Meet Graciela Espinoza

We recently connected with Graciela Espinoza and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Graciela, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

My resilience has always came from my mother. Growing up things weren’t always easy, and at times it felt like Murphy’s law was our day to day routine. Everything that could possibly go wrong would always find its way to us, but I never saw my mother defeated or fearful. She instilled in me that things would always work out with the Grace of God. My mother went through many hardships but she was always there for me and my siblings to lean on no matter what she was facing. She was an immigrant woman who came here like most immigrants hoping to give her children a better life than the one she had lived. Every birthday and Christmas we would attempt to try and ask her what she wanted as a gift and her response was always the same. She would look at us and smile and say ‘ you girls are my greatest gift and all I need in this world is for you and your sisters to be happy and healthy’. My mother worked long hours and even when she was sick refused to take a day off. She would make sure me and my sisters had everything we needed for school every morning before leaving and she would return after long hard days and still ensure that we had a home cooked meal every night. I never realized how exhausting maintaining a household could be until I became an adult myself. My mother was a superhero to me and to this day I channel her strength just to make it through most days. My mother encouraged our dreams and reminded us that we belonged in any room we wanted to be apart of. She constantly reminded us that the world was our oyster as long as we worked hard and kept our faith in God. God would always guide us exactly where we needed to be.Her favorite saying was “Dios aprieta, pero no ahorca” which translates to even when you feel like you’re suffocating and lost in the world, God will never give you more than you can handle. I still live by that belief.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am currently a Bartender at the Alchemists’ Garden in Downtown Paso Robles, CA but have been in the hospitality industry for a decade now. I started when I was young as a hosts and back then it was required to learn all positions, food running/bussing/serving/ and eventually bar, earning your way through the ranks. Like most people who get a start in restaurants I believed this was just a passive era in my life while I got through school to my actual career in Veterinary Medicine, or so I thought. Anytime I briefly left the industry for clinics I felt so unfulfilled and animal hospitals never felt like my forever home. I constantly longed for the community that comes along with the hospitality industry. The camaraderie shared between staff working diligently to create the perfect experience for guest even if just for one night. As I returned to restaurants and finally reached the age and expertise that allowed me to be behind a Bar I finally realized this is where I really thrived. The interactions with guest who became friends and the ability to create a safe space for all who sat at my bar was amazing. Guests come to the bar for many different reasons and being able to shape shift into exactly what they needed is what I loved most. Sometimes I was a therapist for those having a hard day, I was a cheerleader for those celebrating great accomplishments, and sometimes I was just a bartender for someone who just needed a drink and to share a comfortable silence. Cocktail making goes so far beyond the drinks it is the connections we build and the impact we can have on a strangers life in just a short time. Having dealt with a lot of hardships in my own life, I absolutely love being able to add a little sunshine to others in anyway I can.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

For me the defining qualities to succeed in this career have come down to passion, a hunger to continue growing, and having great mentors in your corner to push you to always be better. Most people look for the finish line, for that moment when you can finally say you’re done. The beauty of this industry for me is that you are never done. There will always be room to grow and learn how to be better. Whether that be growth in your skill set or just growth as an individual. This is why I believe mentors are so important. The individuals willing to share with you their own experiences and short comings so that you in turn may be better than they were. That ideal always reminds me of my mother. The way she always wanted me and my siblings to live better than she did is similar to bartenders who help pave the way of the new generations of cocktail makers. There truly is no competition against one another in this industry, just like-minded individuals guiding one another along this beautiful journey to mutual dreams. Before becoming apart of The Alchemists’ Garden I had already bartended for about five years , but it was here that I really found my home and flourished with the love and encouragement that was being poured into me. I am beyond thankful for my ownership team made up of intelligent dreamers who have changed my life in more ways than I could possibly ever thank them for. A special thanks to my greatest mentor and bar director Tony Bennett. He is what I like to describe as the Albert Einstein of the bar world, a cocktail wizard if you will. I use to think that bartending was just learning as many recipes as possible. I constantly joked that I was a worker ant , just teach me what you need of me and I will perform that job to the best of my abilities. Never did I consider the creative side of bartending that requires you to add your own personal flare to cocktails and tell stories through your creations. Tony would always ask me when I was planning on creating some drinks of my own and I initially didn’t believe I was talented enough to be considered in these kind of discussions. It was with his constant push, encouragement, and the way he believed in me more than I ever could have that encouraged me to truly dive into the Bar world and everything it has to offer. My advice for others in this industry is to always lean on others in the industry, share your thoughts and ideas no matter how weird or outlandish they might seem. There will always be people in your corner willing to help you. Do these things because you truly love what you do and you’ll learn so much about yourself and the world along the way.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

I actually think of this question quite often. What do I want my legacy to be when I leave this Earth. We don’t truly have as much time as we think we do. There is no guarantee that we’ll make it to see the age of a hundred. Our clock is ticking and for me I just want to leave behind as much love and light into this world as I can. Everything in this world revolves around love. Love can be shown in a multitude of ways. The way we show up for friends, the way we smile at a stranger, the way we hold space for those struggling on any given day. This is why I love bartending so much. No day is ever the same for me , no shifts like the last. I wholeheartedly believe that being a bartender is so much more than building a good drink. In the next week, month, or year my guests won’t remember what drink I made for them, but they will remember how I made them feel. I hope that they remember me and smile and can say I added a little sunshine to whatever kind of day it is that they were having. I want to be remembered as a friend to all and a safe place to land when needed. I want to share with the world my ideas and creations but more than anything I want to share all the love that has been poured into me. We will never know what hardships each individual is facing that we meet along the way, but we can do our best to extend kindness and be the light that we wish to see in the world. If that is how the world remembers me then I have succeeded in more ways than I could ever have dreamed of.

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