Thanks Federico, your question is fair, but inappropriate at this moment. It’s too late now.
Today, this is what running a bar is: social media, marketing investments, and a whole lot of background noise. No point beating around the bush. It’s a world we built ourselves—I mean our generation, and the generation of customers we raised along with us. A bar opening today enters a market that is far more competitive than it was 20 years ago, or even just 10 years ago. You no longer have the "organic" time to create your own space, your own clientele, your own moment. Creating your presence in the market has to happen even before you open: photos of the construction site, storytelling the journey to the opening, countdowns, and so on.
Social media, money dumped into marketing, big companies pushing and backing one bar over another—it's the norm now. You survive the first few years like this: the narrative of "what you want to be" matters more than what you actually offer. The primary hurdle is surviving the launch, bringing in customers, hooking them with promises and expectations. The "after" part comes later; getting a customer to return becomes secondary to the sheer survival of the business. For the first few years, you can actually get by simply by constantly attracting new people. Awards help keep the hype up, give us new things to talk about, position us, and give us a reason to thank our clientele for their support. They give our work credibility: we’re good because we won an award. Even if we aren't appreciated by our local community, or if the market tells us something completely different, we won an award, so we must be worth something.
Dear Federico, this is the world now. Give in to it. I don't know if it's better or worse. It just is. In the end, once you strip away all the background noise, the only ones left are those who manage to keep the shutter up and still find the motivation to do this exhausting job. Everyone finds their own drive beyond awards, social media, and corporate sponsors.
Opening a debate on this dystopian bar world we’ve created—where a photo of a cocktail is worth more than a cocktail actually enjoyed by a guest—depresses me. I don't want to talk about it because I'm part of it too, and maybe I'm not the right person to preach. What’s certain is that we need to find our way back home, back to the bar. Our Ithaca. How do we do it? Step one: open our eyes, look at the compass, and chart a course.
I think a serious reflection on the state of the Italian beverage bar market is much more appropriate.
Here is mine.
You know those musicians who kept playing on the Titanic while people were panicking and diving into the lifeboats? Sometimes I feel like one of those violinists. I keep playing because I haven't figured out how to save myself.
The Titanic is our industry’s market. We bartenders are the musicians.
Some would say, "A time of crisis is a time of great opportunity." Those are the speculators, and I couldn't care less about talking about them.
So, where are we? Our entire industry is at a standstill. Maybe you haven't noticed, maybe you’ve ignored the alarm bells, or maybe you’ve just been sleeping with your head in the sand. You know when people tell you, "The new generations don't want to drink"? Well, translated, that means we are going to lose our jobs. And it’s not just a problem for cocktail makers: wine is going unsold, beer has shot itself in the foot, and even illicit substances are having a rough time…
Let me drop a few red flags in case you missed them.
If you want to understand where the ship is heading, look at the moves of the major multinational corporations. These mega-entities—which we tend to picture as faceless empires—are actually run by flesh-and-blood people earning a salary. As such, they are deeply attached to their executive chairs. They will do whatever it takes to protect their jobs, so their decisions are always protectionist, cautious, and designed to safeguard capital. The exact opposite of the Titanic, when you think about it.
As soon as they caught sight of the fog on the horizon and realized it was too late to turn the ship, they initiated a series of moves to minimize damage in the event of an iceberg collision.
They immediately slashed all expenses not tied to immediate profit. No long-term investments; laser focus solely on sales—specifically sales of owned brands that yield high margins and sell themselves. Anything superfluous was dumped. Have you noticed that some major corporations have offloaded historic brands to local distributors? They sold off iconic yet stagnant brands, dumping them onto distributors who, until yesterday, were minor players in the beverage market. Did you catch that? Or did you think these moves had zero impact on your day-to-day job of mixing a Negroni?
And what about your former bartender colleagues who managed to snag roles inside big companies as "brand ambassadors"? They were living the high life, jet-setting around to speak about their products (they called it "advocacy"), organizing events, bringing in star bartenders for guest shifts... Where are they now? Have you noticed that, in the best-case scenario, they’ve all been reassigned, and in the worst, let go? For the most part, they are now strictly focused on sales, mass distribution, wholesalers, and trade deals. In short, the companies need cash, so they send them out to lock you into micro-contracts.
They push these micro-contracts onto your small bars to guarantee baseline volumes. And how do they do it? By pouring their real budget into a select few flagship venues—the "lighthouse bars"—those places that project an aura of wealth and abundance, making us temporarily forget the grim balance sheets of our own small spots.
In short, the market has shrunk. They brainwash us with the mantra that people are drinking less, drinking non-alcoholic, drinking "better"... but those are just the symptoms. The root cause is that everyday people have less money and are far more careful about how they spend it.
And what about us? How is it possible that the most talented generation of bartenders in the last 100 years is incapable of altering the market's trajectory? Weren't we the ones "educating" consumers? We educated them so well that we made them lose their appetite to drink altogether...
Weren't we supposed to be the most erudite generation of bartenders since Jerry Thomas? Never have so many bars opened as in recent years. All claiming to be "the best." We decided to "elevate," "improve," "graft," "conceptualize"—basically, we tried to fix something that wasn't broken.
We decided that almost everything done prior to 2012/2013 was "garbage." We learned how to upsell to everyone, even to those who couldn't afford it or lacked the knowledge to understand what they were sipping. We turned the bar into a niche establishment. Niches are lovely—they make you feel important. You buy fancy bottles, force them onto unsuspecting customers who quietly comply, your ego inflates, and the cycle repeats endlessly... right up until everything collapses, just like it is now.
We turned our backs on products that people had grown to love and knelt before products crafted by our own peers—products that introduced us to buzzwords like "craft," "quality," and "sustainability." We pulled the €15–18 bottles from our speed rails and replaced them with €25–28 ones. The only ones still making rounds are bartenders personally selling their own products door-to-door, placing them with local wholesalers, and outmaneuvering big corporations that have frozen their marketing budgets. But don't be fooled: whoever created a new craft product did so just to sell it off to a multinational and retire in Hawaii—not to make your cocktails taste better. Meanwhile, big corporations are standing by watching, knowing the market is dead still.
Unsurprisingly, a cocktail now costs €13–15 everywhere. People gladly pay it because we taught them what "quality drinking" means—except now they buy just one cocktail instead of two.
So there you have it.
Has a friend of yours had to close their bar recently? Were they shocked that their minimalist, Oriental-inspired concept with critically acclaimed modern cocktails failed to find a commercial footing in the small-town province where they opened? Swap the word "province" for "non-central neighborhood" in a major city—the result is the same. The saddest thing in the world is watching a bar close its doors.
So, here we are, face to face with the iceberg. What do we do?
I don't know. But I don't want to be a pessimist; I'm standing here playing the violin with my fellow musicians, so I owe you at least a glimmer of hope.
I can tell you that only honest hard work will save us. Not clout, not "professionalism"—pure work.
Rankings and awards won't save us. Parading an award while bars in your city are shutting down makes very little sense.
Let's safeguard what actually works and build on it. Let's lay solid foundations. Do what the big companies do: don't gamble. Have the courage to take one step back to eventually take two steps forward. Stop chasing the shiny trends everyone tries to sell you on. Just because something works (or appears to work in Milan) doesn't mean it will work in the suburbs of Pescara. Don't be swayed by the siren calls of brands trying to push Product X onto you. Learn to manage your own finances, and stay honest. Today's customers prefer an honest product, communicated transparently, and served professionally.
Tough years lie ahead. We will need to lash ourselves to the mainmast of our ships so we don't succumb to the Sirens' songs that try to throw us off course and crash us onto the rocks.
Endure.
Work.
Don't give up.
One question for anyone who can give me a sensible answer:
In 20 years of working, we haven't managed to make this profession a "real" job. In 2026, I still see women leaving because "past 30, it’s no job for a woman." I see colleagues who, after 7 or 8 years behind the counter, desperately look for any way out. I see colleagues lighting candles to every saint just to land a corporate gig that frees them from the slavery of standing behind a bar.
In 2026, what has actually changed for bar workers? Are there places where you can work behind a bar past the age of 40 and truly be proud of it?
