Is there an officially published background for bartender or something like it in any of the current books?

No, there is no bartender background that has been officially published. I would suggest looking at the rules in the Player's Handbook for creating custom backgrounds

Guild artisan/merchant might work. There's already the idea of a brewers/distillers/vintners guild. Maybe the guild also owns the bar.

It would be pretty easy to homebrew. You usually get proficiency in 2 skills and 2 tools/languages. For skills, Persuasion, Performance, or Insight might work well. For tools, brewer's supplies would be an obvious one. Cook's utensils would also work well. Maybe they could get another language, for social interaction.

The feature could be anything that makes sense to you and adds to social interaction. Most are minor abilities with mainly RP utility.

A feature that comes to mind is actually one of the traits of Mark of Hospitality Halflings from Eberron...

Ever Hospitable. 

When you make a Charisma (Persuasion) check or an ability check involving brewer's supplies or cook's utensils, you can roll a d4 and add the number rolled to the ability check.

Basically... if your character is gifting someone some kind of alcohol they get a bonus to persuading them, and you just get a little boost any time you attempt to brew or cook anything, to represent the characters' familiarity with years of experience running a tavern.

Bar Tender back ground should have something combat related.  Real life bartenders have a higher death by violence rate than a cop. 

I would put Intimidation on his list of skills, and possibly even Perception.  

Given the stereotypical use of bars and taverns as information sources, I'd give a Bartender background the Ear To The Ground ability from the Urban Bounty Hunter.

As a bartender in real life I would say that you would need to have high Perception and Insight since you have to know when someone is laying about their age, how drunk they are, if they are on drugs and be on the lookout for people who steal tips.
You want to have Performance and Slight of hand for flaring (bottle joggling) and you also want some high Charisma since you will need to be able to sometimes have conversations with your guests and you will get to know secrets and people from all over since people tend to speak about anything to a person serving them alcohol.

We tend to drink quite a lot and eat cold (and sometimes old) food too so some high Constitution would be quite fitting.

Something most people tend to forget is that we tend to work very long hours (12-14 hour days are not uncommon) and we have to be on our feet and run around a bunch so the Athletic skill might be fitting too.

In most cities bartenders and other restaurant staff all know of each other and most cities have bars where most of the guests are from the industry where we gossip and keep each other updated on everything from recipes to bad bosses and awful guests so Ear to the ground is not a bad idea.


Most of us don't know more than the theory on how to brew beer and cider but since this is a fantasy setting Brewing kit might be fitting too.