LP O’Brien Balances the Weight of Success and Responsibility

As the Bard once wrote: Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them when their bar’s strongest bartender dives into the mosh pit at a GWAR concert and breaks his wrist.

It was 2014, and LP O’Brien had already been getting drawn slowly into the Washington, D.C., bar scene, starting as a customer at the original Passenger, the city’s early, beloved craft cocktail bar started by Derek Brown. She’d moved to the city from her home in the Bronx to go to nursing school, and since a friend of hers worked at the Passenger, O’Brien often met up with her, later picking up some side work.

That night, she was at the concert with a group of colleagues from the three bars that then made up Brown’s little empire in the Shaw neighborhood—the “DB3,” as the team called them. “I had been a server and a barback, and I had extensive training on how to bartend, but I had never bartended,” O’Brien recalls. As the realities of their colleague’s injury became clear, “Derek looked at me and he says, ‘You’re bartending this Friday.’”

It was a baptism by fire at [Derek] Brown’s establishments on 7th Street in D.C., where there were frequently lines out the door and where the bars attracted “all the OG bartenders of D.C. at the time.”

It was a baptism by fire at Brown’s establishments on 7th Street in D.C., where there were frequently lines out the door and where the bars attracted “all the OG bartenders of D.C. at the time.” But Brown stayed by her side all night, making sure she could execute the drinks. “And at the end of that shift, he was like, ‘How was it?’ And I was like, ‘That was the best thing I’ve ever done.’”

Love at first shift. The honeymoon period. It’s easy to fall for the flash of the cocktail world—the drinks, the party, the attention that shines on “startenders,” the intoxicating vibe of building stories in a glass. And O’Brien has experienced plenty of well-deserved attention for her work as a maker of drinks, including, of course, being crowned the winner of the first season of Drink Masters, Netflix’s reality show featuring mixologists competing to create the most dazzling cocktail experiences for a panel of celebrity judges.

But her focus has widened well beyond the glass. Just 22 when she first got into the industry, she’s expanded her vision over time, looking at issues that the “first crush” stage tends to overlook: The challenges of constantly working around alcohol; the way systemic bias plays out in hospitality spaces; the challenges of being in this line of work while trying to raise a healthy, happy family. (The first thing I heard over the line when I called to chat was not her own voice but the burbles of her new baby boy.) Real, longtime love is work. It’s not all Negronis and roses.

Now a married mom, a business owner, and drinks consultant, O’Brien has turned that crush stage into real love—building her own career but also working to lift others up, choosing to cut out alcohol to be more present for her family, and focusing on making the industry a healthier and more inclusive place to be.

“I’ve worked with lots of bartenders who are good. I’ve not worked with a lot of bartenders who are deep. And she’s both.” —Derek Brown

Her evolution and the ways she’s chosen to use her platform come as no surprise to Brown, who’s had his own journey toward a healthier space in the industry and has become a passionate advocate for more mindful drinking. He makes the connection between her career not taken—nursing—and where she’s ended up. “She has such a natural affinity for taking care of people, and taking care of their needs beyond just a drink,” says Brown. “I’ve worked with lots of bartenders who are good. I’ve not worked with a lot of bartenders who are deep. And she’s both.”

She’s also head-spinningly busy. She runs her own drinks consultancy, LP Drinks. She’s a shareholder in Siponey Spritz (a certified B Corp, a designation given to for-profits that meet high standards for their environmental and social sustainability practices). She’s the co-founder and co-owner of Focus on Health, a nonprofit that works to support people in the bar industry through wellness, mentorship, and harm-reduction programs, and she was recently named global creative director of bars for F1 Arcade. And she has two kids under the age of two.

How in the name of GWAR is she doing all this? “I’m not balancing it well at all,” she says, laughing. “I mean, I’ll be very honest. I’m taking interview calls while two kids are screaming in the background.” Still, she considers herself lucky—she has a supportive husband, and they have people around them who provide great assistance. And she’s learned to get better about boundaries. “I’m still juggling it, but advocacy has been the biggest piece of success,” she says. “If I can’t advocate for myself and be firm in asking for what I feel I truly deserve, it’s not worth it. Because I can’t justify leaving my children to go to Tales [of the Cocktail] if there’s not a valuable return—I can’t do things just to do them.”

In those early days in D.C. working with Brown and other bars and restaurants, including Silver Lyan, bartender and entrepreneur Ryan Chetiyawardana’s first U.S. outpost, O’Brien says she was lucky to have access to people who shaped not only her own evolution, but the national and global beverage space. She credits the passion of those mentors for helping her see hospitality as a career. “They brought so much care and thoughtfulness into it,” she says. “And I want to be able to embody that with everything and anything I do.”

“I knew I had to be the very best version of whatever it is I decided to do.” —LP O’Brien

When she did finally make the shift, she set her goals high: “I knew I had to be the very best version of whatever it is I decided to do. Because my growing up as, honestly, a Black woman in the Bronx, my parents did really invest a lot of time and money in ensuring that I had the education I had.” Initially, the idea of shifting into hospitality wasn’t exactly celebrated at home.

O’Brien brought all of her learning into play when she was asked to audition and, ultimately, cast in Drink Masters. Initially hesitant, she prepared rigorously, studying drink and culinary techniques, brainstorming flavor combinations, and showed up in a way that showcased not only her consummate professionalism and creativity behind the bar, but her pride in her identity. “Everything But the Alley Cat,” for example, the guava rum drink that she paired with a fried plantain clipped to the drink, wowed the judges. It was a tribute to her Puerto Rican heritage and memories of after-school snacking at bodegas in the Bronx.

But while the series seemed to lack the cattiness that can make reality TV both compelling and cringe-worthy, behind the scenes it was a different picture, O’Brien says. She navigated difficult dynamics during filming, though she chooses to keep most of that private. “I’m grateful for the hardships because I came out a much stronger individual,” shes ays, but ultimately, she couldn’t celebrate the opportunities it brought until years later.

Her victory was a meaningful moment, says Nina Oduro, co-founder of Black Women in Food, a nonprofit focused on supporting professionals in the industry and building a more equitable and sustainable food system. Having a Black woman win the first season of the show was momentous—even as, Oduro emphasizes, it should prompt questions on why that kind of moment has taken so long. “For our community, it was essential to have a Black woman like LP win,” says Oduro. “And what I mean by ‘like LP’ is that her contributions back to the community have been just as important as her win. It hasn’t been just a win about her, it’s been a win about taking others with her.”

O’Brien operates with a staunch belief in inclusion, Oduro says, and she’s used her success accordingly. “She continues to look at ways in which our food industry can be stronger if we collaborate across cultures, across groups, even across sectors,” Oduro says. “What does it look like to hire diverse people, to train diverse people, and to integrate culture, to ensure that when people are out in the world working or creating drink experiences for others, that culture and inclusion are at the center of how they perform?”

She learned first how to become a good bartender, then a good storyteller, then a good host.

O’Brien thinks about her journey as one of stages. She learned first how to become a good bartender, then a good storyteller, then a good host. She is now able to expand and think about her values, choosing to take on the projects and brands that reflect and amplify them.

Increasingly she’s bringing this wisdom to everything she takes on, and refusing the work and the brands that don’t reflect her values. She wants to see that more holistic approach spread. “As operators and managers of establishments that take care of other people, we often put our own self-care to the wayside,” she says. That happens across many industries that prioritize taking care of others, she notes, but “I think the difference with other organizations outside of food and beverage is that they have systems in place—HR, resources, or insurance—embedded to ensure there are ways to cope and deal with the difficulties.”

She feels a responsibility with her success, choosing to use her platform “to speak up on these injustices to ensure that I am creating space for individuals who look like me, whether it’s giving them a job opportunity, or allowing them to have access to my resources.”

The industry has miles to go, and the current political moment can make things more charged. But she sees reasons for hope.

The industry has miles to go, and the current political moment can make things more charged. But she sees reasons for hope. “Even a year ago, I don’t think there were as many people having conversations about pregnancy in our industry. I don’t think we were having as many conversations about sobriety in our industry. And before Covid, oh my gosh—I don’t even think you could have said the word ‘anxiety’ or ‘depression’ or anything.”

Recently she was out celebrating two years of her own sobriety and was accidentally served an alcoholic beer. She was frustrated, but she posted about the approach she would bring to the program she’s building for F1: “I was reminded: Intention alone is not enough. Yes, that bartender probably intended to get it right. But without follow-through, without systems, awareness, and accountability, intention loses its power. … I’m going to teach our teams to reframe the approach.”

That goes beyond just NA cocktails. An industry that takes care of the whole person, that recognizes true hospitality goes far beyond what shows up in the glass—that’s the kind of love O’Brien is trying to bring to her work. “It’s easy to feel fractured or pigeonholed in our society. We have so many different identities and sometimes people just see one of them. LP is really good at pulling those together and drawing inspiration from them,” says Brown. “She makes drinks for everyone.”

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