8 May 23-29, 2024 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | News | letters | coNteNts | celebrities like Drake, Rick Ross, and Justin Bieber. During her top-earning years, she was making upward of $400,000 a year. Now she’s mentoring the next generation to “make six figures while building an eight-figure network,” as the @bottleservicebootcamp Instagram account she manages states. “So many people will act like this is a de- grading job, or that bottle service girls are just cute waitresses,” Kent tells New Times. “In reality, we are the sales agents for these mul- timillion-dollar nightclubs in a city where sales can range from $100,000 to $5 million in a single night.” The boot camp spread of bagels, pastries, and juice has been largely ignored throughout the day as attention for the past seven hours has been fixed on the big screen displaying the 92-page handbook Kent wrote on the art of being a successful bottle service girl, based on her 14 years in the industry. So far, the class has created a list of locations to scout rich men as potential clients, learned how to craft a winning résumé, ace a casting call, operate the point-of-sale systems on the register, and most importantly, how to upsell clients, en- sure overtips, and properly serve Champagne. The most enlightening lesson, though, has been just how much earning potential is in this line of work: Ten percent is the standard tip for bottle service, which doesn’t seem like much until you realize that most nightclubs have a required minimum that must be spent at a table — typically starting at $2,000 and rising to more than $100,000 for big-name DJs or on New Year’s Eve — and that bottle service girls attend to multiple tables over the course of a shift. At Ultra Music Festival, Kent says, she has overseen tables with an $80,000 minimum spend. “The night you hit $1,000 in cash tips, you’re like, ‘Oh my god, I made $1,000!’ and then $1,000 becomes a regular thing, and then you start expecting $1,000 and then $2,000 [a night],” Kent tells them. “During the NBA and NFL lockouts, these guys were bored out of their minds and spending $50,000 or $60,000 tabs — it was like a status thing — and that’s when I started seeing $10,000, $20,000, and $30,000 tips.” By the time the first day of boot camp is dismissed at 6 p.m., the five students are equal parts exhausted and inspired. “So you’re going to send us the master list of all locations [to scout clients] we talked about?” Marley Fatale, 31, asks as the class winds down. “It’s 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. that we’re meeting tomorrow?” Alyssa Correthers, 27, inquires on her way out. And, as the room empties, Kent can’t help but holler after them like a teacher reminding them of their homework: “I will! 11 a.m.! Ex- change Night Club! And don’t forget to wear the black Bottle Service Girl tank tops and black leggings!” The Art of the Sale Bottle Service Boot Camp was born out of ne- cessity. By 2021, most of the Miami night- clubs that had closed during the COVID-19 lockdown had reopened, and Michelle Kent was back to making her usual $5,000 to $7,000 a week as a bottle service girl at a pop- up party at Okami in the Design District. The problem, she says, was that many of her colleagues who worked bottle service pre-pandemic switched careers or moved. Or if they hadn’t, their manager had. Or the nightclub where they’d been working closed or changed ownership. It wasn’t until venues began reopening that Kent started hearing word-of-mouth complaints from nightclub managers and others in the industry that the bottle service girls weren’t of the same cali- ber. Service was down — which meant reve- nue was down, too. “People were hiring girls just because they were cute in the face, but they didn’t have any skill set,” Sean Fosky, co-owner of Exchange South Beach and Rain nightclub in Houston, tells New Times. “They didn’t know how to properly hold a bottle in the air and would al- most burn the other girls’ faces off with the sparklers.” By this time, Kent was known across the local nightclub circuit for the high-rolling cli- entele that sought her out specifically. “When I came to Miami six years ago, 10 percent [tip] was common across the board, but Michelle was bringing in 17.5 and 24 percent tips al- most every night,” Fosky relates. “She’s the only waitress in Miami that could jump from whatever club she wanted to work at that night because she was just that valuable.” When industry professionals turned to Kent for staffing help, she never hesitated to recommend another bottle service girl for a gig and vouch for her ability and profession- alism. “People made me a staffing agency be- fore I even chose to be a staffing agency,” she says. Clubs like Exchange South Beach and Booby Trap began hiring her to come in and train their bottle service girls how to hold a bot- tle (never by the neck!), attach a sparkler (with a rubber band!), and go through the menu with a customer (stand or sit side-by-side). She was being flown around the country (Los Angeles, Houston) to help open new nightclubs by hir- ing and training bottle service girls. “This is an industry where there’s a crap- ton of money to be made, but you have to be focused and understand that this is a profes- sion, not some fly-by-night job where you just to go get drunk and have fun,” she’d tell aspir- ing girls. “I’m living proof that you can have a career in bottle service and have it pay for a lifestyle that most people dream of.” By the end of 2021, Kent found herself at a crossroads: She could go back to working nightclubs or develop a business that offered the kind of bottle-service training venues were practically begging for. The former was guaranteed and, at this point in her career, easy money, while the latter would require her to stop taking as many shifts and use the unpaid time to create training materials, which would eat into her savings until she could get a course up and running. Kent opted for the latter and took more than a year off, launched the @bottleservice- bootcamp Instagram account, and literally wrote the book on bottle service training. (“It’s 92 pages, but I’m hesitant to get it printed because I’m still adding to it,” she says. “It’s a work in progress.”) Her main clients are still nightclub man- agers who hire her to train their bottle ser- vice girls for a day or two. Kent also offers one-on-one coaching sessions and so far has mentored more than 50 girls across the na- tion, including in Las Vegas, Houston, and Scottsdale, Arizona. “There was a big difference before and af- ter I took her course. I was holding the bottle wrong. I didn’t know how to upsell,” says Rose Figueroa, a bottle service girl at the Of- fice, an adult entertainment club in Miami Gardens. “She taught us how to be a lot friendlier, how to go out and make friends and bring them to the club, how to sell bot- tles, how to be dressed, what we say when the customer first comes in the club, how often we check on them. I mean, she taught us ev- erything.” Before her training, Figueroa says, she was making $300 or $400 a night. Now, she makes $1,200. This year, she says, she’s on track to gross more than $200,000. “One thousand dollars [a night] is my min- imum,” Figueroa says proudly. “I’m grateful for taking Michelle’s courses because now I can use everything she taught me to increase my bottle sales and make a lot more money.” By popular demand (and a deluge of Insta- gram DMs), Kent expanded Bottle Service Boot Camp to include beginners — women who have never worked as a bottle service girl but want to break into the industry. When she offered her first neophyte’s course for the last weekend of April, more than a dozen women signed up. Owing to the breadth of the material and the one-on-one attention she promises, Kent tries to cap classes at five or six women and wound up hosting a second edition the following weekend and scheduled a third for early June. “The girls have been harassing me about a beginner’s boot camp!” she says with a laugh. “But it did make me realize that I had been booking so many of the staff boot camps and focusing on the girls who were already work- ing that I had left the girls who wanted to be bottle service girls hanging.” Hands-On Training At 11 a.m. at Exchange South Beach, the bright overhead lights are on, revealing imperfections in the floor and a cigarette burn on one of the red booths. No music is playing. The space is so quiet you can hear the air-conditioning. Every few minutes, the ATM beeps. All five aspiring bottle service girls have returned for day two, including this New Times reporter, who was treated as if she were a sixth aspiring bottle service girl. We all wear our matching black Bottle Service Pop! Culture from p7 “I am always, always, always going to steer him away from the tequila and toward the Champagne,” imparts Bottle Service Boot Camp founder Michelle Kent.
