Made in Norway

The Bartender's Cheat Code

Finish the course and you come back prepared. A sharp professional, and a great colleague.

Audience. Routines. Taste. Built by Adrian Michalcik, Global World Class Winner, with a career spent at the top of the trade, and Kai Myhre, founder of CocktailClub, the operational hospitality software.

A is the Guest. R is working the shift. T is the drink itself. The course builds the confidence and the knowledge the basics of hospitality stand on. The second half is where the main recipe families come through. That is the cheat code of the trade: learn what every family is built on, and a memory of 150-plus recipes shrinks to nine essential families.

Built for the phone. One final exam. Six mini courses, each with a quiz. A verified certificate when you pass.

Get the course · $129 Seats for my staff Test your bar free · 3 minutes

The ten-question test scores instantly. Most bartenders get six or seven.

9:41

Question 2 of 10

How much does a bar spoon hold?

They all hold 2.5 ml, half a teaspoon, whatever the style

Depends on the spoon: American holds 5 ml, most European and Japanese hold 2.5

They all hold 5 ml, a full teaspoon, whatever the style

Nothing fixed, a bar spoon is a stirring tool, not a measure

Cocktail Club · Adrian Michalcik · The Aspiring Bartender Course

The quiz, as your team sees it

6mini-courses, phone format

10questions per quiz, fresh every retake

1supervised final examination

✓a credential anyone can verify

Why drinks shift

Nobody thinks they are doing it wrong.

Every bartender is doing it the way they were taught, and they were all taught somewhere different. One from a book, one from the internet, one from a manager two jobs ago.

The need is simple. One clear standard, learned the same way, so the guest stays for one more round because the person serving them clearly knows what they are doing.

Get the course · $129 Seats for my staff

The method

Nine structures carry almost everything on your menu.

Not two hundred recipes. Nine. A sour, a highball, a stirred spirit-forward drink and six more, each with a shape a bartender can hold and repeat. Learn the shape and the menu stops being a list to memorise and becomes a set of variations you can reason about, including the one a guest has just invented.

That is the shortcut the book is named for, and it is the same one your team learns here, aimed at the trade instead of the kitchen table.

The format

Made for the phone they already hold.

Your team already reads on their phone, and the course lives in the same place. Every chapter, every quiz and the final examination are built in phone format: short pages, clean type, ten questions at a time. A section fits between a prep shift and a service. It reads just as well on a laptop, but nobody has to sit down at one.

No classroom, no printouts, no login walls. The bar stays open while the team levels up.

The programme

Art of Bars.

The course is Adrian Michalcik’s programme, adapted. Global World Class Winner. He founded About Contrasts, one of Norway’s most respected bars, and he works as a bar developer and hospitality educator for hotels, resorts and bars around the world. Art of Bars is what he teaches them, and it divides the whole job into three letters.

Audience

The guest, before the glass. The difference between completing a transaction and making somebody feel genuinely looked after. Adrian puts it first on purpose: without guests there is no need for hosts, and everything technical that follows is in service of this.

Routines

The setup before the doors, the sequence of service, and the close that leaves the bar ready for the next shift. Routines sound like the dull part of the job. They are the opposite. They are what makes a person reliable, and reliability, repeated, is what makes a bartender.

Taste

The craft of the drink itself, from the families and the five tastes through ice, tools, technique and the serve. Most people imagine this is where bartending starts. Adrian places it third, because it is the easy part to learn and the last part to matter.

The order is the lesson. Learn to host, learn to run a shift, and the craft has somewhere to stand.

Finish the course and you come back prepared. A sharp professional, and a great colleague.

Get the course · $129 Seats for my staff

Six mini-courses with his teaching, a quiz on every one, and a named credential at the end of it.

How it runs

Study. Prove. Certify.

Six mini-courses

The room and the guest, responsible service, the fundamentals, glassware and spirits, tools and technique, and the Essential 9 cocktails.

A quiz closes each section

Ten questions drawn fresh from a large bank every attempt. Eight correct earns the section’s badge segment. Retakes are unlimited and never identical.

The badge

Six segments, one per section. A complete badge is a bartender who has held the whole standard, and it unlocks the final examination.

The supervised final examination

Twelve questions, twenty minutes, sat under a supervisor’s code. A pass issues a named credential with a verification link anyone can check.

Issued by The Bartender’s Cheat Code. The responsible partners behind the certification are Adrian Michalcik and, over time, IBA guild representatives who will be added as certifying partners. Recognised names in the trade stand behind it, not just a brand.

Get the course · $129 Seats for my staff

One payment, nothing to renew. $129 a seat, whatever the size of your team.

Before anything else

Find out where you actually stand.

Send your team the ten-question test. Three minutes, scores instantly, ten fresh questions every attempt so nobody can pass an answer down the bar. You will see the gap in an afternoon, and so will they, which is the part that makes them want the course.

Take it yourself

The course, priced

One payment. One named credential each.

Seat 1

The Aspiring Bartender Course

One seat. Your name on it.

A supervised final examination
A named credential anyone can check
Six parts of Adrian Michalcik’s Art of Bars
A quiz at the end of every part
Reads on a phone, a tablet and a desk

Yours for good. Nothing to renew, no seat to lose.

The certificate carries your name and a link anyone can check, so it is worth showing to a manager who has never met you.

Signed by Adrian Michalcik and Bartender Cheat Code.

yours for good

One seat ·

129 USD

Get the course

The venue

Seats for your team

The whole bar, on one tab.

One seat is one bartender, one name, one credential.

A seat is not a licence to pass around. Whoever opens one puts their name to it and keeps it, which is why a certificate from us means the person holding it sat the examination.

$129 a seat, whether you take three or thirty.

for the bar

How many bartenders

$129 a seat at any size. No tiers to work out.

3 seats, total ·

387 USD

Get seats for my team

Checkout opens shortly. Both buttons take you to the access form below, and we come back with your payment link the same day.

For hotels and venues

Bring it to your venue.

Your manager pays once, every bartender gets a seat, every seat ends in a named credential. Tell us who you are and we come back the same day with the payment link and your team’s access.

One standard behind the bar.

Every drink the same. Every night. Confidence for every bartender you employ, quality your guests can taste.

Get the course · $129 Seats for my staff

Part of the Cocktail Club universe

Cocktail Club is the platform this course sits inside: the recipes and menus your bar builds and keeps, and the daily routines behind it. The credential your bartenders earn here belongs to them, and it travels with them.

Get the course · $129 Seats