Leeds man Aidan Beaumont from ARC Inspirations has won 'Bartender of the Year' and 2 other awards at the Classic Cocktail Awards 2024.
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00:00My name's Aidan, I'm the Bar Development Manager for Ark Inspirations, which is predominantly
00:05creating new drinks menus, but is also to do with all of the operation and efficiency
00:10of the bars.
00:11We're currently in Manahatta on Greek Street in Leeds, which is one of our three brands
00:16across the business.
00:17We've also got Box, which is sports bars, and Banyan, which is an all-day bar, casual
00:21dining atmosphere.
00:22I recently won the Bartender of the Year Award at the Classic Cocktail Competition, which
00:27is a nationwide cocktail competition put on by H2O Publishing.
00:32We were given six classic cocktails, so it was a Negroni, Margarita, Long Island Iced
00:36Tea, Classic Highball, Old Fashioned, and a Pornstar Martini, and we had to come up
00:40with our own twist on those classics.
00:41I came out on top in two of the categories, so I won Pornstar of the Year and Negroni
00:46of the Year, and then my overall score across all six drinks then got me the top prize,
00:52which was Bartender of the Year.
00:53The reaction that I had on the day from the judges was brilliant, of people coming up
00:57to me after I'd already been on to make my drinks, saying that they were really well-made
01:02and should be proud of them anyway, and going into it, that was all I really wanted.
01:05I wanted someone to come up to me at some point and say, I really liked your drink,
01:09because then you know that that whole process of creating them didn't go to waste.
01:13There's usually quite a specific brief that we get from our marketing team.
01:16The satisfaction out of it comes from spending two to three to sometimes up to six months
01:22developing a new drink or coming up with a new idea, and a lot of the time, as a lot
01:26of processes go, you kind of hit roadblocks along the way, or you end up having to completely
01:31scrap ideas and go back to square one, but the main satisfaction comes from when all
01:34of that work is done and the dust has settled on it, going into the venues and seeing the
01:38drinks actually being made, and almost opening a menu and going, oh, I came up with that,
01:44and now looking at how many we're selling over weeks and months, you go, oh, there's
01:48that many people there, hopefully enjoying the drinks, but ultimately seeing the drink
01:54and going, that sounds like something that I want to drink.
01:56There's a lot of trial and error in it, but it's good fun.