ON-TRADE INTERVIEW – Mix-Master

01 March 2006 By db staff writer

“standfirst”>Wayne Collins tours the globe in his mix-mobile, spreading the cocktail gospel according to Maxxium. Nice work if you can get it, says Robyn Lewis

Mixology, kind of a poncy term for  bar tending isn’t it? Like traffic co-ordinator for a lollipop lady or chief enabler of organic content solutions for a binman. And anyway, working behind a bar isn’t a career is it, it’s just something you do while you’re at university to make some spare cash, isn’t it? Not according to Wayne Collins, brands mixology, senior manager at Maxxium it isn’t and he and his Winnebago – fully kitted out as a cocktail bar of course – are on a mission to talk, teach and train the barmen of the world into bona fide mixologists of the true kind.

“Mixology is a term that’s been around since the end of the nineteenth century, some people like it and some people don’t,” says Collins, with a shrug. “I do think it is overused and there are those who say it’s pretentious but it does describe very well what we do.”

Collins, a down to earth Londoner with a sharp line in black suits and the confidence bred only in one born with the gift of the gab, probably couldn’t give a damn whether people like it or not, one senses. “For me the term sums up someone who is an expert in the field of drinks and bar-tending, so not only how to serve a drink but also product knowledge, understanding the production methods, mixability. It’s about flavours, textures, mixing and matching in a drink. It’s about how they taste, what the components are, when to use them and when not.”

Winning acclaim

These are the skills that Collins is trying to pass onto a whole new generation of bartenders in his work with Maxxium, the spirits distributor. Starting in the UK with an initial investment of £1m over three years, Collins has developed a training programme that the company is now rolling out across other Maxxium markets. The scheme Collins has devised has been a huge success for the company and its brands and is winning acclaim from the bars that use it as well.

The trick, maintains Collins, is his own background working in bars and not being too brand-specific. “A lot of the training we do, it’s obviously backed and powered by Maxxium and we use as many of our brands as often as we can, but generally we talk about general principles like customer service and we talk about brand categories and the role they play and how they are developing. The idea is that we all grow together, the bars, the bartenders and Maxxium. It is designed to be mutually beneficial.”

The idea of using training as a vehicle for brand development is relatively new, to the UK at least, and in many ways Maxxium has been one of the leaders of the trend. For Collins it all began back when Seagram was still around. “I started working in brand development through Absolut, when it was still in the Seagram portfolio,” he explains. “I had done a few events for them and it just evolved from there. Just after the millennium they asked if I’d be interested in a position with them, it was a training role but also as brand ambassador for their whisky brands, so that’s how I got started. I got my teeth into the marketing of the brands and learned how education of the trade is paramount to that. Bartenders are such powerful communicators of the brand to a consumer audience and I believe they can make or break a brand. They are at the coalface of communication and spirits companies are beginning to see that. So for me brand building is all about getting the right visibility, the right exposure for brands, listings and training for staff in bars.”

Learning on the job

Collins’ own career began back in 1990 in a pub in his native Camden, North London. “When I got behind the bar I just felt comfortable,” he remembers. “So I got more and more into bartending, reading books and learning about things that way. When I got my first job in a cocktail bar in 1991 (again in Camden) I was working with a group of bartenders all of whom had worked in America and on cruise ships and I learned a lot from them because even in the West End at that time, the cocktail thing really hadn’t caught on and people in the UK didn’t see the job as a career. Looking back at that time and at the ‘70s and ‘80s, the industry was really stuck in a rut – it was all American theme bars and the beginning of the end for the traditional pub. Now we’ve had the cocktail revolution and we’ve seen how the pub has evolved into the gastropub and high-street chains that are serving decent food and decent drinks, cocktails included, better wine selections and so on. So the bar scene has become more professional and, therefore, there is more of a demand for training.”

Cocktail revolution

The cocktail revolution has been well documented but the scene in London is maturing and entering another phase in its development, the question is, what next – are we in danger of returning to the dark days of lurid cocktails in the wrong (warm) glass? The closure of Atlantic, for example, does not bode well and is – as Collins says – a “shock to the scene. I thought that was one of those classic bars that would still be there in 40 or 50 years time. I think as always that those who are doing it right will survive but there is also a move out of the city centre, which I think is quite refreshing too, as you’ve essentially lost the old local pubs and there’s a new generation coming through.

“If you look at London at the moment that trend is moving things out of the West End and into neighbourhoods. Look at the areas that already have a decent and booming good restaurant offering and this is where the growth is for cocktails. It’s already happened in some places. If you go from Notting Hill to Kensington, into Chelsea and even down into Battersea you can get some great cocktails and you can carry on into Clapham and as far as Blackheath. You can even go the other way out east of the city into Shoreditch and Hoxton, they are all developing great food and drink offerings, there is a real demand for it.”

Another growing demand, in Collins’ experience he says, is cocktails at home. He is working with Asda, appearing on its website giving cocktail advice and there is his work on Good Food Live as well as taking his training programme with Maxxium into the big retailers and talking to the shop-floor staff. “People definitely underestimate the importance of the shop-floor workers in the off-trade; you know, they need to be educated as well. These are the sales people in the BWS aisle, these are the people who get asked questions and for advice so they need to know how to answer and to know about different products and categories as well.

 “And the consumer stuff, I do quite a bit of that as well; cocktails at home is definitely something that is starting to grow. I think it is partly to do with the social trend in London where lots of young professionals are now not just flat-sharing but mortgage-sharing because otherwise they’d be priced out of the market. A result of that is that you have groups of young, funky career types who’ve got a nice house, they’ve all chipped in for and what are you going to do? You are going to want to put a bar in there (or at the very least I well stocked booze cupboard). That’s what I’d do if I were in that position and if you go around the antique furniture fairs these days there’s loads of those old ‘70s kitsch home bars for sale and people are buying them – there’s a real demand for those Del Boy units. That’s part of the whole home entertainment boom as well, I’d say, so the retailers have seen the opportunity and got involved.

“Before there was Oddbins and Majestic with the wine, and some small specialist shops that would do tastings and are happy to talk to consumers, but very little else in terms of retail initiatives in drink. But now the big groups are getting involved with in-store demonstrations, tastings and so on. I’ve done stuff for Harvey Nichols and Selfridges and there are clubs emerging too, often attached to restaurants. Like Conran used to have a vodka club and you’d often get 50 or 60 people down there and at the Albernach on Trafalgar square with it’s whisky club, Aqua Vitae.”

Big Downunder

But Collins is also familiar with markets outside London. He knows the American market where he worked for a while, and through Maxxium he’s party (excuse the pun) to the cocktail scene in cities all over the world. So, is anywhere as hot as London? “London still does lead the world in terms of cocktails, though New York has begun to pick up the game again. I think they all got complacent for a while. Though the real other hotspot is Sydney now. Partly because there are a lot of British bar tenders who go out there and partly because of the Aussie bartenders who’ve cut their teeth in London, who take those skills back home. I’ve a lot of friends who I’ve met over the last decade working in London, who are now back in Australia and opening their own bars, so that is making it an exciting place to be at the moment. We are hoping to target Sydney with the training scheme next in fact.”

A few months in the sun for Collins’ then. A globetrotting, shaker-touting, drinks guru. Doesn’t seem so poncy now does it?

© db March 2006