It was a bit like a traveling concession.  People were mobile back then.  A little spiritual talk, followed up by a little sustenance for the crowd.  A lot of talk about fish, fishermen, bread, vineyard, fruit of the tree, grain...  Jesus would give a talk, and then the loaves and the fishes, each in keeping with the other, each bringing the point of the other home.

The nearest approximation to him, a sort of barman.  There were no fixed places for such, beyond the innkeeper of the Good Samaritan story, those kind of places.  If a stable would do, any other place would do just fine too.  And that''s perhaps why he sounds like a bartender about to retire, take this wine, it's my blood, believe me;  take this bread, it is my body, believe me...  I'm done.  That's my last shift.

They weren't so scheduled back then to be tied down to shifts or to a particular establishment.  Jesus, Sunday through Wednesday, 4:30 to close.

Somewhere along the line the job sort of got downgraded.  Hey, could I get a martini, olives, please.  The scholarly scholar's son got stuck behind a bar, less the doling out of miraculous wisdom, more the grunt work of trade, an employee, the boss's bottom line in mind, that's how it works.  Even the strongest of unions will never bring that back, the job as it was in the original.  And again, people, for all their claims of great mobility, are really more settled down than ever, stuck where they are, commuting in from the suburbs, bound to make anyone bitter and unimaginative, to say nothing of being needy and maybe even thirsty.  Not like you're pulling up somewhere with your flock of sheep or your herd of swine.  Too practical and humorless a world for that.  Sheep and pigs come via the supermarket, as does whatever prophecy the world would allow these days, in form of The National Inquirer, or People, or laundry detergent.