Beyond The Rail Cocktail Competition

Chris Bain

A world traveller and life-long learner, Bain’s F&B career is unique and a checklist of his journeys and hospitality experience reads like an adventure story. Always in search of distinct beverage experiences, Bain has visited some of the world’s top cocktail bars, dives, restaurants and hotels, and has interviewed and befriended an eclectic list of world-renowned (and not-so-well-known) bartenders, ambassadors, and hotel F&B managers. Bain’s early focus was in F&B and Inside Operations Management at ski resorts, family resorts, and hotels in Ontario and B.C. but his work and study travels have led him across Mexico, Central America, and South America, and to cities like New Orleans, San Francisco, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Kyoto, Malaga, London, and Amsterdam. Among his favourites, Bain has helped tend agave fields and distilled Mezcal in Oaxaca, Mexico, taught Mixology in Shanghai, China, and studied the art of Pisco distillation in Ica, Peru. Bain currently teaches mixology at George Brown College and runs “Lloyd’s Cocktails and Apothecary”, an in-home (and now online) private cocktail party service.