We Asked: “What’s Your Best Advice for Young Bartenders?”

As part of the search for the Best New Bartenders of 2026, Punch hosted a series of panels in partnership with Astral Tequila. At events in Chicago, New York, San Diego, and Charlotte, North Carolina, alumni of BNB and local industry leaders shared their experiences and their advice for the next generation of the industry.

We asked about mentorship, how to extend hospitality to both guests and fellow bartenders, and our panelists’ hopes and dreams for the future. Here are some of the highlights from our conversations.

Start simple. “There are so many resources that weren’t available when I first started out. Now there’s probably a YouTube video or an article about pretty much anything and everything. But with there being so much information out there, I think new bartenders today want to get to the most exciting stuff. They kind of skip over some of the steps with learning the basics… I think learning the building blocks of cocktails before you just jump right in and get started is really important.” —Lily Wang, partner at Nine Bar and Cara Cara Club in Chicago

Put yourself out there. “Show up for stuff. It doesn’t just have to be a competition. It could be an educational [opportunity], it could be a brand thing, it could be a seminar, it could be your friend’s pop-up. But show up, put yourself in the room, give other people the opportunity to meet you and get to know you.” —Izzy Tulloch, founder of A Bar Called Pancakes in New York City

You don’t need to be a mixologist. “Don’t feel like there’s this massive barrier to entry. It’s not like you have to have all the equipment… As great as it is for your craft to learn how to take it to the next level with molecular gastronomy, you don’t need to… Bartending is an art because we all have different styles and that’s really the most beautiful thing about it.” —Jenna “Duckie” Reynolds, bartender at Hermanita in Charlotte, North Carolina

Learn to take feedback. “Developing an ability for critical self-evaluation is really important when you’re starting up. This doesn’t mean you need to put yourself down, but you do need to develop an ability to look at your skill set and look at how you perform, shift to shift, and be honest about the pitfalls. If you struggle with that, you need to become much more open to feedback from your peers and your direct superiors.” —Daniel Villa, beverage director for R+D at Thai Taste in Charlotte, North Carolina

Understand the business. “If you want to progress—or even if you just want to bartend forever—knowing the business, knowing how to make a bar profitable, and how to cost your cocktails is important. [Say] you want to put a new cocktail on, it’ll be much easier to get that cocktail on the menu if you say [to your manager], ‘I got this idea for a cocktail. I costed it out. It’s only going to cost us this amount, and the prep is easy… The farther you go up [in management], it’s honestly less about creativity and more about reading a P&L, making sure your beverage cost is correct, managing a team, and things like that… When you go into beverage director or bar manager interviews, they’re going to be interested in that.” —Devin Kennedy, partner at Press Club in D.C. and Best New Bartender alum

Be thoughtful about who to ask for mentorship. “I’m a big fan of mentorship… When you’re looking for a mentor, it’s important to find somebody who you sync with. It could just be your approach to cocktails, your approach to business, your approach to back-of-house machinations. Whatever it is, it has to be that you share a bit of the same philosophy, and I feel like that’s when it can be most fruitful for everybody.” —Erick Castro, co-owner of Raised by Wolves and Gilly’s House of Cocktails in San Diego