Awful Orpheus

[Con­tent note for misog­y­nist, racist and homo­pho­bic lan­guage]

It’s not often that I’ll go out of my way to write bad things about a hos­pi­tal­i­ty busi­ness, unless it’s a paid review­ing gig and the place is hope­less­ly dread­ful. But I’ll make an excep­tion when the expe­ri­ence is active­ly repug­nant and based upon a fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed con­cept. That place is Orpheus, a new cock­tail bar and restau­rant in Allen St.

Keen to try out a new cock­tail bar, six of us vis­it­ed on Sat­ur­day night. We were some­what scep­ti­cal of the Dom­Post’s claim that “born out of a rev­o­lu­tion­ary cock­tail cre­ation app that allows cus­tomers to con­coct bespoke booze using a tablet, the estab­lish­ment is the first of its kind in the world”, but were nev­er­the­less open to see­ing what hap­pened. Once seat­ed, we were offered a cou­ple of iPads in lieu of menus, and some of us were giv­en tuto­ri­als on how to use the app. That in itself was a wor­ry­ing sign: if a user requires detailed instruc­tions to order a drink (includ­ing “don’t press that but­ton: it’ll close the app”), the app isn’t doing its job. But it’s what we found when we final­ly nav­i­gat­ed the fid­dly fil­ters and bizarre “cock­tail fam­i­lies” that real­ly made our jaws drop in hor­ror.

With­out hav­ing to look far, we were con­front­ed with some of the most racist, misog­y­nist and homo­pho­bic drink names we’d ever encoun­tered. We’re not talk­ing about risqué cock­tails such as Sex On The Beach or Scream­ing Orgasms: such things are tire­some­ly juve­nile, but not deroga­to­ry. No, these includ­ed such gems as “Asian Fetish”, “Afghanistany (sic) Whore” and “Pil­low Biter”. Some might say that these are just words, and we should­n’t be too sen­si­tive. But any­one who’s been the vic­tim of vio­lence or harass­ment while being called a whore or a pil­low biter, or suf­fered from racial abuse or dis­crim­i­na­tion, will know that words are part of much wider sys­tems of oppres­sion, and can be active­ly harm­ful.

Now, I was far too polite and Eng­lish (and to be fair, too priv­i­leged as a straight white man to have been on the receiv­ing end of such slurs) to speak up at the time. But one of our group was not so cow­ard­ly, and demand­ed that the man­ag­er explain how such things end­ed up being pre­sent­ed to cus­tomers, why they thought it was accept­able, and what they planned to do about it. The response boiled down to two things: “but that’s what the cock­tails are called!” and “we did­n’t choose them; we got them from the inter­net”.

The first response sug­gests that they don’t real­ly see a prob­lem with the names, and that includ­ing these cock­tails under their exist­ing names is more impor­tant than not insult­ing their cus­tomers. How­ev­er, I doubt that any­one would miss these far-from-clas­sic con­coc­tions if they were omit­ted, or object if the “Creamy Punani” were renamed to some­thing less vile. It’s not like bowd­leris­ing Har­ry Crad­dock­’s Savoy Cock­tail Book.

The sec­ond response is an abdi­ca­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty that also reveals an under­ly­ing flaw in their “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” approach. If we’d com­plained about some bad shell­fish and been told “it’s not our prob­lem; they came from the mar­ket like that,” we’d be right­ly gob­s­macked by their neg­li­gence. It’s a cru­cial role of any hos­pi­tal­i­ty busi­ness to check the qual­i­ty of what they’re pre­sent­ing to cus­tomers, and that applies to lan­guage as well as ingre­di­ents. But Orpheus’ so-called “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” approach blind­ly out­sources that respon­si­bil­i­ty to the form­less morass of the inter­net, which any­one who runs a com­ments sug­ges­tion would tell you is a ter­ri­ble idea.

To their cred­it, they imme­di­ate­ly start­ed remov­ing some of the worst ones we men­tioned. But that sug­gests that either they did­n’t see the prob­lem with the names until we com­plained, or they did­n’t see them full stop. If the lat­ter, then it means they’ve nev­er even read the recipes, let alone test­ed them for taste, fea­si­bil­i­ty, pre­sen­ta­tion options and staff train­ing. That would explain the qual­i­ty of those we’d ordered at the start, few of which even aspired to medi­oc­rity. Of course, how can they expect their bar­tenders to be expe­ri­enced in mak­ing all 4000 or so cock­tails in their app? They’ll just be hav­ing a stab in the dark, based on a down­loaded recipe.

And here we reach the under­ly­ing struc­tur­al prob­lem with their approach, which tidy­ing up the cock­tail names (based on the rad­i­cal notion that women, LGBTQI peo­ple, sex work­ers and peo­ple of colour are human beings wor­thy of respect) would­n’t fix. Far from “a cock­tail cre­ation app that allows cus­tomers to con­coct bespoke booze”, their app just applies some clunky fil­ters to a long list of untest­ed recipes of unknown ori­gin, on the prin­ci­ple that quan­ti­ty out­weighs qual­i­ty. The tra­di­tion­al role of bar­tenders in col­lat­ing an appeal­ing, bal­anced and inven­tive drinks list has been aban­doned, replaced by the illu­sion that tech­nol­o­gy will offer con­sumers the late cap­i­tal­ist nir­vana of infi­nite choice.

This phi­los­o­phy is ascen­dant among Sil­i­con Val­ley start­up-bros, and it’s the same ide­ol­o­gy that’s giv­en us an inter­net drown­ing in click­bait, con­tent mills and chum box­es, but with sim­ple-mind­ed and poor­ly designed fil­ters in place of qua­si-intel­li­gent algo­rithms. It’s dis­rup­tive, in that it dis­rupts the “hos­pi­tal­i­ty” aspect of the hos­pi­tal­i­ty indus­try. It’s like Uber, but for undrink­able racist cock­tails.

The bar­tender no longer gets to talk to a cus­tomer, dis­cov­er their tastes, make rec­om­men­da­tions, nod sage­ly at their life prob­lems, dis­cuss the best ver­mouth for a Mar­ti­ni, invent deli­cious new cre­ations and gen­er­al­ly express their human­i­ty. Instead, an order pre­sum­ably pops up on the screen, togeth­er with a recipe they’ve nev­er seen before, and they mute­ly mix and shake their way through a shift as drink after drink is deliv­ered to face­less con­sumers. It’s mixo­log­i­cal Fordism: an assem­bly line of alco­holic medi­oc­rity.

Even if they removed the egre­gious­ly hurt­ful cock­tail names; even if they pared down their list to drinks they know work well; even if they fixed the UX night­mare of an app that does­n’t let you search by name but eas­i­ly lets you miss the cru­cial step of actu­al­ly order­ing a drink; even then one would have to ask: what does this approach offer that estab­lished cock­tail bars don’t?

It could be more effi­cient, if your idea of effi­cien­cy is being able to order by spir­it type (from a very lim­it­ed selec­tion) with­in a cat­e­go­ry called “Real Men Don’t Cry”. We some­times wish that some of our favourite bars weren’t quite so slow, but realise that artistry takes time. I can imag­ine sit­u­a­tions where a large num­ber of cus­tomers want to order cock­tails they’ve nev­er heard of before with the min­i­mum of wait­ing time and human inter­ac­tion: cruise ships, air­ports, back­pack­er bars, and chain pubs in sub­ur­ban strip malls. But giv­en that Orpheus intends to be “an art­sy, cul­tur­al venue”, I real­ly can’t see this approach being a win­ner.

Orpheus no doubt has some good peo­ple who could run a decent bar, and they don’t need my advice, but I’ll give it any­way. If you want to suc­ceed with a new cock­tail bar:

• empha­sise per­son­al ser­vice rather than mech­a­nised inter­faces;
• cre­ate your own unique cock­tails, as well as doing the clas­sics bril­liant­ly;
• don’t assume that your cus­tomers enjoy snig­ger­ing at the abuse of mar­gin­alised peo­ple;
• employ tal­ent­ed staff, train them well and pay them (at least) a liv­ing wage;
• trust your staff to col­late a nuanced drinks offer­ing, rather than scrap­ing the worst recess­es of the inter­net and get­ting that to do your work for you.