John Debary Email & Phone Number

John deBary is a celebrated mixologist, author, and worker rights advocate with over a decade of experience crafting delicious drinks. His career began at the James Beard Award winning cocktail bar, PDT, where he was behind the bar for over five years. He worked for the Momofuku restaurant group for nine years, first as a bartender at Momofuku Ssam Bar, and then in the corporate office where he served as the group’s first Bar Director. John helped Momofuku open ten restaurants, train hundreds of staff, and oversaw the ongoing operations of nearly a dozen cocktail programs.In late 2019 John launched Proteau, a line of zero-proof botanical drinks. The drinks were inspired by the culinary and cultural diversity of New York City's Lower East Side and are meant to be perfect, straight from the bottle, no mixing required. Proteau has been featured widely in the media, praised by New York Times/Wirecutter, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Huffington Post, Forbes, Food and Wine, and many others. John is an author and industry leader who’s writing has appeared in GQ, PUNCH, Liquor.com, Thrillist, Food & Wine, Wine Enthusiast, and many more. Clarkson Potter published his first cocktail book, Drink What you Want: The Subjective Guide to Objectively Delicious Cocktails in the summer of 2020. It was a Publishers Weekly starred review and was listed one of Esquire’s Best Cookbooks of 2020. The book has been covered by The New Yorker, The Associated Press, Out Magazine, Garden and Gun Magazine, and many others. In 2018, John co-founded Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation (RWCF), an advocacy and action nonprofit dedicated to finding structural solutions to quality-of-life issues facing workers in the hospitality industry. In March 2020, RWCF established a covid-19 relief fund and has since raised over $8M towards relief efforts. Wine Enthusiast magazine named John in their 40 Under 40 Tastemakers of 2020; he has also received Thrillist’s Local Heroes award and Tales of the Cocktail’s philanthropy award for his work with RWCF.He also provides consulting services to private clients, including cocktail and menu development, staff training, product development, recipe testing, and more.

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  Columbia College, Columbia University

  East Asian Languages, Literatures, And Linguistics