Dre Walters on the little things that make big memories for guests

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The Glendronach is all about Raising Expectations — and with a new bottle design in bars now, and the experienced and talented Dr Rachel Barrie overseeing each release, you wouldn’t expect anything less. To find out more, get in touch with your Brown-Forman representative, or read a deep dive on The Glendronach here and hear from Dr Barrie herself, here.

It’s a theme we’ve been returning to again and again this year: it’s no longer enough to have a good bar — there’s no guarantee you’ll survive. Whether the bar is in Melbourne or Mooloolaba, good just isn’t good enough — you’ve got be great. You’ve got to stand apart from the crowd.

And that means raising the bar, and doing that little bit more — going the extra step, putting the effort in on the little one percenters. It might be exhausting, but hey, no one asked you to open a bar.

I think that approach is one of the key reasons why Old Mate’s Place in Sydney’s CBD was so quickly well received, and continues to be — despite its less than ideal location.

“To get people back up to level four of a nondescript building and let’s be honest, the stairway and the lift, they all look a bit crappy,” says Old Mate’s Place owner Dre Walters. “The only thing that gets people back is the service.”

Service is a lot of things: it’s the way you prepare the drink, the care you give to that dram of sherried whisky you just poured, how promptly and warmly you attend to guests. But that’s the standard these days; just like it’s no long enough to be a good bar, it’s no longer enough just to have good enough service. You’ve got to put in that little bit more, because the best bars are doing what they can to raise expectations.

So what are the little one percenters that they do at Old Mate’s Place? What are the extra little things they do that most don’t?

A genuine welcome and goodbye

“[At Old Mate’s Place] we rely heavily on that service that goes above and beyond,” Dre says. “I mean, everyone’s gone to a place and they’ve sat there and they haven’t been greeted and you kind of feel a little bit offended.

“But you walk into a Sushi Train and you know, they’re all saying hi to you — it’s so simple. And you love it. You’re like, hey, how you doing? But if no one acknowledges you, you’re like, what did I do?”

And just how important is it to get the welcome and good by right? “I think it’s a genuine goodbye,” Dre says. “We always say a genuine greeting and a genuine farewell. And we like to say we’ll see you soon. Because it’s not goodbye, we wanna see you soon. We wanna see you back here. And you can always have a joke with the customer anyways, and be like, Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

And at Old Mate’s, part of that genuine goodbye is the small, little nicety of opening the door for you as you leave. “Opening a door for someone is something that, it’s so simple and it’s so basic, but it means so much,” Dre says.

“And you get that personal goodbye when you leave.”

Getting to know you

We all want that bar that is the place where everyone knows your name, and getting to know you is a key part of how they build a great experience for their guests.

And that starts with knowing your name.

“One of the biggest things that we do is we’re big on names,” says Dre. “Try and find out someone’s name. You only ever go back to a bar because you feel comfortable there. And you’ve only got a short period of time to make [guests] feel comfortable.

“And you can stuff up their order. You can make a mistake because we’re humans. That’s what we do.” But if you know each other’s names, well, there’s a little extra grace given to you.

But given the volume of people a bartender will meet and serve night in and night out, not everyone is great at remembering people’s names.

“It is one of the hardest things to do,” Dre says. “I am so bad at it, terrible. But there’s so many little tips and tricks.

“At [seminal New York bar] Milk & Honey they always used to have Post It notes on the bar of like they’d write the name of the person and stick it on the bar in front of them. That’s how they remembered their names. Now with the use of technology and tills and all the rest of it, you can add that to their tab, you can add it to their drink order so you know who’s drinking what.”

Give a little

The bar is where we go when we’re celebrating, and a great bartender can take that night from good to great.

At Old Mate’s Place, when they learn that one of their guests has a birthday, it’s a team effort.

“We’ve got a birthday card that we give to them,” Dre says. “That’s gives one free drink at the other bar. We usually try and find out their name, we sign it and then we get all the staff to sign it. Then before they leave, we say look, we’ve got a present for you — that’s it.”

The guest leaves having had a great night, with something to get them back to their sister bar, Old Love’s, in the basement. That’s more memorable than a free shot.

And bartenders are encouraged to give guests the hat from the heads.

“The guys that want to wear a hat behind the bar, we give them an Old Mate’s hat,” says Dre. “And if [a guest] loves the hat, and they’re super excited about it, there’s something about being given a hat off the top of someone’s head, to give it away to someone. They’re like, are you serious? Of course, that’s yours. That usually enables [another guest] else to go, I’ll buy one.”

Take them to dinner (kinda)

If you find yourself sitting at the Old Mate’s bar, talking to your bartender, they might end up asking you what your plans are for the rest of the evening. You might get some suggestions of where to go, of course; you also might be escorted to where you’re going next.

“It’s not unheard of that one of the guys, if it’s a little bit quieter, we’ll walk them to the next bar,” says Dre.

“We’ve had people sitting at the bar, who didn’t really know where they wanted to go for dinner. They really felt like Italian. So we’ve wandered downstairs, walked into Palazzo Salato next door, and we’ve just booked them in and said, your booking is in 45 minutes. They have another drink here. Then they go over to Palazzo, have a feed. Then they usually just wander back and have the rest of their night here,” he says.

“So it’s those little things you can do for someone. We’ve had one of the guys call up their mates in a different restaurant and book them in for dinner before. It’s one of those things, if you can do that for them, that’s making them feel special.”

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