Dushan Zaric

Coming Up

The making of Dushan Zaric started at the door. Trained at University of Belgrade, he began in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, where he worked as bouncer at strip club from 1996. That kind of job trains the eye fast: reading pressure, crowds, and change in seconds. It is a different discipline from bartending, but it builds the same core habit of the trade — keeping control of a room while understanding the people in it. He later became co-owner at The 86 Company until 2016, moving from the floor into ownership, where product, identity, and service sit at the same table. Since 2017, he has been co-owner of Employees Only and drinks mastermind of Hotel Figueroa, a pair of roles that show range without breaking from the same discipline: one tied to a New York bar with its own history, the other to a broader drinks remit.

Where They Are Now

Employees Only remains the longest-running part of Dushan Zaric's work. The New York cocktail bar was named World's Best Cocktail Bar at Tales of the Cocktail in 2011, a recognition that fixed its place in the modern bar canon. For Zaric, the award reads less like closure than obligation. “I'm trying to understand what that really means and what that responsibility now is having won that award,” he has said, a plain acknowledgment that acclaim changes the terms of the job. His view of bartending resists the idea that craft ends with exact repetition. “I don't believe the mastery of cocktailing is in just following recipes, which, for me, are always guidelines anyway.” The line lays out a working method based on judgment and adjustment, where the recipe matters but does not run the bar by itself. “A bartender, I think more than anything, is supposed to provide a human experience to their guests.” Taken together, those positions map the arc of his work: from Belgrade to Brighton Beach, from a bouncer's post in 1996 to co-owner at The 86 Company until 2016, and then to Employees Only and Hotel Figueroa since 2017. The venues are different, but the craft is consistent — managing atmosphere, reading people, and treating hospitality as a live exchange rather than a fixed script.

In Their Words “I don't believe the mastery of cocktailing is in just following recipes, which, for me, are always guidelines anyway.” “I'm trying to understand what that really means and what that responsibility now is having won that award.”

Honors

Dushan's honors include The Best Bar Mentor (2014).