Bartenders on the move, the initiative to decentralize the Peruvian cocktail bar

It can be by bus, plane or car, the idea is to move, not to be alone in Lima, but to travel around the country sharing the most up-to-date knowledge about cocktails. This is the work of Bartenders on the Move (BEM), a group of young bartenders between 28 and 35 years old who has been traveling around Peru for four years giving free talks to his colleagues from the province who do not always have access to the information concentrated in Lima or have to travel to the capital to find it.

They are Karen Alvarez (Brand Ambassador of Flor de Cana), Andrea Solomon (Brand Ambassador Pisco Gran Cruz and Amaretto Disaronno), Andy Valderrama (Brand Ambassador for Jagermeister), louis castro (Brand Ambassador Jack Daniels) and Jose Luis Valencia (Brand Ambassador for William Grants & Sons), five bartenders who have already toured Arequipa, Trujillo, Chiclayo, Piura, Tacna, Cusco, Huancayo, Tarapoto and Ica with great success and a pleasant reception.

The BEM project was created by the Trujillo Karen Alvarez, one of the most recognized Peruvian bartenders today. How was this initiative born? She tells us that during her training as a bartender she had many limitations due to the centrality of education, she had to travel to Lima to train and thus be up to date. “The differences with Lima are pronounced by the resources that are in each city. In Lima you find more supplies and that is why the provincial bartender has to be more creative and know other techniques. It was very difficult, that’s why I proposed a project that brings knowledge for free to bartenders in the province, as well as contests with exclusive prizes, so that everything is no longer concentrated in Lima”, and that is how this idea began to take shape. is financed by Premium Drinks through its brands.

the journey of knowledge

The first stop was Ica, in 2019, with brand training and prizes such as an all-expense paid trip for Master Class, the world convention of bartenders that takes place in Lima. In 2020, the year of the pandemic, they managed to visit three northern cities and continued virtually, but no longer with brand training, but with thematic talks related to the bar and drinks such as the past, present and future of the bartender.

In 2021 they visited four cities and the talks were generated around the theme The DNA of the bar, with increasingly specialized and rich content: “The DNA of the bar is all the elements that, worked with time, dedication and study, offer the assembly that every bartender you must have within you. These talks consist of developing the most important topics for the formation of a bar such as service, what it is to be a bartender, how to execute the operation itself, the importance of ‘storytelling’ and knowing that you are your own brand”, Karen details. Álvarez on the most recent talks given in Huancayo.

“This year we are talking about the skeleton of the bartender, not only bar tools but, for example, educational development, what to do after being a bartender, how to get out of the general market forecast, bar development and planning, etiquette, a series of quite strong elements. Last year we touched on the detail of distillates and gastronomy”, Luis Castro tells us about his experience. “Each brand ambassador is professional in different subjects. For example, José Luis Valencia has been a hotelier all his life and owns a bar in Miraflores. For my part, I am a cook and have a degree in education”. In this sense, the five members offer ideas based on their training and professional experience, according to the trends of the country and other continents.

Generate movement in each city

Regarding his experience at BEM, Luis Castro, of Venezuelan origin, maintains that each city they visited has its own form and line of work. “I realized that the jungle has very few bars, more places for parties or meetings, but the bars there have a detail that is the supplies. The jungle has countless ingredients, flavors and colors that if we could bring them to Lima it would be crazy. As a cook I tend to use gastronomy techniques for cocktails. One of the things that I loved doing there was a ‘fat-wash’, it consists of using the essence of the fats and introducing them into the distillate. Imagine having a whiskey with a note of bacon, I made this with cecina and it drove me crazy. Those kinds of things are experiences that I love to live in each of the trips”, Luis maintains with great enthusiasm.

Like Karen Álvarez, visiting Huancayo was an extraordinary and surprising experience for them due to the quality of the bars and a growing cocktail bar, in addition to the good reception. Their arrival in each city is awaited with enthusiasm and a desire to share as a community because, in addition to the talks with BEM, the members stay a few more days to carry out activities with each of their brands, such as a masterclass with Flor de Caña, a dinner pairing with Jack Daniels or a special activity with Gran Cruz:

“They eagerly await us because a movement is beginning to be generated. That is what it is about, being that impulse that generates others to wake up in their community. It happens that the communities of provincial and service bartenders are very isolated from each other, there are no activities, they don’t know each other. What we want to generate is greater communication between all. After all, if the internal mixology is trained and improves, all the mixology in Peru improves in general, not everything is Lima”, says Karen Álvarez.

Due to the pandemic, the Master Class convention is on hiatus, so the prize is currently a Lima bar crawl, a private tasting for each one with premium ranges from their portfolio and cash, and they take it attendees who generate the most movement in their region with their cocktail creations, such as introducing a new cocktail to a bar’s menu. For now, BEM is already preparing its new route through a new territory of the country that it will announce at any time on its social networks. Ready for the new adventure?

More data:

• Get to know the Bartenders in motion account and follow them to find out much more about the world of cocktails:

• BEM also has a podcast and was nominated for the Luces Awards 2021. Listen to their interviews and comments here: