Archive for September, 2010
Waiter Training & Wine Service Part 1 – Taking the Order
Posted by: | Commentsby Richard Saporito
Wine service is an extremely integral part of a restaurant’s reputation and bottom line that must be included in every waiter training program. If wine service is performed in an impeccable manner, it will add great value to the customer’s dining experience along with increased revenue for the restaurant and waiter.
There are many components to delivering excellent wine service not only for a four star restaurant, but also for the casual dining restaurant. In this article, we will discuss how to take the wine order professionally which is the first basic step.
First of all, the waiter must know the wine list inside and out meaning the names of the wines, the regions where they are produced, the vintages, and how to describe the wines using superlatives to entice the customers. There are so many different facets to making wines today that it is really an enjoyable experience in simply picking out and discussing the perfect wine to match a meal.
The waiter must know how to pair the wines with all of the food menu items. The more confidence a customer has in the waiter when asking questions about the wines, the more likely a purchase will be made. If the waiter cannot answer even the simplest of questions about the wine list, then the customer will hesitate to make a purchase. This lack of knowledge on the waiter’s part will translate into the customer thinking about how poor the wine service will be delivered in the future. Upselling wines has everything to do with “customer perception”.
To begin, the waiter must approach and greet the table with enthusiasm and charm while making eye contact. When taking the order, the waiter must be certain as to the exact wine which is being ordered. If there is any discrepancy, the customer should be asked to physically point out the wine on the list. After understanding the exact order, the waiter must repeat it back to the customer and get the nod of approval. Once the order is taken, it must be subsequently ordered from the bartender correctly. Often times, a wine list will contain many of the same types of wines, but from different regions, vintages, and prices, so the waiter must double check to see if the correct wine was delivered by the bartender. This kind of clarification always prevents future problems form occurring. It looks terrible, when it is discovered “at the table”, that the wrong wine was delivered from the bar. As a result, service time and energy will be lost, not to mention how unprofessional it looks.
Taking a wine order may not seem like a difficult process, but if done incorrectly, it will be subtracting from excellent restaurant customer service in an immense way that includes the restaurant’s reputation and bottom line. Remember, wine service is in reality a performance. If wine service is done professionally, then an excellent tone will be set for the rest of the meal. The customers are more likely to order more food (more expensive food at that), and leave a bigger tip because they had a great time.
Click here to improve restaurant service reputation and increase sales immediately:
How to Improve Dining Room Service
About the Author:
Richard Saporito is the Founder of Topserve Restaurant Consulting, author of "How To Improve Dining Room Service." If you'd like to improve your restaurants' reputation and increase sales, contact Richard today for a Free Initial Restaurant Consultation by calling (888) 276-4808 or visiting his Contact Page.
Improve Restaurant Customer Service – Proper Floor Diagrams & Table Numbering
Posted by: | Commentsby Richard Saporito
I recently had a situation at a restaurant where the owner was changing the dining room table numbers during the actual shift. This spells disaster. His explanation was that he needed to keep track of coupons being distributed for his restaurant marketing campaign— which used a separate numbered table for each individual coupon. The owner did not realize how much he was hurting the restaurant customer service by using this system. It was no wonder that the excellent food was quite often being brought to the wrong table by the dining room service staff. Also, I have seen times when restaurants use alphabet letters to identify the tables. There is no reason to use letters for tables at all when there are plenty of good whole numbers to go around.
Below, I have outlined a few simple, but important concepts to help improve restaurant customer service. There are too many operations that do not implement these concepts which cause many unnecessary mistakes. This translates into lost revenue and a poor restaurant customer service that will repel repeat business.
Here is how it works:
Dining room floor diagrams, with correct numbering for each table and position point (explained below), must be clearly printed and handed out to all dining room service staff, with extra printed copies available for any future waiter that is hired. These essential diagrams must be placed in strategic locations for all staff to easily view, preferably out of the customer’s sight.
Position points must be established to improve restaurant customer service. Basically, any customer in the restaurant can be identified by a particular table and seat number. Keeping up with position points will not be a problem for a waiter as long as all dining room service staff knows the arrangement ahead of time. It is most important to establish position point #1 for each table. The easiest way of determining the position point #1 is to have the customer’s back directly in line (or as close as possible) with a particular location in the restaurant, such as the kitchen or perhaps a particularly visible item of decor.
Every customer whose back is closest to this particular location is position #1. Once that is established, rotate clockwise around the table, identifying each customer as position #2, 3, and so on. If a seat is empty, a position number should be assigned to it anyway, as a guest may be arriving late. If customer position points are not used, a waiter, holding hot and heavy plates, will be calling out dishes to customers because they do not know the exact position placements. This wastes precious time and energy, not to mention how unprofessional it looks. Moreover, the customers, often in mid conversation or laughter will be unnecessarily interrupted.
Position points must be clearly explained in every waiter training program. The main objective is for the waiter to serve the food and beverage accurately, safely and cleanly. This is more likely to happen when there is prior knowledge of the table and seat numbers far ahead of time.
The above concepts give the dining room service staff “a sense of where they are,” which is extremely important especially if the restaurant is new or the staff is new to the restaurant. It enhances the ability to communicate, which in turn, improves restaurant customer service all around for everyone.
Click here to improve restaurant service reputation and increase sales immediately:
How to Improve Dining Room Service
About the Author:
Richard Saporito is the Founder of Topserve Restaurant Consulting, author of "How To Improve Dining Room Service." If you'd like to improve your restaurants' reputation and increase sales, contact Richard today for a Free Initial Restaurant Consultation by calling (888) 276-4808 or visiting his Contact Page.
Restaurant Service Improvement: Create An Efficient Waitstaff Tip-Out System
Posted by: | Commentsby Richard Saporito
The “Tip-Out System” is a very important part of restaurant service success for many different reasons. Tips are the basic salary for most restaurant service employees, and must be divided with utmost respect and care. The staff’s reputation, morale and income depend on a proper and fair tip-out system.
There are certain factors that must be taken into consideration, before deciding on a correct and fair tip- out system. The most important concept of the system is that it must always reflect the work load and responsibilities of each staffer in a delicately balanced manner.
If this concept is strictly adhered to, then one can’t go wrong in devising the most efficient tip-out system for a restaurant. It must remembered that an improper system can make or break a dining room service staff to the point where employees may deliver poor service or actually quit the job.
A standard base system to work from is for the waiter to tip out 15% to the bussers, 10% to the runners, and 5% to the bar. Now, this is only a general guideline as the system needs to be customized according to each individual restaurant and tweaked evenly according to the workload distribution.
For example, if the runners are doing some busser work (clearing plates, replacing dining wares etc.), then another 2.5% can possibly go to the runners while subtracting 2.5% to the bussers. It all depends on the restaurant dining room service system, and on the “desired level of customer service” —so crucial for success.
One must understand that just because the bussers are being tipped out less of a percentage, doesn’t necessarily mean they are not making less money overall than the runners for that shift. It all depends on how many waiters/runners/bussers are working for that shift. Less employees available for the tip-out split means more revenue for each employee.
In some of my restaurant service consulting jobs, I have actually seen where runners made more money than the waiters on average. Surely, they worked for it running giant food plates up 2 long flights of stairs. And, the runner shift was almost as many hours long as the waiter shift. It all comes down to responsibilities and workload distribution.
There are even different types of tip-out systems that exist in the restaurant world such as the point system. For example, if $100 in tips is produced by the waiter, it gets spread out in a point system amongst all staffers. The breakdown might be $50 to the waiter, $30 to the busser, $15 to the runner, $5 to the bar, and so on. Every restaurant is an enigma, so the tip-out system must fit the restaurant’s personality.
To physically perform the tip-out revenue split, the waiters can place the tip-out revenue percentages for the receiving dining room service employees into envelopes. The waiter name, date and particular shift should be included on the outside of the envelopes. Then, this split for each receiving dining room service employee can be put back together in separate envelopes with his/her name on the outside of the envelope to be distributed. The double-check system works best here to have 2 trusted people witnessing all of the money envelopes that are opened.
The restaurant service tip-out system must always be fair and balanced with very few complaints from the staff. In fact, some feedback may actually help for the understanding of the situation as the dining room service staff carries many solutions to restaurant problems. Of course, there will not always be 100% agreement amongst each and every employee.
The tip-out system really works out beautifully if done correctly using the concepts above. Again, most importantly, the balance of the restaurant service labor and responsibilities must be in proportion to the balance of all the employee tip-outs.
Click here to improve restaurant service reputation and increase sales immediately:
How to Improve Dining Room Service
About the Author:
Richard Saporito is the Founder of Topserve Restaurant Consulting, author of "How To Improve Dining Room Service." If you'd like to improve your restaurants' reputation and increase sales, contact Richard today for a Free Initial Restaurant Consultation by calling (888) 276-4808 or visiting his Contact Page.
Restaurant Service Improvement: Use Proper Serving Trays
Posted by: | Commentsby Richard Saporito
In Restaurant Service, proper serving trays are one the important “tools” which the dining room service staff needs to perform their positions properly. The type of tray used must be the correct fit for the restaurant’s menu, level of service, and staff. It is a major factor for how well the tables are cleared.
After finishing a service consulting job for a huge banquet operation that consisted of 3 gorgeous Romanesque style rooms total, I noticed the many different types of serving trays that the restaurant was using.
This inconsistency made things cumbersome and a bit confusing for the dining room service staff. It had taken some time and effort to figure out the best type trays to use, and what benefits the staff and service the most. After doing away with expensive, over sized silver trays, we finally ended up using medium and large sized brown trays which had a nice grip in the center. These trays were the perfect fit, and the staff thanked me greatly. The trays were light, easy to handle, inexpensive, but looked nice because a white napkin was placed over the each tray while serving and clearing.
Serving trays seem like such a trivial item in restaurants, yet if used incorrectly, they will have a negative effect on restaurant service and staff. With restaurant service, one of the main goals to keep in mind is balancing “what looks best in the dining room” to the logistics of actually getting the job done safely and in a sanitary manner.
3 simple but very important things for waitstaff to remember about tray service are: 1-Do not carry too many items on the tray at one time (dangerous). 2-Try not to carry too little at one time (wasted effort) —balance is the key. 3-Always separate the silverware on the tray, (first, place the silverware off to one side, and then stack plates).
Here are some other tray maintenance points:
1-There must always be enough trays available for service. [Waitstaff must not be wasting time and effort searching for trays because there are not enough available.]
2-There must be proper, designated “easy access” storage areas for the trays when they are not in use. A good storage spot would be on a shelf relatively close to the kitchen doors (either side of the doors, but in a safe spot). Waitstaff should be able to place or retrieve trays before entering or exiting either the kitchen or the dining room areas.
3-All trays must be gathered and washed each and every night–and sometimes during the shift if necessary.
Also, in most cases, at least 2 different types of trays should be made available for the waitstaff. (Large sized trays and smaller sized trays) Like customer service, serving trays seems like such a simple subject. But, when you really get down to all of the factors involved, the serving tray issue can become quite complex and should not be taken lightly.
The proper use of serving trays may also eliminate the need for buspans that, in some restaurants, are sitting in the dining room which are an ear and eyesore.
Are the serving trays the correct fit for the menu, level of service, and staff?
Have you checked the serving trays to see if they benefit your restaurant to the fullest?
Click here to improve restaurant service reputation and increase sales immediately:
How to Improve Dining Room Service
About the Author:
Richard Saporito is the Founder of Topserve Restaurant Consulting, author of "How To Improve Dining Room Service." If you'd like to improve your restaurants' reputation and increase sales, contact Richard today for a Free Initial Restaurant Consultation by calling (888) 276-4808 or visiting his Contact Page.
