Colleen Hughes

Colleen Hughes is a prominent leader of the Charlotte, NC bartending community. She is currently overseeing the cocktail programs at four different concepts including the award-winning bar at Haberdish where she continues to manage and bartend. Leading by example, she works hands-on with her staff to train, educate, and mentor the talent of Charlotte’s future cocktail leaders instilling not only the importance of making great drinks but of customer service and caring for their community.

 Colleen and her cocktails have been featured in numerous regional and national publications, including Southern Living (that named Haberdish the #2 restaurant bar in the South), Forbes, USA Today, Popular Mechanics, and Garden & Gun. Additionally, she has also contributed cocktail recipes for books and television. For the past 2 years, she has been working with the City of Charlotte Travel and Tourism Board to help promote Charlotte as a true Food and Beverage destination in the Southern region. With Visit Charlotte she has represented Charlotte at events such as Charleston Wine and Food and The James Beard House in NYC, as well as Charlotte’s tourism print ads and television commercials.

 In her time as a founding board member and former President of the Charlotte Chapter, she has helped to grow membership to over 70 fun, enthusiastic, and very active members. Colleen has helped to create a dynamic chapter of bar professionals who gather several times monthly in the spirit of education, camaraderie, and raising the bar for Charlotte as a whole. In the last year of her Presidency, the Charlotte chapter hosted the 2019 Southern Regional Conference and won the USBG's Rising Star Award at the National Leadership Conference. It is that spirit of inclusiveness, excitement, friendship, and fun felt within the Charlotte USBG that she would love to bring to all of the individual chapters throughout the country.