I sit down with Giuseppe Lombardi — known to friends as Pepo — founder of Banco, a portable cocktail station based in Lecce, in Italy's Puglia region. From competitive sailing as a teenager to hospitality school in Switzerland to a career that took him through Michelin-starred kitchens, luxury hotel bars in Dubai, Prague, Paris, London and Singapore, Pepo has spent over a decade building the experience he's now channeling into his own venue.

Pepo walks through the unconventional path he's taken to entrepreneurship, starting mobile rather than diving straight into a lease, the reasoning behind his investment structure, and what it actually takes (financially and bureaucratically) to open a venue in an Italian historic center. He gets candid about the pressure of using family money, the mentors who shaped his approach to leadership, and the vision he's building for a place that isn't about the drink list, it's about how people feel when they walk in.

Expect a deep dive into Italian hospitality bureaucracy that will make you grateful for wherever you're opening your bar, a wildly specific breakdown of what a commercial kitchen actually requires by law, and a few hard-won lessons about the gap between working for someone else and building something of your own.

Dylan Brentwood, bar director and founder of Hummingbird, a mental health and harm-reduction initiative for hospitality workers, joins Over Proof from Halifax, Nova Scotia — mid-way through opening a brand new bar program from scratch. With a background as a professional dancer and actor before crossing into hospitality, Dylan brings a fight director's precision and a performer's read on adrenaline to everything he does behind the bar.

From six years anchoring a beloved Halifax cocktail program to turning over an entire new venue in under six weeks, Dylan talks candidly about what it actually costs to keep opening doors — creatively, financially, and mentally. He traces the years that led to founding Hummingbird: an undiagnosed autoimmune condition, a mental health crisis that started as an offhand comment from a boss, and a realisation that the industry has been treating bartenders like therapists without ever giving them the tools.

This one moves through burnout, neurodivergence, substance use, and the quiet epidemic of hospitality workers who don't know how to ask for help — but it's also full of the philosophy Dylan's built his whole career on: intent over balance, forgiveness over shame, and investing in people over product. Expect some properly unfiltered opinions on police, "sustainability" marketing, and why muscle memory doesn't actually exist.

And if you've ever wondered what a bottle of tequila tattooed on someone's bicep has to do with knowing your limits — stick around for that one.

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I sit down with Alex Pearson, recorded while he was still Business Leader at Wynyard Pavilion in Auckland, one of the city's biggest hospitality operations, before he moved on to his next role at Hello Sailor.

Alex's path into hospitality started as a side hustle during his business degree in Leeds (a local pub), then a 70-bartender cocktail machine, then a champagne bar part-owned by Laurent-Perrier. A holiday to Bali turned into a move to New Zealand, and what began as a bar and restaurant manager role at what's now Wynyard Pavilion turned into nine years, a wife he met on shift, and eventually the top job running a venue that holds up to a thousand people.

He talks about what it actually takes to run a business you don't own; the financial systems built from scratch, the spreadsheet wizard who cut overheads by 25%, the SOP libraries, the floor-planning software down to the centimetre. He gets into leadership, trust, why he won't hire cocktail bartenders with two to four years' experience, and the philosophy that's shaped how he manages people through the hardest nights in hospitality.

And then there's America's Cup; 140 kegs in 22 hours, a keg of Little Creatures gone in seven minutes flat, and a night so packed Alex couldn't physically reach his own bar. It's the story that ended up shaping his whole team, and it's one you have to hear in full.