Bartending school

Curriculum

Modern schools offer training in how to deal with drunk driving, underage drinkers, and aggressive customers. This is often required for certification.

Students also learn how to run a bar including setup and cleanup. In addition, students learn the basics about glassware and bartending equipment, as well as brands of liquors and liqueurs, recipes for the most popular drinks (mixology), and drink presentation.They may also trained in customer service, up-selling to customers, and procedures in taking payment. Most schools also offer training in resume preparation, how to act at a job interview, and where they should start looking for employment.

Many bar schools have their students train using colored water to simulate the various types of alcohol, while others use real liquors. Some schools also have mock bars behind which their students can train in a realistic way.

History

Bartending has been a profession since ancient Roman times. There was no need for a bartending school up until the 1700s because alcohol only consisted of beer, wine and ale rather than mixed drinks. The owners of ale houses and taverns would serve alcohol and train new service staff themselves.

After the repeal of prohibition in 1933, stand alone bars and bars in restaurants reopened, and it was necessary for businesses to hire bartenders en masse. It was no longer possible for an individual barman to educate the new workers, and so for the first time bartending schools were founded. According to a brief news blurb in Reading Eagle from 1934, "bartender schools are mushrooming in the manor of Tom Thumb golf courses a while back". One school offered a "three weeks course in rudimental drink mixing, fashioning the multiple concoctions of pre-prohibition.” Classes consisted of one and a half hour periods, five days a week.

Bartending schools were popular in a variety of cities around the United States for decades. In 1955, jobs in service occupations like nursing and bartending surpassed farm work as the third largest category of employment in the economy.

The Columbia Bartending Agency was founded at Columbia University in 1965. Other universities such Yale and the University of Michigan have had bartending schools since the 1970s. Typically, these students work at student unions.

References

References

1. "How to Obtain a Bartenders License in Each State".
2. "How Long Is Bartending School?".
3. "What Certifications You Need to Work in Bars in Canada".
4. [http://www.bartending101.com/bartending-certification-benefits.aspx American Bartender Association] {{webarchive. link. (March 15, 2013 Benefits of Bartender Certification)
5. Katie Corrado [http://www.cnycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=863416 Exclusive look inside unique bartending school in Baldwinsville] CNY Central, Feb 20, 2013
6. Dale DeGroff; ''The Craft of the Cocktail: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master Bartender, with 500 Recipes'', Clarkson Potter, 2002
7. O. O. McIntyre [https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_JchAAAAIBAJ&sjid=t5kFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6404,1916741&dq=bartending+course&hl=en New York by Day] Reading Eagle, Jan 11, 1934
8. Chet Currier [https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=0z4eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9L4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6769,9875083&dq=bartending+courses&hl=en Special Training is Key Factor to Success in Job] The Dispatch, June 24, 1980
9. [https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=WKtVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=COEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6824,1856526&dq=bartending+courses&hl=en Class Held at Columbia] Eugene Register-Guard, Nov 9, 1966
10. Bonnie Juran [https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LBJKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Sx4NAAAAIBAJ&pg=1761,5016320&dq=bartending+courses&hl=en Bartending Students Mix it up with mini-course know how] The Michigan Daily, Dec 6, 1979