Guest chefs and bartenders do more than introduce customers to a new food or drink menu. Their pop-up-style visits can also excite staff and become a major job perk as employees get to work with someone new—maybe even a chef or mixologist they’ve admired and long wanted to meet.
“When I was a line cook, I moved around a lot on jobs…and you kind of get to the apex of what you’ve got [with a particular chef],” says Dan Jacobs, co-owner with Dan Van Rite of DanDan and EsterEv in Milwaukee.
Many of EsterEv’s visiting chefs are familiar names to his staff, who follow them on television or own their cookbooks. “We try to find creative ways to keep our team engaged. The guest-chef series helps with that,” Jacobs says.
The same is true with Adrift’s guest-bartender series at the Tiki-focused bar in Denver. The guest bartender works at the bar for one night, and their signature drinks are featured all month long. “My team gets to learn how [our guest mixologist] approaches their cocktails. They’re doing a full-on immersion of working a whole shift with us,” says Owner Loren Martinez. “We bring in people who are doing exciting and creative things with their programs. We ask them to go crazy with garnish and visuals. We’re looking for bright colors.”
With most hospitality employees working similar hours, checking out other bars and restaurants in town can be difficult. This isn’t about being competitive. It’s about finding inspiration in another place’s energy. “We’re all curious about what everyone’s doing and how everyone’s evolving their programs and getting creative,” says Martinez.
Similarly, Elvie’s in Jackson, Mississippi, felt a need to cultivate community post-COVID. “Our industry was craving collaboration and connection,” says Owner-Chef Hunter Evans. So far, the restaurant has welcomed chefs from around the South that include Chris Hastings (Hot & Hot Fish Club, Birmingham, Alabama); Charly Pierre (Fritai in New Orleans); and Vishwesh Bhatt (Snackbar, Oxford, Mississippi). Bartenders at Elvie’s work with the visiting chef to create cocktails that pair with their food’s flavors.
“It’s fun for our team to play around with some new ingredients that they would not normally work with,” says Evans.
“We’ve all worked with programs where you have to stay within certain guardrails,” says Martinez, adding that bartenders’ favorite drinks often don’t wind up on the regular menu because ingredients are too difficult to source or the drink takes too long to make.
Having this short-term opportunity to shine is fun for the chefs and bartenders as a detour from the daily grind.
Jacobs uses his guest-chef series—which launched in 2017 and took a few years off, only to be revived again—to show off Milwaukee’s dining scene to the visiting chef. He picks them up at the airport and arranges accommodations at a local hotel via a special rate, or his business partner’s apartment across the street (when not in use). “We don’t just eat at DanDan or EsterEv. We take them to our friends’ restaurants and our friends’ bars,” says Jacobs. “Every time we bring someone here they’re like, ‘Oh, Milwaukee is so cool.’”
“We’ve had people that we know really well, and there’s people we’ve never met before,” Jacobs says, adding that sometimes in their travels (and eating out) they’ll find a chef to invite. One guest chef, Bryan Lee Weaver in Nashville, invited Jacobs and Van Rite to cook at his restaurant, Red-Headed Stranger in Nashville.
Launching a guest series easily taps into a new customer base. For the one night each month Adrift’s hosting a guest bartender, “they’re bringing in a whole new set of eyes, people who have never been here before,” says Martinez. “They bring in their friends and family. That’s the best marketing piece of it all.”
For now, Martinez has only invited bartenders who are already nearby, easy to do in a large city like Denver. But one day he would like to host out-of-state bartenders.
Getting the word out to customers works best via social media, word of mouth, and in-store marketing, say these bars and restaurants. During the month of a guest bartender’s residency at Adrift, table tents feature the bartender’s photo, bio, and their signature cocktail.
Asking staff for recommendations has also yielded ideas on who to invite, says Martinez. Chefs that Evans has connected with on social media or met at food festivals will often say yes. Reaching out to only chefs within the region is intentional. “It’s easier for me to maintain a relationship with someone from Louisiana or Alabama than Seattle,” he says. “We see each other at regional food festivals and connect there. There is definitely some commonality in ingredients, too.”
In addition to putting a restaurant back on customers’ radars, guest-chef series also generate income, which is what Jacobs discovered. “There will be people, when we announce it, they’ll book into the whole thing. Even with putting a chef up and paying for their food and travel, we still make money,” he says.
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