft cocktail bars in Austin, and she noticed that a lot of restaurant owners — especially the ones opening their second or third location — had no idea how to build a cohesive drink program. Luna: So she started consulting on the side? Lucas: Exactly. She launched what she calls 'cocktail consulting' — menu design, staff training, sourcing local spirits, even pricing strategy. And within about eighteen months, she was bringing in around fifteen thousand dollars a month from it. Luna: That's a big number. Especially for someone who's still working their bar shifts, presumably. Lucas: She kept her day job for the first year. That's the part I want to dig into — because the way she structured the side hustle was really deliberate. She didn't just say 'I'll take any gig.' She created three specific offerings. Luna: Okay, what were they? Lucas: Number one: a one-time menu audit and redesign. She'd come into a bar, taste everything on their current menu, look at their cost of goods, and then rewrite the entire cocktail list. Flat fee, two thousand dollars. Luna: Two grand for a menu? That seems steep unless you're getting a lot more than just a list of drinks. Lucas: Right, but she wasn't just handing over a PDF. She'd spend a full day at the bar, train the staff on the new recipes, and provide a cost breakdown so the owner knew which drinks had the highest margins. So it was really a consulting package. And that led to offering number two: ongoing training sessions. Luna: Like, monthly refreshers? Lucas: Yeah, she'd come in every four to six weeks, run a two-hour workshop on technique or new trends, and charge five hundred dollars a session. Usually retainer-based, three sessions at a time. Luna: So if she had five clients on retainer, that's seventy-five hundred a month just from training. Then the menu redesigns on top of that, maybe one or two a month… that gets you to fifteen pretty fast. Lucas: Exactly. And the third offering was sourcing support. She had relationships with local distilleries and small-batch producers, so bars would pay her to curate a rotating selection of spirits. She took a small markup on the wholesale orders. Luna: That's smart — it turns her expertise into a recurring revenue stream without hourly billing. Lucas: And it solved a real problem for the bar owners. Most of them didn't have time to vet every new amaro or rum that came on the market. Mia did that legwork for them. Luna: I wonder how she handled the conflict with her primary employer. If she's training staff at competing bars, that could get awkward fast. Lucas: She was upfront about it from the start. She told her manager at the time, 'I'm going to start consulting on the side, but I will never use your recipes or poach your staff.' And she actually avoided working with bars within a three-mile radius of her home bar. Luna: That's a smart boundary. Did she have to sign a non-compete? Lucas: Her employment contract had a pretty standard non-compete clause, but it only applied while she was employed there. She checked with a lawyer — a friend of a friend — who confirmed that as long as she wasn't soliciting her employer's clients or using proprietary info, she was in the clear. Luna: So the key was transparency and clear separation. That's a lesson that applies to any side hustle, really. Lucas: Totally. And look, a lot of people come to this show wondering how to get started. Mia's advice is always: start by solving one specific problem for one specific type of client. For her, it was the overwhelmed restaurant owner who had a great food menu but a terrible drink list. Luna: That's actually a good framework for anyone listening. What's the one thing you're really good at that a small business owner is bad at or doesn't have time for? Lucas: Right. In Mia's case, she had eight years of experience and a network of bar owners she'd already served. She reached out to five of them with a simple offer: 'Let me do a free one-hour audit of your cocktail menu, no strings attached.' Luna: And how many took her up on it? Lucas: All five. And from those five free audits, she converted three into paid redesigns. One of those led to a retainer for training. That's how she got her first three thousand dollars in revenue. Luna: She gave away a lot of value upfront, but it clearly paid off. Lucas: It did. And that's the kind of thing we love to highlight on this show — because it's not about having a huge audience or a fancy website. It's about being useful to someone who's already in your orbit. Luna: You know, it reminds me of something — a couple of dollars a month from listeners who find value in these episodes is what keeps the show ad-free and independent. If you've gotten any ideas from Mia's story, or from any episode, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It genuinely makes a difference. Lucas: Yeah, we don't run ads, so listener support is what keeps us going. Even a few bucks helps cover hosting and research time. Luna: Anyway, back to Mia — she also had to learn how to say no. Early on, a potential client wanted her to create a menu for a dive bar that just wanted cheap well drinks. She passed, because it wasn't her niche. Lucas: That's a hard thing to do when you're starting out and every dollar looks good. But by saying no, she kept her brand focused on craft cocktails, which is what her best clients valued. Luna: So what's she doing now? Did she ever quit her day job? Lucas: She did, about six months ago. She's consulting full-time now, and she's actually hired two other bartenders to help with training gigs. Her monthly revenue is up around twenty-five thousand. Luna: That's incredible. And it started with a free one-hour audit. Lucas: Exactly. So if there's one takeaway from today, it's this: find the smallest possible version of your service that proves you can deliver value. Offer it for free or cheap to a few people in your network. Then charge based on the results you've already shown. Luna: And don't forget to set boundaries with your day job. Mia's approach — transparency, clear separation, and legal check — is a great model. Lucas: Yeah. For our next episode, we're going to talk to a cybersecurity analyst who built a fifteen thousand dollar side hustle in penetration testing. That's a whole different world, but the same principle applies. Luna: Looking forward to it. Until then, keep building.