After founding the company in early 2015 I now look after all drinks development for the business as well as heading and running the consultancy arm of the business. Clients in this include prestigious companies such as Britvic Plc, Pernod Ricard and Savvy Marketing where I carry out a range of tasks from running and developing photoshoots, new drink serves, creating training material for individual brands and helping to train and educate their workforce to enable them to have the tools they need to complete their tasks. This role has lead to developing and running trade stands for Britvic at large scale events such as Imbibe and London Cocktail Week amongst others.The second area of responsibility within this role is running the drinks program for The Hedonist Project which is out flagship bar in the centre of Leeds. This means creating new and interesting menus and leasing with brands every 4 months to help develop new concepts for the venue. This is because it is the only venue in the UK who changes their concept every 4 months, this includes everything from drinks, decor, music, furniture and uniform. I am also responsible for ensuring that the staff have a strong level of knowledge and industry professionalism, which is done through training and one on one on site work.

My main aim in this role is to develop and expand the brand that is Ableforth Spirits, most notably Bathtub Gin and Rumbullion, around the Midlands, North and Scotland with key focus on the cities of Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh & Glasgow. This ranges from organising both On Trade and Off Trade tastings sessions with key accounts in the area and then running the sessions as the main representative of the brand on the area. The role has also included helping to develop innovative and forward thinking POS for the brand and also helping put together training programs and interesting interactive tasting sessions.

Working in conjunction with the Sales Manager for the area, the role includes promoting and increasing the consumer awareness of Wray & Nephew Rum to On and Off Trade. This is achieved through designing and running training sessions for the On-Trade and also creating and implementing consumer events with bars to develop both the Wray & Nephew brand while also increasing the profile of the bar hosting the event. The role also included heavy involvement with Leeds Loves Cocktails as I organised, hosted and ran events for the week. I have also had significant involvement in developing new listings for Wray and Nephew in many local bars.

The duties of this role are to run and maintain a venue which provides a strong and dynamic restaurant and bar offer. This includes managing stock control and wage budgets. In my first 8 weeks I increased the General Profit of the venue from 64% to 71%. I am also heavily involved in helping run Blind Tyger, a specially designed 50 person cocktail built above Sandinista in October 2013. I helped design the menu and also the layout and ergonomics of the bar. This also led to hand picking the back bar spirits and also organising pouring contracts for both venues. I have developed bespoke cocktail master classes and spearheaded organising brand sponsored events for the whole business. Since becoming GM of Sandinista I have become extremely focused on the food aspect of the business, helping to streamline the kitchen ergonomically, reducing wage and waste costs, implementing important legal and ‘good practice’ procedures and, simply, increasing overall sales through improved standards and consistency. This has resulted in me working 25% of my weekly hours in the kitchen to ensure high standards are maintained, maintain quality control while also further increasing my skill set.

Whilst operating in this role I was part of training staff and helped develop cocktail menus and sales incentives within the bar. I also ran shifts, which included ensuring the bar offered a consistent product to its customers and also maintain a good quality work environment. Like in my previous roles I have continued to increase my profile in the industry by entering competitions, making the UK final of the Hennessy Competition 2013. However I also started to organise events and tasting for my peers in the city and organised the inaugural Jekyll & Hyde Cocktail Competition 2013 which was a huge success to a point where I got an article published on the leading bar & hospitality website Barlife UK. (http://www.barlifeuk.com/index.php/2013/07/jekyll-hyde-competition-2013/)

Within this role it included training the staff and the running of the site whilst the general manger was absent. This including writing rotas, stock taking, creating a bar manual, enforcing cleaning and service standards, banking and improving wage percentages and Gross Profit. Whilst at this site I was able to reduce the wage percentage from 35 % to 19% in 3 weeks. I have also further advanced my abilities as a man manger and my abilities to run a successful high end busy cocktail bar. My ability to interact well with customers in a fast pace environment has also improved greatly. Here as at Angel Share I have further increased my own profile in the industry by entering more cocktail competitions.