We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kellymarie Otto. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kellymarie below.
Kellymarie, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Back in 2020, I had let go of my chocolate pairing business a year prior (2019) and had an idea to make cocktail garnishes and other cocktail related items to sell on a website. I claimed the domain of Gar-Niche so I could make niche garnishes. We then hit the road to travel across 15 states, which eventually led us back to California. I still had the domain, had done nothing with it, and needed to come up with a part time job. With over 20 years of bartending experience, of which 6 of those years were mobile bartending under another company, I decided to start my own mobile bar business. I am still creating niche garnishes with obtaining fun dried and herb accompaniments for my weddings and special events. This job allowed me to be flexible with family and other work, but still be creative and do the work I enjoy most. 2022 is when Gar-Niche private events bartenders started and we have a steady clientele of around 1-3 weddings per month. Other events do pop up in between. I have really have had a great time doing mocktails recently, and hope to keep pursuing that aspect of the business. The California mid-state fair has a mixologist competition every year that I have been in the wedding business and we compete in that with a local distillery. I get excited about new drinks and ways to make magic happen for my clients special days.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I was born, raised and currently live on the Central Coast of California. I grew up in Shell Beach, CA and moved to Atascadero, CA when I was 10 years old. That was around the time that you could still have kids sit up at the bar. Mothers Tavern was a special spot that we would have at Shirley Temple and my parents would have their cocktails. I loved watching the bartenders work behind the bar, the drinks being shaken, and the laughter in conversations all around me. At that moment I knew that I wanted to be a bartender when I grew up. Through my teenage years to twenty, I would practice making drinks for friends and small parties. When I turned 21, I went through a bartender course that consisted of a manager-like 80’s male bartender telling you how to make drinks and set up a bar….ashtray and all. I then found a job at the Holiday Inn and Suites in Santa Maria, CA as a server and moved quickly up to the hotel bartender. Around that time, my Step-Father, Ronald Subia passed away from a sudden heart attack. I moved back up to Atascadero shortly after, walking away from my hotel bartender job. Soon I made my way up to Paso Robles, CA where I picked up bar tending once again. McClintocks was where I would end up for a bit, while I learned about wine. Got a job as a weight master for J. Lohr for a season, worked with Mat Garretson for this winery, and eventually found myself working for a bar called Downtown Brew for a short stint. That is when I fell into the job of the patio bartender for Pappy McGreggors (past names The Crooked Kilt and The Kilt) and I started on their second year anniversary St. Patricks Day! I called it baptism by fire since it was the wildest bunch of people I had ever served. I stayed there for 7 years, and in that time I worked for a number of wineries, met my husband, got married, and left Pappy’s when I was almost 8 months pregnant with my first child. I then turned my live to wine and working at CASS, Edward Sellers, and Summerwood, In that time, I began making pairing chocolates for individual wineries. I started working Zinfandel Festivals (while pregnant with child two), Paso Robles & Atascadero Wine festivals, GARAGISTE Fest in Solvang, Paso Robles, and even Los Angeles, CA! The Chocolate Stache was a fun business for a number of years and had two years at Hospice D’Rhone. In 2019, I decided to let the business go for family reasons and that it was going to cost a lot of money to get a shop up and running. It ended up being a blessing in disguise with 2020 in the future. I was working for a mobile bar company in between chocolate, and 2020 back to bar tending on weekends for weddings and special events. My husband Nicholas Otto was the executive chef at Castoro at the time, and we both were out of a job during the lock down year. So we hit the road and traveled over 15 states, this side of the Mississippi to spend 6 weeks in Crosslake, MN. We fell in love with being near a lake at that time. Weather happened and we high tailed it back to San Miguel, CA. Spent a year in an RV on family property to save up enough to move out to Lake Nacimiento and buy a house. Back in 2020 I purchased the domain www.gar-niche.com with the intention of making it a bar product sale site. I let it fall to the wayside when we went on our adventure to visit National parks. After moving to Heritage Ranch, I decided to move on with the domain and create my own mobile bar business. Gar-Niche Private Events Bartenders became my new business baby with some growing pains. Weddings have had their ups and downs since 2020, and the possibility of people meeting to eventually get married was lowering the number of weddings. That being a little bit of a hurdle, I pressed on with it and competed with the business for the Mixologist Competition at the California Mid State Fair. I love it because I am surrounded by all the people who have worked with me, for me, beside me, and who I have come to admire their amazing talents over the last 20 years. It then pushes me to new ways of approaching drink ideas, garnishes, and execution in a timely manner for customers. I live in a very talented area of bartenders and appreciate all the hard work they have all done. Some of my most inspiring bartenders in the area are Tiki Tony (of Alchemist Garden), Robyn Wolf (of Della’s and Hatch), and Austin Sanderson (of Fish Gaucho). Over 20 years on the central coast of bar experience and I am reaching for more.
Have you ever had to pivot?
My pivot story is based on the fact that I started with bar tending and then I went to chocolate. After having my son, a conversation came up with a few friends on pairing chocolates for wine tasting. I thought that maybe my experience with making drinks would help with the creation of flavors and my years of working in the wine business in my pocket. It was very successful to the point that I would almost grow out of my cottage food licensing. I needed to expand, but my son’s needs were more important at the time. Bar tending on the weekends was a more manageable schedule for that, so I went back to what I knew best. It was a constant pivot at that point once 2020 happened. Resilience with people wanting to drink creative drinks pushed me forward with this. I had to constantly think outside the box.
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
As previously mentioned, I did work for another mobile bartender business. It was every Saturday from 2017 to 2020 working weddings, college fraternity and sorority family day, memorials, and birthday parties. I would drive all over the central coast and make tips with a minimum wage. Sometimes the tips didn’t even pay for my gas for the trip. By 2021, I was really over being shuffled around and I wanted to make my own schedule on where I would bar tend. I used the Gar-Niche website to kick off my own mobile bartender business. I was not welcomed by the wedding industry community at first since I did work for one of the top mobile businesses on the central coast. The competition was fierce, at that time, since weddings were on the down slide after COVID. I pushed through and tried to be at every promo event I could for the first two years. I slowly got traction and some personal references to book more events. Every year the number of events doubles from the previous year. I know it will plateau at some point, but there is definitely more room for growth. In the meantime, I do fill my other days with working for Sensorio in Paso Robles as a part time bartender.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.gar-niche.com
- Instagram: Gar-Niche
- Facebook: gar.niche805
- Linkedin: Kellymarie Otto
- Yelp: Gar-Niche Private Events
Image Credits
Dylan Kyle Photography Instagram/dylankylephotography
Brittany App : App’s Photography www.appsphotography.com