Job Description:

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Amara, located at 670 N Midvale Blvd in Madison, WI, is seeking a Bar Manager to join our team. 

 

Amara is our take on contemporary coastal Italian cuisine featuring sharable small plates and bites, hand-crafted pastas, and entrées showcasing the bounty of Madison Wisconsin. Our wine list will feature cutting edge Italian and Italian-inspired artisan wines farmed by hand and made with classical methods. Our bar will showcase the art of Italian drinking including aperitifs, negronis, cocktails and espresso​. Amara will open its doors in the late summer of 2022.

 

The name Amara derives from the Ancient Greek ‘Amáranthos’, which means ‘everlasting flower’. Amore in Italian, Amará in Spanish, and Amara in Arabic all refer to love. Yet, Amara in Italian means bitter, conjuring some of the hallmarks of Italian cooking and drinking, where herbs, bitter greens, and digestivi are celebrated for their health benefits and healing botanical qualities. Bitter and sweet are often found together, and at the same time, and couldn't be more relevant to us now as we move forward with purpose and intention seeking balance, healing, health, sustainability, and love.

 

Bar Manager - Amara - Madison, WI

 

The Bar Manager will, under the direction of Rule No. One Hospitality, our Madison-based hospitality group, create and maintain a culture championing knowledge, excellence, fun, service and approachability (internal and external).  Orientation to our mission and our customer at all times is key.  You will be working with a chef team led by some of the Madison's top talent, including RNO Beverage Director, Caitlyn Nicholson and RNO Culinary Director Jon Nodler, a James Beard Foundation nominated semi-finalist and Executive chef of Food & Wine Magazine’s “#1 Best New Restaurant” in 2019, and RNO Wine Director and partner in Amara, James Juedes.

 

As Amara’s Bar Manager, you are a critical member of the Amara Management Team by modeling all elements of a professional bartender and working to curate a crew that delivers impeccable service and technique.  The Bar Manager handles bar administration, overseeing bar staff, the maintenance of quality standards, and orienting to our mission and our customer at all times is key.

 

The Bar Manager role role is will divided between onsite bar leadership, best-of bartending and training, technical and creative development, bar staff management & scheduling, and communications:

 

Onsite Leadership

• Lead and supervise the Bar Team and oversee the entire bar staff’s customer service skills on site

• Work closely with the entire Amara bar staff to always project positivity and maintain staff morale to achieve the highest performance levels

  • Communicate staffing needs to General Manager to ensure the bar is always providing prompt & friendly service, as well as to maintain sustainability of all bar staff employees

• Work with the Beverage Director and General Manager to oversee onsite training of all new employees 

• Make appropriate cuts behind the bar when needed

• This position is the first to be called upon when there’s a need to cover shifts for other bar employees

• Work with the General Manager and Bar Prep in ensuring all bar staff is keeping all bar areas clean and holding bar staff accountable for cleaning duties. Ensure all checklists (open, close, and prep) are complete on a daily basis

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Best-of Bartending & Training

• Prepare and serve alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks consistent with the restaurant’s standard drink recipes & methods. Oversee all members of the bar team's consistency and correct as needed

• Ensure the entire Bar Team has an understanding of the palate in relation to taste categories and the mechanics of tasting in order to produce balanced drinks and how ingredients affect taste.

• All are expected to have an understanding of the DNA of cocktails and how ‘mixology’ works at a base level: the Classic Cocktail Recipe of “Strong/Weak & Sweet/Tart”; the roles of base/modifier/accent; the Aperitif; the Digestif; the major cocktail types; Balancing a drink.​

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Technical and Creative Development

• Extensive knowledge of and the ability to train a Bar Team on cocktail builds & history of beverages; curating your own original drinks for specials and menus; ability to craft drinks to customer specifications.

• Be knowledgeable about every product and menu item served: what it tastes of; what it is made from; where it comes from; how strong it is; how it is made; if and how it is aged.

• New Product Development and Research

• Research new trends, techniques and products to keep up with and set industry standards in spirits and cocktails 

• Work with Beverage Director to develop new cocktails and menu concepts

• Professional Growth and Education

  • Continue education of all reaches of the beverage world

  • Maintain and increase personal certifications (Cicerone, BarSmarts, Sommelier etc) while also helping to mentor and encourage bar managers/staff to pursue outside education

  • Participate in community and industry events to advance the reputation of Amara bar program

 

Staff Management & Communications​

• This position is responsible for creating and managing the bar schedule. 

• This role is the primary position the restaurant reports to for anything bar-related

• Listen and address staff concerns to the General Manager as needed

• Work with the RNO Beverage Director to communicate Creative/Staff/Service/Bartending to staff ensuring knowledge, teamwork, training, etc.

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Reporting:

The role will report to the Assistant General Manager and General Manager of Amara.

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Benefits:

• Competitive wages

• A flexible and predictable schedule that is posted two weeks in advance

• 50% dining discount for you and your friends and family

• A free and healthy GF Vegetarian or Regular staff meal

• 50% off all food and beverage, 15% off retail items

• Access to Amara's online classroom with training materials, recipes, and checklists.  After full orientation, we offer weekly paid training opportunities to taste wine, spirits and food with industry experts

• Our mission is centered around treating each other and ourselves well through our love of food, drink, and community.

• Sustainability must be possible and attainable in our industry!

• All employees are offered health, dental and vision insurance

• Paid time off

• 401k contribution

• The chance to work in a brand new clean facility with state of the art new equipment

• The chance to contribute to one of the most dynamic restaurant groups in the region

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Our ideal Bar Manager has the following attributes:​

• Has 3-5 years of bartending experience, with at least 1 year of craft cocktail experience.

• Lead with knowledge and professionalism by example to the staff

• Be positive and calm for the staff while problem solving on the floor. Communicate with staff and upper management as needed.

• Has good personal qualities, is polite, confident, caring, level headed, and above all, enjoys dealing with people.

• Ability to multitask while leading by example at all times is key.

• The Bar Manager should be warm and genuine using verbiage and vocabulary that is guest-focused, inclusive, and positive. 

• Able to thrive in a team environment as a reliable and trustworthy player on the floor.

• The Bar Manager, along with all staff members, is expected to be clean, neat and tidy in their personal appearance and also in their working habits; they shall also maintain the highest standards of hygiene in their workplace.

• Along with all staff members, the Bar Manager is expected to embody the organizational mission and caring, inclusive, and authentic values in terms of who we are and what we believe. 

 

RNO is a mission-driven lifestyle company dedicated to creating spaces for celebrating and treating each other and ourselves well.  We seek to provide warm, fun and an endlessly interesting mix of inspired programming that challenges, invigorates and delights our guests by celebrating our craft, who we are, what we do and what we believe. As a community-driven hospitality management organization, we are active in social causes supporting women, Black, LGBTQ+, and Indigenous communities everywhere. Cook It Forward is a non-profit advocacy arm of Rule No One Hospitality, Inc. with a mission to address ongoing inequities in our food systems. We are all working collectively on social entrepreneurship, social equity, and social justice-- one meal at a time.

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Our Values:

• Inclusivity.  We will establish a culturally diverse and  inclusive environment, one that specifically supports minorities, all genders, and those historically underrepresented in our industry.

• Humility. We are modest about capabilities, admit mistakes, and create the space for others to contribute.

• Effective Collaboration. We are a team centered around positivity, that stands for one message which involves empowering others, empathizing with each other, and uplifting others as a collective.

• Respect and Justice / Health and Well-Being. All team members need to be treated respectfully and fairly.  This pertains to equity in pay, and specific attention to physical/mental health, well-being and safety.

• Positivity and Love of Food and Community. Cooking and serving others is a powerful act of caring and love for one another.  Let us work together to bring our community together through the power of food and drink

 

Pay Rate:

$50-55k annual salary, depending on leadership experience, plus benefits

 

Amara is an equal opportunity employer, with a mission to support women, Black, LGBTQ+ applicants.  As an organization, we support a minimum wage of $16/hour.