Dubai's drink academy
HME.com’s Ben Watts visits the MMI Bar Academy to find out how the training facility is educating Dubai’s bartenders and improving standards throughout the emirate’s beverage industry.
An all too often-made complaint made in many of Dubai’s F&B outlets singles out the lack of good and coherent service.
Beverage supplier MMI is attempting to reverse this and in January this year opened its first dedicated bar-education facility in Dubai.
MMI Bar Academy beverage training manager Junaid Malik says that the academy has gone from strength to strength since its launch at the beginning of the year.
“In January when we started we were full, but we were doing one session a day,” explains Malik. “Now we’re doing two to three sessions a day.”
Malik says despite the evident increase in interest in the facility, operating the centre during a downturn has proved to be a testing challenge.
“Hotels are struggling to sell alcohol and they are realising that training is such an important tool to get staff selling certain brands more,” he notes.
One of the big advantages the Academy’s offers hotels and outlets, is that they no longer have to rely on bringing beverage experts from abroad to the region to pass their knowledge onto beverage staff.
“It’s better and a lot cheaper than flying someone in for training sessions,” Malik states.
With a downturn to contend with training continues to play an important role as bars try to increase their sales.
“Training is something that always matters, whether we’re in a recession or not; especially with all the new hotels opening, staff still need to be trained,” he asserts.
HME.com recently visited the facility for a training session on three Jack Daniel’s products, part of one of the academy’s recent brand-based training programmes.
“On average we’re getting around 65-70 bartenders to each session,” reveals Malik, who has to go through several channels before getting the message out to bar managers who might have an interest in sending their staff to the academy’s sessions.
“We first of all contact all our sales managers, who then forward it on to the key account managers; they then send it out to the F&B managers and all the different hotels they look after,” he explains.
“They will basically respond with a list of names and we take the first 70 names that come back so that we’re not selective.”
The increasing number of hotels in Dubai has lead to a greater demand for well-trained bar staff, however, with many properties cutting costs, the chance to send staff to the academy’s training sessions is a cheaper and possibly more efficient alternative.
“It makes it easier for hotels as they haven’t got to book a meeting room, get the glasses ready or sort the beverages out,” comments Malik.
Once the students are on board, it’s left to the training managers to pass their knowledge on. Malik describes his individual teaching style as interactive and fun.
“One thing you find here with bartenders is that they are intimidated easily,” he comments. “But these courses are there to make them more confident when it comes to selling brands.
“If you start talking to them, interact with them and have a laugh and a joke at the same time they tend to open up a lot more.
“Slowly we’ve realised that you have got get the students answering questions, you’ve got to reward them and you’ve got to make it fun.”
The key, according to Malik, is to keep the participating bar staff attentive during the sessions, and by adding an interactive slant it encourages the participants to take notes.
“You have to ask yourself how can I keep them awake — after all these are the guys and girls on the front line and they’re the one’s that are doing the selling,” he says.
The benefit of teaching staff about an established product, such as Jack Daniels, is the added benefit of it having more than a century of heritage, according to Malik.
“If they understand that it’s been around since 1866, they’re going to start thinking that if it been around for more than 100 years, people must like it,” points Malik.
Another important part of the training sessions are the tastings; at the session attended by HME.com, three separate Jack Daniel’s products were tasted by the attending bartenders.
Alongside the history of the product, this serves to give the bar staff the confidence to describe the taste, texture and history of a product.
“In many bars here you have a lot of staff with such a wide selection of spirits behind their bar, that they will not have tasted many of the spirits,” notes Malik.
“It’s all about personal opinion,” he points out. “Everyone is an individual and everyone has their own taste buds.
“I might give a customer a Bloody Mary and I’ll tell them how hot it is and they might suggest that it’s not hot, but mild.
“The most important thing behind these sessions is about giving staff the confidence to talk to their customers, where they can say what they think about the product to make it sound attractive and appealing,” he adds.
With effort being put into improving the confidence and knowledge of Dubai’s bartenders through the MMI Bar Academy, the level of bartending in the UAE is improving, according to Malik, but he still cites serious concerns for bar service standards.
“It’s come a long way since a couple of years ago, but there’s still room for improvement, everybody can learn more,” he asserts.
“If you compare the level of bartending here to that in Europe, there is still a bit of a step up we need to take, but it’s getting there; it’s just a question of people putting in the time and the effort into delivering training.”
In terms of the size and scale of training facility available to hospitality staff in the region, however, Malik has a less optimistic outlook.
“There is the Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management and there’s us, but that’s about it,” he points out.
“Look at England where you have so many bar schools and hospitality courses; any university you go into in England will have a course on food and beverage, hospitality or retail management.
“If there were more facilities like the MMI academy or like the Emirates Academy, there would definitely be an improvement in the product knowledge of bartenders,” he concludes.
What the students say:
Dubai Creek Golf and Yacht Club restaurant captain German Fernandes
“The session is more about learning and getting the basic ideas — how the drink is prepared and how to sell it.
“Sometimes we don’t really know about the product, but after this session I know about a product like Jack Daniels.
“I will pass my knowledge onto the customer and I know how to present the product to the guest.
"If I was to go for a job interview they might ask me about my training, so it helps.”
Plan B, Wafi City, bartender Serdar Marumedov
“I now know about the history of Jack Daniel’s, how it’s made and other Jack Daniel’s products like Gentleman Jack and Single Barrel.
“It’s important as I work in this industry as a bartender and I want to know about the product that I’m selling.
“I will pass this information onto customers who ask about their drinks, so it’s all very helpful.”