Building Leadership & Talent for Bar Owners: Boost Team Performance & Retention

But if you hire great servers , how do you turn them into someone that could potentially be a great manager for you someday ? So what does that pipeline look like and what can you start doing today , in the normal course of your business , to build a leadership pipeline that's going to allow you to succeed in the future ?

Now , obviously , the size of a leadership pipeline or the number of people you need in a leadership pipeline is going to vary business to business . I know I've talked with a number of you . Some of you have larger operations where you're doing a lot of private events . You have different day parts that you're worried about .

You have different segments , different concepts even if you will , that happened throughout the day and in that case you're going to need a lot more staff , and I know some of you that I've talked to have very small bars , little neighborhood bars that you know see , maybe 100 people where you have less than 20 employees .

So if you have 20 employees you're going to have a much different looking leadership pipeline than if you have 100 employees , which should be relatively obvious . But it really is something .

Everything we discussed date , really everything we always discussed , but everything today you have to kind of figure out , okay , what fits in with my concept , with the size of my bar , with the number of employees that I have , and so when we start talking about a leadership pipeline , in a lot of ways in hospitality we have not very well defined the way people

rise through the ranks in our organizations . We haven't done a great job as an industry of standardizing how things are done . Now , part of that is that when you have a lot of independent business owners , obviously everyone has their own opinions . Everyone's going to do something slightly differently . Part of that is particularly in the bar business .

Historically , bars were small operations . If you think back , way back to the days of innkeepers and bars and taverns of the Middle Ages or 17 , 18 , 1900s , a lot of those were just literally a public house where someone made more ale than their family needed and just served ale in their living room to travelers and people in their neighborhood .

So the history of the bar business is not full of a bunch of giant organizations Now . Conversely , the history of the restaurant business is somewhat full of larger operations .

Because when you think about restaurants , even if we go back to the 15 , 16 , 1700s , we can talk about grand scale banquets and the huge number of people that were required to cook the food and serve the food for hundreds of people at a time over multiple course , extravagant dinners .

So for hospitality in general , the place to look for a long term leadership pipeline that's well documented and it existed would be the kitchen brigade system . That existed for a long time but really a scoffier came up with the formalization of that kitchen brigade . And if you think about the kitchen brigade system , you have essentially four levels .

So you have an executive chef . Now your executive chef may actually be more of a business person . So you may have a chef to cuisine that oversees the day to day of the kitchen . But in most modern restaurants this is kind of interchangeable . So you have an executive chef , a sous chef .

Then under the sous chef you would have a chef de parti , so someone that oversees a specific area , a specific section of the kitchen , whether that's the pantry or the saucer or the guy working the grill . Obviously there are a lot of weird French terms we could get into , but I'm not going to do that .

But you have a chef that oversees the section and then you have what they call comies and the . The komi chefs are going to be kind of your junior apprentice chefs that are working their way up to that chef de parti overseeing a section , and so we can kind of adapt that in the bar business .

Now , obviously , in a kitchen you could actually use that exact structure , although most of us in the bar business are not running high end kitchens with five or six different stations . You know you don't need a guy just working a saute pan all night and all he does is work on saute pans over the stove .

So generally , even in the kitchen , we're going to be somewhat away from this . So , for example , just stick with the kitchen real quick . Maybe you have a kitchen manager , a kitchen lead that is in charge of your kitchen when the kitchen manager is not there , and then you just have some cooks .

Or if we were going behind the bar , maybe you're doing this as a bar lead , then you have bartenders , then you have barbacks , or on the floor , maybe you have a server lead and then bussers , runners . That works .

Now I personally think that in any position in any place in your business you can run a three level system and those three levels , that pipeline of leadership , becomes well , your normal employees , so that they're not in our pipeline . But our three pipeline positions are trainer , lead , manager .

Now , as I mentioned just a minute ago , if you bar only has three bartenders , well , you're probably not going to have a trainer , a lead and a manager . You're probably just going to have a bar lead and you're probably the manager as the owner . So you probably just have a bar lead and two bartenders .

But the purpose of establishing kind of a chain of command or a leadership pipeline is that there's always someone in charge . There's clear structure . So if you as the owner aren't there , the bartenders know okay , we listen to general manager . Well , if you're not there as the owner and the general manager isn't there , maybe you have an assistant general manager .

But if you don't , there's a bartender lead that's probably going to be in charge of what's going on that day . And along those lines , depending upon the size of your establishment , how many cocktail servers you have or servers in general that you have versus bartenders .

Maybe you have a server lead and a bar lead , maybe you just have a bar lead that also oversees the servers and kind of oversees the front of house in lieu of other leadership . So part of this is about establishing chain of command and establishing someone to be in control .

But really what this is about is establishing a chain of responsibility where the higher up the chain you go , the more responsibility you have and the more that we as owners , by crafting our culture and really working to take care of and train our employees , can help increase their skills , increase the responsibilities , increase their understanding of the business as a

whole . But before we go any further , I want to take a second to really discuss this trainer-lead-manager structure that I like to look at as kind of the basic pipeline , the basic leadership structure . And obviously , like I said , we can change this depending upon your exact concept , how large you are , how many employees you have , all of that .

So at the basic level , we have trainers . Trainers' jobs is to train new hires . Trainers are your experts at whatever task in your bar . That is so if it's a bartender trainer , they train bartenders .

If it's a server trainer , they say trained servers , if it's a kitchen trainer , they train new cooks and the thing with a trainer is they need to have complete understanding of the standards , the procedures , how to upsell . They should be the servers or the bartenders or the kitchen employees that have your best KPIs . They should be your top performers .

And then you should say , hey , because you're a top performer , we're going to give you the new folks that come in the door that we hire and you're going to train them and make them better .

Now , obviously , to do that , to have a trainer that's effective not only do they have to know the product , but they have to know your policies and procedures . They have to know , you know , if mopping the floor is part of the bartender's job , your bartender trainer needs to know how to mop the floor properly .

They need to know every aspect of their job and exemplify every aspect of their jobs that when you put a new hire under them , they're not being trained on bad habits , they're being trained on good habits .

Generally speaking , especially if you have a smaller operation , it's very easy to identify who these people are who has the positive attitude , who buys into the company culture and vision , who is a rock star with your customers and your sales and who has the ability to actually train other people .

Because , let's be honest , even a great server , even a great bartender , may not make a great trainer . Maybe they don't have the right set of interpersonal skills to be able to train someone well . Maybe they are really good at their job but they're not quite as good at following all your standards .

Right , you want to reward people with a job of training your new folks , who actually have the ability to train them and the knowledge to give them and are going to exemplify exactly what you want your new folks to learn . Now , after trainers , we have leads , and lead is the one thing .

If you have a smaller bar , I would totally cut this section out , or maybe not . It depends on how you look at it . Leads to me are folks that are key holders and they can run a shift and , depending upon the size of what you have , they may actually oversee a department .

So think about you may have a bar manager , a front of house manager and a kitchen manager and then a GM if you have a larger bar .

But maybe you just have a GM and then a bartender lead , a server lead and a kitchen lead , or maybe you do some mixture of the two and you have a GM , a kitchen manager and a bar lead and your bar lead oversees your servers .

But a lead is going to be a key holder , it's going to be the step above your trainers so they can run shifts , they can essentially act as management in lieu of management , but their job is not management .

One thing that , I will be honest , absolutely drives me crazy in this business and that , frankly , I personally do not understand , because I think it gives you a conflict of interest and it makes for a less effective person in management is when you have managers that bartend .

And I'm not against having bartender leads that hold keys , that are in charge when no one else is there , that bartend .

But I think your actual managers need to be focused on your KPIs , your inventory , improving things that you , as the owner , are delegating to them , so that you're working on the business , not in the business , and the manager should be handling all the day to day management tasks .

Well , if your manager is handling all your day to day management tasks , it's really hard for them to do that and bartend at the same time .

Frankly , I will tell you that with all of my bars management made up about 10% of my total employees and the reason is I needed people to handle the day to day tasks so that I could focus on the big picture , the strategy , the culture , the marketing , outreach to the community , things like that , and my managers could do the day to day , but we've digressed

a bit . Anyway , to get back to where we were talking about this lead job , so a lead is a key holder . It's not a manager . It's someone that still works in the trenches , is still a bartender , is still a server , but has the ability to oversee what's going on .

That you trust with the key , that you trust with an alarm code that actually can manage the business in lieu of management being present . Now , obviously , as we're talking about a management pipeline , a people development pipeline , those leads are gonna be people that used to be trainers .

So your trainers , as they move forward and as you have a need for key holders and things like that , those trainers become these leads and you can have the leads do a lot of management E tasks , but , again , they should not be doing all the management , because you should have a manager that does that or , potentially , if it's a small bar , you as the owner

are doing that and the leads are handling some of the day to day . And when I say that I don't mean things like necessarily inventory or scheduling . I think that's much better done by a manager , especially when you have somebody working , say , behind your bar . They shouldn't be the same person riding the schedule for who works behind the bar .

Obviously they're gonna give themselves the best shifts . Now , generally speaking , if you have a great lead bartender , that is your rockstar bartender . They're getting the best shifts anyway . So it's not that much of a conflict of interest .

But I still don't think it looks good from a cultural perspective to have the person that's working the best money shifts also be the person riding the schedule and giving themselves the best money shifts .

But one perfect task that you can give to a lead right , in addition to being a key holder , maybe you allow them to count the drawer at the end of the night probably not because they're actually working the drawer , but maybe you do and they can also do things like have access to comps and voids in the POS system , where your trainers are not going to be

able to comp and void your lead , especially if they're working and there is no other person on duty above them should have that ability , and then , from your best leads , you can go and promote them into managers . And we talked a lot about how to find a great manager , how to promote from within , how to find one from outside .

I personally , finding an outside manager is great . I love creating an internal pipeline like this , though . That really allows people to succeed in your business and gives your employees a way to get themselves ahead . Too often in the bar business , you get a bartender gig and that's the top of the line for you . Now , some people always want to stay a bartender .

They don't want to train people , they don't want to have a key , they just want to come in bartend , bust ass , make fat tips , go home . That's fine . But for those people that are hungry for more , having a pipeline like this really gives them something to connect to . And so your managers .

They're either gonna oversee the whole operation or maybe different departments right , you may have a kitchen manager , you may have a bar manager , you may have a general manager that oversees everything .

Now , personally , if you're going to have one manager and all else leads , make your manager a general manager overseeing everything One of the worst things you can do and , trust me , I have been this guy before and it is absolutely terrible from the employee perspective is to have a kitchen manager with full control of the kitchen , a front of house manager with

full control of the front of house and no manager that oversees both . Because what happens there is you have two departments that will never coexist . They will not get along and in too many ways really , we see the front and back of house as at odds with each other , as different pieces with different tasks .

But let's be honest , the kitchen can't cook anything without an order rung in from a bartender server . The bartender server has nothing to sell food-wise without the kitchen producing it . It is a symbiotic relationship and it's absolutely important that , rather than having two teams that are separated , it's one team that's together .

So putting them under the same management gets you there . Having two equal managers does not work . It creates conflict , it creates issues and it just isn't healthy for your culture . So if you're going to have one manager , have a GM that oversees everything . Then have leads everywhere else .

If you're going to have multiple managers , obviously you can stack managers under each other , but when we talked a few weeks ago about the importance of hiring a great manager . I'm going to manager that oversees all of it .

Now , obviously , if you're , as the owner , going to be there day to day and you are going to oversee day to day management , well then you don't need necessarily a GM right under you .

But if you're really doing it to not work on the day to day and to be able to focus on developing the business , growing the business , working on the business instead of in the business , then you do need that general manager .

We talked about it when we were discussing trainers and how trainers should come from your best servers or your best bartenders or your best kitchen employees . Leads should come from your best trainers Managers . Ideally , if you have a good pipeline and you have people that are going to be the right fit for our management position should come from your best leads .

So we're building that ability for people to move up . Now , one thing that's really important is that as people move forward , as they move through this pipeline , as they get more responsibility , more trust put in them and more ability to do things within your establishment , more power , more authority . They need more training .

You can't just take a great server and go hey , you're a great server , now I'm going to make you a trainer . If you're going to turn a server into a trainer , not only do they need mastery of standards , not only do they need knowledge of their product , they also need to know how the heck to train people .

So you need to train them on how to do training , you need to train them on how to teach . Many times we've talked about my favorite approach to training tell , show , do , review . So you tell someone how to do it , you show them how to do it , you make them do it and then you review it .

Whatever you're training , anything can come down to those four steps . But your trainers need to know that pattern . They need to understand it . They need to know why they're doing it , that they're telling them so they can explain it and answer any questions .

Then they're showing them so that they have an actual understanding , they see with their own eyes what they're supposed to do . Then they're making the trainee do it so that trainee can develop the muscle memory and required to be able to pull off that task . And then they're reviewing it to really help solidify that .

Your trainers need to understand that you don't train just once . You train over and over and over again until it's the same every time , until you have a perfectly consistent cocktail , a perfectly consistent service experience , a perfectly consistent appetizer coming out of your kitchen , whatever you're training people on .

But your trainers need to understand your culture , your vision , your training standards . They need to understand everything that you want a server to understand and they need to be able to teach it . So you need to teach your trainers how to teach and teach them what to teach and make sure they're aware of it .

When you move someone into a lead position , they'll understand teaching , they'll understand training because they've already been a trainer . They get all that . But whatever your key holders can do , if they can run shifts , if they can do comps and voids , you need to teach them when it was a void appropriate , when it was a comp appropriate .

What is our process for locking up every night ? If you have a side work checklist that the lead checks off prior to locking up for the night , they need to understand every task on that checklist perfectly . So you have to make sure that you're training each level to understand their job and how to teach the job below them .

And if you don't put in the right training , regardless of what pipeline you build , it's not going to pay off .

Training and training and training that is the key to consistent product , that is the key to consistent service , that is the key to making your guests come back time and time and time again , because the experience is always the same regardless of who is working .

Now , obviously , when you have a pipeline like this , when you're developing talent in your bar across different positions , you're going to have to give people a little bit higher pay as they go up .

If you have a bonus program or a profit sharing program , which I'm a huge , huge fan of , I think profit sharing is one way to really show your employees you care , and we've talked about profit sharing before , but obviously position should entitle you to a slightly larger slice of pie .

So obviously the manager should have the largest amount of the bonus go to their check , and then the leads a little bit less , the trainers a little bit less , and your frontline employees , your servers , your bartenders what have you ? A little bit less , even still .

Not only does that make for a great culture , not only does that keep everyone working together towards the same goals , but it also helps your trainers , leads and managers be better at their job because they're being bonused a little bit more , but off of the KPIs , off of the standards , off of their job and , frankly , those are the folks that have more of an

ability to impact your bottom line . So , essentially , the more impact you can make on the bottom line , the larger percentage of profit sharing or bonus or whatever you should get , and I think that makes good logical sense to everybody .

Now , one thing I should say here is , if we're going to have a management pipeline , it's important that people do time in each position before moving up . For instance , I'm sure you guys are well aware of this , but there are a lot of bars out there that you cannot get a job as a bartender . You want to be a bartender .

Either go through being a bar back or a server first to get to that bartender job , depending on upon the way that bar structures its pipeline of talent . So , in general , you don't want to just hire someone in as a trainer or hire someone in in a lead position . You want to make them spend the time and work their way up .

Now , obviously , if you have somebody that's coming from another establishment and you know they have a lot of skills and they are really , really good , make that timeline a little shorter If it's somebody that's new to the industry .

But you hire them because they have a great understanding of culture and you really like them and you think they're going to do great with your guests . Make that time and grade before they can move up a little bit longer .

But part of the reason why you need to make everyone start from the beginning and work their way up is because for the folks that are already on your team it's going to not seem very fair .

If Sally's tried to be a trainer for the last year but you hire Jane from the restaurant across the street and she comes in and she's a trainer day one , sally's going to be pretty fucking pissed off . Now the thing is , if you just hired someone , how the hell can they train ? They have to be trained first .

They don't know where ketchup is , they don't know where salt is , they don't know where your storage is , they don't know your standards , your procedures , your closing and opening checklist . They don't know any of that .

So the idea that somebody can come off the street and be a trainer for you today is kind of ridiculous , because they need to spend some time learning that job before they can train that job . One place where that's a little bit different is manager .

If you're not promoting from within and you're bringing in outside management because you don't have the right pipeline or you don't have anybody currently in place that wants to do that job , you're going to hire someone directly to manager .

But even if you hire someone directly to manager , it's never a bad idea to make them do training under your trainers for each position to learn their job early on . Maybe that's not what they do all day , every day . Maybe they spend one or two days a week for the first month training in different positions .

But for someone to manage people , they have to understand what they're doing and so even pulling in an outside manager for them to understand what's going into your business , how things are operating currently , what they can change or where there is the ability for improvement .

Before they just come up with ideas , they need context , and that context comes through being trained by your trainers , training under your leads , and , frankly , if I hired a manager that didn't have the humility to be willing to be trained by the people that they manage while they're learning how to do the job , I don't know that I would hire that person .

I probably have a little bit of an extreme view there . Obviously , I've seen other people make it work without doing that . But I really think it's important that if you hire someone in management , they come in with the understanding they have to learn the jobs first before they can manage the jobs effectively .

But if you're not hiring outside again , the big thing here is make people do the time in each position before they move up . Force them to be the best server before they become the server trainer . Force them to be the best barback trainer before they became a bartender , before they can become a bartender trainer .

Now , obviously , if you build a pipeline like this , one of the things you're going to have is people are going to gain experience . They're going to gain a bunch of knowledge and they're going to go work for somebody else because maybe they're a trainer for you but can manage somewhere , maybe they're a lead for you .

But because you've trained them and fostered their knowledge so well , they can go be a manager that they find some rich uncle and borrow some money and go buy their own restaurant or bar . That's a fantastic thing when your talent is so good that they can go out to other places and get higher paying , higher level jobs .

Yeah , it can suck as the owner sometimes when that happens , but really it's a reflection of how well you train your folks and how well respected your training is in the community . That means that to support a talent pipeline long term you have to constantly be hiring . You always have to hire . We've talked about this before , but it's important to hire smart .

Do not hire on experience , only hire on potential . Hire on culture , hire on how that person fits your values .

It's way more important that someone fits in with your culture , that someone is willing to go through the hoops that you put in on the way , that someone is willing to put in the time to get that trainer or manager position , than it is that someone already knows how to make an old fashioned .

Because I'll tell you right now you can make an old fashioned about 100 different ways . If you order an old fashioned at a high end cocktail bar in New York , it looks nothing like ordering an old fashioned in a redneck bar where I live . They're not even close to the same drink . They both have a cherry in them , but it kind of ends there .

So just because someone can make a drink , just because someone has knowledge , does not mean that they are going to integrate into your system Well , does not mean that they're going to work for building a leadership pipeline that allows you to succeed in the long term .

Hiring someone that fits in that culture , that sees the vision , that understands why you do all the training , that gets the value of what you're doing for your employees , that person has more potential in the long run .

Because I hate to break it to everybody that loves mixology or loves food you can train anybody to cook , you can train anybody to pour cocktail , but you cannot train people to be cool co-workers . So , with all that said , thank you . I want to reiterate kind of where we started . You have to make this work for you .

If you're a giant bar , you're going to have a lot more of this going on than if you're a bar that employs six people .

But if you're a bar that employs six people and you're the owner and you're doing day-to-day management and trying to oversee a bunch of stuff and trying to do your menu engineering and trying to develop your culture and working on your vision and working on strategic planning and all those things , then you at least need somebody that's a good lead bartender , that

can have keys that can close , that can carry some of those day-to-day tasks for you . Because , as an owner , there is no way to work on your bar unless you have people in place to handle a lot of the day-to-day and you delegate those tasks to them . But whether you have six employees or 60 employees , there is a way to build a pipeline .

There is a way to progress people through that pipeline , reward them for their knowledge and skills and their dedication and their understanding of your culture and vision , and then to use them to foster future talent so that you never have a situation where you don't have an employee that you can rely on , so that you never have a situation where there isn't

someone waiting in the wings to get a promotion if you have a manager leave or God forbid have to fire someone in your leadership structure . So I would encourage all of you to spend some time over the next week .

Think about how your pipeline works , think about how you can take the concepts that we've talked about today and turn them into something that works for you and your establishment , based on its size and what you do , and really start to get together a program , a plan to develop your people , not only for them , but also for you and to make your business stronger

in the process . A few notes before I let you go this week . I know last week I think I said that the meetup for the November was last Monday . I was wrong . It was the day after Halloween . I might have been a little hungover or something , I don't really remember . But we're doing our meetup next week .

So if you want to join the meetup call it's a Google Meet call with me and members of the Bar Business Nation Facebook group it's really just to all chat , spend some time socializing , get to know each other and then swap ideas and be able to help each other with each other's businesses .

So the in-person version of really what the Bar Business Nation Facebook group is all about , which is fostering a community where we can all learn from each other and grow and help each other have the best businesses that we can .

If you want to join us for the meetup next Monday at 8 pm Eastern time or you want to join Bar Business Nation , look down on the show notes . There's a link right there . You do have to answer three membership questions to get in and that's just to weed out the bots and the scammers . But answer those , we'll get you in .

Join us for the meetup on Monday If you want more information on how to run a great bar , particularly if you want 75 lessons on how to make top shelf profits in the Bar Business my book , how to Make Top Shelf Bar Offits in the Bar Business we got an Audible book .

We have Kindle , we have paperback , hardcover , whatever you want , go check that out in the show notes . It is a great read , although I am biased , I will admit . Also , if you want to work with me more one-on-one , there's another link in the show notes to schedule a strategy session with me .

Talk , let me learn a little bit about your business and see if there's a way that I can help you out and guide you along your process to making your bar more prosperous . With that guys , I hope you have an amazing week and we will talk again later .