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1. The Spirits Business: Ivy Mix on Championing Women in the On-Trade. The Today Show: Craig Melvin Tried to be a Bartender for a Day (Video) New York Times: Ivy Mix’s Sunday Routine. Esquire: The Government is Ignoring America’s Bars. This is What We Need Right Now. Forbes: Acclaimed Bartender on her Book ‘Spirits of Latin America.
2. Ivy Mix is the head bartender and owner of Leyenda, a cocktail bar in Brooklyn. She also founded Speed Rack, a competition created by and for female bartenders that benefits breast cancer research and awareness. Ivy was named 'American Bartender of the Year' at.

Bartender Ivy Mix runs Brooklyn hotspot Leyenda and champions women in the industry with her Speed Rack competition. She speaks to SB about driving change in the on-trade.

*This feature was originally published in the November 2019 issue of The Spirits Business

Bartender Ivy Mix runs Brooklyn hotspot Leyenda and champions women in the industry with her Speed Rack competition. She speaks to SB about driving change in the on-trade.This feature was.

Through her work to highlight inequality in the on‐trade and raise funds to support breast cancer research and recovery, Ivy Mix has become part‐ bartender, part‐activist.

The day of my interview with the American bartender, she says she has been caught up in a spot of “patriarchy smashing”, following The World’s 50 Best Bars’ decision to name Germany’s Charles Schumann as its industry icon. The awards faced intense public backlash due to Schumann’s past comment that “a bar is no place for a woman”.

“The comments Charles Schumann made about how the woman is never the important figure in the bar, I think he still needs to make an actual sincere apology for that,” she says.

“But one thing I will say, it certainly has galvanised the troops against the patriarchy, and Speed Rack, for better or for worse, is a catalyst of that.”

Speed Rack is the women‐only bartending competition Mix founded with Lynnette Marrero. The duo wanted to create a fun cocktail competition that showcased talented female bartenders from the US. The contest has since expanded, with events taking place in London, Australia and Hong Kong.

“For the longest time, whenever I was working my way up in the industry and when I was going out and drinking in bars there weren’t many female bartenders. People would always say to me ‘oh we just don’t know any’, and I would be like ‘OK, that’s crazy’,” Mix says.

As a result of this, Mix and Marrero began hosting competitions in the US, with the first Speed Rack event taking place in New York in June 2011.

“I wanted to create a really fun event, not to say that other bartending competitions aren’t fun – but once you’ve been to a handful of them sometimes they just aren’t,” says Mix. “At Speed Rack it is a little bit more rock and roll; we have a DJ playing, we have a stage with bars on that the women compete from, we have judges on stage and there is music playing. It is like a party.”

Mix says she hopes the competition can act as a platform for talented women in the on‐trade and that entering the contest can lead to career progression and job offers. Countless bar owners and managers have been spotted scouting out their next head bartender or bar manager at her events, which she says has been fantastic to see.

In the eight years since the competition started, Mix says she has seen the image of a bartender change and that she no longer finds herself asking why venues don’t have more women behind the bar. But the work that has been done in recent years may be under threat as a result of the current turbulent political climate.

“Everything was going good, then when Trump got elected there was a real sense of ‘oh no’,” she says. “Now, we have this man who got elected after publicly saying he was going to grab a woman by the pussy. What does that mean for women? It’s not good. The fact that it’s acceptable to say ‘women shouldn’t be behind the bar past three’ or ‘I’m going to grab that woman by the pussy’ is crazy.”

UPLIFTING POSITIVITY

In spite of such worrying attitudes, Mix remains hopeful that equality for women in the on‐trade can one day be achieved, but this wouldn’t necessarily spell the end for Speed Rack. “I don’t know if there will ever be a time where women don’t need a space to get together and feel powerful,” says Mix. “I hope that one day equality is achieved, but I have no idea when we will stop Speed Rack. Once you go to a Speed Rack event it is so awesome – the love and the heart‐warming and uplifting positivity is pretty spectacular.”

Since its launch, Speed Rack has also focused on raising money for various breast cancer research and recovery charities, and has so far raised more than US$1 million for the cause.

Mix said: “Breast cancer, while it doesn’t affect 100% of women, is the number one form of ailment that affects women worldwide, and it was kind of the obvious choice, for lack of a better phrase, to raise money for.”

As Speed Rack has grown and expanded, so too has Mix’s bartending career. She started out in the industry in 2005 while living in Guatemala and working at Café no Sé, the venue synonymous with the origins of Ilegal Mezcal. After spending four years there learning the secrets of Latin American spirits, Mix moved to New York where she has worked since.

“I moved to New York and I didn’t have any money so I started working as a waitress and also working the graveyard shift as a bartender at this awful bar in the West Village,” Mix says. “Then I discovered cocktails and I was like ‘OK I want to do cocktails’ but nobody would hire me because they thought I was a cocktail waitress.”

It was while working at various bars in New York that Mix heard renowned bartender Julie Reiner was planning to open a new venue in the city, and Mix wanted in.

“I was considering moving to San Francisco because I was offered jobs there, but in New York it was a struggle,” explains Mix. “Then I found out Julie Reiner was opening a bar in Soho and the West Village area and I applied. I got the job and now I get to work with Julie. I worked with her at Lani Kai and at Clover Club, then I opened Leyenda with her.”

FOCUS ON LATIN SPIRITS

Leyenda is Mix’s Brooklyn bar, which she opened in 2015. The Latin spirits‐focused venue was designed, built and opened in just over six months, a process Mix says was much like having a baby. “Opening Leyenda was definitely the hardest thing,” she says. “I was asked if I wanted to open it in November 2014. We signed the lease over the holidays then we opened in May 2015. I think this is how people must feel when they have a baby, but it seemed to happen much quicker and it’s probably a little less intense – but it was crazy.”

Leyenda has become a hotspot for locals, with regular customers returning often. Its position as a neighbourhood drinking den is something Mix says is “the biggest accomplishment. We’ve had people have their weddings here, we’ve had people meet their significant others here, we’ve had all these things happen in this spot. Bars are supposed to be a community hub, they’re for the community and for your neighbourhood.”

With a successful bar, a world‐renowned cocktail competition and a position as a spokesperson for equality in the on‐trade, it’s a wonder Mix finds enough hours in the week. But, she is also somehow finding time to write her book, due to be published next year. “I’m writing a book about Latin spirits,” she says. “That has been a very long process. So I’ll publish that, go on a book tour then who knows? I recently became an aunt so being at home has become more important to me. We’ll just have to see what happens.”

When I was creating the character Celeste Fortune, the protagonist in A Dream to Die For, I needed to figure out how she kept herself financially afloat during her two decades living abroad volunteering in refugee camps and disaster areas around the globe. I remembered running into American and European bartenders in fancy hotel bars I occasionally visited when I, too, was a globe-trotting volunteer. Bartending seemed the perfect job for Celeste, who wasn’t quite able to commit to anything long-term until she landed in Riverton Falls.

When I learned about globe-trotting, award-winning, stereotype-busting bartender, bar-owner and mixologist, Ivy Mix (yes, that’s her real name), I found the person Celeste might have become if she’d had more staying power and confidence in herself. Mix is perhaps best known as the co-founder of Speed Rack, an international speed bartending competition for women to raise money for breast cancer education, prevention and research. Since 2011, the competition has raised $1,000,000 while showcasing the talents of female bartenders in the craft cocktail world, which has long been dominated by men. In addition, Mix is co-owner of Leyenda Brooklyn Cocteleria, a bar in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, New York that specializes in Latin American and Caribbean liquors. Leyenda was named one of the 100 Best Bars in the World by William Reed Business Media. Mix herself has won important competitions, including the Spirited Awards Bartender of the Year (2015) and with Speed Rack co-founder Lynnette Marrero, Bartender Mentor of the Year (2019) at Tales of the Cocktail, an annual celebration of cocktail culture held annually in New Orleans, and was a nominee for Outstanding Bar Program by the James Beard Foundation Awards 2019. These days, she travels more than ever as a celebrity bartender for cocktail-related events and competitions around the world.

Here’s what she told me when I had a chance to interview her between trips.

SZR: Did you always want to be a bartender?

IM: Maybe people aspire to that now, but when I was becoming a bartender, people still asked what my real job was. “What else do you do? Are you an actress? Best video converter for mac free download. Are you a singer/songwriter? Are you an artist?” I did get an art degree and I had an art studio and everything, but bartending was my main job.

How did you get your start?

IM: I went to Bennington College where there is a winter Field Work term that gave me a chance to travel. I wanted to get out of Vermont because I’d lived there my whole life. So, the first place I went was Antigua, Guatemala. I discovered a tequila/mezcal bar, but as a nineteen-year-old American, I didn’t know anything about bars. I hung out at the bar and spent so much money that after awhile I started working there to pay off my tab. I realized I could be making money in the place I was spending so much money. It turned out I really liked being in bars!

I kept going back to Guatemala for five to nine months of the year throughout college. Half-time in Guatemala and half-time in Bennington. I moved to NYC in 2008 when the economy collapsed. The only way to make money was bartending or working in the service industry. I had a Fine Arts and Philosophy degree which was already relatively useless. So, I ended up bartending and I discovered cocktail bartending. I thought: Oh, I can be creative and bartend. That’s great!

Was it still unusual for women to be bartenders when you started out?

In cocktail bartending, yes. Sex sells, so put a pretty girl behind the bar, and then your bar makes money. But in 2008, when I landed in New York, it was the year of the cocktail revival in the US and abroad. We’d been through the Dark Ages of sour mix and crazy martinis in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In 2007 and 2008, things started to ramp up. At that point, cocktail bars meant “speakeasies.” Jerry Thomas, considered the Cocktail Godfather of pre-Prohibition times in the mid-1800s, was the role model for inventing creative cocktails, so everyone was trying to do speakeasy-style cocktail bars when they started to come back into fashion. But in the speakeasy bar, you were supposed to look like the guy with suspenders and a moustache. There wasn’t room for women in that idea of what a mixologist should be. But now that’s starting to change.

Sounds like you are a leader in getting that to change.

Yeah! Along with my Speed Rack co-founder Lynnette Marrero who gave me my start at the Clover Club and is now co-owner of Leyenda with me.

What inspired you to start making up your own drinks and becoming a mixologist?

I got a job as a cocktail waitress while I was still trying to make it as an artist. I had an art studio and everything. That’s how I learned what cocktails were all about. They are pretty; they are beautiful. You have to be a nerd to get into the cocktail business because you have to know recipes and ratios. And be creative on top of those recipes. Kind of like baking a cake. You have a certain amount of flour, a certain amount of sugar, a certain amount of eggs to make something happen. It depends on what’s in there to make a good cake, a bad cake or just plain cake.

There’s also an equation for cocktails. There has to be a certain amount of sweet, sour or whatever. Then you can be creative within those realms. It is both geeky and it was art and creative. Just a different sensory path.

So, you got your start in Guatemala. Where did you go from there?

At the bar in Guatemala I was just pouring beers and shots, not making cocktails. But it was a tequila /mezcal bar, so that’s where I first learned about those spirits. Then I started going to Mexico, not just for the mezcal, but more as an excuse to travel. But when I moved to New York, mezcal was the big thing and no one knew anything about it. By chance, I had learned a lot about mezcal, so I had this foot up.

Fast forward, I was still planning to go to grad school for a fine arts or art history degree, or some combination of the two, but I decided to keep on with the bartending because I was getting to travel because of it. People would ask if I wanted to go here or there and see this and that and maybe make some drinks there while you’re at it. Or maybe you want to learn about our local spirits? I was still into art, but I was getting paid to travel! So sure!

When did you open your bar?

I opened the bar in May 2015. Leyenda honors and specializes in New World/Caribbean/Latin American spirits. It’s everything from tequila to rum to pisco. I had to ask myself, do I want to go back to that part of the world permanently or do I want to bring that part of the world to Brooklyn? So that’s what I did.

What’s your most popular cocktail?

La Sonambula is one that’s been on the menu since we opened. It means Sleepwalker in Spanish and has chamomile, jalapeño juice, tequila, lemon, mole bitters and Peychaud bitters. Always been pretty popular.

Tia Mia is another popular one. It’s like a Mai Tai with mezcal, Jamaican rum, toasted almond orgeat, orange curacao and lime. That’s also pretty popular as well.

Ivy Mix Bartender Salary

What are the flavors you’re looking for?

I make cocktails because they are a gateway into tasting the spirits themselves. I want the spirits to have the biggest flavor profile, the most nuanced, because then I can take the tasting notes and build a cocktail off that. For example, the idea when you’re making something with Scotch is not to think “I taste smoke,” because of the peaty taste. But what else do you taste? It’s like honing your palate a bit and “Mr. Potato Heading” different ingredients onto the base. What other things have that flavor profile and branching out from there, building up these different flavors to make a new drink. That’s how I go about it.

Sounds like you get to a lot of experimenting.

You really need a bar to do it. You probably don’t have all the ingredients at home.

How are you treated as a woman behind the bar? Is it different from how men are treated?

It depends on what part of the world you’re in. I bet your protagonist had the same experiences I had. When I was in my early 20s, I’d get a lot more “Hey Sweetheart” and hand touching. Was that because I was in my early 20s or was that because it was 10 years ago? I do think things are changing. It’s certainly different now.

At Leyenda, the majority of the staff are women. I enjoy having lots of women on staff because I feel like it makes our clientele more comfortable. But there are still times when there are two women behind the bar and a male bar-back. But instead of talking to the women bartenders, people often will talk to the man about his recommendations. It’s not conscious, it’s just moronic.

Is it unusual for a woman to own her own bar?

Yeah, unfortunately! Especially cocktail bars. There are all these different awards, so you have like the James Beard Foundation that finally started honoring bars, about five years ago. Pellegrino does World’s 50 Best Bars, Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans does the Spirited Awards. You look around these categories, and I was the first woman to win best American Bartender in the 12 years of Spirited Awards history. In the World’s Best 50 Bars, only two were owned by women. So, there is a problem.

Why do you think this would be a good job for women?

There are a lot of reasons why it’s not, especially in the United States where there’s usually no health insurance built in. If you’re thinking about starting a family, there’s no paid maternity leave. So, a lot of women leave to become spirit ambassadors, representing a brand. You get to travel the world all paid for, you get health insurance and paid time off—things bartenders don’t tend to get unless they work in hotels.

I personally think it’s sad that lots of women leave bartending to become spirit ambassadors. Bartenders don’t get two-week paid vacations. And certainly not two months paid maternity leave, which spirit ambassadors can get. So, it’s tricky. But the benefit of being a bartender or bar owner is personal freedom. I work for myself. I’ve never wanted to work for anybody. I’ve tried it. I was bad at it. I’m too hard-headed. I make my own schedule. I’m doing my own stuff. People look at my Instagram (Mix has fifteen thousand followers) and think I have the best life. Those are the benefits, especially for younger people. I’d love to see more female bar owners. Usually mainstream media portrays women behind the bar because they are often younger than thirty, they’re pretty, and they bring creepy dudes to the bar to spread money. That’s the whole purpose. Using women as sex objects.

But more women need to become bar owners. Women are inherently more mothers, even if we’re not. We’re into hospitality. And as a bar owner, I don’t have to become a brand ambassador if I want my own family because I’ve built my own businesses. It’s all about the upward ladder. For a long time, it was about not enough women bartenders, now it’s about not enough women bar owners. It’s another step up for us to take.

You’re a glass ceiling breaker. Are you’re planning on continuing in this work, no matter what your personal future holds?

I think so. I travel an insane amount. Now that I’m in my mid-thirties, I wonder if I want to do this forever, so I’m actually looking at opening up more bars. I don’t make any money off my bar at all. I make most of my money traveling to different places and giving a speech or judging contests. I would like to figure out how to make money owning bars so I can travel because I want to, not because I have to. Maybe I’ll write a book, make tons of money, and I’ll get to travel for that.

When you travel, what are you paid to do?

I judge a lot of cocktail competitions. They are massive right now outside the US. I judge competitions like the Diageo World Class, Bacardi Legacy, tinier ones too. I give speeches at conferences all around the world—Mexico, Brooklyn, Berlin, Sao Paulo. Sometimes people want cocktail consulting. Though I own my bar, I haven’t been here much this year.

Did you ever dream that this is where you were headed back in that bar in Guatemala?

Ivy Mix Bartender

No, I just thought it was a way to travel and make money. I opened Leyenda before I was thirty with lots of partners, which is integral to success. I wanted to own 100% of as many bars as it would take to support myself and my lifestyle by the time I was forty. But now I know that owning a bar is really hard. Everything breaks, especially plumbing and electrical. You have to be a landlord with a thousand people a week in and out of your space, like a massive living room. We’ve been open for four years, and now it’s a bit easier, so I begin to think I’d like to open more bars. But it’s like when you have a baby and then forget how hard those early days were, so you think, I want to do that again! Opening a new bar is like that.

I’d like to move back to Vermont one day and make money there, so if that’s an option with the new distillers popping up, who knows?

Do you have a recipe you can share with us?

Sure! Try this!

89 Sour

Ivy Mix Bartender Certification

2 oz Bar Hill Gin
1/2 oz maple syrup
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz fresh orange juice
1 dash angostura bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a coupe, float 1/2 oz of red wine on top using a spoon.

Ivy Mix Bartender Of The Year

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