Within the Raise the Bar project, designed to help the toursim and hospitaliy sectors in Croatia, financial aid is offered to barmen to overcome the crisis caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus

Coca-Cola HBC Croatia started the Raise the Bar project with the goal of increasing the quality of workforce in hospitality and tourism. The project itself consists of three programs – Raise the Bar Academy, aimed at educating waiters, barmen and baristas, Raise the Bar Scholarships dedicated to young talents in gastronomy, and Raise the Bar Centers aimed at finding ways to cooperate with regional centers of competence for hospitality management.

At the beginning of 2020 the second training cycle at the Raise the Bar Academy commenced. However, following the proclamation of the global coronavirus pandemic the Academy has temporarily closed its doors to attendees. Nevertheless, the Raise the Bar team is working diligently on coming up with new ways to help the HoReCa sector, which was heavily hit by the crisis and to contribute during these times. The idea is to offer financial help to barmen who continued working during this situation, but whose income has dropped to the state provided minimum and whose bars offer delivery cocktails.

“When we started the project the situation in our market was quite different from the situation, we witness today. We have stayed strong in our desire to help the hospitality sector. Even though we also feel the consequences of this situation, we are aware that there are those hit much worse and would like to ease the situation for them and simultaneously keep alive the cocktail culture we have been building together. The project was designed with the aim of helping the hospitality and tourism sector, and the type of help we can, want and need to offer has changed. We hope that this situation will improve but are also aware that a certain time will be needed for the scene to start its slow recovery.”, said Filip Verbanac, Raise the Bar project leader.

Noel, Time and Roots are the first bars to have applied and used this aid, offering cocktails-to-go which can be ordered through one of the delivery platforms or directly from them. The Raise the Bar team hopes to include even more bars into this initiative and is working relentlessly to actively encourage people to help the HoReCa sector by ordering in.

Other activities in the scope of the project, as well as restarting the second training cycle of the Raise the Bar Academy, are planned for the second half of the year. In the meantime, the activities are focused on offering support and trying to strengthen the HoReCa sector during this crisis.