My guest on this episode is the owner of Clipper in Auckland, which is talked about as the best cocktail bar in New Zealand: His name is Barney Toy. Barney is originally from the UK, but has spent a lot of his life working bars in New Zealand. 

Clipper debuted in 2019, but then a pandemic came along. We don’t really talk about the pandemic and lockdowns in this chat, but it’s interesting to note how the time of covid spurred the creation of multiple revenue streams for the bar — so that they are not solely reliant on what goes through the till at Clipper every night, and so, in the words of Barney, “Clipper can just be Clipper.” They’ve got consultancy work for other bars, and they started First Class Cocktails, a quality batched cocktail service for other hospitality venues. I know of a few bars developing this model of a bar as a showroom — so it’s great to get into it with Barney. We also talk about his creative process, the attitudes he has adopted after becoming a bar owner, and how bartenders ought to value themselves and their services correctly. We get into that, we get into mentorship, and a whole lot more.