Why I Left Wall Street for the Bar Business

The following is adapted from Pouring with Heart by Cedd Moses.

I’m no stranger to failure. I was a money-managing Wall Street hotshot with his face on the cover of Forbes by the time I was thirty. And I was miserable. The temptations that come with wealth and power did their best to numb me from my emptiness. But when your soul isn’t right, your body and mind don’t stand a chance.

Every room, every office, every meeting felt claustrophobic. Despite the thousand monitors keeping track of stocks around the world. Eighteen floors up, confined in a hermetically sealed, Class-A office building that felt more sterile than the ICU at Johns Hopkins. The only language we spoke started and ended with the word “profit.” How much money could we make off the mistakes of less sophisticated investors? We had an edge born from long hours and short-term thinking that we fused into short-term gains.

But that was all we had.

That and the inescapable feeling that, as a human, I was slowly dying.

So despite an onslaught of criticism, I left the boardroom and never looked back. At the time, I didn’t know what the cure for me would be, but I knew I sorely needed human connection. And I had an idea where I could find it.

The place where people put their arms around each other. Opened their hearts. Shared war stories, love stories, fistfights, teardrops, and second chances. Where they went for support when their chips were down. And to celebrate those precious moments when they weren’t. Where their differences, before their similarities, made for interesting conversation. The place they went to sing. To laugh. To be honest…

To be human.

If I wanted to be among my people, I needed to get to my local bar.

But like I said before, I know failure. I fail all the fucking time.

Walking into this business may have forever changed my life for the better. But make no mistake, I struggled for over a decade to figure out the proper way to run bars. It took years until my bar family and I landed on the magic that has led us to becoming one of the greatest bar success stories in modern American history.

Before the Success

I struggled to find my career until I finally found my true purpose in life. Nothing has given me more satisfaction than working alongside my fellow bar family, cultivating careers for people who, like me, have felt like outsiders everywhere else.

“Outsiders” are my fucking people.

I felt like an outsider until I discovered the bar business. But now I’m surrounded by the most wonderful people every day, and I’m grateful. I’m grateful to work with people fueled by passion and pride for their craft. Who put themselves in a position of service to others and not the other way around.

Some people call them “the help.” To me, those are fighting words.

And frankly, it’s ignorant considering this country was founded on all of us being “the help.” It’s the can-do spirit. The get-the-job-done mentality. The you-before-me tenet of the service industry that’s responsible for more than just building successful bars. It builds character. It builds communities. And it built this country.

Trust me: regardless of what you look like, where you’ve been, or what you’ve failed at in the past, there’s a place for you here alongside us.

Bars are special places for misfits like us.

I became obsessed with bars by the time I could legally drink. Bars became my vehicle for connecting with the city in a real way. Where I finally felt comfortable opening up to total strangers. They’re the place where I felt, and continue to feel, most at home.

Bars just might be the last refuge for humanity (and, specifically, your community) to come together without judgment. Free from the canned bullshit and stale environment of modern city living.

Modern city living…a true ratfuck.

Chockfull of corporate coffee houses misrepresenting themselves as the “Third Place.” Championing themselves as equitable, diverse, and inclusive cultures where communities are welcome to come and gather freely between home and work. But a closer look at these corporate chains reveals an empty promise. A blatant bait-and-switch with one goal in mind. Manipulation. Something bad for the human spirit but great for businesses that prefer to cattle-call sheep by the masses, shear them, and make off with the spoils. These business chains don’t inspire thinking or conversation. Their very blueprints are born of efficiency charts and customer flow schematics designed to push people in and out with the least amount of human interaction possible. They prefer their customers be in a hurry, with their heads down, buried in their smart devices. Which translates to zero sense of community or camaraderie. Meanwhile, your local bar is serving both in spades.

When you can’t distinguish between customer service and automated responses from a computer, we’ve got a problem. That’s not a shot at technology, but AI-driven assistants like Alexa and Siri will never be able to relate to us on a human level.

The less time we spend being human, the more lonely we feel as humans. The less we begin to trust other humans. And as for the idea of kindness, respect, and love for ourselves — and for other humans — well, that notion might as well go fuck itself.

But your local watering hole is different.

It’s one of the last places out there where you truly are allowed off the leash. There’s a sense of honesty we share across a bar top. From Steel Town to Tinseltown, and every bar in between, the one thing you can bet you’ll find…is the truth.

I’m betting everything on saving local watering holes, and I want to bring you along for the ride. Namely because bars have truly fulfilled their promise as that necessary “Third Place” in my life. And have done the same for centuries for millions of others in this country.

But also because every puritan and buzzkill who has ever tried to deny the community of the magic that comes from bars and bartenders has always been met by a stiff line of defense. With that said, I’m more than happy to take the first night’s watch.

I’m honored.

Because that magic is worth fighting for, dammit.

For more advice on entering the service industry, you can find Pouring with Heart on Amazon.

Cedd Moses is the Founder and Chief Vision Officer of Pouring With Heart, a hospitality company that operates twenty-five bars, historic restaurants, and beer halls across Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin, and Denver.

Moses and his team of pioneers garnered national recognition for their part in revitalizing Downtown LA circa 2002. Today, you can find their bars growing across the country, with Moses also spearheading the For Each Other fund, a charity that supports Pouring With Heart bar staff in need. All profits of this book will go to the For Each Other Fund.