It's 9:30 p.m. on a Friday, and Jerry Coffey's night is just getting started. With karaoke music blaring in the background, he glides around the bar, talking with customers, cracking jokes and pouring beers.
"When you're behind the bar, you are on stage," said Coffey, clad in black jeans with a bottle-opener poking out of his back pocket.
But with his gray mustache and wavy hair that is more salt than pepper, mixing drinks and tapping kegs is a far cry from the 9-to-5 work this 51-year-old once knew. Coffey was laid off from his job as a computer programmer about a year ago and has been looking for a new position in the tech sector ever since. Two months ago, after a long but fruitless effort to find work in his field, Coffey became a bartender at the Victory Lounge in Pasadena.
"I enjoy this, but obviously I'm not going to make the kind of money here that I would in programming," he said. "Let's face it, there are hundreds of jobs at different levels in the food service industry."
As the economic downturn began and hundreds of thousands of workers from technology to finance to manufacturing lost their jobs, experts say anecdotal evidence shows that many found respite in the food and beverage business.
There are more than 850,000 restaurants in the United States, and that number is growing each year. About 11.6 million people - 9 percent of the nation's labor force - work in the food service industry, a figure that is expected to reach 13 million by the end of the decade, according to the National Restaurant Association in Washington.
"It makes sense that when the economy softens, and employment opportunities are not as ample in other industries, some of those workers look to the restaurant industry," said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the association.
When local restaurateur Kenny Vieth published an ad for workers a few months ago, for instance, applicants came from the advertising and financial industries.
"All the guys had just been laid off from companies like [Deutsche Bank] Alex. Brown and those sort of things," said Vieth, who owns Henninger's Tavern in Baltimore. "They were all like young guys out of college that had just gotten into that line of work and had gotten laid off."
The Maryland Bartending Academy in Glen Burnie - which teaches a two-week, $640 class on the trade - saw a shift in its enrollment about a year ago. Students from the airline, banking and software industries began signing up for classes because they had lost their jobs or were anticipating layoffs.
Sandy Dodson, who oversees enrollment and job placement assistance at the academy, said she heard a student say he signed up for the class after learning that he might be laid off. That Friday, he was handed a pink slip.
"You hear that a lot in class," said Mark Russell, president of the academy.
One former student, Derek Lazaroff, took the class in February and began bartending at private parties as he braced to lose his job as a salesman at Lucent Technologies Inc. He had already begun working part time as a cafeteria supervisor at Ravens Stadium last year, and he started a part-time job as a server for the suites at Camden Yards in April to save money.
"I think it's probably one of the smartest things I've ever done," said Lazaroff, 32.
When he was laid off from Lucent in September, Lazaroff had some extra cash and a job to keep him going until full-time work in sales or technology comes along. And at about $100 to $200 per night, he plans to keep working part time in the food service industry even after he finds work in his field.
"I'm never going to stop doing that," he said. "The money's too good, I enjoy doing it, I'm in a social environment and I'm getting paid to be there."
Coffey, the Victory Lounge bartender, has also taken a liking to bartending and said he plans to continue working there part time even when he finds a computer programming job. At the bar, he knows most of his customers by name, he always remembers their favorite drinks and some of them even adoringly call him "Uncle Jerry."
"It seems like every place you want to go, there's a need for bartenders," Coffey said. "It's not really glamorous as much as very highly convenient."
Many are using food service jobs to fill the gap until they find work in their field - something actors have done for years, said Rob Hardy, an associate principal at the Hale Group Ltd., a food service industry consulting firm in Danvers, Mass.
"It's some money coming in rather than unemployment, and because of the hours they're able to keep looking for jobs," Hardy said.
Others have found a new career in the food business.
Reggie LaPiere, for instance, sold insurance for a year and a half but saw his sales start to fizzle last May. At first, he held on to his job, hoping that it was just a slow sales cycle. But, eventually, the 26-year-old began looking for a new position in sales, marketing or advertising.
He had no luck.
"I happened to come into Aldo's for dinner one night and was talking to the [owners], and it turns out they were growing," LaPiere said.
In January, he began working as a waiter at Aldo's, an Italian restaurant in Baltimore where he had worked during college. Today, he is a manager there.
"I think I'm going to stay with the restaurant business. I really like it. It paid my way through college, and there seems to be a lot more opportunity in the restaurant business right now," he said. "It's far more money than I made in sales."