[4] After dropping out of Shoreline Community College, he worked a series of service jobs before being hired as a bartender at a Seattle restaurant called Benjamin's.
[4] He was dissatisfied with what The New York Times called "the sickly sweet [cocktail] concoctions of the 1970s", and began reforming the bar's drink offerings with new ingredients and styles.
[4] Stenson later worked at Il Bistro and the Zig Zag Cafe, where his reputation grew among cocktail enthusiasts from the 1990s onward, and lifted the profiles of each establishment.
[4] He left the Zig Zag Cafe in 2011, unfavorably comparing it to Disneyland due to the amount of attention he attracted; he explained in a 2020 interview that he "only ever saw [himself] as a bartender" and disliked the fame.
[4] He worked for short stints at a variety of establishments thereafter, before retiring due to poor health and the COVID-19 pandemic.