499 episodes listed below
The business of hospitality, told after service.
Host Shawn Soole works through the business of bars and restaurants with people who have built them, run them, or rebuilt them after failure. Conversations start with a specific job — a bar layout, a multi-unit leadership problem, where a distillery grows its yeast — and end with something an operator can actually use.
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The Post Shift Podcast with Shawn Soole treats hospitality as a business first and a craft second, without pretending the two can be separated. Soole hosts, and the format is mostly interview. Guests are bar designers, authors, blenders, and operators who have run rooms long enough to have opinions worth arguing with. The pattern is consistent: a concrete story comes first, then the story gets converted into a rule. Tobin Ellis appears to talk through his book Bar Design Essentials, and the conversation gets specific fast — custom scuppers, drawing diagrams, the argument that a bar is a complex floor system tied to a complex wall system tied to a counter and equipment that all has to connect. Christin Marvin, author of Multi-Unit Mastery, describes one-on-one and group coaching with restaurant owners and the workshops where people cry because someone finally said out loud that they are burnt out. Alexandre Gabriel traces a path from training as a blender to a distillery visit in Barbados that reset how he thought about yeast and bacteria, and lands on a definition of success built around a team that grows with you. Richie Barrow talks culture, service, and the emergence of the Kenyan and African cocktail scene, including a bartenders' week only in its second year and the hunt for genuinely local ingredients. Not every episode is an interview. One solo installment delivers five hard truths from almost thirty years in the industry: public failure is coming, and the people who celebrate your opening often go quiet when it closes. Another episode is a crossover with the Bread and Butter Collective, where Callan McNeil turns the microphone around and Soole becomes the guest, reminiscing about a Negroni on tap that outsold everything and about being early to prosecco and polenta in Victoria. Soole is transparent about the operation — running late some weeks, cancelling live streams, clicking his own buttons as a one-man show. That looseness is part of the appeal. The rhythm underneath is disciplined: anecdote, example, implication, takeaway. Language is plain and occasionally salty, and listeners are treated as people who already understand a service floor. Every episode signs off the same way, telling post shifters to keep their standards high, their spirits neat, and their teams tighter than their pour costs. With hundreds of episodes behind it, the archive works as a running record of how bar and restaurant careers actually get built.
Made for: Bartenders, managers, chefs, and beverage directors thinking about the jump to ownership, plus operators already running rooms who want candid talk about leadership, teams, and cost. It also suits designers, architects, and brand people who build for hospitality rather than work in it.
What sets it apart: Most cocktail shows stay on recipes and technique; this one keeps pulling craft conversations back toward pour costs, burnout, and ownership consequences. The host's near-thirty-year hospitality background means guests get pressed on what actually happened, not just what worked.
The Post Shift Podcast with Shawn Soole dives into the business of hospitality with raw, honest conversations on entrepreneurship, leadership, mental health, and modern hospitality culture. From industry icons to rising stars, each episode unpacks real stories, hard lessons, and fresh ideas that help bar and restaurant pros thrive. Tune in for unfiltered insights into what it takes to build a lasting, meaningful career in today’s fast-changing hospitality world.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It turns hospitality's hidden operating choices into clear conversations about service, leadership, brand distribution, and sustainable growth.
The Post Shift Podcast with Shawn Soole treats hospitality as an operating business, following the decisions behind the drink or dining-room experience.
That gorgeous back bar looks different once you picture a 5-foot-4 bartender reaching for the top shelf.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Tobin Ellis shows bar design as the hidden system behind faster service, smoother flow, and a better guest experience.
Bar design comes through as the quiet operating system of hospitality, with Tobin Ellis framing a bar as a floor, wall, counter, and equipment system built to work at speed while fading into the guest experience.
A grounded review of the human work behind leading restaurants past one location.
Restaurant leadership gets more complicated once an operator has to grow beyond a single room. This episode follows that pressure into multi-unit management, focusing on how owners and operators can build the kind of trust that lets people speak plainly about burnout, stalled…
A grounded hospitality conversation about pricing, patience, and teaching a market what a business is really selling.
Hospitality here is framed as a matter of timing, pricing, and market education. Sean Sewell and Callan McNeil move from Clive's negroni on tap becoming a year-over-year top seller to Zambris' early work with prosecco and polenta, then to Big Wheel Burger's first years…
A Nairobi bar story becomes a grounded case for building the culture around the business.
Richie Barrow's conversation with Sean Sewell frames hospitality culture as something built in motion, not declared from the sidelines. As the owner and operator of Hero Bar in Nairobi and co-founder of Kenya Bartender Week, Barrow talks through the work of making Kenyan…
A grounded hospitality conversation about turning inherited craft knowledge into living practice.
Spirit making turns into a study in practical judgment as the guest looks back on learning, through a Barbados rum distillery, that bacteria could shape flavor rather than simply threaten it.
A grounded look at why drinks brands need more than consumer attention to succeed.
Building a drinks brand comes through here as a distribution challenge as much as a marketing one. The episode follows the idea that a product can win attention and still stall if importers, wholesalers, salespeople, brand ambassadors, and bar teams do not carry the story all…
A practical, tactile look at why bar ice matters to both craft and profit.
The episode frames ice as a practical choice that affects both the look of a drink and the economics of a bar program. In conversation with Camper English, the host follows English's hands-on path to directional freezing: changing container shape shifted the cloudy parts, while…
Bourbon talk, barrel stories, messy good pours.
Bourbon reviews with memory, candor, and community.
Everyday life, thought through together.
Host Shawn Soole interviews Chris Maffeo, founder of Bottoms Up Drink Builder and host of the Maffeo Drinks podcast, on building brands in the craft spirits industry.
Lindsey Johnson discusses her efforts to transform the bartending world through community building and education.
Sean Sewell interviews Stephen Myers about brand building and distribution strategies for small craft distilleries looking to scale and enter the US market.
Jean-Marc Baketel Dykes discusses the origin and development of Imbiblia, a bartending app aimed at revolutionizing bartender education.
Alex Kratena discusses designing cocktails that tell a story, sharing insights from his career in hospitality.
Host Shawn Soole interviews Camper English, a multi-award-winning author and journalist, on the Post Shift Podcast.
Bar design gets practical fast.
Kristen Marvin says the pandemic left the industry after 6 million people exited, and Ron Sewell uses that pressure point to ask what restaurant leadership looks like now.
Sean Sewell says he opened three Singapore venues in six months in 2019, including a site that started as a dirt floor.
Sean Sewell talks with Richie Barrow about Hero Bar in Nairobi and the rise of Kenya Bartender Week.
Sean Saul shares five hard truths from 30 years in hospitality, emphasizing the necessity of failure for true success and the loneliness of failure.
Alexandre Gabriel says, "you don't own a farm, you tend a farm," and applies that to distilling.
Host interviews Alex Kratena about designing cocktails that tell a story, reminiscing about their first meeting in Cognac.