"The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team." — Phil Jackson, from the book "Sacred Hoops" (1995).
It seems absurd to start talking about a competition in the mixology world with a quote like this, because let’s be honest: competitions are designed to pit us against each other, and we’d be hypocrites to say otherwise (and maybe sometimes that’s just how it should be). Yet during the West Cup, Giffard seemed to invest in completely different values.
THEY SURVIVED 40 DEGREES UNDER THE SUN
A team-building session right before a competition might seem risky, even crazy, if the goal is to ease the typical tension felt by competitors. But perhaps it seems even more bizarre to take 6 guys out onto a golf course. Let’s be clear: they risked losing someone between the driver shots (for those who don’t know, and we only know because Marco Russo never shuts up about golf, it’s the longest and most powerful club) and the 40-degree heat in the shade (yes, some of them were wearing dress shirts). But the best part was seeing Pierre Giffard step onto the course to play, have fun, and above all, push those 6 guys to try again and again. And trust me, as someone we can't name for obvious reasons would say, we’ve seen corporate managers act as if they own the company, treating everyone else like mere numbers. Pierre, who could have easily just lectured everyone since he's been playing since he was eight, did the exact opposite.
THE ANXIETY KICKS IN AFTER COFFEE
Let’s not forget that this is still a competition, featuring young men and women who have invested their time and often their days off (and we highly recommend preparing for competitions—leave improvisation to those who do it for a living). So, even though the TEK BAR team and Pierre Giffard did everything they could to make them feel at ease, the anxiety was palpable. Hands shook, and voices dropped a little lower (perhaps the sharp, direct English questions from Matteo Mosetti, Giffard Europe Ambassador, served as a good wake-up call, to say the least).
MAYBE EMOTIONS ARE WHAT MATTER
We’re not going to sit here and tell you what kind of drinks were made or what techniques were used. If you’ve come to know us, you also know that we love diving deep into people and their emotions. So, we’re taking home a few key words from a complex theme, "Sip The Moments - Craft Your Journey From Sunrise to Moonlight." We’re taking home diversity, family, connections, change, strength, and monotony, leaving it up to you to contextualize them into a drink.
"An idea is like a virus. Resilient. Highly contagious. And the smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy your world." — From the movie "Inception" by Christopher Nolan (2010)
And each of them brought their own memory to build a drink out of it, just like this experience (a word we’ve been using a lot lately) where a brand created a real-life moment, putting people at the very center of everything (and that doesn’t happen often at these events).
MAT PANGILINAN
Yes, the winner’s name is complicated, we know, and he’s the first to tell you, "just call me Mat." But this humble and simple attitude—the kind of simplicity that feels genuine, spontaneous, and clean—is one of the traits that struck us the most. He’s someone who works two jobs, speaks proper English (and in a country where we still struggle to put a proper sentence together, this absolutely thrills us), and smiles. We should all remember to smile a bit more, because the hospitality world is also about that—or maybe, it’s entirely about that.
“I find that in the Giffard West Cup, what a person manages to express about themselves matters a lot. I really liked Matt because he showed us how he manages to balance two jobs, which is by no means an easy feat. I hope he continues to channel this beautiful energy and the desire to give his absolute best.”
The quote is from Konstantyn Wulf—it almost seems like you can’t participate in the West Cup unless you have a difficult name. We’re talking about someone who didn’t just win the Italian final, but went on to claim the Global title alongside 19 other competitors from all over the world. A guy who dropped everything at 19 to fly to Bangkok and has now chosen to live in the countryside. He’s probably one of those personalities that are impossible to box in, but starting today, he will be supporting Mat as he prepares for the final in Angers.
With Giffard, we didn’t just experience a competition made of drinks (those were there too, obviously, and they were good). Instead, we experienced moments, met people who work hard every single day for their dreams, and saw young bartenders feel like they were the center of the world for a day. No one lectured from a pedestal, no one flaunted power or wealth, and no one bored anyone during dinners with the kind of speeches that are usually only good for feeding one’s ego.
