Simon Difford

Interview with SIMON DIFFORD

Arespected authority in the industry, creator of Difford’s Guide for Discerning Drinkers, Simon Difford was recently in Australia as part of the Disaronno Mixing Star Program. Drinks World was lucky enough to catch up with Simon for a chat about trends, the industry and just what makes or breaks a bar.

DRINKS WORLD: What trends are you seeing from abroad that you think we will see in Australia?

SIMON DIFFORD: That’s the number one question I get from brands, “What’s the latest trend, what’s everyone doing now?” Well everyone is doing everything now in bars.

The funny thing is that most of the trends that I see tend to be global these days. For instance, a bartender might be working here in Sydney but so many of them have learnt their craft in London or abroad and have come back and brought with them not only what they’ve learnt but also the contacts from the industry. So while the bartending world might be spread out across the globe it’s actually quite a small little community that are all in touch with each other via Facebook and social media. They’re all swapping recipes, checking out the same websites and reading the same books. So you tend to find that if something takes off in one city somewhere around the world, within weeks, not months then it’ll be kind of happening everywhere. The thing I’m also noticing recently is how quickly these things are coming in and going out.

I do also think we’re guilty as an industry of racing ahead of consumers. We think that all consumers are really educated and we’re guilty of expecting too much of the consumer. I do think that we almost need to take a step back as a bar industry and think “We have to carry the consumer with us or we’re going to lose their interest in cocktails”. We need to make sure that we make it easy for them and that they get the kind of drink that they like. It’s important that they have a cocktail and afterwards they’ve enjoyed it and they want another one and they want to come back. We don’t want them to think, “I really hated that, it cost a fortune, next time I’m just going to have a beer”.

DW: At your talk recently you discussed the many errors that bars make. What are the mistakes that bars make that you find really frustrating?

SD: One of the things that’s so stupidly simple for any bar to rectify and so many bars I go into haven’t addressed, that I find bewildering, is a simple thing, hooks. Especially somewhere like the UK where it’s freezing most of the time, where you’re going in with a coat, you take your coat off, and what are you going to do with it? Or a girl might come in with a bag, and she

doesn’t want to put it down or put it over the back of a chair, she wants to hook it up. It’s such a stupidly simple thing that costs almost nothing to do, a screwdriver, some cheap hooks and it’s done. It’s something you see so frequently. In my mind, every seat should have a hook. That’s something that really gets me.

The other issue is menus. What astounds me is when you go into a bar and you can’t read the menu. Where the bar has forgotten about the guest experience, I don’t know how many times a bar has seen people get their phone out to read the menu, or take the candle over to it. It should be made as simple as possible for you guests.

Don’t stop making great drinks, but think a little more about what the customer experience is. If the customer doesn’t have a good experience then we’re all out of business.

DW: With people like yourself giving advice to bars for some time now, why do you believe that venues do fail over and over again? Is it brashness by owners, or a lack of education or capital?

SD: I think there’s a massive element of luck in business, one of my favourite expressions is “Luck favours the prepared”. You could have gone through every single thing and spent years of your life researching in making sure you’ve got everything just right and it could still fail, that’s the very nature of business, and there’s an element of risk with any business venture. There are also some sites that are just doomed. There are some locations where one person after another has come in, and they’ve refitted it and for some reason it’s like a kiss of death venue. Whether it’s just on the wrong side of the street, or just in the wrong area. Then there are some other sites that people open up venues in and you think, “This place hasn’t got a chance, it’s in the middle of nowhere, it’s hidden down an alley and it’s in a basement. No one is going to find it, no one is going to even bother to try and find it”, yet it turns out to be very popular.

DW: Do you think opening a highly thematic bar is a risky proposition?

SD: By its nature, it is yes. Right now we’re in a gin craze, everyone is talking about gin, everyone’s opening gin bars and gin distilleries. If we sat here a decade a go it would all be about vodka. You can have a bar that just does one thing, which I think is absolutely fine but if you’re going to open a gin bar for instance, not everyone likes gin so you should still have a couple of beers, a couple of good whiskies and some other drinks available to be able to cater for the person who gets dragged in by the gin freak and doesn’t like it.

I don’t mind thematic bars in terms of décor so much, while I was in Sydney I went to a rock ‘n’ roll bar and straight away it does help a bar stand out. You can see how it works, and it’s quite a nice thing for a venue to hang its hat on.

I think there’s room for everything as long as everyone is not trying to do the same thing. It’s important that bar operators try to distinguish themselves so they’re giving a genuine offering that’s different from the competition, rather than everyone jumping on the same bandwagon.

DW: You’re a man of many hats, being a business owner, an author, a consultant, a father and a family man, how do you manage to keep a balance?

SD: She’s called Paloma, my wife. I’m very lucky in that my partner is also my business partner, and is my life partner. It has a downside, in that our lives revolve around this business, but the upside is also that our lives revolve around this business. It is a 24 hour thing and you’re always on the job, or else it doesn’t work. It is impossible to have, what people would describe as a normal life or normal relationship and operate the kind of business we do. It works because I’ve got a very understanding partner who gave up a high flying corporate job to come and help make this work, so it’s the two of us pulling at it all the time. I’m also lucky that I’ve got some really great people around me that I’ve worked with for very long time.

DW: As bartending has become more of a career as opposed to just a part-time job, what advice you can give to people wanting to take on bartending as a full-time career?

SD: I think there are several things; actually setting out and taking it seriously that it is your career and trying to learn and improve yourself is the major step. You have to be someone who actively decides that’s what they want to do for the rest of their life.

The other thing I see as a challenge in the bar industry is the hours. There’s something about late night drinking and the late night economy where most of the money is made in the last few hours, however, I think in some of the best bars in the world all of the money is made in the first few hours. And I think there is very good business to be had in the early hours of the evening, I don’t think it has to be all at the end.

One of the things I would really like to encourage our industry to do is to think about the bars they want to operate and what kind of people they would like to attract. If I was a career bartender and I wanted to do this for the foreseeable future, I’d be looking to find myself a bar that’s a fairly early evening bar and not one where I had to break the bar down at 3:30am. Although that might work for where you are in your life at the moment, it’s unlikely to work for the rest of your life. Think of it as a career, but also be aware of how it may play out. I’d almost encourage everyone to establish bars that work early evening, if they work late at night as well, that’s even better.

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