3 Stars Podcast

One of the best parts of working in the service industry is having amazing friends who are constantly innovating and creating new paths for themselves.  We are lucky to have such a person in our good friend Kristina Mucha of Five Toed Foods.  Kristina also happens to be the kind of person who proves that taking a real issue directly to a manager will get much better results than just bit...

It's Pride Month and this weekend is Denver Pride.  It's also the biggest weekend for LGBTQ+ bars and nightclubs.  With that business comes online reviews and with those reviews comes 3 Stars Podcast.  To help us navigate some reviews we invited our good friend John Sweat; long time downtown club bartender and proud member of the LGBTQ+ community.

Who would have guessed it would be super easy to find father's day reviews for brunch?  Samantha, that's who.  Brad was sure they didn't exist, but apparently a lot of dads love to go to brunch on Father's Day and then bitch about it online.  Bill is on the Willy Wonka elevator of levels in this episode so good luck keeping up.  Happy Father's Day to all you daddios out there!

Following up last week's episode of people who were first to review we decided to go back to those bars and restaurants and look at the most recent reviews.  The contrast may be a bit of a surprise, but also... not.  The Last Word Cocktail get's us all a little "Chartreused" as we dive into this delicious and powerful libation.

It dawned on us a few episodes back that for each establishment, someone out there wrote it's first review.  We decided to visit a few favorites as well as a couple of others to see what the first reviewer had to say.  Samantha is back to hosting, we've got the insult books out in full swing, and Bill... Well you know Bill. 

Well we decided to do a little switch-up and let Bill have the wheel.  You never know where you'll end up from there.  We revisit a few places from some of our first few episodes and see how they've been doing since.  At least one was a bit of a surprise!  And we have a little "Preachin' with Peaches to give us all a little what's what.

IT'S OUR BIRTHDAY!!!  3 Stars Podcast is officially one year old.  And what else do adults do on their birthdays except go to the Strip Club?!  Samantha really got into looking for some awesome reviews on for this episode and Bill and Brad dug out our favorite book, "Creative Cursing."  Thank you to everyone who has listened and supported us throughout this past year.  We...

Mother's Day is both the busiest and most hated Sunday of the year in the service industry.  We love our mother's, we just don't like yours.  Sit back and relax and listen to some Mother's Day horrors.

What do Americans do best?  Apparently appropriate holidays from other cultures and turn them into all day drinking fiestas just to make it easier to bash bars and restaurants online.  Well, we have something to say about those stupid reviews.  Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Everybody has bad days, right? RIGHT?!?  Apparently review writers have more than most and can't help but go online and just bitch bitch bitch, even if it happens to be on their engagement day.  Oh... Bill's back after a week off and he had the WEIRDEST dream.  Anyone know how to make a COVID Fastball?  You will!

We don't always get stoned, but when we do, we prefer cerveza!  Yup, it's 4/20 so we thought we'd 4:20.  Drinking some THC beer and ripping apart some terrible reviews of dispensaries. surprisingly, The show get's calmer as the THC sets in... Some tangents were discussed and luckily the editing team saved you all from big existential discussions.  Bill took a week off but we were lu...

Is it possible to do a switcheroo on who does which jobs to create an episode, while digging through the old files, yet somehow coming up with new bits AND having entirely too much fun doing it?  Give a listen and you tell us! Thanks again to Matt Cross for contributing a few original guitar riffs and lyrics for our musical interludes.  Find him on IG @mattcrossetc

Beer is one of the most prevalent liquids in human history.  It certainly deserves it's own national holiday and of course a full episode from the 3 Stars that's chock full of stupid reviews and delicious beer!  Enjoy our new musical interlude created by the amazing Matt Cross.  Find him on IG @mattcrossetc and on FB www.facebook.com/matthewlcross   

It's been a year since we lost a good friend and coworker.  This episode isn't about sadness, it is a tribute and celebration to a man who loved harder and more genuinely that most.  No amount of yelp reviews or personal stories can do justice to the real deal.  If you were lucky enough to know Joe Negrete then you know what we're talking about.  If not, then hopefully you have...

Who in their right mind has high expectations of airline food?  What's more, who has those expectations and then has to Yelp about it?  We're flying high on these vacuum sealed sacked lunches.  Oh and what's this... Brad joins the dark side and makes his most despised cocktail!!!

The bartender's Super Bowl, yet sadly, once again this year, many aren't able to work it the way we'd like.  However, that doesn't stop us from finding some terrible yelpers to bash while we kick back with some Irish Whiskey! Special thanks to Kevin Macleod for uploading some free tunes for us to use in this episode! Master of the Feast by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu...

We're not sure if this episode was to help reviewers or Bill, or maybe it was to help a little bit in all of us.  Grateful to have had Ashley Roueche M.A.  L.P.C. on with us to take a deeper therapeutic look at some of our most notorious reviewers.

This is the kind of topic that really splits the community, the audience, and even the hosts of the show.  Non-service animals in bars and restaurants... yay or nay?  Well, we dive into some reviews and try to hash some of it out.  It's a Doggy Dog world out there.

We had done a full episode surrounding ID'ing back in season one, but this was a half shot we recorded as well.  It never hurts to remind everyone about the fact that when we ask for ID it's because we really do need to see your ID in order to keep our jobs.

Sometimes there are just some seriously ridiculous reviews that we just can't ignore.  And of course we couldn't just choose some and not others.  Here's a good selection of some of the dumbest reviews we've collected.  Special thanks to Lyre's Non-Alcoholic Spirits for sending a few sample bottles our way so we could mix up some delicious mocktails and low ABV cocktails to sip on.

Wrapping up this two parter with Colin Overett from Union Lodge No 1.  Just an amazing time with an incredible bartender, reading reviews and having yet another delicious original cocktail, The Kiss Goodnight.  And Brad's story at the end brings it all full circle.

It's virtually impossible to keep a 5 Star status on Yelp or Google Reviews.  However, we got to sit down with Colin Overett of Union Lodge No. 1 to find out exactly what it takes to give the level of service that keeps them at the top.

Dry January is officially over and we are already Hungover AF!  We tapped the industry for favorite hangover remedies; Found some fun reviews from bars featured in the Hangover 2;  Dig into some sciency hangover stuff.  Oh yeah, and we drink Red Eyes!

We didn't have to search for reviews AT ALL thanks to some amazing sharing from listeners of the show.  Thank you so much for sharing with us so we could tear these people to shreds.   Bill rages on and we get pretty hyped up on some Energy Drinks with quite a bit of info from Samantha.  Check out some links she read up on for you. https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-creati...

Yelp now allows the average person to tell on businesses for not following Covid rules.  This is what we think about that!