I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business.

I'm Levy Dalton.

I'm Erin Scala and here's our show today. Oh, It's a custom at some restaurants to allow their staff a ship drink.

This is usually a beer or a glass of inexpensive wine at the end of the night.

And the custom helps to promote a familial vibe among the staff while also educating them firsthand about the products they sell the most often.

It's also considered a type of benefit that is of low cost to the restaurant.

As a server or backwaiter, you aren't likely getting any kind of health care package,

but a shift drink is usually welcome after a grueling shift of running around.

Not all restaurants offer shift drinks but some do. But when

did shift drinks become a thing? Well giving a ration of wine or cider to

harvest workers has been pretty commonplace throughout the ages.

But some of the earliest shift drink laws came about in the 1700s, BC, when Babylonian king Hammurabi decreed some important laws that set into motion a

daily beer ration. If you were a regular blue-collar worker you would get two leaders

but if you were a high priest you might get

up to five leaders a day.

Kunaform tablets from 1785 BC show that daily wine rations were given to the Assyrian

royal household about a glass a day for each man including the menial servants.

In the seaaring days, drink rations became a part of daily military life.

Drinking water would become microbial and filled with algae,

so seaben would get a ration of beer or rum to... become microbial and filled with algae,

so seaman would get a ration of beer or rum

to add to the water to kill the germs.

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