We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alberto Martinez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alberto below.

Hi Alberto, thanks for joining us today. Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

We started the bar with a team of 5 people, including me. It really was an interesting process, in which we hired people we already knew. They all , though none of them had worked making cocktails.
Imagine, I had formerly been HR manager, hiring lots of people, although in a completely different area (engineering).
But the basis doesn’t change, we needed people the fitted in our project.
Of course then it was more personal and I needed to learn more from them than ever.
No, I wouldn’t change any of what we made, that first team made the bar grow up.

Alberto, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I studied engineering and for more than 10 years worked in the field of renewables energies. Had never been professionally in contact with the hospitality industry (neither bar nor restaurant).
But the crisis of 2008/9 threw me away of my comfort area, that led me to travel for one year and, back in Madrid I had to think back about what I would do.
One thing led to another, nothing was in my mind at that time.
I started helping out one night a week in the bar of a friend and specially in a gin and vodka shop, where soon we started to offer gin&tonics and simple, classic cocktails to our clients.
This evolved into people coming more and more to drink cocktails and the shop evolved into a small cocktail bar.
It was for me something more similar to a hobby, but having lots of free time I studied a lot about my beloved classic drinks, the history of them and the old classic cocktail bars in America and the world, specially in the 19th century.
We had great success both in public and media but I always thought the shop had many problems , including the licensing as a bar.
Again, one thing led to another, there was an empty place (a former electronics shop) rith in front of the shop and we ended up renting it and creating a proper cocktail bar.
We had, again, plenty of time to think about the bar concept, and we saw it clear since the building had a plaque with the construction date being 1862, which is the same year i. which professor Jerry Thomas published in New York the first ever Bartenders’ Guide: “How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon Vivant Companion”.
A few things came up then to make us create a classic, old-school bar.
First of all, my interest in cocktail history and the coincidence of the 1862 date.
Then, the fact that I had not studied any bartending school, all my knowledge was fro. reading books and visiting bars. Hence, the cocktails I was able to make was simple classics
Third, the idea of the decoration of the bar, which merged the looks of the gin&vodka shop (victorian style) with the images of the traditional 19th century hotel bars in America.
The whole idea came together in a beutiful space, with a classic long, wooden bar, high ceilings, a huge mirror and two beautiful hanging lamps.
We called it, for sure, “1862”. Then added the suffix “Dry Bar” in order to help clients remember us.

That was May 2012, the bar has evolved with the passing of the years, we have learned a lot about hospitaliy and cocktail craft. But I really believe that the core idea of the place is the same.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

When I opened 1862 Dry Bar in Madrid, the city cocktail scene was in a changing moment. Many of the old classic bars were closed or in the edge of closing, except for three of them.
There had been a boom of new modern cocktail bars with Le Cabrera and O’Clock, which created a trend for young and trendy people.
But my idea was more close to the old classic bars than the new ones, and I stood in that.
I really think that classic , simple way of offering our drinks made us be very successful and made us the meeting point for the industry. New bartenders and brands people usually gathered at our bar for a Negroni, a Gin Fizz.
In two years, we were awarded Best Cocktail Bar of Spain.
Then internationally, I think we were in the right spot at the right time. The world trend for “modern classic bars” that started in New York and London at the begining of the century was big enough to create a

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

With the arrival of COVID we really needed to find new ways of bringing people to bars. Although Madrid was not extremeley strict like most European cities, we were forced to restrain capacity and to close as early as midnight.
I came up with strategies to bring clients in early hours, first with lectures on history of cocktails then inviting chefs for tasting menues at midday which included 3 cocktails and 3 dishes.
Particularly, this idea became very successful and we have kept on doing it almost every Sunday
This has brought us a whole new clientele that loves coming to these Sunday plans, many of them coming with friends that have learned about us from them.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @1862drybar
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
• Twitter: 1862drybar
• Youtube: https://www.yelp.com/biz/1862-dry-bar-madrid
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/1862-dry-bar-madrid
• Other: https://www.google.com/maps/place/1862+Dry+Bar/@40.4241629,-3.7065294,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0xd4228633e48c0cd:0x9a1d44a451285e4b!8m2!3d40.4241629!4d-3.7065294!16s%2Fg%2F12hlbvdnm?entry=ttu

Image Credits
Benjamin Sim José Anoro Alberto Cerrato