Millie Tang on turning two passions into her dream career
Australian bartender and photographer Millie Tang combines her twin passions to great effect.
*This feature was originally published in the July 2025 issue of The Spirits Business magazine.
Working in the bar industry often means wearing many hats – but few juggle quite as many roles as Millie Tang. A multi-hyphenate creative whose main medium is photography, she’s also a bartender – and a bloody good one at that.
Born and raised in Brisbane, Australia, Tang is now based in Paris. Her day job is at De Vie, one of the city’s hottest 2025 openings – though it’s difficult to describe exactly what she does there. “Alex [Francis, De Vie’s co-founder] was like: ‘What’s your role here?’ And I was like: ‘Why are you asking me?’”
Her responsibilities include the bar’s social media, photography and videography, plus managing back of house, including reservations and admin. Like the rest of the De Vie team, she has drink-creation duties alongside bar and service time. “In the end, we came up with ‘venue coordinator’,” she laughs.
Tang’s bartending journey began in Brisbane when she was 21, working in a live music venue. Eighteen months in, she’d gained enough experience to land a spot at Press Club, a Brisbane institution. The ascent of her bartending career came at a cost.
“It became quite hard to stay focused on photography and bartending at the same time,” she admits. “So photography became a background thing.”
‘Egotistical venture’
Her next stop was opening Deathproof in New Farm, Queensland, with two friends. “Looking back, it’s pretty crazy the amount of trust that they put in me,” she laughs. “I feel it was a very egotistical venture on my part, thinking that I was up for that kind of pressure. It was a huge learning curve, but I’m very grateful for it.”
She then headed to The Gresham, also in Brisbane, where she bedded in for nearly seven years. Her long service earned her flexibility, which she used to reignite her other passion. She pitched to take over the bar’s social media, which quickly led to an opportunity with another venue, as well as photography work with spirits brands.
Finally managing to balance her two interests, Tang pushed herself into bartending competitions in 2019, winning a few titles and being named Bartender of the Year by the Australian Liquor Industry Awards. But perhaps more important was the growth of her social media community and photography portfolio – especially when Covid-19 hit.
“It was very good luck and timing that I was uniquely positioned for brands to want to work with me,” she says. “I had a small following, I could create content and, obviously, no one could work together or leave their house.”
After lockdowns lifted, things picked up fast. The brands she’d won travel prizes with honoured their commitments, and she started travelling. “I’d never really had the bug to travel before,” she says. “But once I started, it was the best.”
Tang struggles to choose just one city with the best bar scene. “It’s hard, because you’ve got the obvious cities where there are lots of bars – London, Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore – and they’re always amazing,” she says. “But I’ve been especially excited by the cities I’ve visited in China, particularly Chengdu and Guangzhou.”
It’s not a part of the global scene that gets much airtime, she notes – but it should.
“It’s hard for people to be aware of what they don’t know exists. China is a country of a billion people, and for us to think that cocktails and bars begin and end in London or Singapore is crazy.”
Tang has recently been appointed to Schweppes’ new Pioneers advocacy programme, sharing her expertise with the next generation.
“As much as I love working with [spirits] brands, working with a mixer opens up so many more avenues. It becomes a truly global collaboration because you can reach the places that alcohol can’t,” she says, pointing to countries like India, where alcohol advertising is forbidden.
In the four-strong mentor line-up, she’s the only woman and the only person of colour. While she acknowledges the power of representation, she’s happy to note she generally hasn’t felt held back by her identity. “I actually think being female and Asian has helped me quite a bit,” she says. “Whether that’s just good timing and placements, I don’t know. But I’ve been given too many opportunities to say it’s worked against me.”
Inequality in the industry
Earlier in her career, she occasionally wondered why she was passed over for certain roles. “But maybe it wasn’t a gender thing. Maybe it was just a ‘me’ thing, a behavioural thing. When you’re younger, you’re not that self-aware – if you’re acting like a shit, of course they’re not going to give you the job,” she shrugs.
That said, she still sees inequality in the industry. “It is prolific. I don’t think, in Western societies anyway, that it is a conscious choice to choose white men over women. But it’s now an issue because it’s something people don’t think about.”
Judging Diageo’s World Class in the Czech Republic, Tang found herself in a difficult position in that regard. None of the four female finalists scored highly enough to make the top five. “So the top five were five white men,” she says. “When you are someone who really wants to see women succeed, it’s very hard to say: well, these are the results, and the best people really did win.”
So what’s the solution? Tang doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. “Do the markets now need to put more effort into developing women so they feel supported to enter competitions? Or is it in the bar where there needs to be more support? Or does the competition need to change, where there’s a representation clause built in? I’ve never talked about that stuff on record until now,” she admits, “because these kinds of opinions require conversation, not just hot takes. It needs to be a bigger conversation, and not one with an immediate result. Results come after a lot of time, a lot of conversations, and a lot of back and forward.”
Tang may not have all the answers – but she’s asking the right questions. And in an industry that still has a lot to discuss, that might be the most powerful role of all.
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