In this issue:
- An overview of Jigger & Pony with co-founder Guoyi Gan;
- The thinking behind their hiring formula;
- Why and how the Jigger & Pony Group opens new venues;
- The One To Watch bar coming to Singapore.
Welcome back to Boothby’s Singapore briefing, where this week we’re unpacking the habits underpinning the success of the Jigger & Pony group.
It’s hard to overrstate the influence that the Jigger & Pony group has had over the last decade — not just on the Singapore scene, but globally as well.
If you caught last week’s look into 11 years of data from Asia’s 50 Best Bars, from 2016 to this year, you’ll have seen that Jigger & Pony is one of two bars to have appeared on every instalment of the list, consistently ranking at the pointy end of things.
So on a recent visit to Singapore I spoke to Guoyi Gan, co-owner of the Jigger & Pony group, about the journey they’ve been on with the venue, what they look at when they open new concepts, and plenty more.
Let’s get into it.
Jigger & Pony might just be Asia’s most successful bar. Having first opened in 2012 in Amoy Street in Singapore, it has since moved to much larger and swankier digs at the Amara Hotel. The move has also corresponded with the bar enjoying more success on the global stage. Jigger & Pony currently sits at number nine on The World’s 50 Best Bars list, and number nine on Asia’s 50 Best Bars this year.
With the release of their latest menu, Bloom, we sat down with co-founder of the Jigger & Pony group, Guoyi Gan, for an in-depth chat about how they run their shop and the keys to the group’s success over the years.
BOOTHBY: Guoyi, what is Jigger & Pony all about? What’s your role here?
GUOYI GAN: I am the co-founder and also managing director at Jigger & Pony. On a day-to-day basis, I mostly take care of hospitality and operations within the team. Jigger & Pony is a classics-leaning cocktail bar. We try to focus on using classics that people understand, and use techniques to build a new and improved version of those classic cocktails.
BOOTHBY: How did Jigger & Pony get started? From one bar, you’ve grown to quite a large group, and an influential group too.
GUOYI GAN: In 2012, we actually opened Jigger & Pony at Amoy Street as a much smaller venue. It was about 65 seats then, classic Singapore shophouse size.
BOOTHBY: What’s the size of this place?
GUOYI GAN: At the Amara now we are 130 seated. Quite different. We’re able to do a lot more things that we weren’t able to do at Amoy. It was a very interesting journey. I’m glad that we started small.
When we started Jigger & Pony, actually, we started with a mission in mind, not as a cocktail bar first. We actually thought that we want to be in the people business. We came up with a company mission, which is to be a place in the community, where people can find comfort, forge friendship and share happiness. And then with a lot of iterations, we decided, people seek comfort a lot in hospitality. And that’s how we started with a cocktail bar. We’ve been doing that for 14 years now.
BOOTHBY: When did you make the move from Amoy Street to where we are now in the Amara?
GUOYI GAN: So we closed our venue at Amoy Street in July of 2018. It was unfortunate but it was due to a landlord lease redevelopment clause kicking in. It was not voluntary.
BOOTHBY: Just when everything’s going great.
GUOYI GAN: Yeah. A very stressful time for us in the company as well, because at that point we had also just opened the biggest restaurant we have ever tried to open, Caffe Fernet. Which is still open.
BOOTHBY: Did you change much about Jigger & Pony going from Amoy Street to here, in terms of what you’re offering and your service?
GUOYI GAN: I had the privilege, during this difficult time, to meet Danny Meyer.
BOOTHBY: Of Union Square Hospitality Group, famous New York restaurateur, and who literally wrote the book on hospitality, Setting the Table.
