Beverage director. Team builder.
Co-Founder, White Whale — Downtown Las Vegas.
I've spent the better part of a decade in some of the best rooms in Las Vegas — the Cocktail Collective at The Venetian, the Poodle Room at the Fontainebleau, the bars of 50 Eggs Hospitality — and now White Whale, the bar I co-own Downtown. The longer I do this, the more convinced I am that the drink is the easy part.
What actually keeps people coming back isn't a flawless spec. It's how a room feels — whether the people behind the bar are precise about the craft and still loose enough to make you laugh. I hold my teams to an exacting standard and refuse to let the place feel stiff. Precision and warmth were never opposites; the best bars run on both.
Get the craft right, then get out of its way. That's the whole job.
Every drink hits the same spec, every night, no exceptions. But the standard exists for the guest's experience — never for whoever's enforcing it. Hold the line on the craft, and hold it loosely on yourself. The moment the rules become about being right, the room tightens up and people feel it.
Guests don't remember a cocktail as long as they remember how the night felt. The team's energy is the thing they're actually buying. Build a crew that genuinely likes the work and likes each other, and the room does half your marketing for you.
Coming up through high-end retail and nightlife taught me that nobody is won over by a discount — they're won over by how seen they feel. The garnish, the greeting, the second round you remembered without being asked: that's the brand. Everything else is noise.
Most management contracts are structured backwards. An operator comes in, sets up systems, and leaves — and within six months, the bar is back where it started. That model works for the consultant. It doesn't work for the business.
My contracts are tied to outcomes, not time. Revenue share. Profit participation. Real skin in the game. We agree on what success looks like before I walk in the door — and I don't get paid like a partner until the numbers say I've earned it.
Every engagement comes with AI-optimized costing sheets, inventory systems, preshift documents, and contract infrastructure — deployed from day one.
Deployed in week one. Owned by you permanently.
Every bartender pours to one standard — the one Sam Ross built at The Dorsey, that I carried as bar lead through the Venetian Cocktail Collective at Rosina and Electra, and into every program I've run since. Same specs, same order of operations, down to lime before lemon and vodka before gin. Any bartender can step into another's round mid-build and finish it without a word. That isn't speed for its own sake. That's a program.
Every engagement deploys a working toolkit from day one — the same software I run at White Whale. Each one trades hours of spreadsheet work and guesswork for something your team opens on shift and actually uses. Watch them work — most of these clips run under a minute.
I was born in Grants Pass, Oregon, spent a few early years up near Portland, and grew up in Las Vegas from grade school on. I went through UNLV for a marketing degree and cut my teeth in high-end retail and nightlife — two worlds that look nothing alike but run on the same thing: making a person feel genuinely taken care of.
I came into food and beverage through the side door. The Dorsey brought me on for management and marketing — but standing in that room, watching the program Sam Ross had built, I fell for the craft itself. I stopped wanting to run the bar from an office and started wanting to be behind it.
From there it moved fast. I led Rosina as bar lead, then Electra, and stayed through the Venetian Cocktail Collective until the end of Sam Ross's run as head consultant in 2022. I went on to direct beverage for 50 Eggs Hospitality — Yardbird, Chica, Spritz, Capri, Wakuda — collaborated with brands like Red Bull, and still pour as a mixologist in the Poodle Room at the Fontainebleau.
In October 2025, I opened White Whale Downtown with my longtime friend and business partner, Evan Hosaka. We're still building it.
Evan Hosaka and I have been friends since before White Whale was an idea on paper. We met on the Strip, built trust watching each other operate under pressure, and spent years in the same industry learning what it actually takes to run something well.
Evan Hosaka →
If you're a bar or restaurant owner exploring what it looks like to bring in a beverage management partner, reach out — let's talk about your room.
