The meez Podcast

Jack McGarry on Redefining Irish-American Pubs Through The Dead Rabbit and The Irish Exit

• Josh Sharkey • Season 2 • Episode 83

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#83. In this episode of The meez Podcast, Josh Sharkey sits down with Jack McGarry, Managing Partner of world-renowned, The Dead Rabbit, for a deep dive into leadership in the restaurant and bar industry. Jack shares insights on building and scaling a globally recognized brand, including how he's led The Dead Rabbit to become one of the most awarded pubs in the world, with honors like Tales of the Cocktail awards and World’s 50 Best Bars titles. They also discuss the challenges of hiring in hospitality, what it takes to lead a successful team, and how to maintain authenticity while expanding into new cities.

Beyond the operational side, Jack opens up about his passion for contemporary Irish culture and how he’s reshaping the image of the Irish-American pub. From his expertise in cocktail development and Irish spirits to his commitment to philanthropy and mental health advocacy, Jack’s story is one of passion, purpose, and leadership. And, of course, no conversation with Jack McGarry would be complete without discussing what makes the perfect cocktail.

Tune in to hear how Jack’s journey from Belfast to New York has made The Dead Rabbit a global institution, and what’s next for this Irish pub as well as other brands as it expands across the U.S.

Where to find Jack McGarry:

Where to find The Dead Rabbit: 

Where to find The Irish Exit:

Where to find host Josh Sharkey:

In this episode, we cover:

(02:18): What recently has been keeping Jack up at night
(06:38): How Jack maintains quality when scaling to new locations
(14:55): How Jack thinks about hiring
(35:01): What Jack has learned about hiring for the future
(40:12): What makes a great cocktail and what makes a great bartender?
(1:01:06): The Irish Exit and Celebrating Irish Culture
(1:05:53): What is clear ice?
(1:13:17): Next steps for Jack

[00:00:00] Jack McGarry: 


Use a not metric of four digits for a barrier. It's just a terrible metric or a terrible thing for building a team. You know, it's just not the right way of going about things. 


[00:00:11] Josh Sharkey: 


You're listening to season two of The meez Podcast. I'm your host, Josh Sharkey, the founder and CEO of meez, a culinary operating system for food professionals.


[00:00:20] 


On the show, we're going to talk to high performers in the food business, everything from chefs to CEOs, technologists, writers, investors, and more about how they innovate and operate. And how they consistently execute at a high level, day after day. And I would really love it if you could drop us a 5 star review.


[00:00:38] 


Anywhere that you listen to your podcast. That could be Apple, that could be Spotify, could be Google. I'm not picky. Anywhere works, but I really appreciate the support. And as always, I hope you enjoy the show. I've, you know, been in New York. Most of my life, 20 some odd years, I remember when Dead Rabbit opened and just to see what you've done now from transitioning from just an incredible bartender to, you know, this, all the entrepreneurial stuff you're doing is pretty amazing.


[00:01:07] Josh Sharkey: 


Oh, thank you. We're just trying our best. Yeah. Well, good to meet you, by the way, because we haven't met. Yes, you too. Yeah, we haven't, well, we still haven't met in person, but at least we're doing remote here. Well, I know you've done a bunch of podcasts already, so we're not going to talk about most of the things that you've already gone over.


[00:01:24] 


Uh, you've got a pretty, pretty killer background. I think you started a merchant hotel like many, many eons ago, is that right? Yeah, 


[00:01:32] Jack McGarry: 


That's where I started the cocktail side of things. 


[00:01:35] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. Yeah. And then milk and honey. And then I think you want best bartender in the world. Is that right? 


[00:01:40] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah, many years ago when I was over 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah, 


[00:01:43] Josh Sharkey: 


You look young, but that's okay. But you know today I was hoping look I know you we're gonna talk a lot about like opening new businesses and and how that's going and we can kind of steer this however, you want I mean given you know, we both Build businesses. We could just spend the whole time talking about that if you want.


[00:02:00] 


I developed an allergy to live yeast like, I don't know, like 15 years ago. So I can't drink beer or wine. So I really, so I like cocktails. I don't drink very often, but I really liked them. So I was going to just selfishly pick your brain a bit about the art of making cocktails. So we might dig into that a little bit if you're down, if you're down with that.


[00:02:16] Jack McGarry: 


Whatever, whatever you want. I'm an open book. 


[00:02:18] Josh Sharkey: 


Cool. To kick it off, what's keeping you up at night right now? And like, what's, what's most top of mind for you? 


[00:02:24] Jack McGarry: 


Oh, what's top of mind right now? So obviously we've just opened our first expansion of the Dead Rabbit outside of New York City. And we are on the precipice of doing quite a few other venues related to Dead Rabbit.


[00:02:41] 


Adjacent concept launches and stuff like that. So I'd say the biggest thing on my mind right now is how we're structuring the company and how we're capitalizing our expansion. So that would be the things that are keeping me up right now, because it's been, I always knew when we were going to start this expansion journey that we were going to learn a lot.


[00:03:02] 


Um, we were going to make a lot of mistakes, but my whole philosophy rests on the, I don't like making the same mistake twice. So we're going to make mistakes. That's fine. As long as we learn from them and make better and new mistakes as we get further down, down the road here. So that'd be some of the things that are keeping me up because I don't want the company to steal or.


[00:03:25] 


Key success factors, if you will, to get diluted and, and for the concepts and experiences that we execute to just become commodified, like you see with a lot of other companies that expand. So that keeps me up at night and then also making sure that we have enough cash and the company to support our growth.


[00:03:44] 


Um, so there are two big pieces that are keeping me up. 


[00:03:51] Josh Sharkey: 


I feel you, man. Are you raising capital right now? 


[00:03:53] Jack McGarry: 


We are. Yeah. So we're doing an internal raise and then we're getting closer now to looking at an external raising at the, at the top core level to support our growth. So it's exciting and nerve wracking, I'd say, in equal, um, proportions.


[00:04:12] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're hitting that threshold now where, you know, you're enough sort of expansion where it probably makes sense. Are you thinking about like private equity or are you thinking just sort of like institutional or, or more restaurant investors? 


[00:04:25] Jack McGarry: 


I think more high net worths, institutional as opposed to private equity.


[00:04:29]  

I think that private equity piece will come at some point, but we're not there yet. Cause I think if once we dip our toe in that, that becomes a very different enterprise at that point. And we want to protect, cause it's still, I still very much view everything that we're doing as day one. So I want to make sure we're super protective over the integrity and the intention of everything that we're doing.


[00:04:54] 


Prove everything out until we get to that level, because once we get to that level, as I said, it'll Things will become different, which is less than that's the way I like. But, um, yeah, I'm reluctant to go there until we've done everything that we're trying to do at this, at this stage. 


[00:05:09] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah, man. I mean, it's so hard to maintain that as you scale, but that's the thing that always falls off for most folks is, you know, you.


[00:05:17] 


When you scale, you start to commoditize, make things more cookie cutter because that's the easier way to do it. The harder way is how do you sort of maintain, you know, your vision and your principles and also the feeling. And, you know, like when you, when you scale, I mean, if you walk in Dead Rabbit in New York, there's a feeling you get.


[00:05:35] 


There's a, and I know you've talked a lot about, a lot of the brand is about telling the stories of, you know, Irish artisans and musicians. And, uh, and that sort of. Like downstream into the team that you have and, and, and you clearly have a very sort of high standard being the bartender that you are for everybody is listening that doesn't know you're, you're downplaying it obviously, but you were, you know, an insanely incredible mixologist.

[00:06:01] 


And that takes a lot of precision and a commitment to excellence and, um, high standards and discipline. And, you know, you see that in Dead Rabbit. How the hell do you maintain that? Because that's you, and then you have to sort of impart that into all these people as you scale Dead Rabbit to Austin, to DC.


[00:06:21] 


And it's, a lot of it is you, and a lot, you, I think I've heard you say, like, My finger is on everything, but I'm not there, right? Yeah. Which, you know, is amazing, but like, again, like, how are you thinking about maintaining that? And what are you doing to sort of make sure that, that carries over to the next spot?


[00:06:38] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah, I mean, for me, there's a handful, I'd say, of key barriers that we need to cut to overcome to make this a success in terms of scaling in the right way. So, leadership is critical. That's one barrier. So, you can have the most beautiful looking store, most beautiful looking bar and great story, but it can all fall the way side if you don't have the right leaders.


[00:07:06] 


Leadership in place to set the tone for the culture and create a great culture. Um, so leadership is definitely, it's definitely one the company infrastructure. So I mean, across both the hard infrastructure and the soft infrastructure is critical. So making sure that we have scalable systems in place while also creating essentially a robust framework while also simultaneously having a lot of freedom within that framework, but the framework has to be strong, like there has to be guardrails.


[00:07:37] 

So that's another, that's another thing, making sure everybody's set up for success, both on the team member side, on the customer side, on our other stakeholders and shareholders, um, the culture, which I just spoke to would be another huge one, but that's, that, that would be loosely related to leadership.


[00:07:55] 


And then as an extension of culture operations, so the operations are critical, that's where the rubber really hits the road. So making sure that the team fully supported set up for success. Everybody is focused on the macro and micro details because I, to me, a great experience.


[00:08:12] 


You've obviously been in a Dead Rabbit, a dead, a great dead rabbit experience to me. And that goes back to something I remember Sasha Petrovsky saying to me, um, many, many years ago that, uh, he was speaking specifically within the context of a Manhattan and somebody asked him, well, what? What is a Great Manhattan?


[00:08:29] 


And he said, well, a Great Manhattan shouldn't taste like rye or bourbon. It shouldn't taste like vermouth. It shouldn't taste like bitters. It should taste like a perfectly balanced fusion of all those things. You know, you shouldn't be able to point your finger on it necessarily. And that's, to me, it's a great bar experience, you know, it shouldn't be just the music or the art or the service, the drinks, the food, the cleanliness of the space, the soaps in the bathroom, you know, no chewing gum underneath the bar or whatever, everything looks prim and proper.


[00:08:59]


It's all of those things coming together as one holistic, cohesive experience. So that's the operations, that's your hospitality, that's your service, that's the way you take care of the store and take care of the people that come into your store. And then the last part of that to me that we need to overcome is the marketing side of things so a big and we've been very conscious of this in the past year or so we certainly do not want to be recognized as this new york centric company, um, or a company that has this new york sort of ego or swagger or tension.


[00:09:31] 


So we are first and foremost, a company that celebrates contemporary Ireland, you know, the, obviously the gang, the dead rabbit is a New York Irish gang, but it was when you, when you zoom out. It was essentially, uh, set up to protect and advance Irish immigrants against xenophobia that they experienced when they came to America in the 19th century.


[00:09:50] 


So the gang was principally created to protect and advance Irish immigrants, and by extension, the Irish story. So that's what we, we sort of co-opted and that's where we're going into each market, and this is singularly talking about the Dead Rabbit at the moment. We're going in and basically saying, this is where we're celebrating and championing the contemporary Irish story.


[00:10:10] 


Cause a lot of these places all over America, the interpretation or representation of Ireland is pigeon holed as, as, uh, shooting shots, David Irish bars. Leprechaun St. Patrick's day, you know, and it's very, very limited. And we're here to show that Ireland is an extremely dynamic, progressive, diverse country, you know, and there's so much creativity coming out of it and an excellence across all the mediums.


[00:10:38] 


So that marketing side is critical. And we're digging into that even deeper now in terms of we're in the process of rebranding the top company as something that's brand agnostic because we're bringing on other brands that are. All everything that we do is, is it goes back to representing Ireland because that's what I view myself as a brand ambassador for the country essentially.


[00:10:59] 


Well, as I said, we're rebranding that top company. So it's, it's all about Ireland and everything like cascades up to that or cascades down. So marketing and making sure that we're. Reaching the customers in each city, making sure that the bars are big. And this is the paradox that you know, of business that the dead rabbit brand is strong, but also it's, it's idiosyncratic and localized to each market that it operates.


[00:11:21] 


And, you know, that's important as well, because when we opened up Austin, we had some New Yorkers that moved to Austin thinking it was going to be an exact replica of what we did in New York. And that was never, I was very transparent that that was never going to be the case that you would walk in and know that it's a bad rabbit because the DNA is the same.


[00:11:38] 


But the layout, it's, it's, it's earlier, it's brighter, it's like more contemporary. And, and the reason for that is because Texans like bigger spaces, they like more comfortable spaces, you know, so each, each dead rabbit and each other's thing that we do will, will be different. And I have no interest in doing exactly the same thing.


[00:11:55] 


Over and over again, so yeah, that's the four or five things that I think are critical as we're going through this period and all of that sort of wraps and, uh, and a bow in terms of how we do this well and, uh, making sure that it doesn't become commodified. And your initial point of like, hi, are we doing it like the leadership part part for me is the one I spend the most time on because I'm never nine times out of 10 when people come into the bar, they're coming in here in the evenings.


[00:12:24] 


Early at night. I'm not here. My work's done during this time up until like early afternoon or early, sorry, early evening touching base with the leaders, making sure all the standards are being hit, making sure that I'm setting the leaders up for success. I'm holding them accountable for our standards and really instilling my standards and expectations across every aspect of the business.


[00:12:47] 


But again, And tandem with that, and again, another paradox is I give all of our leadership team, they have a lot of autonomy, but I expect great performance, you know, so, so that's a couple of the things I could probably ramble on for another hour, but I'll, I'll stop because I'm sure you'll have questions.


[00:13:05] Josh Sharkey: 


A lot. Yeah. This is really difficult to do what you're doing scale the way that you're scaling because yeah, each. Each entity has its own individual corpus of, of like the brand, but its own, but its own sort of unique interpretation. It's really, that's hard, man. Each, each time you got to do a lot of research, you have to really understand the market, which by the way, I think also makes it, you know, a way more, uh, risk averse way to sort of scale into new markets.


[00:13:31] 


I remember rolling out, you know, the same restaurant. In Chicago that we had in New York, it just totally flopped. You know, and it just showed like you have to do a lot of research and you have to understand not just your brand, but how your brand, you know, resonates with the community that you're in.


[00:13:46] 


Yeah. From what I understand, you, you also share a love of reading books. I'm sure you've read, you know, Stars Why or, or, or, or things like that. You have this, you know, premise in your business that is, you know, so deeply rooted in Ireland that it's very easy to connect to that or not. And then if you don't connect with it, fine, you don't need to work here.


[00:14:04] 


But like opening another bar is just opening another bar. You know, finding another bar to have a drink at is, is, you know, just walk down the street. But if you do it, right, and it sounds like you are putting so much energy into creating this environment of representing Ireland. And I want to ask you about your hiring practices.


[00:14:20] 


That it makes it easier, even though it's so hard, I would assume, because people have something to fall back on. Like, this is really hard, but we're doing it because we love Ireland. We're doing it because we want to represent, we want to make sure people understand that there's way more to Ireland than just fucking leprechauns.


[00:14:35] 


Exactly. And Guinness. So let's, let's talk about, yeah, like your hiring practice. I'm super curious how you think about, well, just generally speaking, do you have a methodology to use like the A method of hiring or do you like other, other things that you do that are specific to your world of how you think about like hiring leadership? We'll stick to just leadership. 


[00:14:55] Jack McGarry: 


I mean, I'd say, and listen, we continue to, to make these mistakes, but we're making less of them. Albeit it probably doesn't feel that way right in this very moment. But, so zooming out, when we first opened up that rabbit, your point, I was this bartender. I was like a prestigious type bartender.


[00:15:14] 


Like I, I was very talented, very early, really hyper-focused on bartending. All I heard about was bartending cocktails and being the best bartender in the world. That was literally it, you know? And there there's a, there's definitely a huge amount of narcissism and ego tied up. And not that I had the unpack when the awards came and the shit started hitting the fan, but when we, so when we opened, I would've hired based on like the name, the bartender name.


[00:15:39] 


So when we opened, we had like the Harlem Globe Trotters, if you will, on bartend and thought, and our bar obviously didn't go well. You know, it's a lot of ego, a lot of like set ways of doing things. And also, I just was not an effective leader. So when I. Got sober like nine, nine or so years ago. And as part of that process, I really closed the chapter on bartending.


[00:16:01] 

And then moved into operating and entrepreneurship and all of that type of stuff. And that's where I really realized that I needed to apply the same level of discipline, education, reading, development, and to being a leader and an operator as I did as being a bartender. And, uh, that's when I really looked at our hiring practices because we were hiring extremely poorly, like there's been a couple of people with us now I've been with us for the past decade or so.


[00:16:27] 


But we would have just been going through people quickly. Um, the culture wasn't great. They're just making a lot of mistakes. Went into college. Like the university and started reading prolifically. So the books that I read around that time would have been, um, pop grading and a bunch of other books related to culture, related to recruitment, related to setting up a framework and a system.


[00:16:49] 


Cause I love that quote. I don't think I don't know what the heck it's damning, but every system is perfectly set up for the results that it gets, you know, so if you have problems with your recruitment, which we did, that's the way you've set it up. When I looked into that and this took a couple of years and this will get to our recruitment.


[00:17:06] 


Now I, I started this and started understanding like, cause I would have sat down and we would have had a meeting and my whole philosophy back then was what I go for a beer review or what I want to, like, it was all gut based and one of the books calls it voodoo magic. And that's what it is. Cause it's all intuitive or intuition and using that metric of where I go for a beer review.


[00:17:28] 

It's just a terrible metric or a terrible thing for building a team. Do you know, it's just not the right way of going about things because every team should have different personalities, should have different skill sets and, and, and all of that stuff. So the thing that I started off with first was obviously like, here are the roles for the company.


[00:17:46] 


So you're, you're saying about leadership. So we'll just focus on, but I did this, we did this with every single role, but in terms of leadership and leaders and. Our company, what are the core competencies that I expect for that role? And then even going back to that, I started codifying to get to that point.


[00:18:06] 


I would have codified our mission, our values, all of those things. Cause that all feeds in, like everything should be integrated. So on leadership, like here's the competencies, here's what I expect. Then I would have went to the next step of what does that look like for our company? So leadership. So take comp the competent one competency would be like strategic or execution or something like that.


[00:18:29] 


What does that, what exactly am I expecting for that? And then I would have built off questions that fit that competency. And then I would have built off of the questions to basically decide a rubric, a rubric and a like, great, like, here's what a great answer looks like. Here's what an okay answer looks like.


[00:18:48] 


Here's what an incorrect answer looks like. And we did that for each role. So leaders have 20 competencies. I believe our front of house team has 8 to 10. Um, and as part of the leadership. And we did that again, we did this for everything. Once we had that, then we boxed it out into pre interview questionnaire, where we're recruiting or where are we putting the advertisements out, um, how are we filtering then the first interview, which is not in person and the in person interview, and then the last interview.


[00:19:19]


And then the trail period, and then as part of that, there's due diligence and reference check. So we basically, long story short, as I'm sure you'll, you'll get from this, we systematized it. We built a very intentional and, and, uh, set framework for how we recruit and how we, uh, bring people in, like even, so you'd get the leader, but then we have the on board, the leader, we have the on board, all the team members.


[00:19:41] 


So what does that look? How do we do our performance management? Yada, yada, yada. So we're, we're very, very focused on that and we continue to work on it, you know, so for any interviews and like, I went through this with leaders when we started the Austin period, there were some questions where like, we think we can do a better question or we can have a better, you know, so you're constantly developing it, but essentially you're taking all of that stuff that's in your head and you're putting it out.

On a piece of paper and then basically making sure it all makes sense. 


[00:20:09] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah, no, I love that. Have you ever read who the a method for hiring from just smart? 


[00:20:13] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah. So the, um, his father wrote Top Grading. So that's just son's called Jeff. I'm not sure what the dad's called. But I read who, and I read, um, TopGrid89, like the who method is basically what we use. Um, it's just, it's like a calibrated, like it's our version of that system. 


[00:20:32] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. You have to serve the object to yourself. We do the same thing. Something else, you know, honestly, that I've very recently started to do is I keep, and I've been saying this, often, I actually don't even know how technically legal it is, but I hate job descriptions that are specific about, you know, here's the things that you will do in your job.


[00:20:53] 


These are all the tasks. I love the premise of, here's the result we expect, or the outcome. Here's our operating principles and here's how we'll communicate together and do your thing. You know so like as long as you work within our our first principles of what we believe how we you know how we how we want to act and behave and you hit these results.


[00:21:14] 


I'm good. Yeah, it doesn't work It's a very certain type of person because they need to be okay with autonomy and you know lack of you know full direction I find otherwise It just creates very task oriented, you know, people, uh, and then they fall back to like, but this is, you didn't have this in my job description was only this.


[00:21:32] 


It doesn't say that I should be calling people and asking them this thing, you know? That's why I also love the A method. And for anyone that's listening, I would definitely recommend it because it's very outcome based. It's like, what's the outcome you're looking for? And then how are you going to measure that, you know, that, that, that they'll be able to do that, which is so much better than how we typically have hired in the past.

[00:21:51] 


Oh, definitely. It was a nightmare going back 10, 11 years ago. It was a nightmare. Yeah. I am curious also, so we were talking about these systems and also just, I relate a lot to sort of your sort of bartender now, you know, entrepreneur, um, or just focusing more on sort of leadership. Uh, you know, I come from the fine dining world and that's what I did most of my life.


[00:22:09] 


And so much of it translates to, to running a business if you think about it the way, but one thing I struggle with and I'm curious how you deal with it is I'm also super systems driven and for a very long time. you know, before, before this company, I had a, um, uh, well, I, two companies ago. I owned like these hot dog restaurants and I systematized fucking everything, literally everything.


[00:22:32]: 


And then I realized I got to a point where like, Oh, basically what I've created is an environment where I'm almost disincentivizing you to think independently because everything is like a system and my, my sort of learning lesson was like, Hey, you know, like it's actually a lot better if you can just teach people the right way to think about the outcome you're looking for, as opposed to just, you, you need systems as well, but it's hard, man, it's hard to balance and you must be dealing with that a lot, especially with Dead Rabbit.


[00:23:00] 


And I know you have other concepts that you're rolling out as well, but like, how do you think about the balance between systems? And just people in your, in your vision?


[00:23:09] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah. I mean, listen, I went through the same, what you mean, not the same exact context, but over, um, essentially over regulating or over prescribing how you want things done.


[00:23:20] 


And I've definitely hugely pulled back from that. I remember reading a book from, um, Ray Dalio and it was all about his principles. And, uh, I think that like you call them first principles of a couple of minutes ago, it's, that's really what it's about. You know, we have a lot of different. Like obviously we have our values and we have the pillars of, of, of what constitutes a great Dead Rabbit experience and what our customers expect from us.


[00:23:47] 


But we also read, read together as a leadership team, every like a new book a month. That's cool. So that we develop our, our shared vocabulary of, of speaking, you know, so there's, we read a book called, uh, broken windows, broken business, which is like loosely based on the, uh, broken windows theory of criminality.


[00:24:07] 


And I'm aware that there's. Some controversy in terms of how that was used in the criminal world or in the policing world, you know, that led to stop and frisk and like a whole bunch of problematic situations and not context, but a broken window in a business context of like when you go into McDonald's and there's shit laying on the ground or the windows aren't cleaned or there's chewing gum under the bar, stuff isn't.


[00:24:31] 


Isn't perfect. So we use that to talk about like, if there's glasses sitting on the bar for longer than 60 seconds, that's a broken window, but basically what I'm trying to get out is we talk about broad philosophical and principle driven operating mechanisms, or even like mechanisms, to be honest with you.


[00:24:50] 


And we use that to talk about what is important to the business, you know? So we, that's really, I really try to make sure that we've got the right. Like that stuff, right. You know, the cultural stuff, right. How we're communicating, how we're speaking about things, making sure that we're very clear on what's important and not important to the business.


[00:25:13] 


And I've got away from really over doing things, you know, cause I want to get people who are intrinsically motivated, that want autonomy, that are comfortable with that ambiguity, but. Also know what the company stands for, what our expectations are, who we want to be and where we want to be and kind of all that set of things.


[00:25:34] 


So it's really. training people's minds as opposed to training them to like the specific behaviors of building around or serving a customer, you know, cause that stuff, that's the, me, that's the easy stuff. It's this part, that's the hard part. 


[00:25:49] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. This is probably a rabbit hole, so feel free to stay 50,000 feet, but, um, you know, the onboarding process for, for a leader, you know, given all of these principles you have and how detour into you guys are with, you know, running this business, what is the onboarding like for a new leader?

[00:26:05] Jack McGarry: 


We actually built this all like during COVID, because that's when we started restructuring the company and like I separated from a long time collaborator. And we have an onboarding, uh, software solution called rise. It's basically a content creator, but you can create training plots and all that kind of stuff.


[00:26:22] 


And so we, I built that out across four different aspects. So leadership operations, execution, and I can't remember the other one, but there's four different modules and there's substantial modules, and it basically starts from principles and then it goes into actual practices. So we, we outline all of that across all the leadership facets and, uh, it gets very granular in terms of like, here's how to use our Slack or here's how to do this, or here's how to onboard a new, a new team member has to fill out this paper.


[00:26:56] 


All that type, it gets very granular, but it starts very philosophical at the, at the top. Funders. Reading recommendations and all of that type of stuff. So again, everything's externalized. We say what's important to the business, why the business exists, how we operate, what we stand for, what excellence looks like to us.


[00:27:15] 


Like there's, there's no ambiguity in terms of the expectations and we really. sought to create that is if they're unsure of anything, they can go back to it and have a look at it. But I'm also starting with the principles. I'm like, if you know the principles, maybe seven times out of 10, you're going to make the right decision.


[00:27:35] 

And the three. Sometimes you make a wrong decision that presents a moment for us to have a conversation about it. 


[00:27:41] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. 


[00:27:43] Jack McGarry: 


So that's, that's what we did, you know. 


[00:27:45] Josh Sharkey: 


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[00:28:53] 


How long are they onboarding before they're actually doing? You know, like, do you, do you stop them from actually getting involved in the business until they're completely done with onboarding? 


[00:29:01] Jack McGarry: 


Um, so we have their, like, where everything should be done in terms of going through that portal in two weeks, they'll have two weeks of onboarding with somebody with them every, every day of those two weeks.


[00:29:15] 


And then after that, it's, they start, yeah. I have absolutely no fear of people making mistakes. I fully expect if you're not making mistakes, you're not, you're not doing enough, you're not trying things, you're not pushing yourself out there. So we stopped the hand holding or the stabilizers, if you will, after two weeks, fully under the expectation that there's going to be mistakes made.


[00:29:39] 


But that said, we have such a strong team. Like obviously Austin, we're just, we're. She had been that team, but in New York, that team is very highly like it places itself. And if the leader is doing something, that's not, if it's unusual or they're making a mistake, the team will very quickly let you know, or let us know.


[00:29:58] 

So again, We can help bring the leader in the right, in the right space. But in terms of when we expect a leader to fully, fully feel comfortable operating a store or, or yes, in the role, you're talking six months, really until we have full, full confidence. Because at the end of the day, all of these relationships are high trust.


[00:30:18] 


And the trust is the cement of, of all of this type of stuff. So it takes, it takes that time to develop that trust in the trust. We look at it as six months and we fully understand after the two week Like hard onboarding that there's going to be from the two week to the sixth month period, there's going to be a lot of other developmental moments.


[00:30:37] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah, I've made mistakes in the past where I hired someone really good, like I knew they were really good. 


[00:30:44] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah. 


[00:30:45] Josh Sharkey: 


And then I just kind of let them do their thing and it was a big mistake on my part because, uh, you know, just because they're really good doesn't mean that they are going to be able to do things through the lens of what you want, you know, you know, how you want them to think or, or your principles.


[00:31:01] 


So now I'm like really slow with, with, with onboarding. I sort of do like the, I do, we do, you do. Yeah. Sometimes like really good leaders will be like, come on, man. Like, let's get this thing going. I, I want to jump in and I have to like slow it down because, you know, we have these expectations like, Hey man, you've done this or woman, you've done this a hundred times.


[00:31:21] 


I know you're really good at this. So just go, go and do, but you know, we have these expectations and you, you know, Jack, I'm sure you have very specific expectations of how this person should operate. Have you had times when you hired someone really good and then they didn't really execute the way you wanted and you had to sort of like ratchet back?


[00:31:39] Jack McGarry: 


Very recently in Austin, we had the situation where we had to, we had to separate, you know, so we went through an extensive period of onboarding and it just, cause you're always trying to assume the best and hope for the best. But there becomes a point that, as you know, yourself, like you've, you know, you'll have went through all your steps, you'll try to make it work and it's just not working.


[00:32:00] 


And again, all of this, like everything in life, all of this is paradoxes. All of this is like, how quickly. Do you let somebody go? Hi, slow. Do you go? Hi, quickly. Do you hire somebody? Hi, slow. Do you hire somebody? At the end of the day, you can have the best system. A candidate will get through that you're very comfortable with and very confident then.


[00:32:22] 


But ultimately, until you get another metaphorical bed together, you don't know why it's all, it's all going to work, you know, so we went through that in Austin, we separate, we went our separate ways and we are quickly course correcting. Like, I'm a bit sad about that, obviously, because we, as you can tell, we spent so much time and, and, and detailing and documenting and putting everything out there and going through this recruitment process.


[00:32:47] 


But. At the end of the day, you cannot be hamstrung by any of that. You know, you have to make decisions, you have to make them as quickly as you can. And you always have to prioritize the prioritize the business. And I'm very, very transparent communicator and very clear, very candid, um, direct, you know, you'll never think, what is Jack thinking about?


[00:33:06] 


Cause I'm just going to say. Exactly. And, uh, what I'm thinking about and I'll keep it respectful, but I don't mince my words. So that's, listen, that's not for everybody. 


[00:33:14] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. 


[00:33:16] Jack McGarry: 


And I also have high, extreme, I have high expectations for myself. I have high expectations, high expectations for everybody that has a relationship with our business.


[00:33:24] 


So that's customers. Shareholders, stakeholders, customers, team members, especially leaders. So we went through a whole thing of like in this situation in Austin, this person wanted to, I think wanted like a 40 or 50 hour a week type situation. And, uh, we're all about balance, but. I believe every leader should be in a space or should be, be working for 55 to 60 hours, you know?

[00:33:51] 


So there's things like that, that I just expect. And that's still even within that, that still affords a lot of room for personal things, being on top of it, you know, being a leader, the primary leader of a, of a store, you have to be connected all the time. Do you know if a message comes through that the, the boilers broke or the sewage pipe or something like that has to be responded to, you can't just switch off.


[00:34:14] 


Yeah. So we just went through that. Yeah. Um, sucks. And yeah, it does, it does suck. But, and the other part of it is I am very aware that we're not for everybody, you know, and I, I'm very transparent when we're working our way through that. I'm like, we are very performance driven. Like when you're here, you're fully here.


[00:34:30] 


Like we expect people to be connected. We expect people to, when they come in that they're fully in, you know, there's a heavy drinking culture and, and drug culture in our industry, unfortunately. And like, we have zero tolerance for that bullshit. If you come in. And you're hung over, or you're not ready to execute and you're a leader, like that's a terrible tone to set for the entire store.


[00:34:50] 


So there's just a lot of expectations that we have that are off putting and listen, that's fine. You know, I'm completely comfortable with that, but we're not going to. We're not going to settle, you know, 


[00:35:01] Josh Sharkey: 

Yeah, it always sucks to have to fire somebody or let them go. What did you learn or how did you change or update your process of hiring now that you that happened?


[00:35:09] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah. So with the situation in Austin, what, and that's, we always do that. So there's always a post mortem of any situation in terms of I'm a firm believer. You always have to assume responsibility for it, you know? So if it failed, why did it fail? What was our part in this failure? So I'd say our part in this failure was we quickly realized.


[00:35:31] 


We quickly realized that this wasn't going to work, but we basically tried to make it work and in terms of leadership, so like one thing that's important for me. I have no time for people who are late, you know, if you say you're going to meet somebody at a time, you'd be there on that time, we're all, everybody's busy.


[00:35:50] 


Everybody's got their lives. You have to respect one another. Like it should to me, it's respect within the context of this specific situation, there was punctuality issues, which to me are just code red issues. You know, um, I'm a firm believer in the way you do. One thing is in the way you do pretty much everything.


[00:36:07] 


Sort of like the zoom out, we should have made the decision very quickly, as opposed to dragging it out for as long as we did. And then secondly, we could have done more. So going into a new market, we didn't contact, uh, people that are well established in the market to get feedback on leaders. And it became apparent to us after the fact that we should have done that.

[00:36:34] 


And, uh, that's another thing that we're going to. The adding to that framework, you know, and then the third thing is the onboarding process was too elongated. So we brought the leaders in when we perceived we were a month or two away. We're not going, we're, we're going to bring leaders. And once we know we're four to six weeks out, because we're on the ground the whole time.


[00:37:00] 


So the onboarding process is when we're on the ground as opposed to before the bar opens, you know, so that was another mistake that we made because I think that by the time that the bar opened, there was a lot of fatigue and, and all of that type of stuff. So there's a whole bunch of things we've looked at and we're going to improve for the, for, for DC or, or forever.


[00:37:20] 


We open up, open up next summer. Listen, we're going to continue to make mistakes, but it's just making it better. It's making it better for us. It's making it better for the team member in question. Yeah. So it's just setting everybody up for success better. 


[00:37:32] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing with running and growing a business.

It's just full of mistakes. And as long as you, as long as you keep, you know, learning and updating your, you know, your knowledge base. It's all that matters. I have this, um, it's kind of a dumb acronym because it's not in order, but I, whenever, for anybody on my team where something goes wrong, I call it staying thin.


[00:37:55] 

And basically what it means is if something went wrong with someone, it's either training, hiring, inspiring, or nurturing, right? Either. The worst one is that you hired the wrong person. That's what sucks the most. That's when it stings the most and hurts the most because. you know, you fucked up and they might actually be really good and just not good for what you needed them for.


[00:38:16] 


And that, and that sucks the worst. But then if you did hire the right, the right person, when things go wrong, you know, how well did you train them? And also how well did you like inspire them and let them know like why you guys exist and what, why they, they should want to be here. Uh, and then everybody, operates differently.


[00:38:34] 


So like, how did you nurture that? You know, some people want to be more pushed. Some people want to be more empathized with. For me, I find it to be really like, I load off my shoulder and that like, I know it's all my fault, no matter what. Whenever anything goes wrong, even if it's a very blatant mistake and they really, you know, like, I let that happen.


[00:38:54] 


And how, what was the environment? There's a stoic quote that I really love, basically paraphrasing, but it's like, how are you complicit, you know, in the environment that you say you don't want? It stings the most with hiring, man. And firing. Because it is almost always our fault in some way, you know. 


[00:39:08] Jack McGarry: 


100%. I think once you accept that, It's very liberating and not liberating in the sense that you want to, obviously you want to stop making those mistakes or mitigate those mistakes as much as possible.


[00:39:21] 


But when you, a lot of times people have ego wrapped into, Oh, I'm a great recruiter or I'm a great this. And I guess just all bollocks, you know, like we're all works in progress. We're all different. Obviously there's some people who are better than others, but. If you're approaching this thing like you know everything and you're all conquering and it's just not going to work, you know, it's going to breed hubris and you're most likely not serving your team in the best way.


[00:39:45] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. All right. I'm going to pivot for a minute just because selflessly I want to ask you about some cocktails and then maybe we'll after that I want to talk just more about like all the brands you're working on and a couple of things, but I love making cocktails at home because I can't drink beer or wine anymore.


[00:40:00] 


I don't drink that often, but I do like to make them. So my first question would just be like strictly from a tactical standpoint, what makes a great cocktail and a great bartender? Yeah. 


[00:40:12] Jack McGarry: 


So I'd say for a great cocktail, it's the, a couple of aspects to that. It's obviously the ingredients that you use.


[00:40:20] 

Um, so you've got to have great quality ingredients so that it covers your ice. Um, it covers your citrus, your syrups, your modifiers, like spirits. Obviously the equipment is important. You've got to have decent equipment, cocktail shaker, strainer. and all of that type of stuff. So you've got to cut the right, you've got to have the right pieces to make a great drink.


[00:40:41] 


So that's important and then following the right recipe. So for me, anytime I, and obviously you'll be getting listeners on here at various different stages of this, but I would always recommend people to start with one drink. What is your favorite drink? So some martini, get a couple of vermouths, get a couple of gins, get a couple of vodkas, start small, get a good stirring or a good stirring device or a good shaker if you prefer shaking or stir.


[00:41:06] 


and build from that, like nail that drink. So nail your stir, nail your shake, good quality ingredients related to that one drink and then start exploring outside of that. But making sure you've got the right ingredients, the right equipment and a good recipe to start off and you're respecting The processes of the drink.


[00:41:26] 


So stirring like, um, we're spoiled for information on this, but Googling or, or YouTubing how to start a drink, like really paying attention. Cause a lot of people make an absolute mess of the actual production part of the drink. You know, so you can have, you can have Tanqueray, you can have nolipua, you can have the best ingredients, but when it comes to the execution part, people make a dog's dinner of it.


[00:41:49] 

And that's what, anytime I go to a bar. I order the most simple classics, likes of a martini, the likes of a daiquiri, the likes of a cosmo. And if they don't get that right, I know where the programs are, because that's understood. Like, I think it was Steve Jobs said that, um, simplicity is the ultimate in sophistication.


[00:42:09] 


Like if you can't, Master your basics. You're not going to master anything else beyond that foundational level. So really focus hard and on every single aspect that's related to that one drink. So you've, so the Martini great quality ice, you've chilled your glass, you're using fresh vermouth. 


[00:42:26] Josh Sharkey: 


What does that mean by great quality ice?


[00:42:29] Jack McGarry: 


So again, a lot of cocktail novice, like if a lot of people who are making drinks at home, they will use. shitty bag ice. So like the stuff that you get from, uh, from like the liquor store and that, like it's cracked. It doesn't have great surface area. And then when you bring it home, the larger problem is that you put it beside, you put it in a freezer and it takes on the characteristics that are in that freezer.


[00:42:55] 


So people put like fat in the freezer, they put peas in the freezer, they put fish in the freezer. So ice is just a sponge. It just absorbs all of those. You know, so if you're putting up a bag of peas and you make a martini, you're going to have a pea martini, you know, so, or a carrot martini or whatever, you don't listen, that can be nice, but that's not the intention.


[00:43:16] 

So you should like just take that out. So you have to have good quality ice.


[00:43:20] Josh Sharkey:


You said surface area too. Yes. Meaning like ridges and. 


[00:43:26] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah. So when you're, when you say this is your, your glass, so it's obviously a stirring glass should be see through, but when they're a surf, so you want to basically make the surface area as small as possible.


[00:43:37] 


So you're controlling the amount of water that is omitted during the stirring process. So you want to, the ice should always be to the top of the glass, or it should be at the very least above the level of liquid. So it's another problem I see with a lot of at home cocktail makers, both stirring and shaking, they do not put enough ice into this part or into So they put ice below the surface area, they mix it around and it's just pumping out water and it's not getting the drink cold enough.


[00:44:03]


Because a great stirred drink should be perfectly, it should be bitingly cold, but, and it, but it should have the right amount of water, then rotate. So it should be cold and it should be silky and the water should be enough water in there to bind the ingredients. But most times when somebody makes these drinks at home, they are not enough ice.


[00:44:20] 


So basically what happens because the surface area is much larger, it's throwing out ice super quick because there's more surface area for the liquid and the ice to meet. So you're getting a lot of water. So you've lost that silkiness of a stirred drink, but it hasn't got the right temperature. You know, so it's, they fill it all up or they under stir or they overstir. Even just in that one thing, it's very, very intricate. 


[00:44:46] Josh Sharkey: 


Is the size of the ice important too, given you don't want it to melt? It is. 


[00:44:49] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah, but if it's, yes. So you want to use big chunks of ice or big, big solid cubes. But without being contradictory, as long as you're like packing the whole tin or the whole device with ice.


[00:45:04] 


Uh, as long as it's not like crushed ice, cause then it's obviously just going to come out super quick, like even liquor store ice, if it's dry ice or what I mean by dry, it hasn't set outside of the freezer and it's, it's wet cause then that's just throwing out water right away. But even if you buy liquor store ice, cause it is, it is good quality ice, but you just have to.


[00:45:23] 


It has to be cold. It has to be, it has to be, it has to be dry ice and it has to be, um, stored right. So as long as you're not storing it, if it's in a clean freezer, you should be in good shape. Like that should make you a good drink, you know, but that ice will perform definitely to like in the bar here, we use Hoshizaki ice.


[00:45:40] 


So they're perfect cubes. And then, uh, in the part where we use cracked ice, you know, so. All three of those respond differently. So I always remember watching a documentary about Ayrton Senna and he talked about, it's his formula one. And all the drivers were talking about a course and they were, they talked about the course very mechanically, but Ayrton Senna talked about the course, like the way it felt and the way it moved.


[00:46:07] 


That's the way I look at these types of things with these drinks. Like you have to have a relationship with the drink and the sense of you, you're listening to the drink. So when you're starting a drink, you should be tasting the. Multiple times throughout its process to go, right. That's understood.


[00:46:20] 


That's, that's getting close to being done. And then you strain it, you know? So it's not like you're a lot of people will say, start at 10 times. And half ways and 10, like, that's all crap. You know, every, every drink, every piece of ice, the temperature in the room, everything is different. Everything is always different and changing.


[00:46:36] 


So you have to. You have to be fluid to that, even like lemons, if you're making a whiskey sour, the acidity of the lemon one day is going to be different than the acidity of the lemon the next day, so you have to respond to that. 


[00:46:48] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah, yeah, I didn't realize that there is an expectation that there should be some dissipation of like the water going into the drink.


[00:46:56] 


Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Interesting. So, you know, another thing I always, I'm always curious about, so, you know, in my house, right? I got a bunch of bourbons. I got a bunch of like, you know, vermouth, and then I have, you know, whatever, some luxardo and some Aperol or whatever. And you know, I often end up going to like go to's of, you know, a Manhattan or a paper airplane or, you know, uh, maybe I'll just use rye with Aperol and vermouth or something.


[00:47:22] 


Um, but are there like, you know, in cooking, we have mother sauces, right? Like, so you'll have like a hollandaise and you can make 12 different things or a hundred different things from a hollandaise. Are there like mother bases of a cocktail, you know, where it's like, whatever, there's something bitter or something sweet, something that you use that you can then sort of iterate to make new versions of cocktails or is it always kind of a ton of R&D to get new versions of cocktails?


[00:47:47] Jack McGarry: 


I mean, there's definitely cocktail families. Look, Gary Reagan has a great, uh, book on, I can't remember the name of it, but he has a great book. That's, I don't know if I have it here, but it's basically he laid out all the different cocktail families, but even going broader than that, you know, when we opened up the Dead Rabbit, the second floor, because cocktails and I are just used as an all encompassing name.


[00:48:10] 


But back in the 19th century cocktail was just one very small family of the kingdom of mixed drinks. You know, so a cocktail was, uh, properly first defined in 1806. As water, sugar, spirits, and, uh, and bitters, you know, that's, that's what an old, like an old fashioned as a cocktail. So you would add that, you would add punches, you would add sours, fizzes, fixes, daisies, flips, posits, eggnogs, you know, there's all these different types of families, but they're all, they all sort of derive from, from each other.


[00:48:41] 


So like you punch started as like, it's a punch bowl. But then from the punch, you got sours, you got fixes, you got fizzes, and then from sours, you got daiquiris, cosmos, whiskey sours, gimlets, from, uh, daisies, you would have got the margarita, uh, the sidecar, the brandy crusted, you know, so everything. If you do your work as a, as a, as a bartender, you realize that you figure this all out.


[00:49:08] 


And you see how everything is under interconnected because again, I, I would, uh, advocate the all of our, uh, team here that you've got to understand what happened yesterday before you start creating what happens tomorrow. And by that, I mean, understand those families and mixed drinks, understand your history, understand your tactical aspects, understand the spirits of the cures, fully understand everything.

So then you can start to be derivative, 


[00:49:35] 


you know, so your point, there is definitely families that you can go off and do what you were, you were speaking about there, like everything in your house, you're making essentially again, when you zoom out, you're making it. Paper Planes and a Manhattan. So you're making essentially cocktails and sours.


[00:49:53] 


So you start, you start from the cocktails and sours, and then you can, you work your way down and then you'll hit a Manhattan and then underneath the Manhattan, you've, you've even got your Rob Roy's, you've got the Red Hook, you've the Brooklyn cocktail, you know, there's so many things from that. And then the paper plane, you go up, then you're heading. Daiquiri, Cosmo, Last Word, you know, so it's all, they're all connected in some shape, way, or form. 


[00:50:20] Josh Sharkey: 


So, here's the thing, I'm always curious about too is, at what point did these things that are like ubiquitous cocktails just stop becoming something that other people then use? You know, like, somebody invented the paper airplane.


[00:50:36] 


I think it was the Nonino family maybe, but like, The paper plan was Joaquin from Death and Company.


[00:50:41] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I, but it's, it's a contemporary, I would call it a contemporary classic. 


[00:50:50] Josh Sharkey: 


I'm going to Google it right now. Cause like one thing I'm always curious about is like, are there. You know, we drink a Manhattan today, right?

That's from, I don't know what the history of is, but from a long time ago. Like how often are new drinks now ubiquitously used in other places? 


[00:51:06] Jack McGarry: 


You'd be surprised. You know, the reason why those drinks have stood the test of time is because of their simplicity. You know, so Manhattan is, is on paper, a very simple drink.


[00:51:17] 


A, uh, martini is a very simple drink on paper, same as all of those classics. The problem with today's bartenders and today's, it's not the problem. It's a great thing because you're, you have to constantly iterate on and bring relevance and something different to, to your consumer. So, and not, there's a lot of focus on homemade ingredients and infusions and science and stuff like that.


[00:51:40] 


Bring it like the, to do something different. One bar that is exhaled and, and these. Contemporary classics is, is Attaboy or, or Milk and Honey, you know? So, and, and Death and Company to a lesser degree, like you would have had the, the Death and Company would finally, I believe, if it's not the paper plane, but Joaquin definitely created a bunch of those types of drinks.


[00:52:05] Josh Sharkey: 


You were right, I googled it. Sam Ross and Sasha Petrosky. 


[00:52:08] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah. So that's, that's the Attaboy, Milk and Honey family. So, so they created, so for example, they, they, I don't know, that, Bar, those four walls, you have the penicillin, you have Rome with a View, Red Hook, you know there's a whole bunch of classics that are just from, but contemporary classics.


[00:52:23] 


Um, but the reason that they're contemporary is because they're replicatable. Like you can, you can make them at home, you know, whereas a lot of these bars and even our bar here in the second floor, the ingredients that they have here, but take you an age to make them. 


[00:52:36] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. 


[00:52:38] Jack McGarry: 


So simplicity is definitely key.And it's harder as we go through to, as we, like, as we evolve, it's harder to create those drinks because. The pool of ingredients, there is new ingredients coming on so you can, you can do things, but like the, the big pieces are done, you know, like a daiquiri is a daiquiri. So what can you do with a daiquiri to make it different?


[00:52:59] 


Like you can infuse it with sugar or you can infuse it with fruit or you can do, but the, the trifecta of that drink is, is, is being created, but you can definitely create contemporary classics and your point, like the penicillin for, for one drink. It's been all, it's in menus all over the world. Like I've created a drink called the Irish Maid that's derivative of the Maid drink that I believe also the Attaboy guys created and it's very simple and it has been in menus all over the world, you know, so it's definitely doable, but simplicity is the key.


[00:53:30] Josh Sharkey


Yeah, it does seem like so much of it is derivative that it does, it is difficult to create new drinks. I, you know, I did this panel. I think six months ago, and this, this bartender named Ryan Chittiwardner was on the panel. Oh, Chianti. Really, really awesome guy. And he was talking to his flavor profiles and I was like, Oh, that's really different.


[00:53:54] 


I've never heard of, you know, I mean, a lot of the fermentations and I think he actually like, Maybe fecal matter in one thing, like in some way, I 

[00:54:03] Jack McGarry: 


I don't remember exactly what it was. Ryan's a bit, so me and Ryan came through in the same, like, we were in the same, like, class. We came through the exact same year in, in Ireland and, and, uh, he was in Scotland at the time and I was obviously in, in England.


[00:54:17] 


But Ryan's, I would be very much traditionalist in my approach, like I'm very much historically driven. Mm hmm. Where Ryan would be much more on the other side of that, you know, but he's a, he's an absolute genius. Ryan's a genius. Like, 


[00:54:31] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. Okay. One last thing on cocktails and then we'll move on. The shake. Yes. How important is like how far you go back and the velocity of the shake and, uh, you know, they have that like weight that you can sometimes put in the shaker. Have you seen that? Like rubber square, like Yeah. Square weight. Can you talk me about the shake? Like how, how important is it? Like what's the, like, you know, is the technique really need to be?


[00:54:55] 


As you know, they, sometimes they're pretty flashy how far they go back and things, 


[00:54:59] Jack McGarry: 


So the short answer is the shake is very important. The other part of that, again, there's paradoxes, the, the, the everything in life. A lot of people make things more complicated than they ought to be. The whole reason why you shake a drink is to get ice from one side of the tin.

[00:55:14] 


Do the other side of the 10 to incorporate our air and incorporate water. So a lot of people, uh, a lot of movements and techniques that are not. First and foremost, they're not going to serve your body. Cause if you're doing that for 20 years, you're definitely going to give yourself problems. And secondly, you're making, you're going to probably overshake it or under shake it, like this stuff that you're doing, you're, you're creating more space to make mistakes.


[00:55:43] 


So, in terms of shaking, I always, uh, I think it's from Harry Craddock, you're, you're waking the drink up as opposed to standing up to sleep. So, you've got to shake it vigorously. You've got to shake it in a way that you're comfortable with. You've got to shake it in a way that you can do that 150, 200 times in a night for high volume.


[00:56:03] 


You know, like, that's what you need to do if, if you're in these bars and, you know, These tiny speakeasy bars with 20 people in it, like obviously you can, you can be a bit more out there with your, your shake, but cause you're not, you're going to be making maybe 50 drinks, shaking drinks a night, as opposed to in our bars, it's, it can be up to 300 in one shift.


[00:56:23] 


But the key thing with shaking a drink, as I said, is that you're, you're moving it from the bottom of the tin to the top of the tin quickly. Uh, you're adding water and you're adding air. So, and then the other part of that is when you've finished the shake, you are straining it into the glass as quickly as possible.


[00:56:40] 

So that's, that's actually a mistake that a lot of people make. Make, they shake it, they put it on the bar top, they go and grab a glass or they're talking to somebody by the time they strain that drink off it's dead. I think it's in the same book, Harry Coddock from 1930 said, you should be drinking a cocktail while it's laughing at you and laughing at you.


[00:56:58] 


When you make a perfect penicillin or a daiquiri or a Cosmo or, or whatever, it has that effervescence almost on the top of the drink. You've those really, uh, small ice crystals that, that are like a subtle crunchiness to the top of the drink. You need, you lose out if it sits too long in the, in the 10. So you want to spin it off as quickly as possible.


[00:57:22] 


So shaking it vigorously, I mean, shaking it bigger. Cause a lot of people don't shake vigorously. They're shaking it in their hand, holding it with one hand. Or they're, they're, they're not getting it for exactly from the bottom of the 10 to the top of the 10. So it's just going on a small circle inside the 10 and not actually reaching either end.


[00:57:39] 


So you want to be making sure you're doing that. And then once you've nailed that part, you want to be straining them into the, into the glass as quickly as, as quickly as possible. So shaking is incredibly important. It's again, the same as stirring, like the, to me, a great bartender, as all of us can follow recipes, great bartenders to me, it's all like in the, the wrists.


[00:58:00] 


So the way you do a dash or the way you pour, um, the way you stir and the way you shake is really like what separates good bartenders to great bartenders and then elite. Yeah. Bartenders, even above great bartenders are people that fully understand exactly when to start drinks ready, when they need to tailor citrus one day because it's slightly too acidic or it's not acidic enough, you know, so a great and a world class bartender understands all of that, you know, so there's, there's levels to this as a way there is with any other profession.


[00:58:33] Josh Sharkey: 


It's so funny how, how similar it is to great cooking. You know, cause you, it's the same in a recipe or anything, like a list of ingredients. is usually fucking irrelevant, right? It's how you, you know, like, and that's the problem with recipes is they're implicit instead of explicit, you know, they, it's just, here's the ingredients, mix well, you know, but there's so much more that goes into that, that to make it exactly the way, you know, that you want.


[00:58:58] 


Okay. So, What drinks do you, I know you can ask, uh, you know, the guests, like, do you want to shake it or stir it? But I know like, usually like fruit, things that have fruit, fruit juices in them, you want to aerate, things like that. But like, are there heuristics around things that you should definitely shake versus not?


[00:59:16] Jack McGarry:


Um, yeah, I mean, these continue to get blurred as we get, as we continue to innovate. But I'd say like the big broad strokes, generally recipes that are all spirits or spirits and modifiers. So are like liqueurs or sugar, you'll, you'll stir that. So anything that's actually without citrus or fruit or stuff like that, you will stir.


[00:59:38] 


Once you incorporate fruit and citrus and eggs and stuff, you're, you're going to shake or has any dairy products, you're going to shake. But again, there's always exceptions to that road. You know, I remember the first time I had a stirred Gimlet, it was revelatory to me. I think it was, she made it for me and I thought this was incredible.


[00:59:56] 


Or the first time I had a. Had a, a shake in Sazerac. Simon Dippard made me a shake in Sazerac and I was like, Jesus, it's so tasty. Do you know why? But I understand to the traditionalists, that's probably blasphemous, but there's a lot of novelty in changing those up as long as the final product, because again, this is a problem with a lot of people in today's world.


[01:00:17] 


They do things because it's cool, not because it's good, but I'm like, it still has to be good. It doesn't matter if it's cool. It has to be good. So. But to your point, there is heuristics in terms of if it's, if it's mostly alcohol, you'll stir it, if it's got fruit juice, dairy or stuff like that, you'll, you'll shake it, but, um, there, there's even broader, broader than that, you know, stirring is, as I said, I would mention this word all the time when I talk about stirring, it should be viscous, it should be silky, it should have like a real beautiful texture and mouthfeel to it.


[01:00:54] 


I'd shoot a stir, a shaken drink, but a shaken drink, it's much more fluffier. It's, it's got those really fine crystals in there, you know? So there, it just, it just depends what, what, what you want to do with the drink, you know? 


[01:01:06] Josh Sharkey: 


All right. I promise I'm now I'm done asking about cocktails. What else is going on other than Dead Rabbit? You have obviously the Irish Exit in Penn Station or they don't call it Penn Station anymore, do they? They call it Moynihan. 

[01:01:18] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah. It's called Moynihan train hall, but it's Penn State, like it's just a new Penn Station. Yeah. So we opened that. Uh, it was actually our anniversary two days ago, our first anniversary.


[01:01:29]


So we opened that a year ago and it's, it's been doing fantastic. And that is much more of our, like QSR, uh, Irish pub experience. So we built this experience or an opportunity came up to potentially bring Dead Rabbit to Moynihan train hall. And, um, because of the amount of intellectual, like the intention and the sophistication with dead rabbit, it just doesn't work in that type of context.


[01:01:53] 


Then it became, how do we own transit? experiences and how does it fit this focus on contemporary Ireland and level and up Irish experiences in those contexts. So, I mean, I'm sure you've seen this, pretty much every restaurant, airport, train station has a shit Irish bar. So the Irish accent was built to show, and they're all dark wood, they're all, it's all very dark and masculine and shit and just not great quality.


[01:02:20] 


So we wanted the Irish accent to be, obviously you know what the name, the Irish accent means, but we sort of co opted. It's a funny name, so it's a good name because people always have like a smile when they hear the name. But beyond that, we mean it as an exit to Ireland. Like, this is your quick exit to Ireland while you're in these otherwise sterile experiences of, you know, lockdowns.


[01:02:38] 

Of train stations and, and, uh, and airports and, uh, the brand as much it's, it's, it owns its travel, it's travel nature, it's transient nature, but it's brighter. It's very contemporary, very fun, very dynamic, dynamic, very relevant. So we launched that last year and we're aiming to expand that into other train stations and airports across America.


[01:03:01] 


And hopefully we'll get some in Ireland. So that's the Irish Exit. Next year we're also going to be launching, so we're calling it McGarry Sports and Social. Essentially what we did with the Dead Rabbit in the pub vertical, in terms of doing the best quality Irish pub. And listen, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so I'm, I'm, and I've sick enough skin, but I view what we do with Dead Rabbit as, It's the best Irish club and like in America, that's, that's what the goal is.


[01:03:26] 


That's what we're trying to do. And our differentiation comes from our focus on authenticity or focus on our collaborations and our partnerships. and all of that fun stuff. But we're now trying to take that to the sports bar vertical and the entertainment vertical. So a lot of these sports bars and entertainment venues are soulless.


[01:03:47] 


They're primarily for bros. They have no soul. The drinks and the food is not great. The hospitality is not great. So we're aiming to bring Like, what we do with hospitality, all of that fun stuff, into a sports bar, an entertainment venue and use that as our way of celebrating Irish and Irish American sporting culture.


[01:04:08] 


So we're launching our first one of those next year and we're very excited. We'll be debuting the first one in March. In New York, and then we're also developing other concepts that celebrate food, coffee, different stories that haven't been told about the Irish, the Irish story. So we're always looking for new ways to champion contemporary Irish culture or to tell new Irish stories.


[01:04:34] Josh Sharkey: 


Very cool, man. I gotta ask. And we can, we can bleep this out if you want, but what's your, what's your take on, uh, on Puck Fair? I know it's closed now, but. In New York? Yeah. Yeah. 


[01:04:46] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah, New York. Puck Fair, listen, I loved Puck Fair when it was open. I did too, man. Um, it's, we have some partners that were actually, that created Puck Fair.


[01:04:54] 


To me, that's like an Americana Irish bar. Yeah. Um, you know, but it was, listen. It was a good, it was a good pub. Like I walked into it when I first arrived in New York, and I'm like, this is a good pub. I wouldn't say for authenticity or anything like that, but it was just a good, fun pub. Good atmosphere, good vibe, the shape of the room and all.


[01:05:11] 


It was just very, very good, uh, it was actually sad to hear it. Cause they obviously ripped that whole building down. I was very sad that New York lost that bar. Cause that was a good, it was a, it was a great spot. 


[01:05:22] Josh Sharkey: 

Really was. I mean, I mean, I moved to New York in 99, 2000 and, um, That was one of the spots we were, you know.


[01:05:29] 


Yeah, 100%. Downtown. I was bummed when it, when it closed. But yeah, very different, uh, obviously from, from Dead Rabbit. I gotta ask one more thing. I know we, we skipped on the cock, we went, we left the cocktails, but I forgot to ask this and I just, clear ice. Yes. How do you make clear ice? Because apparently this is a difficult thing and it's really, you know, prestigious when you can't, what's the deal with clear ice?


[01:05:53] Jack McGarry: 


Clear ice is basically ice without impurities, minerals, it's basically minerals when they freeze in water are cloudy. So it's not that hard to make it. If you have a cambro, like a cambro like that, or a pot or a pan, generally the last part of the ice to freeze. And that's the reason why you see ice, it's generally always cloudy in the middle and on the sides it's clear because after, so say you have something and every freezer is different.


[01:06:19] 


So I don't want to, when you put whatever you're using to freeze it, put it in the freezer and keep an eye on it. for every 12 hours it'll start to freeze that way in and it will all be crystal clear and then you'll have the pocket in the middle. Once it's got to that point you basically want to cut drain that water out because when it freezes it basically freezes and it goes cloudy and then it essentially explodes so that the whole thing becomes cloudy.


[01:06:44] 


So you want to Obviously, it's, it's less efficient because you have to cut a big piece of the cloudy ice or the water that constitutes the cloudy ice out, but it's, it's pretty easy to do, you know? So if you just get a big enough receptacle, good quality water, and so filter as filtered as possible, generally after about 36 to mid forties, like high 40 hours, that'll be crystal clear.


[01:07:07] 


And then that pocket of water in the middle will be there and you just drain it out. You'll just use an ice pick, put the pick in the cut through the ice and drain it out and everything around that should be crystal clear. 


[01:07:17] Josh Sharkey: 


All right. So this is, this is cutting ice like by hand then? 


[01:07:21] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is less than you should, if you're a cocktail connoisseur, you should be doing that. Um, but they're also less than, they're also is. If you get really filtered water or distilled water and you put it in the molds, it'll be pretty clear. Most supermarkets sell distilled water or, or, or heavily filtered water now, so you should be in pretty good shape if you freeze out, like it should be pretty clear.


[01:07:44] 


It's only if you're using water that's not filtered, like not heavily filtered, um, where, where you run into problems. 


[01:07:52] Josh Sharkey: 


What is the benefit to the cocktail when it's clear ice? 


[01:07:56] Jack McGarry: 


Well, the ice is definitely more, it's denser because when it's cloudy, it's, uh, it's going to melt. Quicker because it's, it's a bit more, there's more porosity with when it has that cloudy stuff, like it, it slushes quicker, whereas the crystal clear is more, it's just stronger.


[01:08:11] 


It's, it's got more integrity, like essentially what you want when you're say, you're having an old fashioned, or if you have a Manhattan and you're drinking it over, over a block of ice, you, your, your, your first set should essentially be the exactly the same. It's a last step. That's, that's what we're aiming for.


[01:08:26] 


So you'll get that with, with a beautiful crystal clear. To be honest, you'll even get that with a, if it's a big chunk and it's in your glass, if it's a bit cloudy, you'll still get that. But if it's heavily cloudy, it'll melt quicker for sure, because it's just not as, uh, it doesn't have the same density or the same strength.


[01:08:43] Josh Sharkey: 


Uh, I'm not going to ask this here cause it'll probably take too long, but where can. I, and anybody who actually wants to know, where can we learn how to shave our own ice to cut our own ice cubes? Um, cut your own ice cubes?


[01:08:55] Jack McGarry: 


I mean, it's pretty straightforward. You could just YouTube it. You could YouTube it.


[01:09:00] 

There's definitely people that have, that have caught, like, particularly the folks in Japan are heavily into that stuff. But you'll get video. I mean, there's YouTube has videos on everything. So I'm confident you'll find people that are, but I'll show that. So it's, it's, but again, it's not that difficult and there's, there's knives and equipment now that you can, you can get now to make ice diamonds and ice balls and stuff.


[01:09:23] 


It's not, it's not that difficult. You just need to learn how to hold. The ice pack in a way that you're not going to injure yourself or on the same with the knives and then make sure you've got the gloves so that if you do make a mistake, you're, you're not going to the A&E. 


[01:09:38] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure my daughter will want to cut ice too. She sees me. You know, what's the next like five, five, 10 years for you? Obviously you're opening up more Dead Rabbits. You're, it sounds like maybe a lot more of these Irish exits. What else you got in the pipe? 


[01:09:54] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah, I mean, my whole thing is to grow to basically challenge as many misconceptions around Irish culture as possible. So it's not growth for the sake of growth. Obviously you want to grow and there's an economic side to that, but that's not what motivates me. The thing that motivates me is the fact that Americans still have heavily outdated understandings of what constitutes Irish culture. And, uh, I'm really keen to show Ireland as it is today.


[01:10:21] 


And as it's developing, you know, Ireland today. Is so different than when it was, even when I was a kid, you know, the amount of diversity, the immigrant populations come on in and really, and like fusing their cultures with our culture. Like, it's just incredible with stuff that's going on back home.


[01:10:37] 


And you have also the ending of political violence in the north of Ireland, and then the, and the, uh, the ending of the sort of Catholic churches stronghold on the, on, on people in the south of Ireland. So people are really expressing themselves now. You know, they're creating art, they're creating music, they're.


[01:10:54] 


They're really just trans ending and I'm just so incredibly proud to be from Ireland and I'm incredibly proud to tell that story. And I'm also incredibly proud to take it in different directions and challenge things, you know, like what take the Irish pub and take it to as far in completely different places as possible or Irish restaurants or their understanding of Irish food or, or, or whatever.


[01:11:18] 


So in five to 10 years, I'm open to a lot more fun things. With the Dead Rabbit, with McGarry's, with Irish accent, with a handful of the other concepts that we're developing that are very, very unique. You know, they're fusing different cultures, like they're, the thing with Irish people is we have got everywhere.


[01:11:36] 


You know, so there's, there's Ari stories to be told all over the world, and I'm incredibly excited to tell the, tell those stories and tell, tell those stories, tell those stories here. But in terms of like, there will be a point in the next 5 to 10 years where if we do everything we do with Dead Rabbit goes well, touch wood, we're most likely going to be, somebody's going to come in and take a big chunk of the company.


[01:11:59] 


And the company will probably start to go in a slightly different direction at that stage. I would look to just to do things. I live in New Jersey, my wife and my boys, we have a place in promise and her family are heavily based in, in the summer on the shore. The bar scene in New Jersey, I think needs a lot of love and the Irish pub representation in New Jersey is incredibly poor.


[01:12:23] 


So I think. If you're asking me beyond 5 to 10 years, I'd most likely like to have a bar, an Irish bar in New Jersey proper, and then something on the shore so it could fit around my family life, um, because right now I'm, I mean, sure you can tell I'm absorbed with everything that we're doing. And I, I will always be highly like, I'm never, I'm not going to be the type of retirees, but I want my work to fit more around my life as opposed to they're going in parallel tracks, if that makes sense, you know, 


[01:12:56] Josh Sharkey: 


How old is your son?


[01:12:57] Jack McGarry: 


I have a four year old son and a two year old son. 


[01:13:00] Josh Sharkey: 


Oh, well, yeah, we're, uh, we're close. I got a three and a five year old. Yeah. We want my daughter. So we're, 


[01:13:05] Jack McGarry: 


We're both, we're, uh, we're both on the trenches then. 


[01:13:08] Josh Sharkey: 


It's definitely in the weeds. 


[01:13:10] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah. 


[01:13:11] Josh Sharkey: 


You know, I think the last thing I maybe want to ask is. Yeah, you gave up drinking, like, like almost a decade ago.


[01:13:17] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah. 


[01:13:17] Josh Sharkey: 


And you're still opening, uh, you know, a lot of these bars, but really, again, I think what we've established is, you know, you're really just sort of telling the story of Irish culture through the medium of drinks at the moment. Are there other mediums that you would do that through? 


[01:13:34] Jack McGarry: 


Yeah, I got, I've got to the point in my life now where I wouldn't say no to, I would've been very rigid in terms of like, even when I was a cocktail bartender, it was just about cocktails.


[01:13:45] 

Like customer, the customer wasn't part of that thing for me. It was like, I am making great cocktails and the customer happens to be the recipient of that, which is just obviously inexperience and, and naivety and all of that type of stuff. As I've grown up and as I continue to grow up and evolve and, and, and develop.


[01:14:04] 


I wouldn't rule anything out, you know, uh, as long as it fits my passion of, of Ireland, I wouldn't rule anything out, you know, so I, again, I don't know what that means or what it doesn't mean or how that could go, but I, I trust in my ability and I trust in my, uh, myself and I, I'm a quick learner. I, uh, learn quickly and make like, uh, I trust in.


[01:14:29] 


Myself to go in different directions and stretch my abilities, you know, so I, I wouldn't say no. 


[01:14:35] Josh Sharkey: 


Love it, man. This is great. 


[01:14:38] Jack McGarry: 


Thank you. Thank you. It was awesome to speak to. 


[01:14:40] Josh Sharkey: 


Yeah. Selfishly. I learned, I learned a lot. I'm sure everybody else as well, but congrats, man, on all the success and continue to grow. I know it's also probably incredibly difficult and I hope you have a hundred fires to put out.


[01:14:53] 

So I'll, I'll, I'll let you get back to it. But next time you're in the city, you know, I'll drop by and we should say hello. I'd love that. But thanks, man. Appreciate you taking the time. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Thanks for tuning into the meez podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist Fresh Daily.

[01:15:13] Josh Sharkey: For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M E E Z dot com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you could share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros, and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. Keep innovating, don't settle, make today a little bit better than yesterday, and remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.