Tiff: While today it might not be so uncommon to see women behind the stick, it hasn't always been easy for women to make an impact behind the bar.

As a way to try and level up that perception two female New York bartenders, Ivy Mix and Lynette Marrero held the first-ever Speed Rack competition. And it didn't take long for their energy and passion to spread not only to other US cities, but also through the bartending community across the globe.

A decade later, the competition is about to hold its long-awaited, ninth season final in New York as part of Tales Of The Cocktail. We speak to Lynette and Lauren Paylor, Speed Rack's digital maven about equality, women in hospitality and what changes they have seen in the industry over the past decade.

Thank you both for joining us.

Lynnette: Thank you for having us.

Lauren: Thanks for having us

Tiff: Now, this is Speed Rack's ninth season, what made you start it in the first place?

Lynnette: Yes, so it's our ninth season in the US that we're finishing. However speed rack did start 10 years ago, and obviously, due to the pandemic, we are a bit behind.

10 years ago in 2011, the landscape was quite different for women in hospitality. We had the Renaissance of cocktails really starting in the late nineties. You had people like Dick Bradsell in the UK and Dale DeGroff and Sasha Petraske here in the US, pushing boundaries. People who are purists bringing fresh juices and really fighting against the package kind of margarita goods that were of the day.

And in 2004, when I started hospitality, working for Julie Reiner at the Flat Iron Lounge, there was a bit of equity between anyone who was willing to give up working in nightclubs and bars, making a ton of money slinging one-on-one vodka sodas, or, any sort of teeny you can make that back then Flirtinis, Apple Martini's

If we were on this purist journey, you were going to make less money, you were going to work harder, you're going to work with big ice cubes and all these other things. And that meant that we were all buying into a career, into a lifestyle, into a methodology.

As you saw craft bartending get more popular and really becoming the norm through 2008, 2009. And I always say it's when the invention of Twitter came about and memes were invented and the meme of the classic cocktail bartender was not Ada 'Coley' Coleman from like the Savoy, but it was more Jerry Thomas. So as moustachioed and arm garters and David Embry and all these people that excluded women from the picture.

You started to see a little less equity, maybe behind the bar. If women were working in bars, they were you know, working really hard cranking out cocktails and these bars, maybe not getting all of the spotlights. Or they were being relegated to being cocktail servers.

I met Ivy in 2010, like late 2009 ish, actually, and I had started doing events with LUCEP, Ladies United For The Preservation Of Endangered Cocktails. I was actually inspired by meeting the Boston chapter Presidents Kirsten Amann and Misty Kalkofen at Tales Of The Cocktail and they had written a book and what they were doing was they were executing really excellent high-end cocktail events and raising money for locally based women's charities.

And so I thought that model would be a great way for the women to band together and set up some disruptive events, taking over bars in New York that people were willing to give to us. We did take over Death & Company, we did takeovers of Macau Trading Co. And we would all band together and work for women's based charities doing cocktail events.

And that kind of inspired where we were going to go with Speed Rack. Ivy And I, when we met, she had bartending experience, but she was working in Guatemala and all these places. And when she moved to New York, she kinda moved right at that time where everyone was getting behind the bar and craft cocktail bartending, and she had a hard time getting behind the bar and so the idea was that Speed Rack would be a platform in a way for women to showcase just how incredibly fierce they were, that they could go, cocktail ticket to cocktail ticket against any of their male counterparts. And obviously, we chose breast cancers, our big charity following the model. But it was just finding ways for us to unite together, work together to change the system, but also give a platform for the women to say, look here I am, hire me

Tiff: Why run a female cocktail competition as a speed competition?

Lynnette: I think it came from, a lot of it came from the nature of who Ivy and I were, working in cocktail bars in New York are fast-paced environments and people wanted beautiful craft cocktails, but they didn't want to wait long for them. And so it just became that sort of idea that if you had great orders of operations, that's what people wanted to see. That's what people were hiring. And so if we could showcase that in rounds of four classic cocktail. These women making incredible ticket times, that'd be incredibly attractive to people looking to hire women in their bars and manage their bars. And to give them an opportunity to showcase that on a business scale at the end of the day and there were competitions things like Rematch around and stuff where it seemed like it was talking about speed was a big thing and we would look at it and say that's just what we were trained to do, because that's our economics and dynamics of how it works in bars here, the more drinks you serve, the better your tips are and keep going. And so that kind of is I think a part of the nature of what our industry was, especially in places like New York.

But also, I think what we saw was that on the day to day, like it was okay to have competitions where you're making your best expression of a sidecar, here's this creative cocktail, but those weren't really the dynamics of whatever day-to-day was working and for Speed Rack, we're really interested in showcasing just the everyday athleticism of bartending

Tiff: Obviously COVID has thrown the timing of the competition a little bit. How difficult has it been to maintain that momentum during this time?

Lynnette: I think for a few months it was incredibly difficult for anyone to maintain momentum. We literally, the last event of season nine was in 2020, in New Orleans on March 16th. And it was the pandemic was following us. Literally the week before, we did our north, our new England regional for the U S in Boston. And right after we left that city, they were closing down parts of that city because of a huge outbreak based on a health conference that had been in Cambridge.

Then we go to New Orleans and every day we were in New Orleans or leading up to it the requirements were changing. So from the Thursday of the event as we had competitors, some of them dropping out saying, Hey, I can't come out. My bosses are not allowing me travel or I can't come out I think I'm sick or any of those things that were going on. In addition, all of the requirements in New Orleans were changing rapidly. So we went from a big event that was going to have stands and stalls from all the brands to, okay. There's not going to be any brands, but we'll still be able to have people come watch the event, to, okay, we can't do that because we actually have a curfew at 5:00 PM and we know how to move the entire event to somebody's bar who's willing to give it to us. So we can execute the full event by 5:00 PM, in a whirlwind and that's what ended up happening. And there was a kind of bonding of all the women who were there and we all felt it was a moment.

And this was the last thing as a community we were going to do for a while. And we all just sat around at dinner after the competition and talked about what our plans were, things that we were hoping to do with the next, at that point we thought a month maybe, and that was very cathartic.

And, we came back to New York. We immediately shut down and were hit very hard with COVID in the early on and at first Ivy and I had to focus on our venues, the places that we work on day to day and what we were going to do for our bars and communities locally. I threw myself a lot into the Restaurant Workers Community Foundation of which I was a founding board member in which, the pandemic really gave us really our vocation of how to keep supporting restaurant workers, making changes for the future for them.

And then it was just a few months off, we don't know what's happening, we don't know when events are coming back. Things are not happening, our UK event was cancelled. We were supposed to do the UK, our fifth Speed Rack there in June of 2020. That got cancelled. In the meantime Lauren Paylor, LP, as we call her she and I had started a formal mentorship relationship in November 2019.

And, she, was part of the Speed Rack family and started reaching out and more of the women also did too. A lot of the women from that group when we were talking about what we're going to be doing. And so we started having conversations about building new projects ad what they were you going to do with the time that we had at the moment?

And that kind of gave us a little bit of a shift of saying, okay, we don't know when we're getting back to live events. But in the meantime, we have a really strong community of women globally, and we need to find ways to unite and be able to still connect because Speed Rack at its core is not about competition at all. It's about supporting each other and lifting each other up and give each other community. And so that's when Lauren joined the team and came on as our digital maven, as you call her, doing everything from helping us revamp and connect, our social media, to use it in better ways for our community, working with us on launching our mentorship program. Which we did this past year during women's history month in 2020. But we're developing it for several months prior to making that happen. And so we just thought of new ways to be there for our community. And then we were able to restart our season nine, which should have been completed in May of 2020, this July by doing our last regional finals in Washington DC for our Southeast regional, to give us our last two competitors to complete our set of 16, who will join us on Monday, September 20th in New York for a live event that will be recorded, but then aired on Tales Of The Cocktail globally on Thursday, September 23rd. So there'll be some people who are going to be live in the room and see an event on the 20th, but globally, we're going to share the relaunch and this kind of incredible feat with everybody through Tales Of The Cocktail on the 23rd.

Tiff: Now for anyone who hasn't seen the competition, what does it look like? How would you describe it?

Lynnette: I think the first jab, and then I'd love to get LPs opinion because it's always different, seeing it as an outsider, but for me, Speed Rack has always been the roller derby of cocktail competitions. It's about seeing fierce athleticism with this incredible feminist energy that is hard, yet soft and rock and roll. And you just see commitment and energy and it's like going to a show. So normally, the audience is watching, the competitors are us on the stage with the judges who are ordering four drink rounds. And you're mingling and in this festival environment. But then you're watching this competition happen and it's seven rounds, so it's instant elimination.

So we do a preliminary competition earlier in the day where we seed the competitors based on time, and then they go head-to-head, one verse eight to verse seven so on and so forth. And then they're instant elimination in the round. So they complete a round, a round of four drinks as fast as they can. The judges received those cocktails. They have to evaluate those cocktails and then add penalty points based on execution. So that way someone can just roll up on the bar, basically pour shots hand them to the judges and win because they would win on time. It's great, thanks. That's a shot of vodka. That was not actually the kamikaze I asked for. So you get 30 points for missing ingredients, et cetera, et cetera, 30 seconds added to your time. Actually, Lauren got a chance to judge in her hometown of DC and in July, and I think if you want to jump in and see what's, what is it like from your perspective? Cause you're the outside looking in.

Lauren: Yeah, for sure. I've always had a wonderful experience with Speed Rack and, I think it's like, It's one of those things where when you're jumping into it, you don't realize exactly what you're going to get out of it. And there's this comradery, there's community. And a lot of the people who compete end up being some of the individuals that you're leaning on and counting on when you're in need of advice or, there's an issue that has arose. And you're just trying to get someone else's perspective. And a lot of the people who have had interactions with me with Speed Rack have also crossed my path in other activities and other industry-related events, which is really nice, but the people who compete in Speed Rack have a lot of focus, they have a lot of drive. It takes a lot of work. You have to be dedicated and focused and practice in order to be successful and to really succeed. And I think with any of these experiences that we discuss, you only get out of it, what you put into it.

Tiff: Now, of course, the competition concentrates on classic cocktails. Are there any that trip even the most seasoned bartender up?

Lynnette: Yeah, I would definitely say what's been great about doing a competition like this for 10 years, is that we actually get to, re-introduce a lot of classics to the next generation.

Things fall in and out of fashion. And the Speed Rack book is a very deep book of classics. Remember The Maine always tends to be one of the more complicated drinks because there's that little hint of did I put a dash of absinthe in my glass or not? How are you picking up the bottles? And it's an interesting thing to see, but I think that's actually been, what's been really fun is that bar owners and people ask us all the time. It's so great because all these bartenders are making all these drinks that are in your spec book that maybe they wouldn't have to make any more because you're used to making the signature drinks from your bar that you're working in and that's, I think a nice shift to see the change. Early on all we had was classics to look towards, there weren't modern classics. I was working for Julie and me and people like Audrey and Danielle and Gaz Regan who were creating the modern classics, and now, we're looking at individuals who are working in bars, who have beautiful signature cocktails. And now we're getting to offer them an education on where a lot of those drinks have come from. And that's a really, I think that's part of that passing along a bit of heritage, passing on a few key learnings that will hopefully help them be even stronger in their journey as they move forward.

Tiff: Has the event changed in ways you perhaps didn't expect.

Lynnette: I would say in some ways, yes. In some ways, no, we definitely, every year we learned. Neither Ivy nor I thought we would go into event production or creating cocktail competitions and this kind of stuff that wasn't where we thought our world would end, and we learned so much about how to refine, the competition, how to be more accurate. We've gone into technology which actually helped us launch our first fully for us fully remote cocktail competition in Speed Rack, when we launched at the St Petersburg Cocktail Week, this year because we run a lot of our timing in a back of house digital way, we were able to monitor and help them with the competition and make sure that things were flowing in the way that they should. Because we could see behind the scenes and that developed, from, writing down by by hand the scores and tabulating them, to now having algorithms and having an app that awesome volunteers have built for us, feed into that one channel, where we can do that. And that was a really wonderful way to give up some control this year and be able to work with that team in St. Petersburg who really wanted to bring the competition there.

.One of the women who was part of bringing it, she's part of our mentorship program and we had to have faith that it was time, and they really expressed their need for a Speed Rack competition, to help the women bartenders. So every bit of the mission and that was pretty great to see how we could use technology in a way to expand and have a greater impact

Tiff: A decade ago, did you ever imagine that the competition would end up somewhere like St Petersburg.

Lynnette: Oh, no. I think every market, even in the U S that we did, we were so excited because we were visiting secondary and tertiary markets, and you would see how incredibly passionate and talented everyone was and to see this growth now globally. We went to Australia finally, a few years ago, we knew like Australia, we're like, we're going to really get along with them and this can be a great event, but it just took that much time for us to get there.

We launched our first Spanish language competition in Mexico in 2019. And that just opened up a whole world and we really are trying to work a lot with that team to expand the Spanish language assets of Speed Rack launching mentorship in Latin America this month.

And also, hopefully, we'll get to rebook our second Spanish language event in Mexico and hopefully get to Argentina which was supposed to be in 2020. But it's incredible to see and the fact that we never thought we would be doing this 10 years later. We always say it's the community that dictates one will stop, and right now speed rack is still serving a purpose. It's still something that the competitors in our community want. And so we keep bringing it back for them

Tiff: How has the industry changed for women over the last decade?

Lynnette: I think, I hope what we see in all industries is that the whole industry is evolving for anyone who ever felt like they didn't have a place. And our industry is much more cognizant and aware of the fact that we have to be an intersectional community. We have to use our privileges that we have to always help someone else who maybe doesn't have the same privilege. And I think that's expanded and brought in the craft cocktail community and there's still a lot of work to do within that. So I think for women, as every time we've gained something and access, it's about then looking to somebody else who we can then use that privilege to help them come along with us.

And I see that happening all the time. Now, and the past few years, I find that to be a really wonderful part of what this is. And that making a change in your community is important and it's important that, for every woman that I see, who's moved up to a bar manager position and its worked that has always brought someone else along with them. And I think that's how I really see the difference. It's not a competition. It is comradery and that's always been, I think what I see on how things have evolved more

Tiff: LP, as someone new or to Speed Rack. How have you seen the competition help change things over the last decade?

Lauren: Yeah, for sure. It's interesting because I think when I was first starting out, my entire focus was so much on understanding cocktails and having, a really well-versed understanding of the history of spirits that, sometimes under-appreciated or undervalued individuals who were female or female-identifying wasn't necessarily something I realize, of course, it was happening, of course, it was very obvious. What I did see, however, when I was first starting out, around the time speed rack was first starting, was that there was now a space for people who were women or who identified as fem to speak in, unity together about the issues that kind of exist in that space and then that sector.

And I think that was really the first time that people were like, Oh, wow. This is an issue we should be talking about this. We should be doing something about this. And it was really one of the first things in regards to being able to support that, female or femme-identifying community that we as a community, could stand in comradery with each other.

And fast forward 10 years, it's interesting because what we're seeing now is that people are a lot more comfortable with being vocal about issues that affect different groups of individuals. I was having a conversation earlier with Speed Rack family, Alex Jump. And it was interesting because she was like, you know what's it like being a person of colour in the food and beverage industry.

And I was like, man, I could list goes on and on, but I think right now, these topics are so complex and nuanced, what is it just being a person in the food and beverage industry? Like it's really it's, there are just so many things that affect every individual. It's such a wonderful thing to see that like organizations like Speed Rack have really created a space but also allowed for that conversation to be a thing.

And it's quite wonderful. When I was starting out again, that focus was on cocktails and now it's really leaning into other issues outside of bartending that matter to me and creating spaces for individuals to be able to continue those conversations, whether it be social justice, whether it be health and wellness, whether it be, whatever the topic may be. Just ensuring that we don't shy away from the hard and more vulnerable conversations that we acknowledge the mistakes that we're going to make along the way, and that we really lean into facilitating the change that we want to see.

Tiff: Now, could you talk a little bit about things like Speed Rack Academy and the Advisory Squad and explain how they work and what they're all about.

Lynnette: Yeah, LP you go ahead. Start with the academy. Cause I was like you really spearheaded and helped shape that

Lauren: For sure. So Speed Rack Academy came about when COVID really set in,. and what we were trying to do is figure out how we can continue to support the community, utilize our platform in a way that really showcases the individuals who are a part of that community.

Individuals, honestly, that are not, or were not that now are, in a way that was genuine and authentic to those individuals. So I always have to shut out Janae, but Janae was one of those individuals who really lean into her culture and her heritage and taught a class on cognac. That was very true to who she is as a person, which I loved I think one of the things that was really great about Speed Rack Academy is we invited these individuals to come in, choose essentially a base spirit that they were passionate about and curate a class that aligned with whatever theme that we were focusing on that month.

So we did a holiday series, we did some stuff for women's history month and it was just a really fun and innovative way to lean into what we were already doing and what we do with speed rack in a virtual setting. And it was the first time that I think we really placed ourselves in a position where we able to do that.

And Speed Rack Advisory Squad has been a project we've been working on for a very long time. And the focus was really leaning into these mentor-mentee relationships and redefining the way that individuals looked at them. I will use Lynette and my relationship as an example, I think there are many instances where we find ourselves with rolls being reversed if that makes sense. Where sometimes that's the mentee and I'm the mentor. I think that we have, we ever relationship of reciprocity and I think that's one of the most important things about having that mentorship relationship, being able to really lean on each other and I, I'm really lucky that I was able to very early on in my career be introduced to the Speed Rack family, Lynette, Ivy, all those individuals who are just amazing.

But for us, it was really leaning into what individuals were interested in focusing on, career-wise and then really just opening an alternative door or just allowing them to see what alternative options that they may have. By introducing them to a network of individuals.

And, with COVID it, I think it, in some ways, made things harder, but it also made things easier. I guess it's, that you have these individuals who are assessable with Instagram, Facebook, with the slack group, we created, with just being able to lean into the resources that we we're able to curate on a month to month basis.

This past month we, leaned into oh, Lynnettee what was it? A apologizing or conflict resolution and apologizing, which was amazing. But every month we like leaned into a theme. Again, these really pressing and difficult topics to discuss that arise in mentor and mentee relationships, but also in any relationships that you have within the workspace. Two programs that I think were a lot of fun to work on and that are ever-evolving for sure.

Tiff: How important do you think it is, especially for younger women who are coming into the industry, to have all of these mentorships and support around them.

Lauren: I think we need to and I said this earlier but like kind of redefine what those words mean. For me, I'm very lucky and fortunate cause I think I found myself in a position very early on in my career, where there were a lot of individuals who were very willing to help me and assist me. And with me being in a position where I was willing to dedicate time and like really invest in my education and learning and expanding my knowledge and just taking advantage of opportunities along the way, really found myself in a position where I established relationships with people.

Some, many actually, have been a very positive and good influence from the onset of my career. So I think my advice personally, as a young bartender would be find out what's important to you, stay genuine and authentic to who you are, and really lean into the individuals that align with what your missions and your values are, be open to change and expanding your horizons, and never steer away from who you are as a person.

Tiff: Now, this year with the final in New York, what should people expect from the event.

Lynnette: I think what you're going to see from this event is a little bit of what we saw in DC. There's a lot of energy. There's a lot of preparation. There's a lot of. Anticipation. There's a lot of nerves from the women who were, put on pause for this time. And you're going to see, I think, a determination, I think what these finals and, a lot of the women who competed in the DC regional said was that it gave them a real goal for the first time in a long time. I think when all of us are just trying to get back to normal and just trying to keep up with the changing restrictions of our different places, where we're at with hospitality and hospitality has to be the most adaptable, that this was the one constant that gave them something really just specific to keep striving for.

So I'm excited to see a lot of passion, a lot of heart on that stage and just a sense of accomplishment. And I really applaud all 16 when we wrote them and said, hi, we're doing this again. This, let us know if you're in, we completely understand if you've moved on. Nobody did. One person has transitioned a little bit out of the industry. She's now working more brand side and she was like, I'm in, and there's a bit of changing some of those rules because it wasn't their fault that they've moved on. So I'm really excited to see like how that will change the dynamics.

This is like her last big comp, so who knows how she's going to like really come out of the gate. But I think it's just a moment of release and celebration and we're really excited to share with the world, on the Tales Of The Cocktail platform and appreciate that they offered that for us to celebrate such a grand way

Tiff: With 10 years and nine seasons under your belt. What is your favourite memory of Speed Rack?

Lynnette: Oh, my favourite's complicated because there's been so many over the years. But I have an anecdote of one of the events and it was a regional in the US many years ago. I can't remember what season it was. Maybe 2014 or 2013. And, the event was done in this crazy kind of nightclub environment.

And the barbacks had gone into the back and found like the sparklers that they do for like bottle service for champagne. And it was the end of the event and the woman who won actually this has to have been 2012 maybe 12 and 2013. And the woman who won had been in the final. Almost one, like a couple of years and she won and everyone just went crazy and they found those sparklers and the sparklers are going off and the music is playing and there's champagne spraying.

And it was this just incredible moment of celebration that kind of will always be stuck in my head. And because it was a weird club, I had this catbird seat view. Cause I was up where you normally would have like dancers above the stage, and I pulled Ivy and I said, look at this is insane. This is our event and this is what it's become and look how happy everyone is. And that was just a pretty great moment.

Tiff: Talk to us about the fundraising efforts.

Lynnette: So speed rack has been, every year annually, Ivy and I really work hard to vet who the charities are. We work with organizations that are underfunded and that are tackling different areas of breast cancer whether it's research and education, whether it is giving treatments helping provide mammograms to underinsured communities. And we usually donate anywhere from around 125 to 150,000 US dollars a year to those charities.

It's obviously been a very hard year in 2020 or 2021. We had fundraising go through 2020. So we were still able to donate a decent amount last year from the events that we had. But this year we're obviously quite short in our goal. So we are working with different brands to work on opportunities to raise large funds for those charities. So that way we can continue the support and the work. A lot of the organizations that we've worked with, we've been donating to them for 10 years. We have special relationships with them. And we have actually helped them grow programs.

One of the charities specifically, we help them turn their breast cancer helpline that is run by survivors from something that was only 12 hours to 24 hours and expand into several languages. So that kind of impact that you can tangibly see is pretty amazing. Lauren and I are actually working with the Pink Agenda, which is one of our charities that we donate to. They do incredible work in research. They work with the national breast cancer foundation. And we're going to be helping them with their gala, which actually just went virtual, just because they're concerned about the Delta variant, but we were going to do a remote happy hour for their watch parties that will happen all over the country.

So everyone's being innovative and where we're trying to work as hard as we can to find different ways of fundraising, so we can still support those charities.

Tiff: Now, presumably it may be a while until a lot of the international competitions can come back. How important has maintaining relationships with international communities via online events been over the last two years?

Lynnette: It's been massive. I think the best example of that was the mentorship program where we opened up to anyone in our speed direct community. So we ended up with several global mentors and mentees, which helped bring that community and brought us to Russia, for example. Actually, it's funny, cause a lot of the women who participated in the mentee program, had never done a Speed Rack and they just were coming to the community and wrote their applications with a lot of heart. And we're like, okay, let's bring them in to the family. And one of the women from Berlin actually was paired with Tess Posthumus from the Netherlands, and she's actually now moved to Amsterdam is working for Tess. This is pretty incredible and they have this great relationship now of working together actually, and a mentorship that's actually going to more an apprenticeship in a way. We actually are launching another international event in October, which is just fully confirmed with the grant in the Grand Cayman. So it's going to be the first event in the Grand Cayman. An opening Grand Cayman cocktail week. So it's almost, I think to LPs point now, we're almost communicating more with people globally because of the pandemic and use lives in those channels and using our digital network.

And as we launched the Latin American mentorship program, the Squad, and LATAM that will also open more opportunities and hopefully it will be able to get back some of the international events sooner as different regulations change, but it's looking a little more optimistic for the next year.

Tiff: Now, if people want more information on Speed Rack, they can of course go to the website, which is speed-rack.com. Or if they want to look at the finals, how do they connect?

Lynnette: Yes, so they can register for Tales Of The Cocktail. And then you'll get all the information for the event airing on Thursday, September 23rd.

Also, I recommend following our Instagram and the work that Lauren's doing there @speed_ rack because we keep a lot of fresh information there. So if you find out about competitions we're doing different programs, that's a very up to the, up to the minute updates.

And yeah, we're excited to see everyone just a couple of weeks at speed rack and for the big viewing party globally on the 23rd.

Tiff: Cool. Look, thank you both for joining us.

Lauren: Thanks for having us

Lynnette: Excited to see everyone very soon on the digital platform.