CRESTVIEW — For Jessica Holland, a bartender at the Crestview Applebee’s, customers are the best part of her job.
"We have a lot of regulars here," she said. "They’re like my family. Half of them are on my Facebook. I know what they like when they come in.”
Friday afternoon, John McLain and Garrett Thomson enjoyed their lunches at Holland’s bar rather than one of the available tables.
“She’s doing a great job,” McLain said. “We like eating here at the bar.”
According to a new survey, that kind of customer loyalty is why bartending is a top job on the Florida Panhandle.
THREE FACTORS
The Crestview metropolitan area, which includes Fort Walton Beach and Destin, has 720 bartending jobs earning a $26,250 median salary — excluding tips.
That makes it the country's No. 3 metro area for bartending, according to ValuePenguin, a New York City research firm.
ValuePenguin researchers looked at these factors for the study, which was released last week:
•Bartenders' median annual play
•The city's cost of living
•Local quotient, the number of bartenders as a percentage of all the area's jobs
The findings?
"If you do want to bartend part-time or turn it into a career, you could do a lot worse than Crestview, because it does rank highly in those three categories," said Andrew Pentis, ValuePenguin's associate editor.
Researchers studied data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on 381 cities and found that, these days, bartending isn't necessarily a part-time job. Many so-called mixologists turn it into a career, particularly because of the tips.
"It's very hard to predict exactly their take-home pay," Pentis said, "but we know (many of them are) making a lot more than that 26 figure."
KEY INGREDIENT
“I feel a little more honored as a bartender,” Holland said, adding she has worked in various positions at Applebee's, including as a table server. “The customers come to you. They choose to sit at your bar.”
At Angel's Speakeasy and Saloon, Angela Quertermous does much more than ensure family recipes are being made just the way her mom always cooked them.
She also tends the bar on her Hickory Avenue restaurant’s porch.
“I’m a working owner,” she said. “Bartending is in my genes. My mother said I was conceived on Stingers.”
The daughter of Bob Pettigrew, who “owned most of the bars in Fort Walton Beach in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” Quertermous said she “just fell into” bartending before she worked at any of her dad’s pubs.
“I had to go to bartender class,” she said. “You had to know how to make like 200 drinks. I still know what a Golden Cadillac is.”
Quertermous, who has tended bar for more than 25 years, said the occupation has one key ingredient.
“You need some personality to do it,” she said.
—
1. Las Vegas
2. Atlantic City, N.J.
3. Crestview
4. Brockton, Mass.
5. Myrtle Beach, S.C.
6. Flagstaff, Ariz.
7. Naples, Fla.
8. San Francisco, Calif.
9. Fairbanks, Ark.
10. Ocean City, N.J.
Source: ValuePenguin
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: The Crestview metro is among U.S. top cities for bartending