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    Billing on Index Cards
    1 sip · 2 notes

    Billing on Index Cards

    A rye old fashioned served on a handwritten index card, the arithmetic still visible under the glass

    He arrived in Melbourne in 1988, worked his way up from technician to general manager, and took over a company running on paper. "We were doing our billing on index cards. We were the number one AV rental company in Australia and we were losing money. I thought, I need to get a computer." He was twenty-four.

    Why this cocktail? Australia's number one AV house, losing money, billing on index cards. So he bought a computer.

    The Story

    Being the biggest and still bleeding is the clearest possible proof that revenue is not a system, and the only way out was to teach himself the machine nobody at that company understood. The glass sits on a real index card with the night's numbers written out by hand, so the guest can see exactly what a business looks like just before it gets rebuilt.

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    Prep: 3 minYield: 1 cocktail

    Ingredients

    • 2 oz rye whiskey
    • 0.25 oz demerara syrup
    • 2 dashes Angostura bitters
    • Orange peel
    • Index cards and a pen

    Preparation

    1. 1.Stir rye, syrup and bitters over one large clear cube.
    2. 2.Express an orange peel and drop it in.
    3. 3.Write the evening's real cost per guest on an index card.
    4. 4.Set the glass down on the card.