Engage Bartenders to Boost Service & Profits

Success to give bar owners a challenge for the week . One simple project that shouldn't take more than an hour that can improve your bar and your profitability . So the challenge this week is going to focus on working with your bartenders to reorganize your well and bartender stations to make your bartenders more efficient .

And one thing that has always surprised me is I'll go into a bar . I'll look at the way bartenders are moving around and sometimes they have difficulty making drinks . There are a lot of steps involved in what they're doing and I'll ask the owner or the bartender I say well , why is your well set up this way ?

Or why are your glasses so far away from where you make a drink ? And the most common answer that I hear from folks is well , because that's the way it's always been . Now , that's the way it's always been is probably the worst reason . You could have to do anything , let alone allow .

That's the way it's always to impact your ability to serve your guests and make money . So we talked last week on the podcast about revenue being a function of volume and price . So how much revenue you make depends on what you charge and how many people you can serve .

Increasing your speed to service , making your well more efficient , better setting up your bartenders takes care of that volume side of the equation . More steps for your bartenders will always equal slower service , longer take-times and potentially less profit . So what are our goals with the challenge this week ?

We have three main goals Maximize your bartender's workstations for speed and ease of use , make their job easy and make them more efficient , because we're making their job easier and more efficient . Our second goal is we're going to improve our ticket times .

And our third goal for the week for this challenge is to document how your well and stations should be set up and then create a system where you hold every bartender accountable to that documented station setup . So in order to accomplish this , there are five action steps for this week's challenge .

First , talk with every bartender you have and if you have , you know if you have 20 bartenders talk to your primary bartender , but talk to every single one that you can Obviously weight this toward the bartenders that work more when we get into the solutioning .

But what you want to do is go to every bartender and ask them what they do not like about the way things are set up in your bar , what makes their jobs harder every day , and then get them to give you or you can write it down some sort of documentation of these ideas .

Now again , some bartenders are going to give you really good ideas , some aren't , but the first step is to ask all of them and document every single idea every bartender has , no matter how stupid you think it may be .

Because once you have all those ideas documented , now it's a matter of looking through all of that and saying , okay , where do multiple bartenders have the same or similar ideas ? Where do they have the same complaint ? Where do they have the same pain ? Where do they have the same pain point ?

That's making their job harder , because if multiple bartenders are saying the same thing , it's something you should fix . So look where those similarities are in their ideas .

Look at where you have multiple bartenders saying basically the same thing , and then create a standard operating procedure , an SOP , a documented way to implement and do whatever ideas your bartenders have . Now , the fun part here is you don't have to come up with the ideas as the owner , you don't have to guess .

You're literally asking your team , hey , what would make your life easier ? And then you're just documenting what they told you , or what multiple people told you , into a single policy .

Now , when it comes to documenting those ideas , you may run into some issues where one bartender says this and a different bartender says that and they might not quite align , so you will have to use some judgment here . But you're using the knowledge and the experience of your frontline team members to essentially do your job for you .

Now , once you've documented that , once you've taken those ideas , distilled them down to their similarities and documented those similarities and changes that you need to make to improve your bar , then you need not going to pull everyone in for a training in December when , at least in my experience , oftentimes it's hard enough just to get some sleep with how quickly

these holiday parties can go , especially as we get later in the month . So early in the month you have time to do this , but you can do this as simply as a memo , or if you have a smaller bar . You know , if you're in that neighborhood dive bar type market , like I used to be , you probably have five or ten bartenders .

You could just talk to each one of them when they come in for their shift and say , hey , here's the way we're doing this . Now I asked you guys all what you wanted . This is what the majority of people said was an issue . Here's how we're fixing it , based upon your feedback . Here's how we're fixing it , based on your feedback .

So this is what I need you to do moving forward . But regardless of how you train each person on it , you need to train each person on it . You need to make sure they know and understand the new policies and procedures that you're putting in place , based on their feedback .

And then the last step and this is a step anytime you create any change in your bar , you have to enforce that change . So , yeah , are some people going to be annoyed because you're telling them to do extra work and they're going to forget to do it and you're probably going to write them up ?

Absolute , but if you don't enforce something , it won't stick , and too often in bars I see this all the time . People have great ideas , they have great passion . They go after something and they get it , and they get it right , and then two months later they're back where they were before because no one's actually enforced the new policy .

So again , this week is all about just understanding what makes your bartender's job harder , by asking them , looking for the commonalities in what all your bartenders say , documenting an idea that they have and then implementing and enforcing it .

It shouldn't be a lot of work it actually should be pretty easy and the end result , even if you only implement one little idea , should be a happier team , because they know you care about their feedback , they know you're interested in what they have to say , and better customer service , because you have a happier team and your bartenders are more efficient ,

allowing you to really capitalize on the holidays and all the parties that bars will have in the upcoming weeks . That's going to wrap us up for today . To get even more out of our weekly challenge , make sure you join the Bar Business Nation Facebook group . There's a link in the show notes .

I make a thread there every week so we can share our challenges and successes and improve our bars together . Until next time , have a great day and we will talk again later .