Serving the City: College Job Evolves Into Full-Time Career

ST. CLOUD -- This has been a year where live events have been difficult to pull off.

Adrienne Donnel is the bar manager at the Red Carpet in downtown St. Cloud. She says she moved to town to attend St. Cloud State University as an art major. She started working at the Red Carpet as a waitress when she was 21-years-old.

Working her way up through the ranks was a huge accomplishment for her.

At the time that I got moved up to bartending it was a super veteran staff, so all the staff was already here for five-plus years, and it was the biggest honor in the world to be able to bartend with these people at the largest bar in the Midwest.

She says for a bar that thrives on live music and events it's sad to see the bar so empty.

We've only done acoustic acts up here in the Martini Lounge this summer out on the patio.  We did do one burlesque show in the event center and one drag show in the event center, and a whole lot of comedy, comedy seems to work really well.

Donnel says the events part of her job has caught her eye lately and that is what she wants to focus on more moving forward. She says they're starting to book some things for this summer and fall in the events center.

Donnel says she's not working at the Red Carpet now during the shutdown and is relying on unemployment. She says she's staying busy with her side hustle jobs. She calls this shutdown even more of a struggle than the first one in the spring.

If you know someone who is working full-time in the bar and restaurant industry that you think we should feature in our "Serving the City" series let us know.