In the autumn of 2012, something happened that stunned everyone around me: I left radio presenting and went into business as a bar owner. Furthermore, I’d resolved that I would stop drinking. So, having the keys to my own bar really couldn’t have come at a better time. (Seriously, it really couldn’t have. Settle in, my loves and allow me to explain this bonkers true story.)
I’d been a successful local radio presenter for a few years by this point and I’d inadvertently become well known in the area that I broadcasted to. So, it wasn’t unusual for me to get recognised when I went out locally and this led me to feel that I couldn’t get the help I needed to address the drink problem I knew I had. I was worried that if I went to AA my bosses would find out and it would jeopardise the job that I loved. I was under a lot of scrutiny; had no anonymity and everyone always knew where I was, what I was doing, who I was doing it with and what I thought about it.
I’d also unintentionally earned a reputation as a bit of a booze hound, and I found it incredibly hard to shake that image even though I wanted to. The expectation of me as a hard drinker had been publicly embraced and at that point I wasn’t strong enough to reject it. So I kept on drinking, partly because it was expected, but mostly because it was what I’d always done and because I didn’t know how to stop. When the opportunity arose for me to run my own business – which had always been an ambition anyway – it came at the right time and I took it.
The earliest inklings of this new business opportunity arose about three months before I broadcasted my final show at the radio station. One summer’s night I was in a bar (of course I was), watching a live band and chatting with Bob, the bar owner. Bob had become somewhat of a business acquaintance and friend and on this particular night he was telling me how his bar wasn’t doing too well. He told me that his business partner had recently walked out, his staff were out of control, he was getting into mounting debt and he was weeks away from filing for insolvency. As I gazed around the room at the terrible décor and tried to make out what Bob was saying over the din of the horrendous band he’d let loose on innocent bystanders that night, I could see why it had taken less than a year for the business to fail.
Bob told me that he was in a dreadful situation because although the business was losing money, he was still contracted to pay the rent every week for the next six years regardless. He was planning to file for insolvency and then reinvent the business somehow in the hope that it’d be more successful. The problem was, this bar was his dream bar, and yet it had tanked dismally. He didn’t have a clue what to change in order to make it commercially viable. He’d put everything he had into that venture and it had swiftly nosedived. That night he asked me if I knew of anyone who might be able to help him. He needed someone up for a huge challenge. Someone with new ideas for a refurbishment and a good eye for interior design. Somebody who had common sense and didn’t mind getting their hands dirty. Somebody who fundamentally understood what entices people into a bar and keeps them coming back. Someone with initiative who wanted to come on board as the co-owner and co-manager of the business. He was looking for a new 50/50 partner. Neither of us knew it that night, but as it turned out, he was already looking at her.
I did know a couple of people that might have been potential business partners for Bob, and I spoke to them about it but they weren’t interested. The more I thought about it though, the more I realised that this was something I really wanted to do. Bob and I spoke again and I mentioned that owning and running a business had always been one of my ambitions. And that interior design was an enduring passion. And that I’d once completely gutted and refurbished a flat and had made a massive profit on it. And that I knew exactly what makes a great bar, having spent so much of my life hanging out in them. And that I had loads of ideas about how to turn this particular business around. And that I’d done loads of bartending all the way through college and uni and that I knew how to manage and motivate staff. And having worked on the radio station for years, I knew the area and the local people and the businesses and the competition. I’d also championed all the good local bands and so knew loads of great musicians and dj’s too.
Bob was ecstatic at the possibility of me coming on board, so we started talking seriously about it. I was honest with Bob from the start about my drink problem and my intention to stop drinking for a while, or forever if necessary. One of the conditions of me going into business with him was that I would be able to work around going to AA meetings, and anything else that would support me in getting sober. He was fine about it, in fact, he confessed that he’d overcome his own addiction problems in the past and said that he’d do whatever he could to help. Bob had a young son, and so he too needed a degree of ongoing understanding and flexibility from me in order to accommodate his personal life.
Bob and I negotiated an agreement that we were both happy with. Essentially, I was to have full reign over refurbishment decisions, interior design, branding, advertising, music, bands and dj choices, and the rest of the business decisions we would agree on together. We were to be 50/50 business partners and would therefore split any profit 50/50. Bob was to teach me as we went along about how to run the business in all of the areas that I wasn’t yet familiar with. I was to be the license holder, so I also had to study and pass an exam, which I did while we were in the thick of refurbishing the bar. There was a crossover period when I was working out my notice at the radio station during the days and working on plans, for what turned out to be an extensive three month bar refurbishment, at nights.
After I’d done my last live broadcast at the radio station, I went home with my ‘Sorry You’re Leaving’ cards and my bunches of flowers and literally went underground (it was a cellar bar) until the new business re-opened in December 2012.
During the three month refurbishment, I lived in dusty, paint-spattered clothes and got stuck into my new venture. I started going to AA meetings the same week that I did my last live radio show at the end of August 2012. To my dismay I was recognised as ‘Jen from the radio’, but it didn’t matter by then because I knew I wouldn’t be on air every day much longer, so wouldn’t feel that same level of exposure. Now that I worked for myself I could go to as many AA meetings as I liked, when I liked, where I liked and I could be totally honest about how I felt, how I drank and why I drank and it was liberating. I could regain my privacy. I wasn’t worried about my bosses finding out anymore because I was my boss. I could also choose my own work hours too, which were pretty much all the hours, all the time, for a while.
I named the bar and decided we should have several posh pool tables. We’d also have live bands, but only great live bands, and we’d have an amazing dj on Saturday nights, who only played cool music. (I know that’s a relative term, but I was the only person I had to please, so I pleased myself!)
I hired the contractors, joiners, brick layers and plasterers and had the bar completely stripped and gutted. I held a sale and got rid of every scrap of tasteless furniture, which was all of it. I had the floors levelled out and the ceilings raised. I had wooden flooring fitted. The breeze block walls whitewashed and we hung big gold-framed mirrors and punkrock artwork everywhere. I chose big leather chesterfield sofas and bar stools to match and had solid wooden tables handmade. I had big crystal chandeliers hung. I designed some Jackson Pollock/Stone Roses inspired Union Jack artwork, which framed the bar and was also used for our menus and flyers too.
I ordered traditional British dimple beer mugs. It was understated cool, 60’s punk rock inspired, comfy, traditionally English and old school glamourous. I had a projector fitted into the ceiling, aimed straight onto one of the walls and we played classic music videos or cult films all day. I basically had free reign and a pretty sizeable renovation budget to create my very own dream bar. It was crazy hard work, super long hours, blood, sweat and tears but by the end, it looked absolutely gorgeous and once we opened, it soon became the best bar in town.
I started holding interviews for a new team of staff and I paid them all more than the minimum wage as standard. I wrote new, more efficient procedures for how to set up and break down the bar every day. I wrote a new cocktail list, I removed the vulgar sounding cocktails and only served classics. We hired an amazing chef and decided on which bar snacks to serve. I designed the menus and the cocktail lists. I liaised with the printers. I designed the signage and oversaw it at every stage. I arranged to meet with council planners and re-negotiated our terms of trade. Bob and I met with breweries and chose a new back bar layout and improved the cellar. Between us, Bob and I chose the drinks and the brands we were going to serve and agreed on our prices. We decided on our opening times (every day 12-12 and 12-2am on the Fridays and Saturdays). We split the shifts straight down the middle, when I was in, Bob had his time off and vice versa. We factored in a crossover in the middle of the shifts where we’d have business meetings and discuss any problems, ideas or staffing issues. There was such a colossal amount of work to get done, but somehow, between us, we did it. We were open for business and trading again, with a fully trained workforce of 12 employees, before Christmas that same year.
Throughout that incredibly hectic time I was still drinking on occasion. Maybe once a fortnight on average, but because I was so busy and focused on the new business and getting to grips with my alcohol addiction, my patterns had completely changed. The more I learnt about myself and what my triggers were and about addiction and recovery in general, the less I could convince myself that I could enjoy it whenever I did drink. The smokescreen was disappearing. I knew that I’d been drinking for a long time not because I wanted to enjoy myself, but because I wanted to escape how I felt. Fully facing how dependent I’d become on numbing out of my life really put a dampener on any benefit it had provided until then.
Once I’d truly accepted that fact, there was no going back. I couldn’t un-know that stark truth once I’d acknowledged it, but I could postpone the inevitable for a little while longer, which I most certainly did. And now I had my own bar and no boss to answer to and I could choose my own hours – when I drank, I really drank.
In the beginning, walking into our cellar gave me chills, not just because it was so cold in there, but because at first I had a visceral reaction to the sight of all of that seductive booze. It was wall to wall and towering over my head. The luxury and prettiness of the champagne bottles. The fine wines, all the wines, racked up, row after row. Box after box of spirits piled up, one on top of the other. Some of them already out of boxes for easy access whenever the bar ran out, ten types of gin, ten types of tequila, ten types of vodka, all the rums, all the spirits from all over the world, all in their iconic, distinctive bottles, with their famous taglines. Hundreds of bottles of beer and cider, that unmistakable clinking sound whenever you moved a box. Big barrels lined up neatly along the wall, all hooked up to clear plastic tubing which carried golden liquid straight to the beer taps on the bar. It was an entire room, stocked floor to ceiling, with every type of alcoholic drink anyone could ever want. I’d chosen every single thing in there and we got the really good high end stuff because we were building a really good high end brand. And it was all mine. And if I wanted it, I could have it, anytime, day or night, and nobody could stop me. It was intoxicating on so many levels.
In the early days, once we’d opened the bar for business, there were quite a few after-hours lock ins where things got pretty wild and I made all of the choices you’d expect from a person struggling with active addiction who was sitting in the dangerous comfort of her own bar. Those nights usually got messy and the aftermaths were painful enough to pull me back on track for a while. There were days when I shook so badly I couldn’t hold a pen. I would feel so completely numb and as though I was moving in slow motion, it felt as though parts of me were dying, and they probably were. I still made it to meetings fairly regularly, even if I had to drag myself there and sobbed all the way through. I got an amazing sponsor who was as tough as old boots. I was honest with her about everything and she made it very clear that if I carried on the way I was, I would soon be dead.
There were loads of nights at the start when I served behind the bar alongside my staff and I poured them drinks on the house while I stuck to water. Bob and I had agreed that our staff could drink within reason as one of the perks of the job. I’d often make it through the whole night happily sober only to get hammered with my friends during an impromptu private party once the bar was closed. I’d have made up for lost drinking time by about 4am and by sunrise we’d be heading back to my place with take out from the cellar to carry on.
There were times when I worked day shifts, and was so hungover from the night before, that I would drink steadily throughout the day in my office, trying to keep the hellish hangover at bay, hoping the bartender that day wouldn’t need my help too much, instead of facing the gut-churning pain of sobering up.
I was always getting bought drinks, it didn’t seem to occur to people that as the boss I could drink for free. Sometimes I’d accept the drink, sometimes I’d decline, sometimes I’d say: “No thanks, I’m a raging alcoholic.” Only to be met by stunned expressions, followed by interrogations that would make me wish I’d just accepted the fucking drink.
There were many outrageous, drunken times working at ‘Jen’s Den’ as it’s still known, even though I left back in December 2013 after its first year of successful trading. Mostly I remember that time for teaching me how to do life sober.
Gradually, imperceptibly, over the course of that year, working in that environment, and being around alcohol all day every day, it changed me irrevocably and for the better. The decision that others understandably feared would be the death of me, turned out to be the very thing that helped me to become far stronger than my addiction.
