It’s midnight. Charles is driving to a gig when his phone buzzes. Battery failure. The truck, loaded to the brim with dozens of bottles, won’t restart after the event.
“I don’t care,” he tells the tow truck driver. “Honestly, I don’t care. Right now the only goal is to get to this job. After that, we’ll see.”
At 35, Charles Jonville has learned one thing: in event work, there are no problems, only solutions. He even had the phrase tattooed on his leg.
Sixteen, on his own
The story begins at sixteen, in public housing in the Paris suburbs. Charles runs away from home. No plan B, no safety net. His mother? “A child who grew up in foster care, poorly prepared for life in society.” And when you’ve lived like that, it’s hard to teach your own child how to live socially. Years later, he will discover that you’re supposed to file tax returns. No one ever really explained it to him.
He starts an apprenticeship as a landscaper. “I thought working outdoors could be cool. Three years in a sexist, racist environment.” Three years feeling like a city kid dropped into a world of hunting, fishing and tradition. “Not really my thing.”
So he keeps moving. A year and a half as a mover, until the company goes bankrupt — “they were hiring undocumented workers.” Then temp jobs in Toulouse: welding workshops, cleaning airplane parts, assembling Airbus cabins. “The only things I have going for me are my two arms and my hands.”
Every morning he wakes up with a knot in his stomach. “What am I going to do with my life? Everything I do, I hate doing.”
The bar that changed everything
Toulouse, age 21. Charles hangs out in the same bar, his headquarters. He rides BMX with friends who work there. “They were the rock stars of the city. We never hired from résumés — we looked for people who had the bar’s DNA in their blood.”
A position opens up. A friend calls him: “Go for it, it’s your chance, I put in a word for you. Come do the trial shift.”
4 p.m., trial appointment. That very morning, Charles calls the temp agency: “I’m not coming back. Bye.” The owner likes him, he’s got a good look. That’s it — he’s a bartender.
For three years, he enjoys himself: after-parties, clubbing, everything the night has to offer. But he notices something: customers start asking specifically for his cocktails. “And back then, cocktails were basically Canadou, Pulco and white Havana.”
One morning, a revelation. He goes to FNAC and buys the Larousse of cocktails. “I realize that cocktails aren’t just about making a Mojito in five seconds.” He learns to make syrups, tests everything at the bar. “I’m like: OK, it’s just sugar and water? Is it really that simple to make syrup?”
And for the first time in his life, he wakes up without that knot in his stomach.
The boat and the 500 euros
La Rochelle, a few years later. His future wife, a law student, wants him out of the nightlife. He settles into a brasserie, stops working nights. “When you leave the night world, you land back on earth. You realize there’s a whole parallel real life.”
One day, an 18-year-old customer asks if he can make cocktails for her birthday. On a boat. “Sure, why not, sounds great.”
Charles has never done event work. Never. He imagines the evening fifteen times in his head, writes down everything he’ll need. Four hours of service. The father, an executive at Napapijri, is thrilled. He hands him 500 euros in cash and a down jacket as a gift.
“I work four hours and suddenly I’m holding that much money. I tell myself: maybe there’s a business here.”
He talks to his wife. “I hadn’t thought about it, but event work could be cool. I’ll work three nights a week, the rest of the time in the office, creating recipes, preparing everything.”
She says yes. Les Cocktails de Charles is born.
The legal trap
But he quickly discovers something: selling mixed alcohol is illegal in France. “You can’t sell cocktails unless you’re in a bar with a full liquor license.”
With his wife, now a lawyer, they dig and find a workaround. At first it’s homemade. He writes everything by hand in a notebook: recipes, road sheets. “Then one day I have three people with me and they say: we can’t really read this.”
He learns Excel. Designs brochures. Builds a website. Everything he thought he’d never have to do.The machine starts running
Nine years later: a 130-square-meter warehouse, three trucks, seven bars, over 3,000 glasses, six fridges. In high season, Les Cocktails de Charles can run three events a day. Up to 1,800 cocktails.
“People tell me: you’ve basically built an industry. But I’ve got my head down, I don’t really realize it.”
The secret? “You have to stand out.” Vintage shirt, suspenders, always. “If you hire us, it’s because you like who we are. You like the bartender wearing sneakers behind the bar at a wedding. You find it fun.”
And word of mouth: 90% of the business. “Out of 20 people at a party, all 20 will talk about you at the next dinner. You win one gig from one gig. Then two, four, five. It becomes a spiderweb.”
His cocktails? He’s not trying to impress experts. “I have my wife taste them, her friends, people who aren’t cocktail geeks. When five people tell me, ‘This cocktail is amazing,’ for me, that’s a win.”
When things go wrong in event work
Marseille, festival, 11 p.m. Charles is serving cocktails. His phone buzzes. A Belgian number. He ignores it. Another Belgian number. Then a third. Four calls in less than two minutes. “OK, there’s a problem.”
He answers. It’s the bride.
“Where are you?”
“Well, I’m in Marseille, at a festival.”
“No, but where are your bartenders?”
“The wedding is tomorrow.”
“No, it’s tonight.”
Shock. He rereads all his emails while talking. The quote says Saturday. They talked about Saturday. “She just didn’t realize that when I said Saturday, it was because weddings usually happen on Saturdays — but this one was on Friday night.”
It’s 11 p.m. The cake is coming. 170 guests. No cocktail bar.
He calls his head bartender: “Where are you?”
“On the couch watching TV.”
“Put on a shirt, get the truck, the gig is tonight. I’m sorry, man.”
The truck is already loaded for the next day. One bartender leaves an aperitif with friends and rushes to the lab. Another finishes a job and agrees to come.
“I tell them: first thing, set up a table, put out gin and tonics, start serving while the others build the bar.”
Forty-five minutes. The bar is up in forty-five minutes.
“In two hours, we were fully deployed.”
The next day, the bride calls: “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. I think we both messed up. But in nine years of weddings, you’re the first Friday night one I’ve ever done.”
The price
The company has grown fivefold. So has revenue. “In year four, I passed 100,000 euros. I was so proud. Today, we make 100,000 euros in three months.” But his salary hasn’t multiplied by five.
The pace hasn’t changed. “On a day when I don’t work, I work from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.” Dinner at home is at 9:30 or 10. “Until 6 or 7 p.m., I’m on the computer. Then I think: OK, I have to cook.”
Twice a year, he breaks down. “I quit everything. I want to drop my résumé at Decathlon, work in the hiking department, 8 to 5.” Then it passes. A new fridge to buy, the 2026 brochures to design. “Alright, here we go again.”
How does he keep going? “It comes from how I grew up — kind of rough. I grew up thinking: I’m in a jungle, I’m alone, I have to survive.”
Even on Saturdays when he’s off, he’s glued to his phone. At 11:45 he texts his teams: “You guys good? The truck started? You’re on the road?”
Then: “Everything in place? Nothing missing?”
After that, he knows it’ll run smoothly.
His favorite moments behind the bar? The rush. “When you have three lines of people in front of you waving bills. Managing that pressure — I love it.”
Requin Cocktail and what’s next
With Max, whom he met in the U.S. working for Jack Daniel’s, he launched Requin Cocktail: cocktail taps for events. “We were sick of working 80 hours a week and never seeing our wives.”
The idea? “The guy who installs photo booths at weddings has it all figured out. He comes Friday, sets it up, comes back Monday, collects at least 600 euros. He enjoyed his weekend.”
Today Charles lives in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. His wife found a job in the Basque Country. The Cocktails de Charles warehouse stays in La Rochelle, but he wants automation. “The goal is for the company to run without me physically on the ground, while keeping the identity I created.”
For Requin Cocktail, a national cooperative project: helping bartenders all over France who want to do draft cocktails. “For now we’re tinkering here and there, giving parts to people so they can win the event game.”
There are no problems, only solutions.
In five years, he doesn’t really know. Maybe a serious branch in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Focus on training, help bars that don’t know how to sell their cocktails. “You put a photo, five cocktails in a notebook. When the waiter comes to the table, he says: here’s the cocktail menu.”
He taught himself everything. Every step had a trap. “Today, when young guys start out and ask me for advice, I give them everything. Shortcuts, mistakes to avoid.”
On his right leg, that sentence: “There are no problems, only solutions.”
“If you can’t find a solution, then things are really bad. Like, really, really bad.”
He smiles. Since that night at sixteen when he left home with nothing, Charles Jonville never had an instruction manual. He wrote it himself, through broken-down trucks, weddings on the wrong day, and constant improvisation.
“Either you do things right, or you don’t do them at all.”
And when asked what he’d do if he had to quit the bar world, he answers:
“I’ll always be an entrepreneur. I’ve always had this refusal of authority. When someone gives me stupid orders, I’m like: no, that’s completely stupid, I’m not obeying.”
The kid from the Paris suburbs who didn’t even know he had to file taxes built an empire of 1,800 cocktails a day — without a manual, except the one he wrote himself.
