Mixing Business with Pleasure at Law Bird

Annie Williams Pierce has spent more than half of her life serving plates of food, pouring beers and mixing up elaborate (and award-winning) cocktails. She liked the work, but spending dozens of hours in dimly lit bars—where she had little say in decor or the drink menu—grew wearisome, especially during the cold, dark winter months.

Now, when Williams Pierce heads to her job, it’s in a sunlit space she designed based around an elaborate—and personal—menu paying homage to her worldwide travels.

Law Bird, the Brewery District bar Williams Pierce opened in November with her husband, Luke Pierce, serves wine, cocktails and beer (plus snacks to sop them up) in a sunny space filled with palm frond motifs, a bright color palette and warm neon signs.

“The physical space is such a reflection of the two of us,” said Williams Pierce, 31. “It’s great because it’s no longer just in our heads. For so long it was the two of us in here every day either painting and working, exposing a brick wall, or on our computers formatting everything and picking everything and designing everything, and now it has hundreds of people coming through the door.”

Between them, the couple have decades of food and beverage experience. They didn’t plan on switching career paths anytime soon, Williams Pierce joked, so they decided they might as well work for themselves.

Before she was legally of age to work in bars, Williams Pierce waitressed in diners and restaurants.

A move to Chicago for college in 2006 landed her a mid-day bartending job at a high-volume sports bar. Told she “wasn’t hot enough” to bartend at night, Williams Pierce poured bomb shots and opened Bud Lights for customers during the lunch rush.

Not until moving back to Columbus in 2011, when Matt the Miller’s Tavern manager Christina Meehan sensed her nascent talent, did Williams Pierce learn about the art of alcohol.

“I will highlight her and point her out all day any day because she’s the first person to really give me that opportunity to learn, and learn the breadth of what there is to know,” she said.

This is in contrast to the many men who have taken credit for her success. “It fills me with rage but it also makes me laugh,” she said. Williams Pierce moved up thanks in large part to her own thirst for learning. She educated herself on flavor pairings, ingredients and technique during stints at the Sycamore, at her pop-up Four Thieves Thirst Bar and at the esteemed German Village spot Curio.

While at Curio, Williams Pierce became the first woman to win the United States Bartenders Guild’s Most Imaginative Bartender award. Her Japanese-inspired martini—infused with snap pea vermouth— earned her a victory after six previous attempts.

She has since turned that curious, competitive attitude toward Law Bird, formatting the cocktail menu herself and building tables and painting the space alongside Pierce. The imaginative cocktails she designed for the opening included the Graeter Flavor Saver (stone fruit, port, Cynar and egg served like a Ramos gin fizz) and Ooples and Boonoonoos (Japanese whiskey, banana liqueur, Pommeau and pineapple rum).

A hefty chunk of the menu highlights what Williams Pierce likes to drink the best. Since she came up in cocktails and Pierce worked in beer distribution, they found a happy medium with wine, sherry and sake. All find prominent places on the menu.

Also given high billing: the names of each Law Bird employee. In an industry that often minimizes the status of those who serve the patrons, Law Bird’s owners wanted to ensure their employees felt acknowledged.

The service industry is often transient, but the couple knew they could give others the tools to turn it into a viable career.

“People … don’t see all the options you can really [get] out of being in this industry and have a career from it and we’ve tried really hard to provide that,” Luke Pierce said. “That’s really what we’re focusing on here, which is hopefully creating one of the best teams in Columbus and that will allow us to spread and continue to grow.”

Right now, they’re both working long hours doing administrative work, planning the next menu and meeting with reps during the day and working service four nights a week.

Not only does serving customers demand a different set of skills, it also requires a complete change of attitude from business operations. “I wear my heart on my sleeve,” Williams Pierce said. “You can read my emotions all over my face, so that’s the hardest part for me right now, just that total mental and energy shift.”

While the days are still lengthy, Law Bird’s owners have witnessed the community rally around the bar in ways large and small. A crowdfunding campaign raised more than $22,000 to help kickstart the business, and local bars and restaurants such as Watershed and Antiques on High regularly boosted Law Bird on their social media platforms in its earliest days.

Williams Pierce sees the “light, bright and funky” space as another bottle on the growing Columbus shelf of interesting independent food and beverage spots.

“It’s where our team is [and] our community is,” she said. “We want to continue to be able to serve them because we love them and wouldn’t be able to continue doing what we’re doing without their enthusiasm and engagement and support.”

Her oft-repeated mantra seals this commitment.

“We serve people, not cocktails,” Williams Pierce said.

• Law Bird, 740 S. High St., is open every evening except Tuesdays. Check out the latest cocktail offerings at lawbirdbar.com.