Post Shift Podcast #80 - Sean Muldoon and Jack McGarry of Dead Rabbit

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Sean and Jack have been an inspiration to me for nearly a decade, from the years creating the bar at the Merchant Hotel to the award-winning Dead Rabbit; we also talk about their partnership, it's strengths and weaknesses and how they continue to power on through thick and thin. Great insight on how to create one of the best bars in the world.

ABOUT SEAN MULDOON

Sean’s earliest passion was music. To support that passion, he began tending bar. In time, one fascination overtook another. He discovered cocktails and mixed drinks and he saw opportunity everywhere. After working his way through many of Belfast’s well-known bars, where his management skills were much in demand, Sean did something extraordinary. He left. He left to start his own venture – the Perfect Drinks Company, a one stop consultancy and event bartending service. It not only won numerous prestigious awards (for itself and for other bars); it also helped shape a cocktail culture that is still evident today.

Sean was making his own liqueurs and bitters when he was asked to take over the bar and the city’s most prestigious venue, the Merchant Hotel. It was here that he designed and perfected an entirely new approach to making ice. It was also here that he was reunited with Jack.

Soon, and perhaps inevitably, the Merchant would soon scoop a World’s Best Cocktail Bar title.

From there to New York, it was just a bunny hop.

ABOUT JACK MCGARRY

How do you get to be International Bartender of the Year? You make two things: Good decisions – and your own luck.

Jack’s background in the hospitality trade covers every aspect of running a bar. He started young, bussing tables back in Belfast, graduating to tending bar and discovering the city’s nascent cocktail scene. Along the way, he accumulated an encyclopedic knowledge of mixed drinks.

He and Sean worked today briefly at a fashionable bar called the Northern Whig. They were later reunited at the city’s stylish merchant Hotel, where their combined forces soon garnered a World’s Best Cocktail Bar title in 2010.

After that, New York came calling.

WATCH HERE

Share a dram with the hospitality industry’s top global talents: bartenders, venue owners, distillers and industry aficionados. Shawn Soole has lived, breathed, and imbibed hospitality for decades. Now, he delves into the advice, opinions, and provocative stories that are helping to define the creative, culturally-necessary space of ‘modern hospitality’—covering topics from front-of-house service, to back-end business operations, and every inch between.