E276 Michelle Freed
From Long Beach to World Class Top 15
In this episode of The Industry Podcast, we sit down with Michelle Freed, a bartender currently behind the stick at The Mermaid in Downtown LA's Little Tokyo. Michelle traces her hospitality career back to age 15, working at Polly's Pies, through a stint as a general manager at Panera Bread, and into her first cocktail bar job in LA roughly a decade ago. She credits the Long Beach cocktail scene — and a mentor she met there — with pushing her to take craft cocktails seriously and start entering competitions.
The conversation centers on Michelle's run in Diageo's World Class, where she advanced from an initial field into the Top 15 this year. She walks through the multi-round format — a pantry-list cocktail, a free-choice Diageo-portfolio cocktail, a classic, and eventually a six-cocktail themed menu and live presentations in front of judges. Michelle also opens up about how the competition experience previously outpaced the support she got from her former bar, and how that contributed to her decision to move on to a new role.
Dan and Kypp dig into the bigger picture too: why competition culture matters for the wider bartending community, how the industry has shifted from secrecy to openness around recipes and technique, and Michelle's evolving plans to eventually open her own bar — including a scaled-down mobile/pop-up concept as a lower-risk way to build an audience before committing to a full build-out.
Also discussed:
- Michelle's move from El Segundo's neighborhood-bar scene to Downtown LA
- Her Speed Rack Fast Track experience
- The pantry-list and prompt-based rounds of World Class judging
- Foraging local ingredients (loquat syrup) for her competition menu
- The disconnect between "global" bartender-community recognition and local bar culture
- Using scotch as a base spirit in tiki-style drinks
- Social media strategy for an eventual bar or pop-up launch
Connect with Michelle Freed
A big thank you to Jean-Marc Dykes of Imbiblia. Imbiblia is a cocktail app for bartenders, restaurants and cocktail lovers alike and build by a bartender with more than a decade of experience behind the bar. Several of the features of the platform include the ability to create your own Imbiblia Recipe Cards with the Imbiblia Cocktail Builder, rapidly select ingredients, garnishes, methods and workshop recipes with a unique visual format, search by taste, using flavour profiles unique to Imbiblia, share recipes publicly plus many more....Imbiblia - check it out!
Contact the host Kypp Saunders by email at [email protected] for products from Elora Distilling and Noble Estates.
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