Team Spotlight: Qwesha Byrd
Qwesha Byrd, Head Bartender, Jojo’s Beloved Cocktail Lounge
Hometown: Columbia, South Carolina born and raised. I went to Clemson University and, when I left there, I moved to Atlanta to go to culinary and stayed here for 10 years before moving to Houston. I just moved back to Atlanta in 2021.
When I left Clemson, I moved to Atlanta to go to culinary school and stayed here for 10 years before moving to Houston.
While I was in Houston, Sophie Burton became good friends with one of my employees. That is how I first learned about the upcoming Atlanta project. When I decided to start looking for a new job in Atlanta, I saw the job post for Bar Politan, remembered the name and applied for that bar, but was offered the position at Jojo’s instead.
Favorite Sandwich: I’m a sucker for a great BLT. It’s super simple but super tasty. BLT or Grilled Cheese. I almost always have the stuff in house to make either one.
Coffee or Tea: Tea. Big fan of iced tea. My grandmothers always had a pitcher of it, so I grew up as a tea person. Love hot tea too: green tea, English breakfast, Matcha.
My impression of you is that you are a very calm and cool person, just from the thoughtful contributions you always make in our training classes and your personal email signature. It all just screams “cool” to me. How did you get so cool?
Hahahahaha!! That is so hilarious to me! I’ve always been one who kind of speaks first and thinks later. I’ve gotten better at controlling that as I’ve gotten older. I’ve toned it down a lot. A lot of times, though, the first thing that comes out of your mouth is usually either funny or really silly; really intelligent or really thought provoking. That’s what happens, especially when I was younger, I would really make you laugh or really make you think, or even make you say, “ok, that’s enough Byrd”. I feel like that had a lot to do with it when I was younger, but now that I’m older I’ve toned it down and think a lot before I speak. Now I’m definitely more concerned with people and never want to unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings. I also come from a big family where we spar a lot with our words. I’m one of 5 sisters, and we all have big personalities, so when you deal with that growing up it doesn’t stop when you leave the house. I don’t know if I’d call myself cool, but I do recognize that when I was younger my personality was very big, and it still comes out sometimes, even though I’m a lot calmer.
Priorities definitely change as you grow and mature.
I’ve been in hospitality since my very first job, but the one thing that gets to me especially as a bartender is that you spend your 40 hours a week in noise and in chaos, so when I just want to go home and chill. Whereas when I was younger I thought, “let’s go do another four hours of this from the other side!” I don’t want to do that now. I’d much rather just go home have a glass of wine or a pour of tequila, watch old reruns and enjoy the quiet. Every once in a while, I’ll get the itch to go out, and we do and we have a good time, and then I don’t have to go out again for a couple of months.
Favorite drink on the Jojo’s menu: I really like the “Private Life Drama”. It’s a combo of two different cocktails. When I do go out, I like to drink rum Old Fashioned. No two people make it the same, but it has the same ingredients: a spirit, sugar, bitters, and water. You can use any spirit. So, when I saw this drink, I said, “it’s a rum Old Fashioned” but then they got this crazy idea to throw this coconut fluff on top with almond and chocolate. As soon as you take that first sip you taste that coconut, almond, and chocolate, but that next sip is like this funky Jamaican slightly bitter, floral, just all of these flavors with just one sip and I think that’s really cool.
In your role, you do a lot of research and development of new cocktails. What is your process? Honestly, I think the first thing I do is I check my environment. At other bars I’ve worked at, we’ve had kind a process of how we do things where we want a menu where we cover all of these bases, etc. I was usually the person whose ideas come a little later. I didn’t want to do anything that conflicted with other ideas. My cocktails in the past were kind of the “fill-in” cocktails. Rarely do I have an immediate idea, but instead I get my ideas by kind of seeing what was missing on a menu and filling in those gaps. Here at Jojo’s the cocktails don’t have to just come from the 80s but can reflect the 80s. I grew up in the 80s so this is my genre! I know this! So here I really feel like I can contribute a bit more. Coming up with ideas for Jojo’s is more natural for me having lived it. So, the cocktail making process for me really depends on the environment. What is the feeling I want to convey through this cocktail? How do I want people to feel? What is the story? That’s kind of my process.
Moonshot dream? So, I have two things I really want to do and they are kind of the reason I moved back to Atlanta. I do want to open my own bar within the next few years. The other thing is that I want to help my community understand hospitality as a whole. Not just taking care of cocktail knowledge but also taking care of your mind and body and taking care of yourself financially. As someone who has been in this industry for over 20 years, I’ve seen the highs and lows. It’s such a great job but honestly a lot of us are not taken care of. I want to teach people how to take care of themselves. I’d like to compile resources for mental and physical health, but also create resources to take care of people financially like retirement plans. I’d just really like to start a program where I’m teaching bartenders how to treat this like a job because there are still a lot of places that need to catch up and offer the kind of benefits we need like health insurance and 401ks. I want to show them that if you make some smart choices, you can travel, you can invest, and you can retire someday. That’s the end game for me.