Meet the Mixologist: Shana Race of TalkTales Entertainment

Shana Race

We’ve all had to make adjustments since March 2020, and while the hospitality industry overall has taken a major hit, there are also several stories of pandemic pivots that brought prosperity—and they are well worth sharing. Mixologist Shana Race and her company TalkTales Entertainment is one of them. After losing her bartending job at Bar Franca in Downtown Los Angeles due to COVID-19, she’s been serving up success via virtual cocktail classes, signature cocktail kits, and a popular podcast, which was already underway pre-pandemic. However, corresponding in-person events had just started picking up steam when the city shut down.

“We began doing live events with the podcast, live cocktail competitions, and brand sponsorships. We started getting money coming in, and then I had an opportunity to teach cocktails in person at Bar Franca,” says Race. “Things took off really quickly.”  Within three months Race was booking all her classes and making a living doing them just one day a week. The last class she booked was the day after all the bars locked down, so she had to cancel it. “It was completely full,” she adds, “and it was the only glimpse of a potential payout for the foreseeable future.” Race packed up all of her tools, went home, and was unsure what was going to happen next.

Going Online

After wallowing for about a week, she had her “ah-ha” moment. “I thought, ‘I have an opportunity here. I realize that. No one is given a gift of time. This could be amazing, so I took my in-person class platform and flipped it into the virtual space.” After Race posted it on Eventbrite, people responded. “I think there was only one other cocktail class at that point on there, and it took about the same pace as doing it in person—around three months—until I really started getting booked, booked, and booked.” Once the snowball effect started rolling though, Race got so busy she was having a difficult time managing everything. She went on Reddit to search for help with marketing and negotiating deals for all of the corporations and gigs that were reaching out to her for everything from company holiday parties to anniversaries, bachelorette parties, and friends needing to connect.

After partnering with a company called Vanguard, TalkTales grew 3000% between October and December 2020. They also launched cocktail kits, which come complete with three craft drinks and a class with her or one of the members of her team, and sold 561 of them—in just 12 days. Since pivoting her in-person, private events business to teaching virtual cocktail classes that she now runs globally, Race has evolved from jobless bartender to a successful CEO. “At this point we’re teaching cocktails classes to Fortune 500 companies such as Amazon, Boston Consulting Group, Florida Tech, and Harvard Law. We’re rebooking companies, and we’re sending kits out every day,” she reveals. “What has been really incredible about this entire thing is that everyone thought we were going to be really far apart from each other. I’ve witnessed everyone coming together in an incredible way—and not just our neighbors. I connect with people all over the world. I taught people in Australia, and I got to hear about their experiences going on with COVID-19 as well as tell them about mine. I have Spanish-speaking teachers who taught classes in Uruguay. I have bartenders in France who are teaching classes for my brand. What started off as one of most secluding, scary events has ended up for my company—and me personally—being one of the most connecting experiences of my life.” And she’s just getting started.

The Future

Moving into 2021, TalkTales will be scaling the business. They’ll be partnering up, investing in the company, and building out a new, user-friendly website set to launch in early February. It will be an all-encompassing, one-stop-shop for the bartending community, an e-commerce platform where anyone can come on, pick their cocktail kits (in compliance with states for shipping), choose their bartender, their experience, where in the world they are and book their event. “We take care of everything, and we're the only company I know of that does that.”

As far as the challenges Race faced when it came to bringing in-person experiences online, getting into the Zoom groove (technology aside) and learning how to engage with other people in a virtual environment wasn’t easy. “In the beginning, it was such a new communicative space that it was kind of weird and awkward. I really had to what I do best as a bartender, which is to provide hospitality. Normally, we’re the host of a party every single night, and when you're face-to-face with somebody, it's natural and easy to get them having a good time,” she explains. “Whereas when it’s virtual space dividing us—even though everyone is there on screen—it takes a little more finesse and willingness to let loose myself to get people feeling comfortable. We are here to bring spirits back with spirits. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

shana race podcast logo

Race adds that she knows so many people in the companies she works with that have lost a touch of something unique to them. “Maybe it’s their happy hours at bars or the holiday party at the end of the year. So many companies have put so much time into creating these special spaces for their employees that were just ripped away from them,” she says. “It’s a huge deal for me, and anyone who’s done the classes for my company. That’s it—all pretentious bar stuff aside. I don’t care if you know how to make the craziest, coolest cocktail on the planet. Our goal is to get these people to make their coolest cocktail on the planet, loosen up, have a good time, and engage in a weird virtual space.” Race also wants to make sure that everyone who attends TalkTales’ events can make themselves a craft cocktail, understand how to make the cocktail, and how to make the formulas of how to make the cocktail. “Even after the class, they can take those formulas, look in the cabinet and their bar to be able to recreate what we did, and continue to make bar-quality cocktails at home.”

The biggest realization Race came to from her experiences in 2020 is that everything she has tried to do in her past—that maybe didn’t necessarily move forward in some successful project—has given her a knowledge piece that fits perfectly into what she is doing now. “I haven’t really attacked anything in this project that I haven’t already learned, and in doing this, I’ve also learned a valuable tool of problem-solving,” Race explains. “Anytime I’ve been hit with some type of a barrier, I describe it like this: People want to run straight and get what they want, but if you think about when you’re physically running, you never get to just run straight. You have to move around barriers and obstacles, whether it be a traffic jam or a person, to get to the end destination. You might even have to turn back a few times, but when you do that, you’re navigating these problems. They’re not stopping you.”

Speaking of not stopping while we wait for life to return to “normal,” one of Race’s other goals for 2021 is to try and help get work flowing for other bartenders who need it as long as they meet her hiring criteria. “I don't think the virtual space is going to going away. I think people are going to be excited about going back to the bar, but there are still companies that have employees all over the world,” she concludes. “There are friends who went college that don’t get to see each other—except maybe once a year. Now we can do a cocktail class anytime, all the time, every day, to get people together.” As Race says: When life gives you lemons, why not make a Tom Collins?