The other day, I mentioned the buy back in the office and received blank stares from my younger coworkers. The internet seems to have forgotten about the practice as well. Google yields few results. A Bon App piece from 2017. Something by Esquire in 2015. This lack of written proof tracks, since the buy back itself was always something of an unwritten rule.
So just what was that practice? A buy back was when a bartender decided to bless you with a free drink – that’s it. The buy back was simple, economical, and, most importantly, magical, as I learned the first time I received one. It probably occurred on a third or fourth round, the gruff bartender pulling my friend and me two fresh pints and slopping them across the countertop. Beyond the four or five bucks saved, it was the good feeling the freebie engendered that was so memorable. We’d cracked some kind of code, both been anointed – “these two, they’re alright, huh?”
The tradition
“A buy back is an investment in someone,” says Dan Risch, co-owner of King Tai in Crown Heights. Before opening up his own place, Risch put in years behind popular Soho dive Botanica Bar, where the buy back was considered the cost of doing business. It’s a grey area he allows his own bartenders to still trade in today, providing the customer seems to warrant such treatment. “You give it to the people who you know are going to stay for a long time, or come back again and again. If a regular shows up sometimes you even buy them their first drink.”
The buy back has always been at the bartender’s discretion, especially in the post prohibition days. In fact, it was often the bartender who was the draw (truly the Peloton instructors of their time), courting customers more than the bar did itself, and owners—flush with cash thanks to cheap rent and real estate—made sure their stars had the proper tools to keep those customers loyal.
“Bartenders were the rock stars of the early 20th century, and, just as rock stars get a big pyrotechnics budget to fill arenas, owners gave bartenders their own tool to draw in crowds – the unspoken discretion to give away freebies.”-Michael Y. Park, Bon Appétit
So what happened?
Given the buy back’s place in drinking culture, why did it more or less disappear? Free drinks are fun, right? And being made to feel like you belong? All the better for business.
As Jeff Bell, proprietor of PDT, has witnessed firsthand, our drinking attitudes have shifted. Drinking, he’d argue, has evolved into a more premium experience.
“Twenty years ago, bars were more session drinking on lower quality, high margin products – beer and a shot. At a neighborhood bar, you could serve four beers and then say, ‘next one is on us.’ That’s much easier to do in a crowded bar. But with the evolution of bar culture, we’ve seen the cocktail become the centerpiece of the experience, and that’s a high-ticket item.”
Centerpieces are what Bell and his staff serve at PDT, as anyone who’s sipped a Chartreuse Swizzle can attest, and these type of beverages require time, effort, and money, especially when seats are limited. Not only is it economically inadvisable to give out a complex $25 cocktail, but it devalues the product, and thus the entire experience.
“Keens isn’t going to send out an additional porterhouse,” Bell says. “Maybe they send some crab cakes, a wedge salad, or a complimentary dessert.”
The same holds for PDT. Bell gives his bartenders guardrails of when to make a guest feel special with something extra, and these extras often come in the form of food (it all depends: sometimes it’s on a guest’s third visit, sometimes it’s on their fifth). In Bell’s view, this is the more responsible version of the buy back.
“Cocktails have high gravity. If you give a regular food, they can still operate a car afterwards.”
That said, Bell will make some exceptions within reason.
“I like to do experiential things. If I’ve got a bottle of l’Abricot du Roulet, which is $100 a liter apricot liqueur and they’ve never heard about it? I’ll bring it over for a little taste.” Bell pauses over the phone, thinks. “Money is so lame but human connection is what makes this business so cool.”
You get what you give
Directly across the street from PDT, the buy back is alive and well at Romeo’s, only it comes in a much smaller form – a house Jäger shot from their customized Jägerator, or a blend of coffee and Teremana Reposado. And what unlocks said shots? Again, it’s human connection, and the onus is put equally on the guest as it is the bartender.
“If you're kind, gracious, and putting good energy out there, there's no way I’m sending you out the door without a free shot,” Romeo’s co-owner Evan Hawkins says. "You give what you get."
But forging this connection can be harder now, with guests more distracted than ever by their phones and the constant media and information overload we’re all barraged by daily. Risch, who’s built part of his business on the conviviality of having regulars, sees it often at King Tai, especially among younger guests, who he speculates might not even recognize the good hospitality of receiving a buy back, let alone expect one.
"Bargoers nowadays don’t even know how to behave," Risch tells me with a laugh. "It's definitely caused by the phone, no one is paying attention to their surroundings, which has probably caused this inability for them to engage in a proper way of being, like, professional bargoers, and therefore getting the buy back. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone would be startled by it.”
last time i got offer a drink was during my last trip in SF; I received a cafe Latte at Blue Bottle in Mission Bay- i can attest the special feeling it creates.