Meet Randy Perez | Bar Lab RTS & Magic City Garnish Co-Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Randy Perez and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Randy, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I started in the hospitality industry at as a bar back at Broken Shaker one of the 50 best bars in the world. I quickly put my head down and worked towards moving up as a bartender by learning, studying, and practicing every night at work as well as on my off time at home. I quickly moved up to bartender, bar manager, beverage director and then partner of Bar Lab Consulting. Through this growth I learned how important yet time consuming bar prep is for the staff and what a strain it has on a program when done inconsistently. When Covid 19 happened all our projects where put on hold, however, I understood this wouldn’t be a permeant hold so I got to work and thought about what major issues would bars and restaurants have once reopened. I quickly came to the conclusion that labor, waste, and constancy would be the biggest challenges our industry would face when reopening venues.

Who knew how many guest would come to your bar or restaurant when things reopened and understanding that capacity would be limited due to the virus. Ordering produce would become a challenge as to over ordering with limited guest could be a huge factor in food waste and put a major financial strain on venues. Also, the factor of limited labor. With Labor shortages playing a major role in reopenings owners would have to prioritize what would be needed to keep up with service. This quickly became an issue for venues maintaining quality and consistency.

With these factors we created a business for beverage programs to eliminate labor in their back of house prep (Juicing, Infused syrup production, and garnish prep) all while giving these venues what we need as bar and restaurant owners which is quality and consistency.

The business was called Bar Lab RTS (Ready to Shake). We would juice citrus and cold press different fruits and blend the juice in the perfect ratios for balance with an arrangement of infused agaves then package in 3L bags. We then take them to be HPP’d. What this allowed us to do was treat the juice while cold through pressure which allowed us to gain a 90 day shelf life (if kept cold) on our blends without having to use heat to pasteurize which kills nutritional values and mutes flavors nor did we have to add any type of preservatives to the blends. We were able to maintain the fresh taste of the craft cocktails consumers have grown to enjoy and expect. What this did is eliminate all prep labor for the cocktails and allowed bartenders a balanced platform to build craft cocktails on while maintaining their creativity and speeding up service times during cocktail building. Now bartenders wouldn’t have to come in to prep ingredients and owners would be able to reallocate or save on scarce labor while the 90 day shelf life helped reduce waste completely.

Once this business took off we quickly realized another area venues needed help with to reduce labor, waste and increase consistency. This area was in garnish creation. Although bartenders didn’t have to prep syrups or juice daily anymore we found that they still had to cut garnish daily. Cutting fresh garnish can lead to tons of waste if garnish is over prepped for a shift that wasn’t busy when it was projected to be busy. These left over garnishes would be thrown away at the end of the night as they would be bad the next day. That being said we then started a Garnish company called Magic City Garnish you can visit us at www.magiccitygarnish.com. What we do is slice and dehydrate fruits we purchase locally and at peek seasons and dehydrate at low temperatures for long periods of time to achieve a dried garnish that still maintained its original color for the best quality garnish we could provide which set us apart from other companies who speed up the process and sacrifice quality for sheer volume. Now venues could order garnish and not worry about prepping in-house as well as saving the garnish for the next day of service as they did not need to be thrown away due to dehydration (a natural and old time way of preserving ingredients). Before starting this business we looked into the market for our competitors and analyzed what they did well an also what they were lacking. This was important if we wanted to set ourselves aside and create a company that was user friendly as well as produced the best quality product for each and every customer.

As both our business grow we constantly adapt and listen to feedback to adjust our product to make them better through social listening. It’s been such an amazing process and I keep learning more and more each day, as I feel like once you stop learning you stop growing. I’ve learned this through my growth through Broken Shaker, putting my ego aside to learn as much as I could and understanding I could always learn more no matter from whom. I take this now into my company as we grow into the future.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Growing up I knew from an early age I wanted to be an artist and started in visual arts programs from the age of 10. My median of choice was charcoal, pencil and ink. I’ve always been a creative person all my life and through art I was able to release and showcase my creativity to the world. One lesson I learned in my visual arts class in my freshmen year of collage was how every now and then we need to take a step back and see things from an outside perspective. As sometime we become so engulf in the moment while drawing what’s in-front of us we aren’t able to realize out protective is off and when we finish we step back and look at the finished product for the first time and the drawing is off. By taking a step back during the process we are able to see things from a more realistic prospective and make adjustments accordingly which helps create the best end result as humanly possible. This took my talent to the next level and elevated my art over night. After realizing school wasn’t for me I got into craft cocktails and saw how working with different fruits, citrus, spirits and manipulating different ingredients through culinary techniques to blend all together for this beautiful looking and tasting craft cocktail was another form or art just instead of charcoal, pencil and inks as a median instead it was fruits, vegetables, spices, spirits and liqueurs. I quickly fell in love and began my new form of art. Always applying the one lesson I learned in art class freshman year of collage to take a step back and see things from outside perspective. I have used this lesson in art, life and business and it continues to take me to the next level in all. Without this lesson I’m not sure of the person I would be today had I not learned it.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would recommend first taking a trip out to the homestead to see what Miami agriculture has to offer. Visiting farms and local fruit stands like “Robert Is Here” and “Burr’s Berry Farms” for the best strawberry ice cream made from strawberries from their farm you’ve ever tasted. For lunch I would say eat at a Miami Staple on South Beach called “la sandwicherie” and have an Italian on a fresh croissant dressed in their famous French dressing. After that I’d recommend a trip to the NORTH MIAMI beach to take in the sun and have pre dinner drinks at our bar “Broken Shaker” with dinner reservations at our restaurant next door called “27 Restaurant”. Chef Jimmy Lebron originally from Puerto Rico grew up locally in miami and uses all of his local connections to grow, purchase produce and fish from his garden on site, local farmers, and his in-house spear fisherman for the freshest taste of miami you’ll ever have in one dinning experience. After dinner we would finish the night at my favorite bar in miami “Sweet Liberty” for a night cap.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’d like to give a Shoutout to Bar Lab Hospitality Group who gave me there trust and support and believed in my concepts, ideas and me. They provided me the tools and assets to start these companies together. Also, I’d like to Shout out my partner in life Desiree Ramirez who helped me see myself worth and always pushes me to be better, opened minded and a listener in business and life. With out her influence/on-going influence I don’t know if I would have been able to achieve what we have done so far as a company and in life as well as what we are going to do in the future to grow.

Website: www.magiccitygarnish.com, www.bar-lab.com

Instagram: @Magiccitygarnish, @Randy1221, @barlabcocktails

Linkedin: Randy Perez

Facebook: Magic City Garnish

Image Credits
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