GUEST SHIFT: NINA YOUNG, The Delaware, Whiskey Pickle + The Balloonary
Nina Young, beekeeping and bartending on location at June Farms. | Photo: Konrad Odhiambo/The Dishing
Bartender, beekeeper, and balloon business owner Nina Young talks hospitality, Cali-sober living + the art of balancing four jobs.
Interview: Susie Davidson Powell
Photos: Konrad Odhiambo/The Dishing
Shoot locations: June Farms, West Sand Lake, N.Y. + The Delaware Restaurant and Bar, Albany, N.Y.
Tastemaker: Nina Young | IG: @neebeans
Business: The Balloonary | IG: @Theballoonary | Website: theballoonary.com
Rose & Dale Photo Co. | IG: @roseanddalephotoco | Website: Rose & Dale Photo Co.
Hometown: Cottekill, N.Y., nr. Rosendale
Current city: Albany, N.Y.
Personal style: As much fun, color and organza as possible!
Listening to: Today? Mr Experience by Donny Benét. But in general, Benny Sings, Khruangbin, The Weekend, Astrud Gilberto. I’m truly all over the place when it comes to music
Favorite spirit/non-alc: At the moment I’m liking a Phony Negroni on ice with a splash of club and an orange
Favorite classic cocktail/non-alc drink: I used to love a gin martini with olives – unfortunately I haven’t had a non-alc yet that compares, but I'll keep trying
Coffee or tea and what’s your order: Coffee with a little oat milk
Biggest industry influence/inspiration: José Andrés of World Central Kitchen - I appreciate when people use their platform and skills to help people in need
Drinks industry trend that should end: Single use plasticware, cups, shot glasses, straws.
Nina Young beekeeping at June Farms. | Photo: Konrad Odhiambo/The Dishing
The Dishing talks with tastemakers in the hospitality industry + trailblazers at the intersection of food, culture + art. Today we’re talking with Nina Young about beekeeping, bartending, balloon-bending + giving up booze.
Hey, Nina. Thanks for talking to The Dishing! You’re insanely busy across 3 jobs: bartending, ballooning and beekeeping. What does your week ahead look like?
Hi, thanks for having me! I am insanely busy! This upcoming week is a little different because next weekend I leave for a vacation to Iceland, but a typical week looks like this: For The Balloonary, lots of e-mailing with clients about balloon design or back office accounting and book keeping. Even though we are mostly getting orders for the weekends, parties and birthdays still happen during the week so I am also taking care of any orders that have to be prepared and installed. For Rose & Dale Photo Co., my photo booth company, it’s typically wedding prep for the upcoming weekend which includes getting the Airstream ready, prepping everything needed for the event and finalizing timeline details. I’ll typically make one visit to June Farms to manage the beehives, sometimes two trips depending on where we are in the season. Come Friday, it’s a night shift at The Whiskey Pickle, balloon installs on Saturday morning with either a wedding or a bartending shift at The Delaware, then Sunday morning is back to balloon installs and a night shift at The Pickle. It sounds nuts to write it all out. [Laughs]
You’re from Rosendale (well, a tiny hamlet near it called Cottekill) about 7 miles from student-heavy New Paltz, but Rosendale has had some superb new additions with the recent openings of Well Nice Wine Bar, the fishmonger-and-restaurant Montauk Catch Club, and Le Chat Barbu. Are you surprised by the glow up?
The place I call home is incredible and I understand why people want to move there. The influx of people from NYC and the area’s improvement has been happening for a while now. There was a huge move there during and after COVID also. My parents moved upstate when I was three – a little early to the trend – but for the past 10 or 12 years I’ve watched my hometown and surrounding towns wildly change. Every time I go home, there’s a new restaurant/bar. It’s exciting, a lot of the areas that I grew up going to have really changed for the better.
You have an airstream named Rosendale. What’s the backstory there?
The Airstream business is called Rose & Dale Photo Co. — it’s a nod to my childhood stomping grounds. In 2014, I had a lightbulb moment with the idea of creating a photo booth and lounge space in a vintage Airstream. I’ve always loved Airstreams and who doesn’t love a good photo booth? It wasn’t really a thing yet, so by 2015 I bought the trailer, completed the renovation and was booking gigs and it’s been a hit ever since. I am booked mostly for weddings in the Catskills, but once in a while I get a booking around here which is super fun!
Your two bartending jobs and two event businesses are all customer-facing in some way. How did you get into hospitality and what do you like about the work?
I think I thrive in making connections with people. All of the things that I have and do nurture that desire in me. I don’t know that I fully understood what I was getting into back in high school when I first started working at the neighborhood pizzeria, but it has become very clear to me as I’ve gotten older that people are my thing.
I think it became most impactful during my 10-year stint at Bombers on Lark, back when Lark was jumping and the place was packed every day. I met the people that I consider my family there, both co-workers and regulars. I enjoy the revolving door of incredible new people I meet. Starting and operating the businesses continued that trend of connection. I think I also developed a love of creating experiences for people. Both businesses call me to do this through design – whether it’s the Airstream interior or installs we do for events with The Balloonary.
Having launched The Balloonary in 2020, you and your business partner, Steph Turcotte, moved into a pink former laundromat in Center Square followed by a pop up store last winter in Stuyvesant Plaza. The business is now online. What’s the plan: Brick-and-mortar or virtual?
The plan is to sit tight, build an online shop, grow the business until we find the perfect location for another space. I love owning a brick and mortar — again that customer-facing, revolving-door of new people just gets me. I think it legitimizes a business like The Balloonary to have space people can come into + see what we represent.
Being on Madison Ave was a great experience and start for our little shop, but it was a lesson in the value of a good location and a parking lot for customers! The uptick in traffic and business we saw in our little pop-up at Stuyvesant Plaza was incredible and while it was a ton of work to set up and be there for only a few months (as we intended), the lessons we learned there were of huge value!
You’ve been very open on your social media about your personal health journey in recent years, both physically and mentally through your sobriety journey. I’ll break this into a couple of components: First, what led to this decision to put your health and sobriety first?
Let’s say I’m Cali-sober — I just don’t use alcohol anymore but, for me, I find weed and mushrooms to be a healthy tool in my life. I think I finally took a look at my relationship with booze. I’m a pretty intense all or nothing personality and that carried over into the way I consumed alcohol. I’m not a glass of wine every night on my couch, or a let’s meet for a cocktail kind of drinker — I’m a go out and completely go for it drinker. I have a hard time limiting myself and it was consistently resulting in black outs and really bad hangovers. I mostly just wanted to dance and have a good time (I’m a very happy, fun drunk) but it started to feel incredibly unsafe for me. So I just stopped and haven’t started again. It will be three years in January!
Congratulations on that milestone, Nina! And I think we’re seeing more bartenders making decisions around alcohol, or maybe it's that the industry conversations around alcohol and mental health is more in the open. How do you balance sobriety (from alcohol) while working as a bartender?
During my time at Bombers, I made a very conscious decision to stop drinking during work hours. I recognized if I was working multiple nights a week, and drank all of those nights, there was a good chance I would ruin my health, look haggard and feel a mess. I think that decision eventually made it easier for me to be in a bar and not drink alcohol. Also, I think my decision to quit drinking a little later in my life also helped as there isn’t that eagerness to head out to the bars post-shift like there was when I was younger. Since I don’t feel compelled to go out as often, my exposure to being out drinking is less than it used to be.
With that, I will say I’m incredibly lucky: Quitting drinking is difficult for many people, but for me it’s been a fairly easy decision. I’m not tempted to drink when I’m around people drinking + I have just as good of a time. The only difference is I get sleepy earlier than I used to, but that could be that my life is madness from morning to night!
Nina Young opening a hive at June Farms. | Photo: Konrad Odhiambo/The Dishing
Now I’m really excited to ask you about your journey into beekeeping. I think it’s been one of my favorite shoots so far seeing you don all the beekeeping gear and calming the hives with smoke. Start at the beginning: How did you get into it and how it’s going with the hives at June Farms?
The shoot was so fun and I’m shocked how good the girls were —no stings! Honestly, beekeeping has always been something I was interested in. Seeing beekeepers in their full gear, working their hives was so intriguing to me. I went through a breakup after an extremely long relationship and there was a new motivation to get into all the things that had been on my lists of things that I wanted to try over the years. I bought a beekeeping book and decided to sign up for a class. Bee Hollow Farm has an eight-week course that’s mostly online and taught me the basics. I bought the equipment I needed for two hives and Collie from Flowerscout graciously invited me to keep my hives in one of her beautiful city gardens in Troy. Matt Baumgartner is a dear friend and I knew he needed a beekeeper on the farm so I started working on my own hives while taking over the hives on June Farms. Shortly after I started I was introduced to George, the beekeeper from Forts Ferry Farm and with some convincing he became my mentor. Beekeeping is hard and having his guidance has been incredible.
After my first season with hives, managing two different locations on top of everything else I do just became difficult, so we moved the Troy hives to the farm. This is my fourth season and it’s been such an awesome experience. We have six hives at the moment and they are thriving. I think it’s an awesome addition to the farm that people are really enjoying. Once in a while I do a little class for Girl Scout troops and it’s so cool to see how interested people are in learning about these incredible creatures.
How much honey do you produce each season? Honey tastes different depending on the season and where the bees are pollinators, so how would you describe the color and flavor of your honey this year?
So we have two harvests on the farm, Spring and Fall. This Spring we pulled around 400lbs from the hives which is great! The supers went right back into the hives and the girls are now producing fall honey. Spring is always lighter in color, more yellow, and tends to be light a little more floral and sweet. Fall is a darker amber color and has a slight funk to it. The pull in fall is always a little less because they have less time to go out and gather and because we have to leave a decent amount of honey in the hives for them to sustain themselves through winter.
There are well-documented healing properties of bee sound frequencies. Is beekeeping a therapeutic practice for you in some way?
Absolutely! There is nothing more peaceful than getting to the farm early on a beautiful day, opening the hives and getting into it. Their hum is so indicative of their mood and when it’s just right it sends me into a meditative flow. It’s crazy to think of it as peaceful, considering there are hundreds of thousands of little creatures at my fingertips, and especially since I found out I am highly allergic with a sting to my face! But, when all is going right, it’s incredible to witness and it puts my nervous system at ease.
How do you balance your busy work/life? Do you prioritize mental and physical health + make time to relax?
This is something that I’m trying to get better at. I work a ton and run around a lot! It sounds like the opposite of relaxing, but movement is always helpful to me. I love working out and moving my body, so if I can go for a walk or run that’s awesome. On top of the endorphins and feeling good afterwards, working out is helpful because I’m not able to multitask on a run or lifting weights. The task at hand is all that I’m focused on and that helps my brain relax. Making sure I get time with friends, having healthy conversations and quality time also really rejuvenates me and helps me feel connected. It’s absolutely a work in progress because unchecked, work could completely take over. But I’m also going on vacation next week to Iceland!
You’ve been in or around the industry for a long time. Restaurants and bars still report less foot traffic and less of a drinking crowd since 2020. What do you see as the future for the industry?
I really am not sure... I do know that people still crave connection and value quality experiences. There are few things more special than an incredible night out at a restaurant or bar you’ve been looking forward to trying. Or the way your favorite restaurant just hits every single time. My hope for the industry is that people continue to appreciate the value in connection and in-person experiences. The stay home, Door Dash, on-demand culture is sad and I hope people realize that it lacks the richness life has to offer.
Where are 3 favorite spots for breakfast, lunch or dinner in the Hudson Valley or Capital Region?
Jeez, there are so many places that I love, but I have narrowed it down for you! First, I’m going to start with pizza — I love pizza so so much, so of course one of my choices has to be a pizza spot and I’m going to give you two. Ollie’s would be my top spot, whether from their slice shop in Kingston or the full restaurant in Stone Ridge. Their full menu is great too and I love it. Runner up pizza for me at the moment is Be Golden Farms in Berne. The drive is gorgeous, the food is delicious and the owners are great. We did a really fun pasta-and-fringe install for them last year and when I went in to eat for the first time they still had some foam paper farfalle that we had made on display. Just an overall feel good space.
Second, I also love Lil’ Deb’s Oasis in Hudson. I really appreciate when a business fully commits to an aesthetic. I cannot express how much my I eat with my eyes and the design of the space is 1000% part of that for me. If you have ever been you know that it is fun, bright and everything I love. On top of that, the food is fantastic. The whole fish is my favorite because any opportunity to eat with my hands is a happy experience for me.
Third is Liza’s of Troy. Simply put, I love her and all that she stands for. True health food that makes me feel happy and taken care of after I’ve basically licked the plate clean. She’s the real deal and an incredibly hard worker. Talks with Liza are always inspiring and any opportunity I get to go say hi and have a delicious bowl, I take.
Imagine an ideal day or night out. If you could go anywhere with no limits on costs or reservations, where would you go and how would the day or night unfold?
Like really no limits?! I could go so many different ways here — so many things make me happy! But I think it would be a private jet to a private Italian beach with my core people. The in-flight snack would be shrimp cocktail cooked to perfection and perfectly shucked oysters. On the beach it would be a full grazing feast of all of the most fresh, delicious Italian coastal cuisine. I love basking in the sun and sand around people I love most. That to me is true living. When the sun goes down, a hop back onto the plane to a big comfy cabin in a forest where we could have a fire under a night sky full of stars. S’mores fixings of course, the perfect lake for night swimming and the best playlist for a dance party to end the night. All of this isn’t too much to ask for, right?
What’s next? Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
My hopes for the next 5 years to be solely working on my businesses. While I love the industry and am so thankful for it, the older I get, the more I value my nights and getting up early in the morning. Right now, late nights and early mornings are my life, but I hope to be done with that soon. I hope we’ll soon have another standalone, pink, cutie Balloonary (maybe two?), and that we’re able to provide a really happy place for people to visit and shop. I like where we’re going with the sustainable fringe offerings and other elements of design, so I hope we’re able to develop that even more as time goes on. I’m always dreaming up fun ideas for new ventures — I think it’s impossible not to when you have the entrepreneurial bug — so, who knows, maybe something new will happen! I try to practice keeping my mind open to all the possibilities and to say yes as often as I can.
Nina, thanks for talking to The Dishing about your bees and balancing life! It’s so good to see forging your own path in so many ways.
Thank you so much, Susie! I’m honored to be asked to be a part of your new and awesome project.
