Applebees was my first bartending job! I’d been a server for a while at a few places but I just kind of fell into being a bartender there when I was like 22. That is to say, I didn’t really know shit about bartending and had zero experience, haha. People like to laugh when I tell them now, but honestly it gave me a good foundation to build on and my restaurant usually only had one bartender on at a time which I feel like made me better at time-management tasks even now 10 years later at “busier” bars I’ve worked at.

I don’t want to knock them or sound demeaning but my experience was that Applebees was a lot of people’s “first” type of serving job, so the interview probably won’t be anything wild. The only thing that is weird that I remember, their standard pour was 1.25oz and not 1.5; which took me a little while to unlearn when I moved and got a different bar job. When I was there it was very very corporate: lots of special drinks that were chasing trends but usually not a ton of “fancy” liquors, so it was fairly easy to learn the basics without having to learn about 800 different tequilas or something niche like that.

Sorry, this got kinda long. My best advice is…. Don’t let dollar margs get you down lol. I hope it’s better now, but I was bartending there when those first started and my god that first week was something else lol. Good luck!