Profile | Asia’s 50 Best 2023 Bartenders’ Bartender Beckaly Franks of Hong Kong bar The Pontiac on why bartending is ‘part of her DNA’, and ‘making space’ for women
- Beckaly Franks, co-owner of The Pontiac and 3 other Hong Kong bars, is the first woman to be voted Bartenders’ Bartender at the Asia’s 50 Best Bars awards
- The American talks about her bartending journey from the Dixie Tavern in Portland, Oregon – ‘Coyote Ugly on steroids’ – and using her voice to advocate equality
She may have started as a little girl hanging out in her parents’ bar in Portland, Oregon, in the United States, but she grew up to become an award-winning bartender who moved to Hong Kong to open her own venue at the age of just 30.
And in the eight years since then, Beckaly Franks has become a true powerhouse in the city’s food and drink industry – a position cemented this month when she officially became the first woman to be named the Bartenders’ Bartender, the only peer-voted category in the Asia’s 50 Best Bars awards.
Franks is grateful for the opportunity to do what she loves and for the recognition bestowed upon her by the community – and true to form, she says she does not have any impostor syndrome about winning the award, “because I earned it”.
“The bar is my heart, the bar is my bones,” she says. “I’ve always said that hospitality and bartending are part of my DNA. My parents co-owned a bar, and that inclusive community culture is how I grew up.”
In her early 20s, Franks was recruited into performance bartending at the famous Dixie Tavern in Portland, which she describes as “high-volume, rock ’n’ roll, Coyote Ugly on steroids”, referring to the 2000 musical film based on the Coyote Ugly Saloon bars, known for their female bartenders who could often be seen dancing on the counters.
