Stuart Bale started collecting glasses in a Glasgow nightclub at 16. He taught himself Cocktail-style flair tricks with the dirty glassware, and by his early twenties he'd opened bars in Edinburgh and landed a head bartender role in London at one of the most innovative cocktail bars in the world. Today, he runs Crucible — a flavour consultancy working with everyone from startup spirits brands to Cointreau, from Michelin-starred restaurants to Fortnum & Mason.
Hospitality has a remarkable ability to give young people something rare: real responsibility, real skills, and a real sense of belonging, from almost day one. For those willing to throw themselves in and pay attention, the industry doesn't just offer a job. It offers a foundation.
In this Career Spotlight, Stuart opens up about fainting in dentistry school, what two decades in the drinks industry does to your relationship with alcohol, and why Covid forcing him to rebuild from scratch turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to his business. Oh, and if you're a consultant who thinks the work is about your own vision rather than your client's? He has some very direct words for you.
What was the journey that led you to your current role?
I started working in hospitality as a glass collector in Glasgow when I was 16. I fucking loved it. The venue was called Tusk and it was part of a group called G1. The bar guys kind of took me under their wing, showed me the film Cocktail, and I was hooked. I took great pride in trying to be the absolute best glasswasher I could be, making sure everything was super tidy and clean.
I got really into doing flair routines with the dirty glasses and bottles and ended up becoming the barback for a company called Liquid Assets which was doing all these kind of mad high end parties. All of the older guys I was working with were great at teaching me cocktail recipes before I could legally sell them. I actually ended up working on my 18th birthday, I was buzzing to finally be able to legally pour drinks.
In amongst this I had gone to university, also in Glasgow, to study dentistry. With hindsight, somewhat bizarrely, I had always wanted to be a dentist. I really liked the idea of how much you could improve people’s lives by fixing their teeth. When I got there, I found out you had to practise on actual dead people’s heads. This really did not agree with me, and I kept fainting in those classes. Probably did not help that in the evenings I was living this double life, learning hospitality, learning partying. I lasted a year of dentistry.
I moved to Edinburgh and did two or three years there, working in cocktail and party bars, had a blast, opened a couple of places, and dipped a toe into “management”, which at that time really just meant locking up and cashing up. When I moved to London at 22 I wasn’t really too excited about it and said to myself I could do five years: think of it like university, go away having learned a bunch and see where it takes you. Here I am 18 years later, haha.
I ended up opening a bar called 69 Colebrooke Row as head bartender in 2009. At that time we were one of, if not the most “sciency” cocktail bar in the world. We won a bunch of awards and I was able to use a lot of the stuff I had learned in chemistry and biology in the drinks. I started using rotovaps and centrifuges on the daily to do prep, which was pretty much unheard of in those days.
After a couple of years there, I started working with the guys at Strange Hill doing various consultancy type jobs. I made Absolut Craft with Nick Strangeway, and opened The London EDITION with Henry Besant. We wrote a load of the training programmes for the fledgling Diageo World Class competition, which I really enjoyed because I was able to get really in depth and geeky. Looking back on those now, it’s kind of crazy how ubiquitous some of the things that were proper cutting edge at the time have become.
After five years at Strange Hill I left and did a ski season, as I’d always wanted to and figured it was now or never. It was an absolute riot, but one was enough. When I came back in 2017 I wanted to set up myself as a consultant to the drinks industry, similar to what I was doing at Strange Hill but for myself. I quickly found that I was destroying my kitchen, and not able to put out work to the standard that I was happy with.
This was around the same time as the rise of WeWork and I thought that if normal people with real jobs could have a shared working space, then I could make something like that but for people working with flavours. So while my peers were opening their own bars etc, I opened Crucible.
Now there are three main revenue streams at Crucible.
- New Product Development (NPD). We do recipe development for both new and existing brands. That can be at startup level, up to helping out Cointreau making their Citrus Series recipe.
- Operational support. We help make your bars run better. Staff training, menu development, keeping staff motivated, and helping out with the more aspirational side of things. We help out the bars at Fortnum and Mason, and Signature Group in Scotland amongst others. We helped out Nieves with the drinks at Legado last year.
- Brand engagement. Drinks brands come to us when they need a compelling or interesting hook to get bartenders excited about their product. That can be hosting groups of bartenders at Crucible and showing off some drinks, or writing articles, or writing speeches for the brand ambassadors.
What’s been the hardest thing about your career journey so far, and how did you get through it?
I think that most people who’ve had a 20 year career in the drinks industry have, at some point, had to reevaluate their relationship with alcohol in some form or another. And if they haven’t, either lucky them or maybe they should.
At some point a couple of years into Crucible I veered more into the dependent side of things and it took quite a lot of work to get to a place I am comfortable in. I don’t feel I could do my work if I was totally dry, so working out sensible boundaries and keeping them in place was, and always will be, challenging. It’s a constant conversation with myself.
What’s the realistic salary range for your role? At entry level, mid-career, and at the top.
Ha! That’s a good question. I’m still trying to get my head around running a business and I would say it seems like a particularly challenging climate to be running a small business these days.
How has your earning potential changed over time, and what has influenced those jumps, plateaus or dips?
At Crucible of course we are subject to the vagaries of the drinks industry. Aside from crises like Covid, things seem to move in cycles, from my point of view.
I think I’m quite lucky in that Crucible offers three distinct services at the moment, and they don’t tend to all be busy at once. I’ve got it that way so that, in theory, there should always be some kind of revenue coming in, but that is always adapting.
For example, there are good and bad years for product development. In my experience, when the big drinks companies are investing in innovation there tends to not be so many independent startups, so that kind of ebbs and flows. Similarly, when the large houses do their seemingly fairly regular cull of brand ambassadors, inevitably someone upstairs realises that they still need education pieces doing, so I might get a call then.
What’s the most unexpected part of your role?
I often end up in a kind of agony aunt situation with clients, where they’ll call me just to vent about the world in general. Because I deal with a few different aspects of the drinks industry I’ve learned that everyone always has their problems, but not necessarily the same ones at the same times.
What’s the best part of the job?
Job is a funny word for what I do day to day. I’m very lucky in that I get to taste a lot of delicious drinks. I also work quite closely with some fancy chefs so I get to taste a lot of very nice food.
What’s the hardest or most draining part?
Cash flow and fucking VAT.
What skills matter most in your role, beyond the obvious ones?
My role now is keeping the business running. Managing current clients, and finding new ones. Marketing and promotion doesn’t come naturally to me so that’s something I’ve had to work at, so that I am comfortable with how it comes across.
I really don’t like it when people try to push their shit on me, so I’m quite sensitive about how Crucible is presented.
What did you have to learn the hard way?
When I started Crucible I wanted to do all the fun stuff and none of the serious stuff. I had someone else doing the cashflow, invoicing, boring day to day stuff. I had to let everyone go during Covid, and so when business picked up again I was very lucky to have a second chance in building the organisation in a way that worked better for me, and then, by necessity, better for everyone else.
It meant letting go of a lot of the creative drinks stuff. It’s just such a different headspace to be in than running a business. I try very hard not to backseat drive things, and we do internal tastings at various stages so I do still sign everything off. I do miss that side of things, but it’s just not practical to do everything.
Also, always read the small print on insurance. I’ve never managed to get them to pay out on any of my three legitimate claims. I have since gone through the Federation of Small Businesses so I am hopeful that if there’s a next time it will be successful.
What advice would you give to someone trying to break into this role today?
Work to the brief. As a consultant you’re in quite a privileged position where the client is trusting you to carry out their vision. The key word being THEIR, not your.
If you want to do your thing, open your own fucking place. (I actually wrote a bit about this on my website: https://crucible.london/working-to-a-brief/)
What’s the best piece of advice that YOU were given?
Not sure if it’s the best advice, but it’s something that always stuck with me. My old boss in Edinburgh, Michele Civiera, said something along the lines of it’s better to be notorious than obscure.
We both lived (loved) the hedonistic lifestyle, but have also definitely both calmed down a lot, hahaha!
