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Mike Dabasinskas
In an industry where profitability can be razor thin, Southern California restaurant and bar owners often turn to Mike Dabasinskas ('86, Management Science, Marshall College) for help. You might call him the "wine whisperer," called into duty to advise restaurateurs as they brave fierce competition, tight margins, and a fine line between success and failure.
When it comes to dispensing beverage advice, Dabasinskas knows "from what he speaks." His training ground was being a bartender during his early UC San Diego days at the legendary Elephant Bar - an establishment many alumni know well, just across La Jolla Village Drive from campus.
Dabasinskas soon found his knowledge keeping Elephant Bar afloat was valuable to others. He joined the team at Southern Wine and Spirits, the largest beverage distributor in the country with over $11 billion in sales today. He became an award-winning sales manager and rose steadily to become Vice President - Portfolio Manager for Southern California.
A huge asset to Dabasinskas' success was his adaptability to seismic shifts in consumer behavior. He took on wine management and road the "Sideways" film-inspired wave of consumer wine growth, becoming a key adviser to top clients and grocers as the country collectively stocked their newfound wine cellars. Soon bottle service streaked into the club scene and Dabasinskas saw clubs grow too fast and then close down. His product knowledge and inventory skills became invaluable to hoteliers who relied on help managing vast inventories of wine and spirits.
"UCSD provided more than just the basics," recalls Dabasinskas. "It was not just about learning theory, but learning 'the why,' doing analysis, and using the basics creatively in the business world. The pace of society and business has changed so much since my time [on campus], but the concepts I learned - statistics, production theory, game theory - help me to this day."
While bartending paid his bills, Dabasinskas was a serious student who initially came to UC San Diego to study oceanography and play basketball under Coach John Block. He realized that management science provided the best pathway for success and he pursued the major, while also taking a broad range of classes in biology, genetics and chemistry that fed his intellectual appetite. UC San Diego's Nobel Prize winning professors were a big draw and he found ways to crash their lectures even when he was not enrolled in the courses. Education and the drive to achieve were his top priorities then and remain so today.
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