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Uncle Nearest launches mentorship programme
Tennessee whiskey producer Uncle Nearest has created the Raise the Bar Mentorship Alliance, a six-month programme that teams bar industry veterans with up-and-coming talent.
The brand said the programme is designed to fast-track its participants’ opportunities in the industry, while creating long-term relationships between bartenders and building brand advocacy.
The application period is open until 5 September and those successful will be announced on 1 November. The programme will commence in January 2025. Entry is open to bartenders based in the US with two years’ industry experience.
The one-to-one mentorship will see mentees and mentors, who are paired based on what best serves their needs, meet for regular bi-weekly virtual meetings. A group visit to the brand’s distillery in Tennessee will take place in spring – provisionally in January, but dependent on potential bad weather.
Speaking on why Uncle Nearest created the initiative, Lucia Creed, the brand’s head of trade advocacy, says: “We’re still making sure that in everything that we do, there is an aspect of giving back. When we launched our trade advocacy program, I really wanted to look at the industry and see what was needed.”
The initiative ties into the brand’s ‘Pull as You Climb’ ethos; “We don’t have to wait until we’re one of the biggest companies in the world before we start helping other people,” adds Creed.
She pointed out that while there have been great mentorship programmes, there hasn’t yet been one that is fully brand-based.
“There are a couple of brands that have come in to support non-profits that are doing mentorship programmes, but in the spirits world, I personally have never seen a fully brand-sponsored mentorship programme – or one that’s open to all demographics, or open to the whole country. A lot are focused on one city or a specific demographic – we really wanted to make sure this was open to everybody.
“There are a lot of people in flyover states, for example, who may not have the same access to mentorship, regardless of their demographic, compared with someone who lives in New York or Los Angeles, where you have so many bars and successful bar community members.”
The agenda
The programme will feature 10 mentors and 10 mentees. At the end of the six months, the cohort will individually present their projects to a group of key stakeholders at Uncle Nearest. Two will be chosen and granted US$10,000 each to follow up on their project.
“It’s really just meant for them to take their big ideas and figure out how they can turn them into a strategic goal and build a project that allows them to get to that goal,” Creed explains.
“Loosely, we have seven different areas of focus, but it’s really meant to be tailored to the individual. So whether they’re focusing on advanced drink innovation or brand building, or if they’re interested in building an organisation to support the bar community, our intention is to help them identify what they are excited about and support them in building a project that expresses their passion.”
She adds that the goal of mentee application review is to “start off as general as possible” to reduce potential bias.
“We want to take out information like ‘where do you work’ and ‘what’s your name’ because we don’t want this to be a popularity contest. We want to create a programme where the people who are excited and motivated about doing something impactful in this industry get a chance to work with some of these really amazing mentors.”
Some of the bar industry veterans who will take on mentor roles include Kate Gerwin (owner/bartender of Albuquerque’s Happy Accidents and of Netflix’s Drink Masters fame), Tiffanie Barriere (former beverage director of One Flew South), and Chris Cabrera (Bacardi’s first national LGBTQ+ ambassador.
Before moving into brand advocacy, Creed was a bartender for 15 years, so she was able to reach out to some of the people she knew from this time. “I was grateful that they were all so excited to be involved, because some of them have been on TV shows, several of them have owned their own bars, and many of them have won major awards. Besides being really successful in their own right, they have done a lot to uplift the community in various ways.”
Creed adds that the mentoring isn’t one-sided – it works both ways. The brand has hired a director of mentor development, who trains the mentors before the programme starts and then supports them throughout the six months. They might know how to bartend very well, but some are still learning how to be the best possible mentor.
“We’re making sure that everybody involved is as supported as possible through the process,” says Creed. “When they go back to their bar, city or community, they’re better mentors for everybody they come in contact with going forward.
“One of the cool things in the conversations that I’ve had with some of the mentors is that it goes both ways. Up-and-comers learn from the best practices and mistakes of the mentors, and they get to build a bigger network faster and create relationships with people they may not have had access to. But for people who have been around for a while, we don’t always know the newest thing, or we don’t always know the people who are new to the industry. A lot of the mentors are also very excited to learn from people who are newer to the industry.”
Long-term vision
The hope is that the brand can run the programme globally in the future, and potentially expand it to others in the community who aren’t bartenders: servers, barbacks and so on.
“It creates a great launchpad for everything we’re doing with the trade,” Creed says.
“We started seven years ago – so a big chunk of the time that we’ve been in operation was during Covid-19, which didn’t allow us to have exclusive connections with the trade. Now we’re trying to focus on building those relationships with the trade community and supporting them, because they do so much to support us.
“We want to make sure we’re giving back and building something really meaningful for the bar community.”
Founded by Fawn Weaver, Uncle Nearest aims to elevate Black-owned brands alongside its whiskey production. Speaking to The Spirits Business in 2020, Weaver said: “Uncle Nearest is the only major African-American-owned [spirits] brand, period. We need more Uncle Nearests.”
In 2020, the brand partnered with Jack Daniel’s to jointly pledge US$5 million towards the Nearest & Jack Advancement Initiative’s (NJAI) business incubation programme.
Last year, Blackleaf Organic Vodka and Mission Craft Cocktails were chosen for the programme, which looks to encourage diversity in the spirits sector and give Black-owned brands the resources they need to succeed.
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