Over the last 2 years, Uganda Breweries Limited has trained 250 Bar Tenders under a spirits training initiative called the Master Bar Academy (MBA).
The master bar academy – The MBA (as it’s known informally) is Africa’s largest bartender training and certification program – with over 10,000 bartenders across Africa and in 25 cities spread across 9 countries. The aim is to establish an international standard of service and brand knowledge across the continent including Uganda. Another very important outcome is to transform bartending from what is often seen as a part-time job into a viable career.
In Uganda the MBA is ran by Uganda Breweries Limited (UBL). This program is run with support from Diageo in the UK and instructors from South Africa.
The MBA program has been designed in response to consumer change in taste and preference from beer to spirits. UBL feels that if its consumers are to get the most out of every spirit drinking experience, then the bar tenders who interact with these brands on a daily would need to understand the different spirits categories and how best each can be savored. Through the MBA, UBL seeks to upgrade bartender skills to satisfy this growing demand to international standards (in a nut shell, we are raising the bar behind the bar).
The MBA spirits training is split into 3 stages; MBA 101 (Basic bar-tending skills and spirits knowledge), MBA 202 (an online quiz challenge) and MBA 303 (the cocktail master class): where the top 25 bar tenders from MBA 202 go through a day long training and a cocktail challenge.
The winning bar tender at this stage gets to walk away with; 1,000 USDs, MBA iPad, unique MBA certificate and the right to be called Uganda’s master bar tender
Last year round our winning bar tender was Jude Kiwanuka – a bar tender at ‘The Sanctum’ located on Entebbe road. It is for that reason that UBL is rewarding The Sanctum with a whole year’s supply of Johnnie Walker Red Label.
This year, the training which started in March will culminate in another MBA 303 challenge on the 12th of August at the Kampala Sheraton Hotel where UBL will be picking out Uganda’s next Master bar tender.
UBL will also run a fresh round of MBA training sessions. There will be 8 training sessions and 35 bar tenders will be trained at each of these sessions. The training sessions will be run on the 14th, 15th, 16th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd and 23rd. That would mean that a total of 315 bar staff will be trained this month alone with another 140 planned for in March 2015.
Uganda Breweries Limited believes that bar tenders are core partners in the alcohol beverage business. Our hope is that the MBA training will standardize and upscale bartender skills in Uganda and deliver a better drinking experience to our consumers across the country.