Knowing how to make an excellent cocktail can open plenty of doors in a hotel bar. Building a career, however, requires learning skills that never appear in the glass: controlling costs, reading a P&L, managing inventory, understanding supply chains and forecasting, working across departments and, above all, learning how to lead people. That is the shift that separates a strong bartender from someone who can aspire to become a bar manager, beverage manager or, eventually, beverage director.
Sotiris Konomi has just made that transition at Raffles London at The OWO. After leading The Spy Bar, he was promoted to Beverage Manager for the entire property, taking responsibility for the hotel’s beverage program while retaining the title of “Head of Spies,” as he likes to call it. His experience offers a practical framework for anyone hoping to build a career in luxury hospitality. The first lesson is about how you see the bar itself: stop thinking of it solely as a creative space and start understanding it as a business.
8 Lessons From Sotiris Konomi on Managing a Hotel Bar With Purpose
“The real turning point in my career came when I stopped looking at the bar as just a creative hub and started treating it as a serious business unit,” Konomi says. “I focused heavily on the commercial side of things, mastering inventory control, understanding how a premium pour impacts the bottom line and proving I could maintain luxury standards consistently.”
Learn the Business, Not Just Mixology
This is perhaps the most important piece of advice for anyone hoping to move beyond an operational role. Technique remains the foundation, but at management level the vocabulary changes. Costs, margins, waste management, ROI and forecasting become as much a part of the job as spirits, fermentation and clarification.
“Business acumen, ownership, emotional intelligence, project management and data fluency are becoming increasingly important. The modern beverage leader needs to be as comfortable analyzing a P&L as they are balancing a cocktail flavor profile. Technical skills may open the door, but business awareness, leadership and commercial understanding are what help professionals grow.”
On this point, Konomi is unequivocal. “Financial literacy and commercial awareness are non-negotiable. If you want to move into senior management, you need to understand the commercial side of the business as well as the operational side. If you cannot speak the language of margins, waste management, forecasting and ROI, you will struggle to champion your ideas effectively at the executive table. Great leaders create value, but they also know how to measure and deliver it.”
Understand How the Entire Hotel Works
One of the advantages of building a career in a large hotel is exposure to an organization far more complex than a standalone cocktail bar. Konomi believes anyone who wants to progress should treat that structure as an education in itself.
“In a luxury hotel environment, your education goes far beyond the glass. Of course you learn how to create exceptional cocktails, but you also gain exposure to cross-departmental collaboration, commercial strategy, guest experience, events, culinary operations and the wider business of hospitality. Large hotel groups also invest heavily in learning and development, leadership training and talent progression, while offering access to international networks and structured pathways into management, new openings or opportunities abroad.”
Curiosity about what happens outside your own department can therefore become a career accelerator. Purchasing, finance, marketing, events, culinary operations and front office stop being departments you simply work with and become parts of a system that any future manager needs to understand.
Sotiris Konomi, Act Like a Manager Before You Become One
A promotion rarely begins on the day your job title changes. According to Sotiris Konomi, the people who progress fastest tend to assume responsibilities beyond their formal job description long before they are given a new position.
“Among those who want to grow, the biggest differentiators are curiosity and a sense of ownership. The people who progress are rarely focused solely on their own role. They look at the bigger picture, ask questions about other departments, seek out mentors and take a genuine interest in how the business operates as a whole. They treat the venue as if it were their own. Rather than simply identifying problems, they bring solutions.”
Make Your Team Independent
It may sound counterintuitive, but earning greater responsibility often means learning how to become less indispensable in your current role. Konomi calls it “duplicating yourself.”
“I focused on training and empowering my team so thoroughly that The Spy Bar could run flawlessly even when I wasn’t on the floor. Implementing those structures and leadership habits is exactly what allowed me to step away from the daily grind of a single bar and transition into managing beverage programs on a hotel-wide scale.”
That skill becomes particularly important in a large hotel. Overseeing multiple outlets means giving up direct control over every decision and developing people who can exercise good judgment in your place.
Sotiris Konomi: Lead Different People Differently
The higher you climb, the more the job becomes about people. And this, Sotiris Konomi argues, is where one of the most difficult skills comes into play — one that no training program can fully teach.
“You cannot lead or motivate two people in exactly the same way. In a team of 10, 15 or 20 people, you are working with different personalities, backgrounds, ambitions and motivations. As a leader, your role is to understand each individual and find the best way to support them while remaining fair and consistent across the team. A training program can teach you how to conduct a performance review, but it cannot teach you how to recognize when a high-performing team member is quietly burning out, or how to rebuild someone’s confidence after a difficult service.”
Build Relationships Before Chasing a Promotion
Ambition matters, but in a hotel there are clear limits to individual talent. No beverage program functions without constant collaboration with culinary teams, purchasing, finance, marketing, events and the rest of the property.
“Before you earn a promotion, you need to earn your team’s trust and build strong relationships with other departments. If people do not enjoy working with you or do not trust you, it will slow down your development, no matter how ambitious you are. Ambition should not only be about your own career. It should also be about helping the people around you grow.”
Do Not Confuse Visibility With Career Progression
In a bar industry where awards, rankings and social media can accelerate a bartender’s visibility, Konomi sees the pursuit of immediate recognition as one of the most common mistakes.
“Ego, arrogance and short-term thinking are some of the biggest obstacles to career growth. One common mistake is becoming defensive when receiving feedback. Another is focusing too much on immediate recognition — social media attention, industry awards or personal visibility — before mastering the fundamentals. Long-term success is built on financial awareness, operational consistency, service excellence and the ability to lead and develop people.”
Sotiris Konomi: Invest in Emotional Intelligence
If he had to choose one quality among talent, discipline and emotional intelligence, Sotiris Konomi would choose the last. It is also the lesson that best ties the others together.
“Talent might open the door and discipline ensures consistency day to day, but emotional intelligence is what allows you to truly lead. In luxury hospitality, it is the ultimate differentiator. It enables you to connect genuinely with guests, navigate complex environments and inspire a diverse team to move in the same direction. It is what builds trust and shapes culture.”
For a young bartender who dreams of becoming a Beverage Director one day, Konomi reduces the path to something very practical: “Learn how the hotel operates beyond the bar doors — supply chains, tenders, cost controls and the commercial thinking behind every project. Always understand the intended outcome and adapt your approach accordingly. Most importantly, focus on people skills. How you handle pressure and how you treat people will ultimately shape your trajectory.”
Because building a career in a hotel bar certainly means becoming better behind the counter. The decisive step, however, comes when you learn to understand everything that happens beyond it.
Photo by Emanuel Florentin x Coqtail – all rights reserved
