23 Nov Who are ‘Roberts and June’?
Since we started Roberts and June, a few questions have come up often enough that we thought it would be worth taking a break from our usual tips, recipes, and reviews to answer them. We hope you enjoy it. And don’t worry, we’ll be back to our usual tomorrow.
Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Why, hello. Thanks for asking. We’re Brian and Steph, the founders of Roberts and June. Pleased to meet you.
We’re pastors turned bartenders (a natural career ladder right?) and currently call DC home. In addition to a well-stocked bar, we own many bikes, have less than pleasant thoughts about winter (after surviving more than a dozen of them in Boston), and dream about spending a summer in France.
If your names are Brian and Steph, why ‘Roberts and June’?
Well, our names are Brian and Steph, but also Robert and June. Our company name is a combination of our middle names. While some people hate their middle names, we each actually really like ours. Each of us was given our middle name in honor of a family member, and so much about our interest in cocktails came from a love of cooking and hosting, which we learned in our families.
Middle names are so interesting because they’re this distinct part of who you are, but since they’re hidden from most of day to day life, they’re kind of like a secret–only being shared with good friends or when completing lengthy forms (that you hope are being kept in secure cloud storage). When we were starting our cocktail project, we had other day jobs and vocations that felt solidly like who we were and what we were known for (one of was fairly widely known as the girl who worked with immigrants and ran a massive soccer camp, and one of us was pretty well-known as a pastor who wrote these fun, interesting Bible guides) and this name was a way to acknowledge this other side of us that we were equally interested in.
Why the plural Roberts then?
Okay, we’re getting a little in the weeds here, but we have multiple Roberts in our family we wanted to honor: Brian’s father and grandfather, and (coincidentally) Steph’s father. Thus, Roberts.
Also, we might have felt that it comes a little easier off the tongue than ‘Robert and June.’
How did you get into cocktails?
We love cocktails because they’re interesting, and delicious, and there are endless possibilities of what you can do with them. But more than anything we love them because of what happens when they’re in your hand. A pretty li’l drink housed in fine glass communicates to everyone that it’s a moment to celebrate, to slow down, to enjoy.
There’s been a surge of interest in the finely-crafted-cocktail world, but a lack of knowledge and accessibility often leaves only two options: drink good cocktails for 14 bucks a pop at a trendy establishment, or drink randomly-mixed-concoctions in solo cups that are almost guaranteed to make the following morning painful. There has to be a middle ground!
We love helping people party and celebrate well, and we think good drinks and good parties are well within reach for everyone. So, we started this blog (and do some bartending at events, and party and drink consulting too) to take down the intimidation factor of cocktails and party hosting a few notches. We hope it’s working.
So consider yourself in on our secret, part of our family, and please come join the cocktail fun.
