Tom Ryan is in his second year of an undergrad degree in Astrophysics MSci. He's worked as student staff at the Student Union Bars since September 2021, and recently took it upon himself to completely restructure our Institute cocktail menu...
What’s the best thing about working at the Institute?
The atmosphere. It doesn’t matter if you go in there to drink or to work it’s always guaranteed to be lively, friendly and just a really nice place to be. It also helps that it’s a very short walk from the main campus and there are some great events on every week that the staff get to enjoy.
We hear you’ve been working on restructuring the way our cocktails are served – could you tell us about this and how far you’ve got?
I trained as a cocktail bartender during my first gap year so, coming to the Institute, I already knew how to make cocktails. A common complaint amongst staff at the time was that the cocktail quantities weren’t ideal, and some cocktails contained superfluous ingredients that didn’t add much to the drink (sometimes even overcomplicating them). The bar’s cocktail recipe book (aka ‘spec book’) was also difficult to read and navigate since the instructions for each cocktail took up a whole page so if two people needed to check a different recipe they had to keep flicking between the pages.
Over the Christmas break I decided to try and improve the recipe book so, using the format for cocktail recipes I knew from my work in cocktail bars, I condensed the recipes from seven pages down to fitting on a 2-page spread so no flicking between pages was necessary. I also added an additional two pages of ‘off menu’ drinks which weren’t on our menu but were common in other cocktail bars and we could make using ingredients we had in stock. Alongside this I added six pages detailing cocktail making techniques and terminology to help explain some of the abbreviations used in the new recipe pages as well as provide background info for anyone who was interested. I sent this to our Venues Manager and got it shared around the staff. I was then allowed to swap it out for the old recipe book and it’s now in use on the bar!
Aside from changing the format of our recipe book and including extra information/drinks, I also made a list of suggested changes to the quantities used in each cocktail to bring them more in line with their ‘classic’ recipes, including removing unnecessary ingredients. This is still a work in progress as (as I’ve learned) it’s simple in theory to change the recipes used by a bar but a lot trickier to implement in practice due to how the recipes are stored in the tills and how the tills interact with the databases that track what we have in stock. The upshot of this is that, so far, the majority of extraneous ingredients have been removed where possible to improve the present cocktails, and over the summer the entire cocktail menu is going to get a serious revamp, including brand new cocktails and recipes, in time for next September.
How did it come about that you were able to get involved?
Essentially a bit of luck and putting myself out there. I was lucky enough to have already had two years experience working on and off in cocktail bars before joining the Students' Union bars team. I was then lucky enough to have a Supervisor and Venues Manager who were keen to improve the cocktail menu to benefit the students and happy to listen to what I had to say.
Fairly recently we’ve had a new Venues Manager join the team (Chris) who’s exclusively based at the Institute and has been focused on improving the cocktail menu as well as a tonne of work to secure brand deals and take part in the NUS cocktail and spirits programme. As a result of the work I’d done on the spec book he was also kind enough to let me help with new cocktail ideas for the brand new menu. A majority of this menu contains reworked familiar cocktails from the previous menu but there’s also a new ‘signature section’ containing four new cocktails that I’m helping Chris create.
Do you feel it’s important that student staff are invested in improving services for other students?
I feel that if a student staff member thinks they have ideas on how to improve things that would better the student experience, they should definitely bring it up with their managers.
I’m really pleased that the Students’ Union are open to these kinds of suggestions and happy to listen to students when it comes to improving things for students. Having staff who are interested in improving the cafes/bars/venues for the benefit of all students is definitely a plus and can only be good for students in the long run.
Most importantly, how have the cocktails gone down with students?
As a part of creating the ‘off menu’ pages in the spec book I made a very long list of popular cocktails we didn’t feature and picked the top 10 or so to include in the book. Some of these top 10 we didn’t have the ingredients for and I felt it would really improve the cocktail menu for student customers as well as the bar’s profitability if we ordered the ingredients and featured the cocktails at the top of this list (primarily the pornstar martini).
Whenever my supervisor was in to set up the order for the week I would cheekily ask if they would order the ingredients for the pornstar, obviously they couldn’t as they would need approval from the venues manager but after a lot of pestering we got the ingredients in to allow the pornstar to feature on the menu:
This is a modern classic cocktail that was invented in London by Douglas Ankrah and is frequently in the top 10 most popular cocktails year on year (if not number 1). I felt it was a really important one to add to the Institute menu and, as of April just gone, it is now available! So far it appears to have gone down really well, soaring in popularity despite only having been on the menu for a little over a month.
We’re also currently testing cocktails for the new signature section of the new menu which may start to appear over summer before officially launching next September. A ‘sneak peak’ of one of these work in progress cocktails is pictured below:
This minty, parma violet gin-based cocktail is the ‘Parma Sutra’ and will have an edible flower floating in it’s centre once we have them in stock.