Cocktail chat: Another Round, Another Rally

During lockdowns, nonprofit organisation Another Round, Another Rally provided a lifeline to struggling hospitality workers in the US. Now it plans on changing the industry for the better, as Alice Brooker discovered from co-founder Amanda Gunderson.

“During the pandemic, when we first opened our applications, we had 79,000 applicants in the first week. It got to the point where we had one applicant per second,” Amanda Gunderson tells me of her non-profit Another Round, Another Rally.

Gunderson founded the company in 2018 with her friend and long time industry Travis Nass. Based in Phoenix, Arizona, Another Round is a financial and education resource for the hospitality sector, using donations to provide emergency funding for workers in need, as well as paving the way for professional development in the industry. While both founders have worked in bars and kitchens, Gunderson has completed a stint as a whiskey ambassador for Beam Suntory, plus spent five years at House of Tequila at Pernod Ricard. “Me and Travis were sitting around one night talking about how most people in the hospitality industry, if they’re working at a bar or a restaurant, won’t be offered any type of insurance,” says Gunderson.

“We were kicking around all these types of emergencies – unexpected cancer diagnosis, a broken elbow; I have a friend who was a restaurant operator and had to go to court three times for one of her dishwashers to keep them from being deported.”

From the top down

The duo became set on providing funding for hospitality workers, for anything “from healthcare fees to legal fees”. In terms of professional development, the pair also wanted to tackle the structure of the industry from the top down.

“We see how many people in the highest-paid jobs in the hospitality industry are not women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ folks, people with disabilities or immigrants.

“Both of us have worked in a situation where you’d have this amazing bar back who was an immigrant, and as soon as a bartending position would open, someone from the outside would be hired, instead of just promoting this [bar back] from within.” As a result, Another Round also looks to help workers establish “more skills on their resumés”, and focus on these people who are “more important to the industry”, Gunderson explains.

With such ambitious goals and a philanthropic nature behind the scenes of the nonprofit organisation, I ask Gunderson what’s behind the name of the brand? “In the beginning, Travis and I thought of some really stupid stuff for names, like, ‘let’s call ourselves the flowing punchbowl’,” she laughs. “We landed on Another Round, Another Rally because it was the most celebratory thing. It felt like, ‘let’s go, hats in the air, we’re gonna get there, everybody rally together’.”

Another Round has seen a number of donations from major brands: “Our biggest stakeholders are spirits brands – they really stepped up during the pandemic,” she says.

Financial hardship

In 2020, Aperol owner Campari Group donated US$1 million to Another Round, which was raising money to alleviate financial hardship caused by the pandemic. The nonprofit has also seen funds roll in from LVMH, Pernod Ricard and others, and companies are able to have a say on where they would like their donations to be focused.

“We also got some money from Grey Goose. They wanted to keep their donation in New York, specific to the LGBTQ+ community. Moët Hennessy really wanted their money going to people of colour and front of house,” Gunderson says. Bacardi donated money from its Tequila brand Patrón, which it specifically wanted to go towards Covid-19 relief, she adds.

However, Another Round can control where a fraction of the donations go, given its knowledge about which areas are especially in need of help. Of the Patrón donation, Gunderson notes that a third of the money was put towards supporting immigrants – “undocumented workers, those who are illegible for federal funding”.

With a US$1m hand-out from Diageo’s Ketel One brand, Another Round was able to implement a grocery programme. “People could apply to us for grocery vouchers,” says Gunderson. “We were able to distribute them as requested. If you wanted vouchers for a grocery store, or for a department store like Target, we could do that too. We were able to touch more than 10,000 families during the pandemic.”

When Another Round was set up, the road to success was not without its bumps. Alongside trying to produce content in Spanish, a language not native to its founders, Gunderson and Nass had to work to earn the trust of hospitality workers to convince them their nonprofit was legitimate. “People thought we were maybe a scam, from US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement – that we were trying to capture undocumented workers,” Gunderson says.

“We’ve really had to take the me to build trust with people. Word of mouth has really helped us in that particular demographic, and that’s always going to be front of mind for us, as we work with various people across the country.”

But even with its challenges, Another Round has achieved a lot, including taking home the Pioneer Award at the Spirited Awards 2022, hosted by Tales of the Cocktail Foundation in New Orleans, US. “I was not expecting to win,” Gunderson says. “It felt like a bellwether, like we were on the right track, doing the right thing. Keep moving, keep going forward and getting the money out.”

The organisation has also brushed shoulders with a number of famous faces. “Not only did Matthew McConaughey mention us on his social media, but I was watching Stephen Colbert interview him on TV one night, and he said our name and I was like, ‘holy crap!’ I almost fell off my couch,” Gunderson laughs.

Another Round has also had Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson promote its brand, plus seen Ryan Reynolds, David Beckham and P Diddy come together for an ad in honour of its name, alongside companies The Drinks Trust in the UK and the Bartenders Benevolent Fund in Canada.

What does the future have in store for a nonprofit that has catapulted to success in such a small amount of me? Gunderson reveals that in the long term, there is a five- to 10-year programme about increasing global reach, but for the me being Another Round is dipping a toe into the healthcare system.

“You guys in the UK have such a good healthcare system, but we don’t [in the US], especially in hospitality,” she explains.

The hospitality industry is especially in need of more focus paid to its employees’ healthcare, given that it’s the “largest employer of veterans in the country”, Gunderson says. “The hospitality industry is considered to be unskilled labour, and it’s not okay. We currently have a mental health programme for Black folks in the hospitality industry, and that gives you three months of counselling. We are also trying to launch a mental health programme for LGBTQ+ folks this summer, and for women in the fall.”

Another Round, Another Rally is “constantly in fundraising mode”; it is the middleman between the brand giants in the industry and hospitality workers in need of more support – but the hospitality sector weathered a turbulent storm during the pandemic, and is still getting back on its feet.

All the same, there is no doubt the nonprofit wears the hero’s cape on behalf of hospitality employees, and positions in bars, clubs, hotels and restaurants suddenly seem more financially secure to settle back into with its backing. The future of hospitality could be brighter than we anticipate, with thanks to Another Round, Another Rally.