I worry about this too

Yet one more factor comes into play, and not all cocktail mavens are enthusiastic about it. In recent years, spirits makers have recruited and signed prominent, knowledgeable bartenders as “brand ambassadors,” financing their travel to bars far and wide, where the drinks they make include the gin, bourbon or tequila they represent. “I worry that a lot of young bartenders are being snapped up too soon, and they’re going to look back at when they were making drinks just to make drinks and feel a sense of having left their best years behind them,” said Jim Meehan, general manager of the bar PDT in the East Village. He himself does work for Banks 5 Island Rum, though it has followed many years of shifts behind the bar.