Benjamin Fickes

I helped Re-Open Vine Street Pub last year, and was quickly brought into leadership due to my strengths with the POS system, Toast, as well as my general bar and restaurant experience. While in this position, some of my responsibilities have entailed -

• Resolving customer complaints and issues and offered solutions to maintain customer satisfaction.
• Creating new specialty cocktails - as well as refining past cocktail recipes.
• Managed upwards of 20+ staff, delegating proper cuts and necessary tasks
• Closed out cash register and prepared cashier report at close of business.
• Actively calculated and distributed tips too all tipped employees
• Reported daily sales, labor, performance notes and more every evening

As a bartender at Comida, I mainly prepared cocktails for guests, as well as providing service for bar guests and any given tables. This is where I gained a majority of my knowledge of the process of creating cocktails. Due to also being responsible for the preparation of ingredients such as simple syrups, juice mixes, and more.

Some of my other duties at Comida involved,

• Following alcohol awareness procedures for preventing excessive guest intoxication.
• Served high customer volumes during special events, nights, and weekends.
• Training new bartenders on drink preparation, product promotion, garnish preparation, and sanitation protocol.
• Serving high customer volumes during special events, nights, and weekends.
• Performing opening and closing duties, printing sales reports, setting up for incoming shift, preparing cash drawers, and taking inventory.

My first large scale, high volume restaurant job. Here I was responsible for attending upwards of 20-25 table sections before becoming a bartender. Working here was always very high volume, due to us showing sporting events, like football and UFC fights we would get large parties of people, for hours.

Some responsibilities here included,

• Opening and closing a large restaurant with little staff.
• Upselling menu items to customers, driving up per sale revenues and maximizing profits.
• Preparing custom drink orders by accurately measuring and mixing house ingredients.
• Managing bar inventory, restocked supplies and placed orders for spirits, beer, wines, and mixers.
• Keeping bar stocked with liquors, juices and garnishes for drinks.