Stefanie Ross has been asked for everything from drugs to pizza to sex throughout her nine-year career as a bottle-service girl.
“I think when people are spending a certain amount of money, they think they can have anything they want,” she says.
Including, quite often, her.
“People say, ‘If I spend this much or if I offer you a certain amount, will you leave with me and come to Vegas or do that sort of thing?’ ” says Ross, 30, who’s worked in NYC clubs for the past five years.
Such cringe-worthy moments go “hand in hand,” Ross says, with pouring bottles of Cristal and Ketel for financiers and athletes who shell out thousands to down booze marked up nearly 2,000 percent and poured by doting waitresses. (Ross once witnessed one man spend $60,000 at a downtown club in one night.)
Which is all the more reason why she, and four other curvy, college-educated Manhattan bottle gals, are looking to break out of the bottle.
Ross, Alexandria Murphy (age 28), Christina Donato (29), Mariya Dekham (32) and Ivanka Naydenova (30) are founders of TheSix, an all-female night-life company hosting a new series of “One Night Only” pop-up parties in NYC and at high-profile events such as Sundance, Art Basel and SXSW. TheSix kicked off the festivities in late June with its inaugural bash at 55 Gansevoort.
(The sixth member, Lizz Ariosto, left the group two weeks ago to focus on her modeling and acting career. The ladies opted not to rename themselves TheFive.)
New York ladies Mariya Dekham (from left), Ivanka Naydenova, Stefanie Ross, Alexandria Murphy and Christina Donato, posing at the club SL, are turning their bottle-service savvy into a new pop-up-party biz hitting hot spots all over. (Anne Wermiel/NY Post)
New York ladies Mariya Dekham (from left), Ivanka Naydenova, Stefanie Ross, Alexandria Murphy and Christina Donato, posing at the club SL, are turning their bottle-service savvy into a new pop-up-party biz hitting hot spots all over. (Anne Wermiel/NY Post)
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They claim to be the first entirely female-run night-life company — a rarity in a field dominated by testosterone-heavy teams like Strategic Group’s Noah Tepperberg and Jason Strauss and EMM Group’s Eugene Remm and Mark Birnbaum (the latter of which still employs Murphy, Ross and Naydenova as bottle-service girls).
Not only have TheSix’s cumulative decades worth of experience given them inside (and sometimes gritty) knowledge of what goes into running a nightspot, it’s also given them loads of stories and secrets to spill.
The ladies have witnessed impromptu concerts by Prince, dance-offs with Madonna and Leonardo DiCaprio sightings by the boatload.
“I once saw a guy spend $300,000 buying everyone Cristal,” Dekhman says of Low Taek Jho, the Malaysian party-boy investor who took NYC by storm in 2009.
Of course, the customer who enters the club isn’t always quite the same person who exits.
“You’re dealing with some pretty intense people,” says Ross. “That level of intensity rises the more people drink. The transition sometimes from when you meet the person and take their order in the beginning of the night to the person they are when they leave is like night and day.”
Patrons have asked her to secure everything from decorative ladies to cocaine — “I tell them, ‘I’m not your drug dealer. I am not judging you, right or wrong, but I have nothing to do with anything outside of what we sell,’ ” Ross says.
At a West Coast spot where the fresh-faced brunette served back-breaking magnums of Champagne for high-rolling customers, one man went so far as to offer her boss $5,000 if he’d let Ross leave with him.
“My boss said he’d take the money if I were interested,” she recalls. “I said no.”
Still, they can get paid handsomely for all the headaches. While bottle-service girls earn minimum wage, it’s the tips that really add up.
Ross says she takes home between $1,000 and $3,000 a week working “full-time” — three shifts a week from 10:30 p.m. to 4 or 5 a.m.
Once, she received a $15,000 tip from a customer (on top of the included 20 percent gratuity).
“It’s amazing money,” admits Dekhman, who’s worked at Show and Marquee. “When I started, I was 20 and I was making $150,000 to $160,000 a year. Now it’s less because people don’t have budgets, and everything’s on the books.”
Bottle-service girls tend to sit at the top of the club hierarchy. Positions are few and far between, most often snagged through connections. Asking for a Saturday night off for your sister’s wedding can get you put on probation for months at some spots, says Ross. “Everyone is replaceable, and we know that,” she says.
“You make more money [as a
bottle-service girl], but you also have to deal with more bulls - - t. There’s no bar between you, so people can grab you and speak to you closely and engage you in conversation you don’t want to be part of for long periods of time,” says Dekhman.
“I pretend that I’m deaf and
cannot hear,” she adds.
For many customers, eye candy (even of the silent variety) suffices.
“We are in the business of selling things and looking good,” says Ross. “I don’t know if I came in here with a mohawk and 20 pounds heavier that they’d have me on staff.”
Uniforms vary from club to club. While working at Show, Dekhman purchased Victoria’s Secret lingerie for her work-wear, though TheSix-ers say uniforms typically consist of black dresses provided by management — usually a spandex version made by American Apparel.
As for shoes, Ross is grateful that her EMM bosses allow her to don boots instead of heels.
“I like to keep things in my boots when I’m running around and need a pen, phone or flashlight handy,” she says, adding that’s where she stores her tips, too.
Some clubs, like Provocateur, are rumored to enforce strict mandates on weight and appearance, while others, like Pink Elephant, merely ask that the girls get regular manicures because “it’s the first thing people see,” says Murphy. (She wrote off her manis for tax purposes.)
The industry’s emphasis on youth and looks puts an inevitable expiration date on bottle-service girls’ careers.
“It would be ridiculous to say there isn’t a kind of shelf life in waitressing,” says Ross.
“This industry is not generally friendly to older women. It’s not generally friendly to age,” says Dekhman. “You have to phase
yourself out eventually.”
Dekhman put down the bottle for good four months ago, because, she says, at age 32, she felt “like a dinosaur” as she watched friends’ careers and personal lives move forward, while she worked the overnight shift with a fresh batch of 18-year-olds.
“There’s a point when it becomes very clear that it’s time to move on to another career . . . it’s just very important for women to step up and take the initiative to empower themselves,” says Dekhman, who also owns her own staffing agency.
Despite the sometimes harsh realities of the industry, TheSix see the glass as half-full.
After all, their stints as bottle-
service girls have given them money, connections, experience and the freedom to pursue outside interests, like their “One Night Only” bashes.
“We decided that instead of rejecting night life, to embrace it. This is what we know. This is what we’re good at,” says Murphy.
As Ross points out: “I’m not the person that created the ridiculous idea of bottle service, I was just lucky enough to get the job.”
dschuster@nypost.com