Ivy Mix wants you to back the Rack

There are many cocktail competitions in the bar world, but there isn’t one quite like Speed Rack. Speed Rack is the US-based high-speed bartending competition designed to highlight women and femme-identifying people in the bar industry, all the while raising money for charities supporting breast cancer research — and putting on one big party.

And in 2025, Speed Rack is returning to Australian shores with the assistance of William Grant & Sons.

Speed Rack was founded by influential bartenders Ivy Mix and Lynette Marrero, and to date they’ve raised close to two million US dollars. That’s no small achievement. 

On this week’s episode of Drinks At Work — and in the brief Q&A below — we’re talking to Ivy Mix, Speed Rack co-founder, about what Speed Rack is all about and what we can expect this year. Ivy has had an illustrious career to date: first as a bartender in some of New York’s best bars, before becoming co-owner of Leyenda in Brooklyn, as well as wine bar Whoopsie Daisy; she is also the author of Spirits of Latin America, a booze and travelogue book well worth a read. Below, lightly edited and condensed for clarity, Ivy talks about their plans for Speed Rack this year, why you should get involved, and plenty more.

Boothby: Speed Rack was last in Australia in 2019, and now you’re coming back. What’s the elevator pitch for Speed Rack — what’s it all about?

Ivy Mix: We started Speed Rack in 2011, Lynette and I. When we first started Speed Rack, we looked around and we didn’t see many people that looked like us in the bars that we wanted to go to, in the bars we wanted to work in. So we started Speed Rack to literally create a platform for women to stand on so we could have a competition, so bars couldn’t be like, ‘Oh, we don’t know any women.’

We’re like, here’s a whole stage full of all these women. You should hire them. 

We designed the competition to be particularly focused on being really excellent at your bartending job. So we started that in 2011. Since then, the global landscape of feminism has changed quite a bit. A bunch of stuff, especially in the States that’s happened — Trump getting elected the first time reinvigorated a feminist movement here and I think the globe over. And since that moment what we’ve thought of Speed Rack being, has always been to fight for diversity in bars, [and that] has even expanded. The idea of what is feminine or female has expanded for us, what is diversity in general. I guess it’s nice to fight for just binary women, but [you can do] so much more. 

We’ve been doing that for the last 14 years, which is insane. And we decided to pair it up with breast cancer research because that’s what kills more women than almost anything. 

I’m happy to say we’ve raised a lot of money to fight breast cancer. It’s still a horrible thing that affects many, many people, but we’re happy to be involved in the fight.

Can you tell us a bit about the setup for the comp too? Because the speed element is a huge part of it. It also creates a really exciting atmosphere in the room. I’ve been to a couple of them and I haven’t experienced that in a cocktail comp before. Everyone’s super excited. They really get on and they cheer on the competitors up on stage. Can you describe that atmosphere for people?

Yeah, we’ve done hundreds now. There’s a few different pillars. Number one, breast cancer charities are not necessarily fun. Cancer’s not fun, right? Cancer sucks. I’ve been to a lot of breast cancer charities now, and sometimes it’s like, ho hum, cancer, death, and it’s a bummer. Which obviously cancer is.

Speed Rack is a party. Speed Rack is fun. Speed Rack is like roller derby, femme rock band meets rally, bartender craziness. And people like the opportunity to have fun for a good cause. And who doesn’t like rooting for the underdog? Speed Rack roots for the underdog, it’s literally a whole room full of underdogs. So people are like, heck yeah, I’m gonna go there and cheer on that lady I know who’s never gotten a fair shake ever because she doesn’t fit the vibe of whatever thing that she’s doing and I’m gonna go and cheer for that person because they’re the underdog.

At our events, it’s 70 percent trade, 30 percent consumer, depending on the market. But bar people like to bust ass and bar people are like, I’m gonna show up and volunteer and do my thing to support a good cause. And that kind of camaraderie makes the event so great to be at.

Yeah. Is there a city, whether it’s in the States, the UK or around the world, who’s got the wildest support going on?

Man, there’s a few different ones. Because we’re so established in the US, we tend to have very ruckus events. There’s a reason why we always launch our season in Chicago in January: Chicagoans don’t care about dry January. They don’t care about the fact that it’s minus 60 degrees. They’re just here to have a good time and they bring it so hard.

If we had our event on January 13th in New York, no one would show up. In Chicago, we sold 450 tickets. It was awesome. They always bring it. 

You know, Australia actually brings it. I’m excited to come back, especially with how much the cocktail scene has grown there since we’ve been there.

How many of these shows do you do a year? Because there’s quite a lot of work involved.

There’s a bunch of work. It’s not just showing up and doing an event, we get sponsors, we get venues, we get DJs, we get judges, we get volunteers, we get competitors. For Lynette and I, it’s a full-time job. And Lynette and I both do this and then many other things. 

You have your own bars to run, too.

Exactly. We’re becoming more fine tuned. But when we go somewhere internationally, it takes someone like William Grant & Sons to be like, we want to bring it here. Or if someone can help us with boots on the ground, especially as Australia has such a wild time difference. It’s almost impossible for us to do things there. So we need someone to help us put it on. 

I’ve always loved the merch that comes out of Speed Rack. You see the photos from the events and then you go to a bar convention around the world, you see the shirts everywhere. Was that merch thing always part of the plan?

Well, Lynette’s husband is a very good graphic designer. And when we first thought of Speed Rack, I came in with the name, because I thought it up with a friend in San Francisco on a boat in 2010. And I came to Lynette with a name. And then we talked to Ty, her husband. He’s like, what’s the vibe? And we said, ‘Hot wheels, flames, but boobs.’

And then he made those boob-like flames and we’re like, this is so good! And then we did tour tees, we stopped doing them after Covid, we’re going to do another one this year, but we do puns on boobs. Who doesn’t like a boob? Two boobs is even better, you know?

Everyone likes to support them.

Right? I mean, be a bra. 

Be a bra!

I want to support them. There’s endless puns. People love it.

Have you managed to travel much since the pandemic?

I’ve been traveling some, you know, we did Speed Rack in Mexico and the States. But we are just now starting to really travel again and I’m excited. The industry has changed so much. I think the skill set from Speed Rack is needed more than ever because everyone, all the young bartenders — and I say young as in young in bartending, not young in age — all the young bartenders I know just pour batch out of bottles. That is all they do.

There’s a lot of that going on now. And then those, those quick service, classic cocktail kind of skills are maybe not as called for. Therefore you lose that ability.

Yeah, when I was coming up bartending, if you didn’t know how to do classics off the top of your head, you couldn’t just look at your phone. I’m old, we didn’t have it. You can’t look up how to make a 20th Century, I’d have to know what it is.

Your phone was for playing Snake on, not Googling the answers to every question.

So I think that it’s really important right now more than ever to do Speed Rack, and have people know the drinks that they’re making, and understand that the fancy clarified rotovapped whatever the hell thing that you’re making at your bar probably had its origins in  classic cocktails somewhere — and you should probably know what it is.

Where do think we’re at with women in the industry globally? There’s been lots of progress made in terms of women in hospitality careers, with more women running venues in high profile roles. But then on the other hand, last year we had some quite high profile allegations of sexual misconduct among some venues. And it seems sometimes that nothing has changed. I’m sure that there’s a great deal of frustration out there at that, because no one really should be going to work in a bar environment that isn’t safe. What’s your view?

The question is twofold, it’s unfortunate that just because women are gaining power and clout does not make sexual harassment go away. Usually, probably the opposite, actually. Look at The World’s 50 Best. How many women-owned bars are in there?

I couldn’t tell you.

Like, none? Two, three? Not many. So the people in charge are still men. And not to say that all men are pigs, they’re not. And Speed Rack wouldn’t exist without men supporting it. But I think that women and diversity in general is definitely happening across our industry. You look around and you see more queer people in positions of power. You see more women in positions of power. You see more ethnicities in people in positions of power. And all this is really good because that’s how change happens.

It seems like change happens slowly.

So slow. We’ve been doing Speed Rack for 14 years. And to me, the thing that I really would like to see — you know, it’s not like every woman on Earth is a magical soul. There are some monster women out there too. You know what I’m saying? But if more women ran countries, if more women were at the top of different industries, I think there would be significantly less problems, less violence in general.

Well, when you keep doing things the same way you’ve always done them and you get the same results, then perhaps it’s time to change some things, right?

Precisely, I think we’re like 2,025 years in. I think it might be time to give it a go. 

Give the girls a run, yeah.

Yeah, truly. I followed everything that happened over there in Australia and, you know, horrific. What’s really shitty is that I don’t think anyone’s surprised. Like you hear about these things and you’re like, yeah, I could see that. And we just need to get to the point where people are like, my God, *can you even believe something as horrible as that could happen?* We’re a long ways away from that. And I don’t know the answer on how to get there, but I think that in my mind, having women and diversity in positions of power is a good thing, but we need to start seeing more women in positions of ownership. 

I’m still under the impression that women in power and diversity in power sometimes can be a little bit tokenised. I think that with some intention we can get going in the right direction.

I don’t know that Speed Rack is itself is going to solve the problem, but I think it certainly can’t be a bad thing. And when you’re in that room as well,  I’ve experienced it, you’re not getting told what to be thinking, but you’re just part of something that’s really enjoyable to be around. I think that’s a good thing.

Yeah, women are fun. We’re great, we’re a good time. Party with a bunch of chicks, it’s great.

And then they’ll bartend faster than the boys.

Yeah, well, you said it, not me.