Shawn Soole has parlayed his standing as Victoria’s most influential bartender into a burgeoning empire of hospitality consultation.
Already an award-winning mixologist in 2006 when the then-26-year-old arrived on the Victoria scene from his native Australia, Soole lit up the craft-cocktail scene behind the bar at the likes of Little Jumbo, Olo, Cafe Mexico, Pagliacci’s and, most recently, at Clive’s Classic Lounge, where he was lounge manager. (Soole left in January to become GM and beverage director for Laowai in Vancouver, although he will continue his consulting work in Victoria.)
Bartending is his day job. Helping others become better bartenders is his jazz.
The nearly 400 episodes of his Post Shift Podcast are an insider’s take on the food and beverage industry, locally and globally, with interviews, business-forward insights and no shying away from difficult discussions. Soole pours out two a week and his chats placed in the top five for Outstanding Business Series at the Canadian Podcast Awards announced in January.
A sought-after speaker and author of three books on cocktail craft and culture, Soole is all about consistency, whether it’s raising industry standards or mixing the right drink.
“It’s not just making the same cocktail once,” he says. “It’s making the same cocktail 100 times a night and making it the same every single time.”
Douglas: What do you see as the biggest challenges to the hospitality industry today?
Shawn Soole: Gen Zs are the next big demo that are going to be coming into your bars and most of them aren’t drinking [alcohol]. Another big change is that the pandemic changed a lot of their socializing skills. They came of age during the pandemic and then two to three years of isolation. They don’t want to go out to a club. Nine times out of 10, they want to grab a six-pack of beer and hang out with their friends.
Douglas: Is there a biggest mistake employers in the industry are making time and again?
Shawn Soole: They’re still looking at the industry as a turn and burn, like it’s acceptable to have high turnover. We should be leaving the industry better for the next generation. It shouldn’t be this-is-the-way-I-did-it-so-this-is-the-way-you’ve-got-to-do-it. Coming out of the pandemic, I put into play a lot of new training to keep my turnover super low. At Clive’s, my turnover was 14 per cent over four years. That’s nothing. The industry standard is 70 to 80.
Douglas: Would you change one overriding issue in the hospitality industry?
Shawn Soole: Keep your staff. People don’t fully understand how much it costs to flip a staff member. The average cost of one staff member leaving and being rehired is somewhere in the region of $2,500 or $3,000 to $5,000.
Douglas: How do you empower and incentivize staff to not leave?
Shawn Soole: My big thing is benefits and proper certification courses. They’re not expensive.
Douglas: Why are you so open discussing things like your social anxiety in your podcast?
Shawn Soole: I’m open about it because the industry needs to be more open about it. All the males in the industry need to be more open about it. All the males in the world should be more open about their feelings. We get told that we have to “man up.” I come from a very traditional household, my dad was ex-military, and so I started working when I was 13 years old. It was not bred into me.
Douglas: Why have discussions about mental health become so central in your podcast?
Shawn Soole: We have a lot of substance misuse in the industry. It’s prevalent, it’s there, it’s accessible. It’s easy to deal with issues if you have a drink at the end of the night. It can easily cascade. I’ve lost a couple of friends in the industry to suicide. I want to be more open about it because I want them to be more open about it. I’d prefer to get a phone call at two o’clock in the morning because you’re on a horrible down than to hear about you passing away the next morning.
Douglas: What would you like to see changed that’s hampering the industry in Victoria?
Shawn Soole: The revitalization of downtown is something that needs to happen. I’m hearing a lot from people who have venues downtown and venues out in Langford and Langford’s killing it right now. People want to leave [work] downtown and go home and don’t want to come back downtown.
Douglas: Your consulting service, Soole Hospitality Concepts, provides design, operations strategy and branding, literally one stop for everything, right?
Shawn Soole: I always like to say if you come to me with an idea on a napkin we can go from a napkin idea all the way through to six to 12 months of operations and everything in between.
Douglas: What if it’s just a tiny cocktail napkin?
Shawn Soole: [Laughs.] Your idea should always fit on a bar napkin.
Douglas: When did you decide to expand into all these other services?
Shawn Soole: I live by the rule “a rising tide lifts all boats” so, Victoria especially, it’s important for me to have young bartenders and venues come up with it. That has always led into: What else can I do? I went back to school in 2018 [for HR and accounting]. All of a sudden, I can offer how to lay out your business properly, how to lay out job descriptions. I don’t have a stop button. It’s always, “What’s next?”
Douglas: Are you providing a necessary service?
Shawn Soole: I think the industry as a whole, post-pandemic, is still struggling quite a lot. So for me if I can give any insights or services or sit-down mentorship, there’s always going to be things in the industry that need to be fixed.
Douglas: You started out consulting and training people from other bars for free, didn’t you?
Shawn Soole: Yes, I did. I often still do. I’ve done something like 14 different consults since Little Jumbo all across the world. I did three bars in Singapore in 2019. I think you’ve got to try to monetize your passion. I still struggle with that sort of thing when it comes to mentorship and advice giving. My wife tells me I need to charge everybody, but I still tend to feel the industry needs a helping hand.
Douglas: Any free advice to someone wanting to open a bar in Victoria?
Shawn Soole: You need to have passion, but you’ve got to have that business as an equal portion in your brain. If you’re so heavily business-minded your product won’t feel authentic and if you’re super passionate you can sometimes miss the forest for the trees. In Victoria, just be very mindful of rent, make sure your lease is really good.
Douglas: Just how important is the lease?
Shawn Soole: The biggest factor is your lease. Your lease should be six per cent of your top-line revenue. You can control your labour. You can control your costs of liquor or food, but the lease can be make or break.
I try to keep positive when it comes to failure. I still have certain regrets that I’ve failed at, but I look at every failure as having opened up a door to something else
Douglas: What’s the bar scene like in Victoria now?
Shawn Soole: The cocktail scene is the most vibrant it has ever been since Solomon [Siegel] and I sort of kicked it off in 2008. I’ve got really good people who started with me as barbacks [bartender’s assistants] now running their own venues. [The scene] is very collaborative. There’s no cliques, there’s no niches.
Douglas: What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in the bar industry?
Shawn Soole: There’s a big age gap right now. A lot of people in their late 20s, mid-30s left the industry during the pandemic. There’s a big gap with the next generation that’s coming up through the ranks. It’s not a bad thing.
Douglas: You’ve talked about how one is often one problem away from failure in the industry … is failure necessary for success?
Shawn Soole: I try to keep positive when it comes to failure. I still have certain regrets that I’ve failed at, but I look at every failure as having opened up a door to something else. For instance, X happens so I could actually go and open up three venues in Singapore.
Douglas: What would you like people to know about Shawn Soole?
Shawn Soole: I’m a six-foot-five, 300-pound, bearded Australian guy. I can come off intimidating by pure size. When I’m thinking, my face is very blunt. The people that get to know you are the ones that matter, so having other people’s opinions and trying to have that in your head — I still struggle with that. The imposter syndrome is real.
Douglas: You’re pretty much a local celebrity. Do customers ever ask for selfies?
Shawn Soole: I get that sometimes. It’s still weird and surreal when that happens. I find it odd, but people will ask for an autograph.
