Speed Rack is the US-based high-speed bartending competition designed to highlight women and femme-identifying people in the bar industry, and all while raising money for charities supporting breast cancer research. It’s a big, brash — and fast — bartending comp doing good things while having a great time.
The national final of Speed Rack takes place on Sunday 19 October at Oxford Art Factory in Sydney, and you’re invited to come along, cheer on the fastest bartenders in Australia, and help us raise money for a great cause. Tickets are on sale now — hit the button below.
Speed Rack was founded 14 years ago by New York bartenders Ivy Mix and Lynnette Marrero, adding editions in the UK, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Australia over the years.
Marrero is an accomplished bartender herself, and a leading figure in the cocktail renaissance that blossomed in New York from the first decade of the 2000s onwards. Marrero has run award-winning bar programs, worked as an ambassador on brands, co-hosted a Masterclass.com course with Ryan Chetiyawardana on bartending, and was awarded the Best Bar Mentor title at the Spirited Awards in 2019. Marrero is also a regular fixture of the Drinks International Bar World 100 list, landing at number 37 this year on the list of the world’s most influential bar personalities.
Lynnette is our guest on Drinks At Work this week — you can hear the chat below, or on your podcast platform of choice — and below, lightly edited and condensed for clarity, we speak to Marrero about the return of Speed Rack and what to expect, what makes it such a unique and exciting comp, and how she built an interesting and unconventional career in the bar business.
BOOTHBY: We’re looking forward to seeing you come out to Australia again because Speed Rack is back. The final will be taking place in October. It’s been a few years since it’s been out here.
LYNNETTE MARRERO: It has — our reigning champ, Millie Tang, is now living in Paris and that means there’s a whole new generation of bartenders in Australia who are ready to rack and roll.
Tell us what is it that makes Speed Rack special? How long you’ve been doing it for now?
We just celebrated our 14th year. It originated in the States 14 years ago, but because of the gap year we all had for the global pandemic, we just completed season 13 for the US nationals. So we are really excited to be able to get back to more of our global activations. We’ve spent the time developing Mexico and Puerto Rico but now it’s really exciting to get back to some of the first countries that we expanded to, which included Australia.
Did I see you were down at the Speed Rack finals at Tales?
Yes, that was our big national finals at Tales of the Cocktail. That included all of our national winners from the US, Puerto Rico, and then some wild cards. We’re in the wild card phase for Australia now.
What happens with the wildcard recruiting?
It’s another way of entry. So to apply to the wild card, they have to do a video and make these four cocktails. It’s like an audition tape versus competing in in the fast track events that we did in the different states. So this gives other people an opportunity to participate in Speed Rack if they were not able to make it to one of those live events and then they’ll be brought in to be a part of the national finals in Sydney.
Like you said, there’s a new generation now of bartenders who are maybe unfamiliar with the Speed Rack format. It’s quite a unique format. Can you walk us through it?
Absolutely. We focus on classic cocktails in the Speed Rack universe. The way we were taught, when the renaissance of cocktails was developing, we all looked back to these classic formulas and recipes. We’ve evolved so much to new modern techniques, but those are still the foundation of what we do.
That’s the era where we saw things like cocktail family trees, how you can create one thing by knowing another cocktail. So they will receive a book of classics. Those are what we primarily focus on for the preliminaries. You’re trying to make those as fast as you can with very little mistakes. And you want to make sure it’s just the right ingredients. So we’ll have a preliminary event at the start. And then we will take the top eight fastest times. And then they compete in the elimination rounds on stage, where they’re live judged on what they’re creating on the cocktails until the final round where they’re going to repeat the classics. The classics get more complicated as we go through the rounds.
In the final round, we also test more of what bartenders are doing now, things like dealer’s choice and whatever the bartender makes based on a guest’s preferences, which is brought to them by our judges.
It does seem to me that Speed Rack is the most accurate test of what you’ll want in a bartender — everyone can come up with a batch drink and present it on stage and tell a nice long five minute story, but if I’m in a bar, I want my drink quick and I want it to be really good. And it’s usually a classic.
Absolutely. And it’s building that repetition. I think as consumers get more educated — and [their knowledge] has been growing at a rapid pace, and have even dabbled in making them at home — so then they have questions. Knowing those classics is a really important foundation.
My new bar that I just opened, Millie’s in Brooklyn, we have a great young team and we’re doing an exercise of having, yes, our signature drinks, but then really delving into different classics and working on a spec together as a team.
Since the pandemic — what you called it a gap year of Covid — has there been a change in the knowledge of bartenders that are coming into your bars?
It is a really great time. There’s more renewed interest in digging out an old dusty book and picking through them and being like, okay, this recipe is really interesting but it’s weird. How do we make this?
That was something we were very fortunate to be doing as we rediscovered these little books and this revival was happening. And to see another generation of bartenders getting that moment now, it’s great to see them going back to deconstructing and learning a new old skill. Because they can make the Milk Punches and all those other things which are so much more advanced.
Perhaps every 10 to 15 years bartending needs to go back to the basics again. Put down the ISI canister.
In general, you want cocktails that taste good. And I think that knowing that foundation, and knowing how to do it without all the tricks is the key.
Let’s talk about you. How did you get your start in the bar industry?
So I was very reluctant to be in the bar industry. I actively fought against hospitality. I was a musical theater performer and auditioning in New York. And the only thing worse than being a bartender [at that time] was being an actor who’s a bartender. I’m not going to do that. Then unfortunately, I was temping and working in office buildings — as if that was better — and I was away doing a show in California when 9-11 happened. And I was like, well, I’m going to move back to New York, but I’m never stepping a foot in an office building. So what am going to do? I’m going have to go do this whole thing and figure out how to bartend. I started with a job at a wine bar, which was really great, as a server. And I got to learn so much about wine lists and the people there. That was a really great learning experience. And then from there, I moved on to cocktails, but I was working in Martini lounges, where people would get off work and have happy hour. And there’s all the flavoured ’tinis you can think about.
I remember those days.
A few years later I discovered Julie Reiner’s bar, the Flatiron Lounge, where everything was beautiful and fresh. That was where I got to see how you can make really beautiful drinks, balanced, with fresh juices and and then it took off from there. I found restaurant bars, which I found a real comfort in. I love the idea of how food and drinks all work together and that experience of completing guests full experience for them and making their night.
You’ve picked up a number of accolades over the course of your career. You’ve worked as an ambassador, as a masterclass.com teacher with Ryan Chetiyawardana, you’ve done a lot of different roles. How do you describe what you do today?
It’s funny, when I first set out on the path to do what I do, it wasn’t quite as understood. People were very much attached to one venue or to a group. I just always liked doing so many different things within the industry, and wanted to do events and do restaurants and all these different things.
And so I built this portfolio life and I think it’s now more acceptable. There’s opportunities for folks to be part-time brand ambassadors — [it used to be] you were all in or nothing, which I was not as big of a fan of. I also wanted to maintain some sort of independence.
I also love teaching — how do I have more access to more people? I love communicating that. When Masterclass came along, it was such a great opportunity, especially in a crazy time. We didn’t know it was gonna launch in the middle of a pandemic. When they approached us, I knew that Ryan Chetiyawardana was my counterpart. So I was like, he’s gonna have all these fun twists and things like that. But if we’re just teaching people for the first time, I need to be very classic and go back to what I learned and teach people from scratch. And then you can get really creative with beeswax and all the other things after.
What advice do you have for bartenders in those early stages of their career, and wanting to build a long term career?
Get as much varied experience as you can. I think for me, working in a classic cocktail bar, then working in restaurants really gave me a broader spectrum of what the industry can be. And I learned so much from working with chefs on developing flavour and changing some of my techniques that are now very commonplace. That diversity of access to different people and in different disciplines within our industry is really invaluable.
So really try to get a few things under your belt that help you complete who you are. We’re all learning and you have to put each type of bar in your repertoire, so you can do anything at the end of the day. There’s definitely a big gap that I call from craft to corporate. So at some point, you might make a jump to do something in hotels, but if you haven’t actually learned or been in a space where you’ve had to look at P&Ls or understand ordering, it could be a very intimidating job. You have the creative chops, but no-one taught you the business part. The pandemic really taught us a lot about how fragile the business can be and how we really all have to have that basic understanding to figure out how to be successful and create great spaces that have longevity for our guests.
So you’ve been at this bartending thing for a while now. You’ve seen a few twists and turns in the industry. Where do you want to see the industry go next then? What type of bars do you want to see?
What I want to see, and I think I’m starting to see it, is bartenders with empathy, right? I love seeing that they actually care about the guests.
So I like seeing that we’re maybe coming back to a place where it’s not just this exercise like ‘here’s the 20,000 techniques I did, if you don’t like this, we’re sorry — this is what we do. That’s the only thing we do.’ I like people thinking out of the box of how we can approach things too. So there’s not just one way — I’m not averse to learning. I’m going to tell you how I’ve done things and there’s always room for improvement and evolving. If you have a better way of doing something, I’m all ears. Let’s actually do that together.
What in your professional opinion makes a great bar? What makes Lynette happiest in a bar?
What I think makes a great bar is the people. No matter where you walk in, if something is soulless, you feel that. So for me, it’s number one that that you walk in, there’s a warmth, there’s a vibe, there’s an interaction, there’s something that you’re like, I’m going to get into this.
And then for me, what makes me happiest in a bar? I love when there’s good music playing. I love a cold Martini made well. And I love when a bartender has a great suggestion for me, especially if I’m just doing something simple. That little extra effort to try to have a conversation with me is really great.
The national final of Speed Rack takes place on Sunday 19 October at Oxford Art Factory in Sydney, and you’re invited to come along, cheer on the fastest bartenders in Australia, and help us raise money for a great cause. Tickets are on sale now — hit the button below.
