This past Monday I observed Garrett Blackwood the owner of the Blue Label Bartending School. Blackwood is not only a great teacher and bartender, but he is also a charming individual who made me feel comfortable the instant we met.
Blackwood owns two businesses. He has Blue Label Bartending, which rents out bartenders for private parties or weddings with locations in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. He also has the Blue Label Bartending School where he teaches a 32-hour course on how to become a bartender.
Blackwood’s Blue Label Bartending business has 16 bartenders on staff. They do around 400-500 private parties a year. This business began getting attention when they were in the top 7 businesses for the Spirit Award here in Tulsa. The Spirit Award is an award given by Spirit Bank to the most original business that has been in operation for less than 5 years and does not exceed $1 million in net worth.
Blackwood moved from Dallas to Tulsa in 2006, and realized that there are “3 places to go here: Brookside, Cherry Street, and Downtown.”
He found a house in the Brookside neighborhood, and in 2007 he opened the Blue Label Bartending School right in the middle of the Brookside bar scene. The building where the school is located used to be a bartending school, which is one of the reasons he chose this location.
Another reason he chose Brookside is because “it’s a very entrepreneurial area.” He expressed how much he appreciates that business owners invest so much of their time in the Brookside area.
While I was shadowing Blackwood at the Blue Label Bartending School I learned more information about bartending than I even knew existed.
During the class Blackwood’s student and I took a written quiz over the flavor and makeup of liquor and the appropriate use of wines. His student had been assigned readings over the material on the quiz and other information about alcohol. Blackwood claims that it is important for bartenders to not only know how to make drinks, but also that they need to know about the alcohol they are putting in them.
Blackwood taught us how to free pour. The correct technique for free pouring is necessary in order to pour the correct amount of liquor into every drink. After watching Blackwood and his student practice free pouring I thought it would be easy, but free pouring was much harder than it looked.
During the course Blackwood also taught us the meaning of the names in a lot of mixed drinks. For example, a screwdriver is called that because screw means orange juice and drive means vodka in bartender lingo that he taught us.
Blackwood showed us how to make all of the juice drinks out of his bartending manual. After he taught us about the ingredients, garnishes, and correct glasses to use for the drink, he let us practice making them.
As I practiced making these juice drinks, I could imagine myself working behind a bar and having drink orders yelled at me. I felt like a professional bartender after only attending a small portion of Blackwood’s course, which shows how great of a teacher he is.
Observing Blackwood was not only a fun time, but I also learned a lot of information about the bartending business and what it takes to be a bartender. As I left the school I told Blackwood that I would be back if I ever decided on bartending as a career, and after the great time I had on Monday I am definitely going to consider it.
More information on the school is at their website: http://www.bluelabelbartending.com/module-clip-viewpub-tid-2-pid-1.html
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