How a young bartender is encouraging others to ‘push boundaries’ as mentor

Like many industries in SA, bartending has been slow to transform, but 24-year-old Mish Chinnah is trying to change that as one of 10 mentors in The Hand-Up Mentorship Programme launched by Diageo SA with the goal of offering mentorship to previously disadvantaged bartenders.

Since its inception, the 10 bartenders — who are some of the best in SA — have been mentoring 100 bartenders in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Chinnah, who is based in Joburg, brings a unique perspective, not only as the youngest mentor, but as a woman of colour.

“As one of the only female mentors in Johannesburg in The Hand-Up programme, and also the youngest, I hope the people in my group are inspired to push boundaries,” Chinnah says.

The nine-month programme kicked off in August last year to prepare the mentees for Diageo’s World Class competition that starts next month — a worldwide bartending competition that brings together top talent from around the globe.

Mentees for the programme were selected from bars that are Diageo SA customers, with a focus on black and female staff.

“We decided to focus on a diverse group of young women and black men bar staff as, every year, the Diageo Bar Academy gets solid entries from them, but they tend to drop off before the national finals and don’t make it into World Class.

“We want to focus on upskilling these bartenders by providing them with stock, equipment and training to practice mixing drinks to help them improve, thereby adding diversity to those working in the bartending industry,” said Zizwe Vundla, the marketing director for Diageo SA.

Chinnah, a former drama student who has been training as a bartender and mixologist since 2016, has entered the World Class Competition, and is now focusing on helping other contestants prepare for it.  

“Myself and the other mentors have all been lucky enough to go as far as we have because we’ve had guidance. And unfortunately not many people, especially women of colour, have the same kind of support,” Chinnah says. “They don’t have any support or they’re just not getting the right type of support where they’re being told by a man what the industry is like for them or what it is to compete.”

Chinnah’s approach goes beyond teaching her mentees the ins and outs of creating a great cocktail. She looks at things like what being a head bartender entails, how do you set up systems in a bar and navigating managerial problems — whether it’s your manager undermining you or you being undermined as a manager.

“I’m a minority in an industry that’s very male dominant [and] those are the things that actually give you confidence in your job and I see people that have that confidence exceed in a competition like World Class because they are more confident as a bar tender as opposed to confidence in creativity and skill.

Chinnah’s journey started as a part-time bartender during a gap year. This is where she met her mentor, Dominic Walsh, who Chinnah says trained and always supported her.

She went on to work at Rosebank’s Bolton Road Collection, helped open award-winning Mootee Bar in Melville and opened the nonalcoholic Niks bar in Rosebank, which ran for six months during Covid-19.

Since March, she is the operations and logistics manager at Just Short, a range of pre-bottled nonalcoholic cocktails in Johannesburg.

For those looking to start out in the industry, Chinnah offers a world of advice. “If you’re struggling to find the resources, we’re in the age where you can Google anything. It’s as easy as starting off with YouTube tutorials [so] feed your knowledge.”

Second, you need to start building a network, something, she says, which is as easy as sitting at a bar and chatting to a bartender.

Lastly, she encourages people not to be scared of the less glamorous jobs such as being a bar-back, something she says will teach you more than what you can learn.

A final takeaway from my conversation with Chinnah is that asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Like she says, “as much as people say fake it till you make it, I don’t feel like you have to if someone can guide you”.

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