A chat with bartenders, food vendors at Friday night’s rodeo
By Jack Reaney SENIOR EDITOR
Editor’s note: Big Sky PBR is produced by Outlaw Partners, publisher of Explore Big Sky.
Each night of the Big Sky PBR gathers 3,000 attendees, and more than 100 hustling service workers are tasked with providing food and drinks.
During the fast-paced setup before the Friday night PBR, Explore Big Sky interviewed bartenders with Scissorbills Saloon, the event’s primary beverage provider, to hear what it’s like and what keeps them coming back year after year.
Lauren Hafer manages beer and wine for the Hungry Moose Market and Deli. But for the past five summers, she’s worked the Big Sky PBR.
“Sure, the pay’s great and that’s why we work,” Hafer explained, wiping sweat from her brow during a quick break from her bar stocking duties in the Golden Buckle VIP tent. “But being able to experience the event from a different side is fun, and then working for Scissorbills is just a great opportunity when we don’t do it year-round.”
It’s fun to ask visitors where they’re from, and why they’re interested in attending the PBR. “Traveling from Florida and Minnesota and making this their destination,” she said. “It’s just kind of cool to talk to people and get their background, you know?”
Hafer said the Moscow and Montana mules are popular drinks, and anything featuring Wildrye Distilling’s huckleberry vodka. She said PBR is unique for its high-end products that aren’t typical at Big Sky bars.
Stocking the opposite side of the island-shaped “Saloon” bar, Amanda Knust stepped aside and shared her favorite part of PBR: the vibe and the people.
“Working up as Scissorbills I see a lot of the same people, over and over, and PBR just brings a completely different crowd of all shapes and sizes and sorts and such,” said Knust, a seven-year Scissorbills employee. She’s been working the PBR for the past four years. Aside from the event’s good pay, bartenders come back to work for a fun team, including owners Dan Currie and Michelle Clark-Conley.
“Dan and Michelle are amazing to work for… Everyone’s in a good mood, we’re here to have a good time,” Knust said.
She compared bartending roles on the general admission side of the Big Sky Events Arena to the “Saloon” in the VIP tent.
Serving VIPs, they get to converse with the guests more, where GA is kind of a “turn and burn,” she said. “In the VIP tent, I can actually talk to someone, and ask them, ‘where are you visiting from? Have you been here before? Is it your first rodeo?’”
She recalled a past year, when she met guests visiting from South Africa at their first PBR event. “They had no idea what they were walking into. And I was like, ‘Well, let me tell ya,’” Knust recalled. “Because I’m from Montana, so I’ve been to rodeos my whole life.”
Speaking with EBS at 4:55 p.m. with gates set to open at 5:30, Knust described the feeling of anticipation.
“Oh, I love it. It’s the—let’s go. None of us want to stand around idle-handed. We’re gonna be ready to go,” she said. “… We want the crowds, we want everyone to have a drink in the hand and get to watch the PBR.”
MJ Matute certainly doesn’t stand around. For she leads the bleacher sales team.
“It is pretty exhausting. You kind of have to feed off the crowd as you’re out there,” Matute told EBS. “Which helps too, because that’s the fun part—instead of being stuck in a tent, I get to go watch the show.”
She bartends at Scissorbills in the winter, and has been selling drinks at all 14 years of Big Sky PBR. She’s witnessed “a lot more hype” over the years with the event’s growth.
“It’s probably the most fun event to work in the year… I’ve been in Big Sky 18 years, and there’s a lot of people I don’t see throughout the year, and I see them at this one event,” Matute said. “So it’s really fun to just reconnect with locals, and also meet people from out of town that are amazing.”
She said customers are incredibly kind—she’s had people try to buy her jewelry off her, and just the night before, someone offered $500 for her boots.
“I’m like, what is going on here? Like, this isn’t a market.”
Matute often pushes water sales—generally an unpopular choice—but otherwise the most popular drink has been the Wildlands Mexican-style lager from Bridger Brewing, since the drink debuted in 2024.
“They’ll ask for limes, too, and I’m like, ‘I’ve got a cooler on me. Do I look like I’m carrying limes,’” Matute said, laughing.
With gates set to open in 30 minutes, Matute said bleacher-runners are packing cans into their backpack coolers and measuring the straps for comfort and access to apron pockets.
“As soon as the door opens, we’re like, ‘alright,’” she said. “We first tackle the lines that are coming in, to give people a bevy right away. And then we start with the bleacher hopping.”
Another form of bleacher bartending, each VIP platform and skybox has its own bar and server. Unaffiliated with Scissorbills, bartenders like Pearl White enjoy the personal touch of serving the same small group all night.
“The group I had right now I had last year for Wildlands and PBR,” said White, who’s worked as a private VIP bartender for the past five years as a “just for fun” side gig to her full-time job in Bozeman. “Bond with them, they’re always fun—this group is fun especially.”
Many of the VIP customers are corporate groups from across the country, perhaps seeing their first rodeo. “I like watching their first-time reactions to the bulls, because anything can happen,” White said. “… Everyone is just really excited to be here.”
‘It requires so much planning’
Scissorbills owner Michelle Clark-Conley has been at PBR since the beginning—she was a guide with Geyser Whitewater, whose rafts atop school buses are a fond symbol of the Big Sky PBR’s modest beginnings. She’s been serving drinks at the Big Sky PBR for 12 of its 14 years.
“It’s a really big part of my summer. We do look forward to it every year,” she said. Many of the bartenders are Big Sky locals she’s worked with throughout the years, making the event a fun reunion of Big Sky’s food and beverage industry.
Scissorbills collaborates with distributors and Outlaw Partners for months ahead of the event.
“It requires so much planning. We plan for this like a year ahead of time… It is a lot to manage,” she said, crediting Outlaw for adapting resources like bar locations and Wi-Fi every year.
Clark-Conley hires between 60 and 80 bartenders for PBR, with 30 to 40 working each night. “It is a lot of people to manage all at once,” she said. To make it easier, she appoints captains each night to delegate duties.
Talking with EBS 15 minutes before gates opened, Clark-Conley shared the message she communicates to her massive team.
“Let’s do this again this year, we’ve done it year after year, and it’s bigger and bigger every year.”
‘As soon as they smell it, they come runnin’’
It’s not just drinks, of course. Golden Buckle attendees enjoy catered cuisine in the VIP tent—this year, a sampling of small plates arranged by graduate chefs from TV series Top Chef. And on the GA side, food trucks fire up their mobile grills.
EBS stopped by the Baja Fish Tacos food truck after Friday’s dinner rush.
One of Bozeman’s first food trucks, according to owner Dana Hill, the truck is making their Big Sky PBR debut this year. Hill reported steady business throughout the first two nights, with brief lulls during the opening ceremonies.
“Everybody has been so lively. Everybody is dressed to the T. Everybody’s having a great time,” Hill said. He observed a generally “rowdy” and young crowd.
Sidekick Aaron Jensen said the Yellowstone bison quesadillas have been most popular at the PBR.
“Hungry, thirsty, and everybody needs some hot tacos… As soon as they smell it, they come runnin’,” Jensen said.
While chatting with EBS, they earned the stamp of approval from a self-proclaimed longtime San Diego resident.
“That’s solid, dude,” the customer said after his first bite.
Across the woodchips, retired Big Sky teacher Jonathan Gans said he’s been wheeling his Rancho Picante bison burger trailer to the Big Sky PBR since the beginning.
“It’s a real good gig,” he told EBS, stepping out of his brightly lit, sizzling trailer into the blue light of dusk. He typically sells more than 1,000 burgers across the three-night event—a per-night rate comparable to Music in the Mountains.
Gans said many visitors are excited to try their first-ever bison burger. One couple from New Zealand attended their first PBR on Thursday night, and they were “so excited, so stoked,” even asking for a photo with Gans.
“[Customers] really like the fact that it’s grass-fed, grass-finished, raised in Montana,” he said. He tells the story to “almost everybody” while flipping 24 bison patties on the grill.
Embracing the chaos
After dark, the energy of the rodeo always rises to meet the excitement of cowboys’ final bounty-winning rides, and the afterparty concert beside the arena.
Thirst continues, too.
“This is extreme,” shouted Lauren Hafer, carrying an extra case of tonic water into the bustling VIP tent four hours after her pre-event chat with EBS. “This is one of the busiest nights we’ve had.”
Skillfully mixing two cocktails with both hands, Amanda Knust raised her voice over the bar crowd.
“Chaos. Yeah.”
Handing a pair of beers into bleachers vibrating with energy, MJ Matute offered her thoughts.
“The hype is high.”
And on Saturday morning, Clark-Conley wrapped up the carefully controlled chaos of the night before.
“We had a real nice big turnout, seemed like everyone was having a good time,” she reflected. “My team crushed it, everyone was doing really well. And we’re gearing up for another big night.”
