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Apio: Nurse excelling as a bartender
Jane Apio trains bartenders how cocktails are done. PHOTO/TONY MUSHOBOROZI
What you need to know:
By the time the training ended, six months later, Jane Apio emerged not just a great bartender, but also the winner of the 2015 cohort. All the top pubs in Kampala fell over each other offering her jobs.
Jane Apio was a nursing student at Mulago Hospital when she first cut her teeth at bartending. Her friend worked in the hospitality business and as a student, Apio was often short of pocket money. It was only a natural progression of events that she would end up accepting casual requests from her friend to stand in for bartenders who were either unwell or on their days off or on extremely busy days.
These gigs came only once in a while, but to Apio, they were a much-needed source of income. They were also a welcome break to the monotony of the nursing school. That was 2014. By the time she finished school in 2015, she was sure she wanted to be a bartender more than she wanted to be a nurse. While still a student, Apio took a job at a boujee bar- Riders Lounge (still standing), that had just opened at Acacia Place.
At the time, just like most people who try their luck at bartending for the first time, she had barely ever drunk any alcohol. She could not differentiate a whiskey from a gin and did not know much about beverages other than just handing them to the patron. As she would soon discover, merely bringing people’s orders was not enough to make her a good bartender.
So, that same year, her employer submitted her name to the Diageo Bar Academy to gain more skills that would turn her into a great a bartender. As a premier international entity that deals in alcoholic beverages, Diageo knows a thing or two about the bar business on top of their deep knowledge of alcohol. They are behind whiskeys like the entire Johnny Walker portfolio, gins such as Tanqueray and Gordons, rums such as Captain Morgan, Tequilas such as Don Julio, Vodkas like Ciroc, generally all the premium liquors on any shelf in Uganda are from Diageo. Alcohol is clearly their forte.
At the Diageo Bar Academy, Apio was taught technical skills such as attention to detail, speed and mixology. Because there is actually a science to making a good cocktail. She would be trained in customer care, so she could understand the importance of simple qualities such as courtesy, calmness and clear communication in the bartending business. And to top it off, Apio was trained in salesmanship, so she could easily recommend the kinds of shots one needed to bring life to a party.
By the time the training ended, six months later, Apio emerged not just a great bartender, but also the winner of the 2015 cohort. Most of the top pubs in Kampala were offering her job opportunities. But she still had six months to finish nursing school. So, off she went to revise for her final exams. As soon as she walked out of her final paper, one of the bar owners, headhunting, was outside her hostel asking her to go and work. Apio took a job at Mythos Bar in Kololo as a head bartender and head mixologist.
She was offered the best benefits. She was barely 20 at the time, possessing a bottomless bag of energy and drive. Her name had become well known among all serious bar owners and they came seeking out her expertise. “I became a bar consultant of some sort.
Bar owners would consult me in case they need to set up a successful cocktail bar. I was doing a lot of staff trainings, drawing professional menus and things like that for bars, all the while working at Mythos,” she says. In 2022, after about seven years as a bar consultant, Diageo Bar Academy came back to Apio asking her to consider joining them as one of the trainers in the same programme that trained her.
Being one of the more 5,000 allumni that the academy has trained over the years, she accepted the offer. This year’s training programme started on April 1 and aims to upskill 1,650 bartenders and bar staff in Kampala alone in the next two months. Apio is one of the trainers that will be transforming young students looking for a quick buck into confident, professional bartenders. And she lives for it. “The hospitality sector is one of the largest employers in Uganda, and its growth impacts the economy.
This programme improves service quality, boosts career development and enhances guest experiences, contributing to the sector’s profitability and sustainability,” says Roy Tumwizere, head of advocacy at Uganda Breweries Limited, while speaking at the launch of the training programme. The trainings align with Uganda’s efforts to raise service standards and support the growth of the tourism sector. But beyond the tourism sector, Uganda’s growing middle class (at 8.9 million people) is also driving increased demand for premium dining.
According to a study in 2024 by ResearchGate, 39.2 percent of Ugandans regularly dine away from home, increasing the need for well-trained professionals that meet the evolving consumer expectations. That is why bar and restaurant owners are often enthusiastic about these annual trainings. When this year’s trainings are done in June, Apio will go back to doing her bar consultancy work and enjoy her reign as the best woman mixologist to ever come out of this country.
“I became a bar consultant. If bar owners needed to set up successful cocktail bars, conduct staff trainings, drawing professional menus and anything related to a bar,I was consulted.’’
