Five years in: advice on opening a bar from Santé, Toowoomba

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Last November, a little bar in a big country town turned five years old. Santé is a small place, with space for just 40 people, and is staffed by its owner-operators every night it’s open: Alexandra Percy, and Loic Mouchelin.

It’s a great little bar, and — as they explain in the interview below — their passion for the job has seen them not only become a distinctive feature of the city they’re in, but they’ve also picked up accolades on the national stage along the way.

To watch Loic behind the bar is to watch a proper, well-drilled bartender doing their thing — the night I’m there, it’s their fifth birthday celebration, bartenders from Brisbane have arrived by bus, their locals have turned out, and the tiny little bar is heaving. Alex is off to one side taking orders — the bar is full — and calling them out to Loic, who is spinning, shaking, stirring, and making every drink to order. No batches here, just the old school urgency of a bartender who loves his job fighting it out in the weeds. It was a marvel to watch.

And reaching the five year milestone is an important point in any bar business. It’s the time where things have settled into a rhythm (hopefully), the public knows who you are, and with any luck you’re making a little money.

Below, lightly edited for clarity, Alex and Loic talk about how the challenges they’ve faced, how they’ve overcome them, and how they’ve managed to spread the word about their little bar around the country. If you want to open a bar of your own, they have some great advice.

BOOTHBY: What were you doing before you opened Santé?

LOIC: We were in London. We met in London.

ALEX: My visa ran out and so I dragged Loic back to Australia.

LOIC: And we were looking at opening [a bar] in a capital city or on the beach, but Alex’s dad moved here [to Toowoomba].

Alex: And I came here for six months and like for six months behind me and by the time we he got here we kind of worked out we could afford to open a bar on savings.

And here we are five years later.

So Sydney and Melbourne were a little bit out of the price range for the savings account. And Brisbane, I feel like I didn’t know well enough, like we knew the city and the valley, but we wanted more of a neighbourhood sort of feel. We were just about to leave Toowoomba when this place came up. We stayed here.

Sam: Can you describe what Santé is like for people who haven’t been?

LOIC: It’s a cocktail bar — very cocktail focused. Of all sales, it’s 96 percent cocktails.

ALEX: But we try to make it a neighbourhood bar, that’s what we wanted. Our customers range from 18 year olds that come and have one fancy drink before they go out clubbing, to our oldest customers, Gordon and Beryl, who are in their 90s. We have this really wide range of people. We’ve had a few proposals, always at the table that’s over there, so we don’t sit there anymore — just in case, if anyone gets any ideas.

LOIC: Couple breakups.

ALEX: A few breakups, yeah.

LOIC: Many stories. But I know when we talk to people, the service is quite formal — we made a point of it. But even if the service is formal, we try to not be super formal.

ALEX: It's all table service, sit down.

LOIC: We want people to try come and have a drink every day. We want the hospo guys to come on their break to get a Boilermaker or a Daiquiri.

ALEX: We’re trying to be everything to everyone. I think when you're in a small town you have to be.

LOIC: You cater a bit more to everybody.

BOOTHBY: What’s the drinking culture like in Toowoomba?

LOIC: I make a lot of Pornstar Martinis — a lot. The week trade has changed — we get all the regulars that try everything we do, all our special drinks. But weekends, I make Pornstar Martinis, Espresso Martinis. And Mango Daiquiz last week. It's very broad, but it's very cocktail-focused. We have two menus, so one regular menu with classics and a few creations, but the main one we focus on is the market menu. We talk with suppliers or farmers, we see what we can get and we make a big batch of that drink and when it's gone, it's gone. So we have a couple of drinks that change every week on that and it's a list of eight, nine drinks.

ALEX: It took us a while to get people to trust us, but now they come in and try the drinks with mushrooms and crazy stuff. I think we've earned the trust that we get

LOIC: That's taken a while.

BOOTHBY: What were the early days like when you first started off? Because you down a bit of a laneway, you’re a bit tucked away.

LOIC: Yeah, it was very different.

ALEC: We didn't market at all. It was word of mouth. We opened really quietly. Someone said it when we first opened, I've got friends I'll bring here and I've got friends I won't. And that's kind of it — people tell who they want to tell and they tell them what we are.

LOIC: Also early days went very fast because we opened December 19th, so then three months later we were closed for Covid.

BOOTHBY: What was that like?

LOIC: It was scary.

BOOTHBY: Because you put your savings into this place.

LOIC: We didn't have anyone else with us, just us.

ALEX: We got two flatmates in to cover the rent, and then we started doing bottled cocktails.

LOIC: There was a licensing change in Queensland, because take away is not allowed on the small bar license, and we were the first small bar licence in Toowoomba.

ALEX: So when COVID happened, were the only ones that were allowed to do takeaway without food, other than obviously pubs and bottle shops. And so we were the only ones doing cocktails. So we came in every day and sold out and that kept us going until we could reopen.

LOIC: Yeah, I don't like saying it because it's not true, but Covid in a certain way has helped us getting our name out there because everyone was coming here to get bottle cocktails. And so when we reopened, we were [allowed only] eight people capacity. And it was mad. We were eight people capacity in here, and there's 20 people lined up at the door to wait for a seat. It doesn't make any sense.

ALEX: It never really calmed down again.

BOOTHBY: How long was it that you had this place up and running before you're like, yeah, we’ve found our stride, we’ve got our regulars, we know what we're doing?

ALEX: We still don't know what we're doing. Every day's a new day.

BOOTHBY: That can’t be true.

LOIC: I think you lose the fun of it if you know what you're doing. I think everyone who opens a business, when you try to do something, you're like, I don't know what's going to happen.

You never know everything. I think that's the learning curve of the industry. And that's also the beauty of the industry is that it's something new every day. Every day is a different day. You don't know who you're to get in, what kind of people you're going to get in.

ALEX: And the kind of people you get in will change the whole night.

BOOTHBY: Well it’s a small place, right?

ALEX: It's quite intimate.

BOOTHBY: How many do you seat?

ALEX: 30, if the bar's full and outside's full. No. Outside is under an umbrella. So it's sort of weather dependent. We had someone sit out there with a giant umbrella the other day though and they just kind of sat under it, I was putting their drinks under the umbrella.

LOIC: But yeah, it's not a big place.

BOOTHBY: And so it's just you two at the moment. How does that go? Because you are partners in business and in life.

LOIC: We don't take any fight home.

ALEX: Work’s work.

LOIC: If we ever go at each other, it's here before we leave. When the door is closed, there's no work chat.

ALEX: We also worked together before we were a couple, so I think we had the good working relationship first, so we know how to compartmentalise as well.

BOOTHBY: So how do you divide duties here — how does it work?

LOIC: [Alex is] floor, [I’m] bar. I don't step on the floor and she doesn't step behind the bar.

BOOTHBY: What happens if you step on the floor?

LOIC: I get in trouble.

ALEX: You don't, you just normally drop something. You just drop a tray.

LOIC: Yeah, I'm not a good waiter.

BOOTHBY: You’re a stereotypical bartender who is just hopeless on the floor.

LOIC: I used to be good.

ALEX: You haven't done it in a while.

LOIC: No, I did everything. I was a chef originally. I'm also a dickhead because I was a chef before. I think every bar owner that deals with chefs will tell you that. I'm a bit of both.

ALEX: But I think as well we had to play to our strengths when we opened. I was a bartender in London but Loic was just better on the bar. He's better with flavours. He could make things up faster. The bad reviews will speak differently, but I'm more diplomatic on the floor.

LOIC: You're the only one on the floor so that's why the bad reviews talk about you.

ALEX: But yeah, we had to play to our strengths. It had to be the set up that it was.

BOOTHBY: What else do you think attracts the locals here?

LOIC: I think it's going to be a very basic chat that everyone says to you. Yes, we focus on drinks, but it's not just drinks. The service, the things that Alex always says you're not supposed to notice, like the lighting, the atmosphere—

ALEX: The aircon, the music.

LOIC: We try to think about everything all the time. Yeah, the drinks are cool, but like I said, at the end of the day on the weekend, I make Pornstar Martinis and Espresso Martinis most of the time. So, technically it's not only the drinks — people come for something else.

ALEX: This is kind of our house. We spend more hours here than home. All the bottles when we first opened were our bottles from home. These are posters from France that we collect. My best friend did that artwork. Like it's all the stuff from our house that we brought in.

LOIC: It's us, yeah.

ALEX: Because it feels like our home, I think other people feel that. They always say they feel comfortable here. I think that's the main thing, you want people to feel like they're at home. It’s welcoming.

BOOTHBY: It’s just you two here, do you shut down at all?

ALEX: We close for a month and go back to France for a month. We take a month off. My dad comes over with us. He stays with Loic’s dad. They don't speak the same language but they're the same people.

It's a good chance to kind of reset and work out what the plan is for next year and where we're heading.

LOIC: Travel is always good. Travel always opens your mind to new things. I think that's why we're terrible for the people in this town, because for the kids that are good workers, we're the first ones to tell them, go away — whether it's Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Asia, Europe, go travel because you've going to come back with so many new ideas, with so much more in your mind, and an open mind. It teaches you so much.

ALEX: It doesn’t matter where your hometown is, I always think you have to leave it. You get too comfortable. Get too used to it.

BOOTHBY: In terms of the French accent to the place is that something that you did conciously?

LOIC: It’s stuff from home, but it's knowledge as well. I think I know more about calvados and cognac than I know about scotch. I've studied a bit about scotch, but calvados is, it's the home thing. It's around the corner from where I live. It's been part of who I am since I'm a kid.

ALEX: His dad still makes his own.

LOIC: Yeah, he’s not a distiller. It's apple moonshine, basically. It's really anchored in culture.

ALEX: We were trying to think of a name [for the bar] and we were struggling so much, we gave up. We're gonna stop thinking about it. It was two in the morning. Like, we'll have a glass of wine, we'll chill out, relax. Then we were like, Santé! Oh my god, there it is! That's the name!

BOOTHBY: Tell us about the calvados you have. You’ve got your own special bottling from Christian Drouin?

ALEX: We went last year and picked a barrel. We tried six different barrels that we could pick from and we all agreed on this one, and then they let us try six more that we couldn't have but just for the fun of tasting them.

LOIC: It's five years old, four and a half years in Bordeaux red wine cask and finished for six months in Sauternes cask, a sweet dessert wine. And it's bottled at cask strength. It’s 54.2%. It's a bit mighty, but it doesn't taste like it.

BOOTHBY: What’s it about calvados that you love?

LOIC: I think it's the childhood memories, I've always seen people drinking it and you get familiar with it very early. I was drinking Calvados at the same time I was starting to vodka Red Bulls in clubs, you know?

ALEX: Definitely underage.

BOOTHBY: How do the punters in Toowoomba respond to calvados?

LOIC: Well, we're now the biggest seller of Calvados in Australia, so, you know... That's over 300 bottles last year.

ALEX: Again, people trust us, so they're willing to try it.

LOIC: There’s a few nips, but it's all in cocktails. It's mostly cocktails. Especially when wintertime hits, that's the way to go.

ALEX: And again, because he likes it, he uses it a lot. It's easy to go to, to come up with something.

BOOTHBY: You also do bit of travel yourself within the country, you're in a lot of competitions, go to bar weeks, go to Bartenders’ Weekender, how important is it to travel? Why do you guys do that? Because it's not easy to get in and out of Toowoomba.

LOIC: It's so important. Hospitality is a giant community, I'm not only talking Australia but worldwide, you know you'll bump to people you used to work with in London at Sydney Bar Week, know, we went to London last year and we bumped into some people we knew; some regulars from here were in London at the same time we were.

It's such a small world, but I think hospitality is that giant community. You always know someone in a country that works in a bar somewhere.

ALEX: And it’s how you find inspiration, go and meet new people and go to new bars and talk to people. It's such an inspiration to be out of your circle. You don't want to get too comfortable in what you do.

LOIC: You see what people do and you're like, do you think we could do that here? And you're like, yeah, I think we can. We’re at the point now where we're like, we can try. We do it for three months and if it doesn't work, well, nothing to lose. We lose a bit of money and that's about it.

ALEX: But I also think that you love the competitions, you thrive on the competitions.

LOIC: But that was also part of the plan to get the name out there, through the comps.

ALEX: But it's also a way for people to know we're here. Otherwise you can get a bit lost in Toowoomba.

BOOTHBY: Well it's a big country. What advice do you have for people who want to open their own place?

LOIC: Do it.

ALEX: You're never going to be ready. There's always going to be another thing you need to learn or some challenge that will stop you but anything good has its own challenges.

LOIC: Come sit at the bar here, you know, we'll chat about it as well. You need any advice, message us on Instagram, send us an email. We're always happy to help.

ALEX: There’s a lot of people in the community that would say that as well, who would help you if you need it.

LOIC: I think you just gotta do it. Like Alex said, you'll never be ready. And if you think you're ready, you're a fool because you're not gonna be ready. But you know, you talk to people like [Frog’s Hollow Saloon co-owner] Pete Hollands — he's massive handyman. And I would have loved to have him around because I'm probably the worst. I can't fix shit. And I hear him always sorting things out in his venue, like I wish I could be you some day. Instead, we have a handyman here that comes and we ring him and he’s like, seriously, you need me for that? Yeah, man, I need you for that.

ALEX: There's always going to be another way to do it, another thing to learn, but I do think you have to love it. For us, it's a lot of hours. We joked if we didn't sleep here, we were doing well and so far we haven't had to sleep here yet. It hasn't been a night where we have finished so late and had to be back so early. But you have to have the passion for it. It has to be a labour of love. If you're going to get rich, it's not doing this.

LOIC: But you can have fun and do what you want. I’d probably be on more money if I was a bar manager somewhere, than what we earn together here in this small place but here, every day I turn up and we do what we want, the way we want.

BOOTHBY: How important is that to you?

LOIC: It's priceless. We're good now with a stable position here and the bar runs very well. But when we opened, we cut our wage in half compared to what we were earning before. But it never felt like it. And it never felt like it because you’re just happy to rock up every day.

ALEX: You get something else out of it than money.

BOOTHBY: And you’re working too hard to go to restaurants or bars anyway.

ALEX: Exactly, saving our money. That’s a lie, there's a little wine bar across the road and we spent a lot of money there.

LOIC: I think passion is the most important thing. But for me it's priceless to be able to rock up and do what you want. Again, you sacrifice your soul sometimes, like I said, the Ponstar Martini, Espresso Martini weekend thing.

But we always say they pay all the bills, they pay the rents and they allow us to play with other shit during the week and do the menu that makes us have fun. It's a balance to find. It gets me angry sometimes, and Alex is like, it pays the bills. Yes, you're right.

ALEX: Shut up and make the drink.

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