Why Club Suntory (and the Suntory Cup) is making a comeback
“We want to bring some of that fun back.”
You can sign up to Club Suntory and RSVP to the Suntory ‘Fill Your Cup’ Launch events kicking off from the 8th April by visiting club.suntory.com and following @clubsuntoryoceania on Instagram for all the latest news and updates.
The bar world today is one of information abundance. If there’s a new cocktail technique invented in Copenhagen, it’s picked up in Cairns the next day thanks to social media. But it hasn’t always been that way. As someone old enough to remember the pre-social media before times, I remember scouring the early internet for recipes and techniques and often finding nothing. There wasn’t such a sense of a bartending community out there.
But there was Club Suntory. The program, which shared information about brands, recipes, and bartending more broadly, was one of the few avenues through which you might get better at your bartending job. In an information desert, Club Suntory was a tasty oasis of knowledge.
And now, Club Suntory is back.
It comes as a result of a broader restructure and branding refresh; Beam-Suntory has become Suntory Global Spirits, and they’ve parted ways with their previous distribution partner CCEP (Coca-Cola) to bring that capability in-house. And that, of course, means that The Blend — which won a number awards for its training program over the years — has been retired, and Club Suntory reawakened.
In this episode of Drinks At Work, presented by Club Suntory, I talk to the Club Suntory team about the reasons behind the recent changes, and what we can expect from them across this year.
And when I say I talk to the team, I mean I am talking to six people on this episode — I think we managed to keep everything on track.
At Maybe Sammy here in Sydney, I talked with John Galiatsatos (Group Advocacy Manager, Suntory Oceania), Valentine Maguire (Design Manager, Club Suntory),
Rhi Lucas (Maker’s Mark Diplomat, Australia & New Zealand), Alice Newport (James B. Beam Distilling Co. Ambassador, Australia & New Zealand), Ella Jones (Brand Activation Specialist, NSW/ACT), and Sophie Smallwood (Event Manager, Club Suntory).
In the chat, they get into a little of the history of Club Suntory and talk about its significance over the years, the program’s focus on inclusivity and talking to bartenders outside the big metro areas to address what John says is an insularity creeping into the bartending world.
We also get an idea of what to expect when they bring Suntory Cup back, too. The cocktail competition has a rich history and big emphasis on fun, something that can be forgotten every now and then in competition bartending space.
We’ve got a lightly edited and condensed transcript of the chat below, but do give the full chat a listen.
Okay, Club Suntory team, there are six of you here. Thanks for joining me on Drinks at Work.
JOHN: You’re welcome. Thanks for having us. And the other four are missing because they’re based out of state.
Right.
JOHN: They send their apologies.
They’re doing the real work right now.
JOHN: Yeah.
There have been a few big changes. The big thing we’re going to talk about today is that Club Suntory is back. John, can you give us a little bit of a rundown of some of the changes that have happened recently?
JOHN: It’s a really exciting time for us as a business with our own route to market coming to fruition behind Suntory. We’ve now had a bit of a one-Suntory mindset, where we’re bringing together both the alc and non-alc parts of our businesses to become Suntory Oceania.
So we’ll see lots of Boss coffee kicking around?
JOHN: Absolutely. It’s a really exciting time for us. [We have a] new location, we’ll be moving down to Darling Park, right where the action is. And that has allowed us as a company to bring our own sales force and really double down on servicing our great retail partners.
For us as an advocacy team, it means that we get to expand our already existing team and introduce people like Ella who specifically look after our portfolio in the state. It really is a keynote from Suntory to show how serious they are about partnering with this industry and having an ambassador in every single corner of Australia.
Tell us a little bit about your role, John. What does it entail?
JOHN: I’ve been in my role for now eight months. I’m ex-travel retail. I’ve been with Suntory Global Spirits for eight years. I used to head up our brand ambassadors globally for retail so if you can imagine lots of travel and lots of different cultures and brand ambassadors — I think I had 171 brand ambassadors at one stage all around the world.
I feel like I’ve seen a photo of you behind a bar though.
JOHN: You more than likely would have. The bars that I used to tend probably don’t exist anymore.
I think it’s probably worthwhile explaining for people how we got here with Suntory Global Spirits.
JOHN: We had an amazing partnership with CCEP for the last 10 years. As part of the wider global strategy for Suntory and really owning that end-to-end customer connection, it was really important that we established our own route to market. What that allows us to do is really bring our sales team in-house to manage our distribution and really focus on areas that we believe as Suntory Global Spirits are really important to us like the on-trade and the off-trade.
Tell us about Club Suntory — that’s coming back. Tell us about what Club Suntory was, and then we’ll get into what it is going to be today.
JOHN: Hopefully for a lot of people, when we talk about Club Suntory, it really evokes a very special memory for them. For a lot of the industry today, Club Suntory was that foundational program that people started off their bartending career with, or it was their first brand experience. And certainly for a lot of the industry greats today, it was their first bar competition. Club Suntory started actually in Melbourne in 1986. And at its very essence, was just the beginning of a community, these like-minded individuals.
We’re talking about 1986, where bartending was either a weekend job for a uni student or you’re a traveler trying to make a little bit of extra money. It wasn’t the craftsmanship and it certainly wasn’t the serious vocation that people look at as bartenders today. It was a small type community of like-minded people.
That’s when training and education became part of the whole ethos of what we do.
That kind of organised brand training thing didn’t really exist before.
It didn’t. Suntory has been a proud supporter of the hospitality industry for nearly 40 years, next year will be our 40 year anniversary of supporting the industry.
And we introduced a very special competition called Suntory Cup. So again, a lot of winners, a lot of finalists in that and that was the first time everyone really banded together as a community to support each other and celebrate each other.
So there’s a lot of people who had a really great time starting with Club Suntory.
Tell us about what’s the goal for Club Suntory now? Why did you change it from the blend to Club Suntory as well? Why was now the time to bring Club Suntory back?
JOHN: Obviously the big catalyst was us coming back to the industry as Suntory Global Spirits. One of the things that’s really core to us as a business is this kaizen mentality of continual improvement.
As we evolve and we reflect on how can we better service the industry, we looked at the opportunities of where we were as a Club Suntory advocacy program [compared] to where we were as The Blend. There is a significant opportunity for us to really embrace and involve inclusivity, really touching as many bartenders and bar backs and wait staff as we can.
We can clearly see the premiumisation of advocacy programs over the last couple of years, with some really great successful cocktail competitions and advocacy programs. But if we really hold the mirror up to ourselves, I think we’ve become quite insular as an industry. So our number one objective is, I keep on thinking to myself that there’s a bartender somewhere in a regional area, who really loves this industry and she loves making cocktails and she loves the hospitality element of it but are we talking to her or him these days?
That’s why Club Suntory has come back. We want to bring some of that fun back, some of that inclusivity back into more regional areas, and touching different parts of the hospitality industry that have been potentially neglected for the last couple of years.
Those regional areas and the bars in those towns have come up quite a long way in the last decade or so, right?
JOHN: They sure have. And Covid was like a massive instigator, right? Those bartenders who used to creep into the city built little nests outside in the suburban areas. So we’re starting to see this influx of really talented bars and bartenders and venues and community outside of the CBD.
The CBD will always be the hub of cocktail culture but we can’t neglect what’s happening a little bit further out.
I think too that, there’s suburbs around the CBDs and further out it’s probably more accessible for bartenders to start opening their own places.
JOHN: Just from an economics perspective, the rental there in the CBD is pretty high, especially in Sydney — forget New York, New York; if you can make it in Sydney you can make it anywhere.
I think it’s just a reality that we are starting to see that bartender creep out into more suburban and more regional areas. I think it’s a welcome thing.
Can we talk about the Suntory Cup? Are you bringing it back?
SOPHIE: Yeah, let’s give a bit of a reveal. We’re actually doing a challenge theme around reinvigorating the retro in line with bringing back Club Suntory. So we’re super excited about themes of nostalgia and cocktail classics. Obviously a huge thing at the moment. So we’re inviting everyone to bring their own spin and their own inner retro selves in a cocktail classic. It’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to bring out the fancy dress and the fun and flair of what Suntory Cup used to all be about.
We’re targeting all levels of bartenders as well and we’re also entering a People’s Choice Award which will not necessarily be about the cocktail creation but really focused on personality and charisma and community spirit.
That sounds fantastic. I would note that Club Suntory started in 86. I think there’s a direct line there right to the invention of the Japanese Slipper in 87 in Melbourne. Has anyone here been into the Baptist St Rec Club to try their take on the Japanese Slipper?
RHI: Absolutely. Many times.
JOHN: Truly, Midori is having its own moment and what we love about it the most is that it’s been organically generated, it’s not something that we’ve pushed out.
Bringing it back to the theme of reinvigorating the retro — a lot of retro is coming back. Everyone’s putting their individual spin on it. So we’re super excited about this competition. We think it’ll bring a new dimension to the way that we view classics as well and classic cocktails. The more conversations that I have with bar managers, the one thing that they’re asking of us is, My team need to get closer to the to the classics, how can you do it? So I think bringing an exciting platform like this with my talented team of ambassadors going out there, showcasing what the best of a bourbon cocktail will look like, what the best of vodka cocktails or gin, and the support that we are offering the community. I think we’ll see some pretty exciting entries.
The one thing that I will say to all of your listeners today is, like I said at the very beginning, we want to be the most inclusive advocacy program. So I would love to see some candidates come in from regional parts of Australia, whether you’re right in the middle in Alice Springs or right on the coast up towards Queensland and all the way down to the bottom of it down at Hobart. We would love to see as many applicants as possible to come through because it’s a great way for you to highlight where you’re from and what you’re doing.
What else can we expect from Club Suntory this year? Any other initiatives you want to talk about?
JOHN: In terms of inclusivity, we have three different tiers in everything that we do. We’re a Japanese company, so you will hear a couple of Japanese words for us. We have our Monozukuri Masters. Monozukuri means craftsmanship.
This is one of the tiers?
JOHN: One of the tiers, yes. So Monozukuri Masters is all about that person that’s really tenured and the role that they can play for our community whether it be in a mentor perspective or a higher level of engagement and training.
Something that I think we do really well is our next category which we refer to as Omoroi. Omoroi, it’s this hyper creative group of people which, sometimes when you refer to someone as Omoroi, there’s a touch of crazy in there.
Our Omoroi people, they’re the people who really push the boundaries of our industry, of our drinks, they’re the fat washers and you know the milk punchers of our industry, so we’re really excited to see what comes out of there.
And then we have Yatte Minahare. Yatte Minahare is a core value for us at Suntory. It’s a phrase that comes from Shinjiro Tori who was the founder of Suntory and it really means go for it. So Yatte Minahare is specifically targeted for newcomers and new frontiers — people who have been in the industry for less than two years, people who may have never even spoken to a brand ambassador or ever been part of a brand education class. This might be their very first time in a competition.
We can’t sort of evaluate everyone on the same block. We want to give everyone a fair crack at having a great time and being part of this competition. That’s something Club Suntory has been known for going back to the 80s.
Well, we’re coming to the end of the chat. As always on Drinks at Work there’s two questions that I ask each guest. Those questions are, what in your professional opinion do you think makes a great bar? And then probably more importantly, the second part to that question is what makes you happiest in the bar?
VAL: I’d say probably the atmosphere to me is massive, the way they serve, the way they interact with the guests. I want to have an experience when I go to a bar. So I think that’s one.
SOPHIE: For me, makes a good bar, I mean, it’s all about the bar space. It’s like sitting at the bar, nestled in, talking to the bartender, talking to someone next to you, talking to a stranger. I love that hustle and bustle. I love watching people make drinks. I love a bar snack. Give me a bar snack, I’m gonna have three drinks — don’t give me a snack, I’m gonna get hungry, I’m gonna leave.
And what makes you happiest in a bar?
SOPHIE: I mean, guess they’re one and the same, really.
RHI: Look, it’s all about that atmosphere. I want to be greeted at the door. I want to see a smiling face. I want to sit down and like Soph said, talk to the bartender, talk to who’s around me and just feel like I’m being really welcomed into that space. Johnny’s obviously spoken a lot about inclusivity and inclusive bar spaces where you feel welcome and you feel like you can go there on your own and have an incredible time with the bar team and whoever else is around. That makes me so happy, I get so excited by those types of experiences. An amazing drink is fantastic, and you know I want to see Maker’s on the back bar,but at the end of the day it’s just the way that the people who greet you in the bar make you feel.
ALICE: And for me, it’s definitely the people who work there. We’ve all had our favourite bars, and then somebody stops working there, and we just slowly stop going there. Or we follow bartenders around to different venues.
There’s that idea that you don’t go to bars, you go to bartenders.
ALICE: Yeah, 100%. And that for me is definitely, and that’s also what makes me happiest in a bar, like walking in and seeing my best mate behind a bar in a city I haven’t been to in months. That brings me so much joy.
ELLA: For me, professionally, I always like to be taken on a journey. So I think a bar or a venue or a space that’s doing something different, whether that’s the presentation of the cocktails, whether the menu is telling something new, something different, whether the drinks are pushing the boundaries of what’s being done before the trends, whether the space itself is a new concept. I really like the idea of pushing your own understanding of what cocktails and bar services are through that.
What makes me happiest in a bar, I think it has to be a conversation. Sometimes we forget that most ordinary people aren’t actually in the industry. They don’t have the expertise or the understanding of the industry that we do. So going into a bar and removing yourself from that and saying, I’m just a consumer today. Going, having a chat, asking the bartender, Hey, what’s new? I really like these flavours — what can you recommend? So I think from a personal perspective, I almost like to pretend I don’t do this job, I want to want to feel it authentically.
I think that’s a great way to sort of judge a bar too. What’s your take, John?
JOHN: In summary, we’re all touching on a very special word that we have at Suntory which is called Omotenashi. Omotenashi loosely translated means hospitality. Hospitality doesn’t start when someone pulls up a stool and faces you at the other end of the bar. It starts when they first enter your venue. So for me, Omotenashi is the type of music that you play, the fragrance in the air, how clean your bar is, has someone greeted you as you’ve come in, are the menus out, the listening and understanding what they want rather than trying to push what you want down to them. That welcoming spirit it is really important for me and it doesn’t end once the cocktail is made, it ends when your guest has actually left your premises. So Omotenashi is something that’s super important to me. That’s what I think makes a really good bar.
What makes you happiest in a bar?
JOHN: I guess it’s hearing the stories and learning a little bit about the bartender themselves, right? Who’s crafting the drink for me? Having the opportunity to actually talk to someone and connect, that’s what a bar is for, right? So whether you’re with your mates or with the bartender, you’ve rocked up to a bar and had a drink by yourself, but it’s about connection. That’s what’s the most important thing for me. Connecting with your mates, connecting with your friends, connecting with the bartender. Good conversations and storytelling.
Don’t forget: You can sign up to Club Suntory and now RSVP to the Suntory ‘Fill Your Cup” Launch events kicking off from 8th April by visiting club.suntory.com and following @clubsuntoryoceania on Instagram for all the latest news and updates.