“Stars” for the Bar Industry?
The gold standard for top restaurants and gourmets is the Michelin Guide. Its ranking system of one, two or even three stars has long been accepted all over the world, but there has never been a similar system in place for the bar industry to date. However, The Pinnacle Guide now intends to fill this gap. No easy task, as Hannah Sharman Cox and Siobhan Payne announced in their interim report at BCB 2022.
The famous Michelin Guide has a long tradition. It was first published at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Initially, the guide merely consisted of a list of garages and petrol stations provided by the French tyre manufacturer’s tourist department (cars were a rarity at the time and, as everyone knows, petrol pumps and workshops were few and far between). However, it soon developed to become a travel guide providing, amongst other things, culinary tips. After all, the well-heeled car-owners of the day – and you had to be well-heeled to own a car in those days - needed some attractive destinations. And while out on their excursions, drivers wore their tyres out and needed to buy new ones as a replacement. What better form of marketing? The criteria chosen at the time for one, two or three stars are still the same today, with one star standing for “worth a visit”, two stars for “worth a detour, and three stars, “worth a special journey”. Today, nearly 125 years later, the Michelin Guide is still the gold standard for gourmet cuisine.
Liquid stars?
There is, however, no comparable guide for the bar industry. OK, there are formats such as The World's 50 Best Bars, or national awards, but no global rating system. The Pinnacle Guide would now like to plug this gap. One of its key aims is to create a recognition system which is also clear and easy to understand for people who are not part of the drinks community. Hannah Sharman Cox and Siobhan Payne of London Cocktail Week have brought the project to life in collaboration with Dan Dove of Global Bartending. Sharman Cox and Payne presented an interim report to the professional audience at Bar Convent Berlin 2022.
Intensive Round Tables
For the past six months the Pinnacle Guide has been immersed in an in-depth digital consultancy phase. The structure of the system has been hammered out in round-table discussions and one-on-one sessions with nearly 40 professionals from the drinks and bar industries. What should be evaluated? How are things to be evaluated? Who will do the evaluating? Question upon question. You can view no less than 13 hours of online discussion on the website or read short summaries of the digital round tables if you prefer. The initiators state that the following points have already been agreed upon:
- Bars may nominate themselves. Anyone may participate but no-one is compelled to do so
- Bars will be visited several times before being rated
- You can apply to become a reviewer - you will then go through a training course and evaluate local bars anonymously
- Any bar can be nominated, they do not have to be located in one of the “bar-meccas”, they can even be located in the middle of nowhere
- The publicity generated by the guide should also benefit those bars that have no big PR budget. The goal is to create a level playing field
The whole package is evaluated
Here we see some differences to the Michelin Guide. It only evaluates the culinary performance, i.e., what is actually served on the plate and what it tastes like. The restaurant décor is irrelevant, as is the quality of service. (While we are on the topic, there are no Michelin chefs as such because it is always the restaurant that receives the stars). The Pinnacle Guide, on the other hand, will assess the whole package including, among other things, the range of drinks on offer, quality of service/hospitality, atmosphere, sustainability, diversity, as well as team well-being. Quite a difference. Even today, the working conditions in many Michelin star restaurants serve only one purpose: to preserve the number of stars awarded at all costs, even if that means exploiting trainees and wasting food resources.
However, it is precisely this multiplicity of aspects that makes the Pinnacle Guide so complex, as Sharman Cox and Payne revealed in their talk.
How well does a bar meet its own expectations?
First example: taste and range. You cannot simply tick off a list as to whether the products on offer taste good, or the concept and bar menu are appealing. Does a bar necessarily have to have all the classics in their range in order to be assessed? One of the results of the long round-table discussions with experts was that, no, it would not have to do so. Rather, it is about the extent to which a concept lives up to the bar’s own expectations. Does the range on offer fit with the kind of establishment the bar purports to be? If the bar is a specialised whisky bar, is it a good whisky bar? If so, then, according to Sharman Cox and Payne, it is also a good bar. A high-class sushi restaurant also receives stars even if it has little to offer in the way of meat.
How do you measure hospitality?
Second example: hospitality. How do you measure hospitality and quality of service? A hotel bar “works” in a totally different manner to a smoky dive or a laid-back beach bar. Fascinatingly, the Pinnacle Guide wants to get some psychologists on-board to help formulate criteria that need to be fulfilled to make guests feel welcome. The people behind the future bar assessment system are certainly not making life easy for themselves.
And sustainability?
Third and final example: how do you compare sustainability throughout the world? You have to take the local circumstances into account, e.g., the disposal and recycling systems available in a particular nation and also the financial resources of the respective bar. According to the initiators of the project, the real goal of the guide to provide fresh incentives here: whosoever wants to be on-board will have to be sustainable within the possibilities they have available to them.
The first Pinnacle Guide is due to appear Autumn 2023
Some other important questions still remain unanswered at this stage, however. What will the differences be between one, two or three pins? How do you prevent prejudice and manipulation when working with volunteers rather than paid testers like Michelin do? To be discussed. What happens next? The intention is to publish the criteria in April 2023, after which there will be a one-month follow-up phase for providing any feedback, which will then be incorporated into the guide. After that, bars and reviewers will be able to put in their applications. It is currently planned to launch the first Pinnacle Guide in Autumn 2023. It is not intended to publish the guide annually, but rather keep it going as a rolling process. There will be news made available every time a new bar receives one, two or three pins.
The project will probably only be launched in six countries initially. Nevertheless, Sharman Cox and Payne say it should soon be extended to include 50. The Michelin Guide also started small, with the initial recommendations for gourmets only covering the guide’s home country, France.
More information is available from:
The Pinnacle Guide
