Transforming Bar Experiences with Education: From Staff Training to Effective Bar Ownership Strategies

Hello and welcome to the Bar Business Podcast , where we help bar owners increase profits , attract loyal guests and simplify operations so you can avoid burnout and finally enjoy your life outside of your bar . I'm your host , chris Schneider , the Bar Business Coach .

Before we get started , a quick thank you to our sponsors SpotOn , who provide a great modern POS solution for the bar and restaurant industry , and Starfish , who use AI to turn your books into actual steps to increase profits .

So , as I mentioned , there's one thing you can do that is going to improve your guest and team experience and helps your bottom line , and what that is is investing in education . Now , when I say education , I know a lot of people automatically think about college , university type instruction , and that is one of the things I am talking about .

One of the things I am talking about . But there are many other ways that education can exist in the hospitality industry and many other ways we can use education to improve our guest experience and our team experience and to make us more profitable .

Now , the reason behind that I would like to say a self-explanatory , but I know it's not which is that an educated team makes a better positive impact on your guests . So what do I mean by that ? Well , we know that what guests want when they come in is an immersive experience .

They want to not worry about their day , they want to have a great time while they're at your bar , and in order to provide that experience , one of the best tools we have in the bar industry is telling stories and personal interaction .

So when you have a team that's more educated , they're able to tell better stories and therefore you have a better guest experience .

And beyond that , if you educate your team on things that are not necessarily related to their day-to-day job , it makes it a better work experience for them and helps you attract better team members or more A-level team members in the future .

And so today , what we're going to do is we're going to talk through education and where you can use it , how you can use it to make your bar better , because I think one of the main things that we have to do as bar owners , or our bottom line , for our teams , for our guests , is to make sure not only is everybody trained on how to do their job , but

they have knowledge about products , they have stories to tell and that they can work with our guests to make sure that they're having the best experience possible .

So we're going to talk through three things over the course of this episode Training your team , how to expand your knowledge as an owner , and then one more amazing tip that will improve your team experience and education through loyalty . So , to get started , let's talk about training your team .

Now I have talked about this some there have been multiple people on this podcast , a guest that I've had that have talked about this how training your team is not particularly something that's done in our industry , and I know what you're thinking right now . You're scratching your head , you're going well , I train people . I always train people .

Everybody that works at my bar gets trained , and I'm going to say for most bars out there , that's not actually true . Now , part of the reason why I say that's not true is because training can be defined different ways .

To me , training someone to be a great server or a great bartender goes beyond training them to be an order taker , and 90% of the time when someone starts at a new bar or a restaurant . They are shown where the money is ketchup is , how to refill the salt and pepper , where to drop off dishes , how the POS system works , how to split checks .

They are taught some very basic policies , procedures about , say , splitting checks , or what the closing shift work is or the opening shift work is . That's about it . And so what we're doing is we're not teaching people how to be great servers . We're not teaching people how to be great bartenders . We're teaching them the process that we use to take orders .

Now , that's not to say that that's not a very important thing to teach folks when they're new to your team . A matter of fact , that is the most important thing that you could teach them . But , at the same time , it's not everything and it's not going to give you a competitive advantage . It's not going to make your servers better .

It's not going to make your bartenders better . It's not going to improve your guest experience . It's just going to maintain your guest experience and make sure that your new cocktail waitress , who worked it out back last week , figures out your POS system and learned how to punch things .

It is the bare minimum required to stay in business and we've talked about this before on the podcast . Like 60% of bars fail in five years . If you do the bare minimum , statistically you're likely to fail . So we have to go beyond the bare minimum to actually achieve high levels of success .

And so just showing people here's how you take an order , here's how you ring it in , here's how you do your side work is now training them . It's doing the bare minimum . Training them is expanding their knowledge base , helping them learn about the products that you sell , helping them learn about why you sell the product you sell .

And , beyond that , what's the difference between mezcal and tequila ? Why would I want to serve someone a bonded bourbon over a non-bonded bourbon ? Or does that make a difference ? Start with what is the difference between a bonded bourbon and a non-bonded bourbon , or does that make a difference ?

Start with what is the difference between a bonded bourbon and a non-bonded bourbon . What types of beers are going to work best in different seasons ? Obviously , with beers and seasons , you can go the easy route and just go . Well , this is the seasonals , so this is why . But what makes a season ? Why are they there ?

Why do you want to sell a porter in December and not in July ?

All these things are things that most people in the industry do know , but a lot of new folks get in and don't and , quite frankly , a lot of people that have been in the industry for a very long time maybe they haven't learned craft beer all the way yet , because craft beer 20 years ago wasn't really something that we worried about .

So not only do you need to make sure they have the basic knowledge of how to take orders , you need to make sure they understand what they're selling , what your processes are . Say you focus on food in your book , you're doing something a little higher end . They need to know the ingredients and the preparation methods . Take , for instance , sous vide .

Now , sous vide is something that now is popular , but 10 years ago , not very many people knew what it was . Well , if I'm trying to tell my server oh , many people knew what it was . If I'm trying to tell my server , oh , you've got to sell this steak , it's a sous vide steak .

It's one of the best steaks in town and they don't know what that sous vide is , how are they going to sell that to your customer ? What ability do they have to actually get that sell and to generate it and to move your business forward and provide a good guest experience . Well , not much if they don't know what sous vide is .

So your job is not only to teach them how to take orders . That's the bare minimum of server education and server training . You need to figure out everything that they need to know and how to encompass all of that while you train your team .

Now , for those of you that have been listening to the podcast for a while , you probably recall the episode we did with Greg Buda in the spring of formerly of Dead Rabbit , and he was their education director there . He currently owns a bar called Bizu Bizu in Montreal and consults out of New York , but one of the .

If you have not listened to that episode , you really should go listen to it . The point here is Greg's system for training , which he lays out well on our podcast episode is the idea that training is not it's not a month , it's years , years of incremental knowledge that we want people to learn , and the way Greg described it is well Dead Rabbit Irish Bar .

It was more important for those team members to know Irish whiskey than it was for them to know tequila . So one of the first things he taught because they were in members to know Irish whiskey than it was for them to know tequila .

So one of the first things he taught , because they were in Irish bar , was Irish whiskey and the complexities of Irish whiskey , the different types of Irish whiskey , the different aspects to it , why different whiskeys are different , really diving deep on that subject .

Well then , a few months down the road , after Irish whiskey and other more important things are learned , he would focus on tequila

. If you give people too much information at one time , you will overload their brains . They will not learn , they will shut down .

And this is especially true in hospitality , because I had folks with master's degrees and I had folks with GEDs that hadn't actually graduated high school and just taking the test afterwards , and so the education span is large in our industry . But beyond that , if you have a degree , it doesn't necessarily mean you know industry specific information .

It doesn't mean you know the food . It doesn't mean you know the booths . But we have to teach all of that .

We want to make sure people have all the information they need to be successful , all the information they need to be able to provide our guests a great experience , because if a guest asks your team a question , they should have the answer Again this has to be done systematically . This has to be done systematically .

This has to be done over time , and if you overload people that have not had a lot of academic background , they will shut down . They will not perform well .

So not only do you have to understand that this takes time , but you also have to understand that every single person that works for you is going to learn a little bit differently , and you need to adjust to them . Now , some of that is the fact that no one's going to go through your program at the same pace .

Some people are going to go through it a lot quicker than others , regardless of how much detail is there and how complex it is . It's just a fact . Some people will move faster than others .

So you need a system that's flexible to your learners which your learners , in this case , are the folks that work for you but , at the same time , gives them all the knowledge they need to be successful .

Now let's shift here a little bit and say okay , so as an owner , it's great we can do all that for our teams , but as an owner , what can I do to help ? Why not ?

Let's start with what's free and available to you out there on the internet Podcasts , blogs , newsletters , youtube videos all of that is available for free on the internet and all of it contains some good information . Now , are there people that put out videos that really don't know what they're talking about ? Absolutely .

Are there podcasts that give better information than others ? Absolutely . But the more you expose yourself to those sorts of sources regardless of who's writing them A you'll start to see patterns in what people say and write . Who's writing them ? A ? You'll start to see patterns in what people say and write .

I laugh a lot of times when I talk with other people that have podcasts or write books or consult and a lot of us have podcast , books and consult and we'll talk about what we know and what we don't know , and different styles and things , and we all approach it a little bit differently , but we all basically get to the same point and we have more or less

the same conclusions and thought processes . We attack everything totally differently . So what does that mean ?

That means you can read the books or listen to podcasts , or read a blog written by 20 different experts or influencers whatever consultants , however you want to refer to that group of people but you can look at 20 different pieces of content covering the same material and , yeah , probably 19 of the 20 will basically have the same conclusion .

If you look at the net effect of what they're saying , it's identical , but the pathway they use to get there will be different . And I will tell you right now . It's like we have Chip Close is going to be on next week . Chip Close and I agree on a lot of things . We're really on the same page in a lot of ways .

I do it all from a finance side , he does it all from a marketing side . Why ? Because I have a finance background and he has a marketing background Nine times out of 10 , we're probably getting into a very similar spot . But here is the thing what works best for you as an owner ? How does your brain work ?

Now , if you're listening to this podcast , you probably like numbers and data and finance , because that's the avenue that I take . If you listen to Chip's podcast , maybe it's a little bit more on the marketing end . You know , last week we had Kristen Marvin on and talk about her book about leadership and taking that angle to .

Again , all different angles , all different thought processes , all different ways to present the information , but all leading back to essentially the same set of ideas . So I would encourage you if you listen to this podcast , go check out 10 other hospitality-related podcasts . Go check out 10 other hospitality-related podcasts . Go listen to what other people have to say .

See , ya , I'm really the person that fits the way you think the best now . Obviously , I want you to listen to my podcast . I enjoy it when people listen to the podcast , but if you listen to my podcast and you're going , you know I see where he's coming from and I like what he says , but I listen to this other person and it makes way more sense to me .

They think closer the way I do . Well , I keep listening to their podcasts , but the more you listen to , the more you read , and , again , you know . Podcasts , blogs , social media content all free online . You can go and get this stuff and learn from a whole bunch of different people .

What you should look for as you're putting all that together , then , is what are the commonalities ? Where is everyone driving to the same point ? Again , we may have different ways of getting to it , in which case , listen to the folks that get to that point . The best way for you .

Make sure that you follow what they're saying , that it makes sense to you that their logical process fits the way you think , because that's going to mean that you'll absorb that information better . But the more sources you listen to , the more you realize we all get to the same point .

You see different angles to get to that point and then you understand different ways to do it so you can figure out the way that works best for you . Because , let's be real honest , what works best for me and what works best for you Probably not identical , same with every other podcast blogger , social media content creator .

In this space we don't all think alike . You probably don't think like any of us . So the more you listen to , the more diverse perspectives you get , the more you can build your own perspective at them .

Now the other thing and I didn't mention it with the previous three books read a lot of books , and the reason why I didn't mention books before is because those were all free . Books cost money . Now you can do it on Kindle . Personally , I buy paper books and I read them and I underline things and write notes as I read .

It's just a process that allows me to absorb the most information . So if you enjoy reading , you probably know what helps you absorb that information the most . Ibooks Read all the books , because in a lot of ways the books are much more refined than content or podcasts or blogs .

When I podcast and talk to you guys every week , especially on the solo episodes , I just have an outline and I look at it . It has my bullet points on it and I talk through things . However , I talk through them when I write . It's edited , it's thought through .

Every word I pay attention to and make sure , okay , does this sentence convey what I need it to convey in this space ? So books are a lot more refined . A lot of times books are going to make more sense . There's less likeliness that you have some random guy with ADHD talking on a microphone and I see a squirrel out the window .

You have some random guy with ADHD talking on a microphone and I see a squirrel out the window and the next thing , you know , I went from talking about reading books to what kind of fish I have in the pond in my room Because there was a squirrel outside . Yeah , anyway , enough about pond fish .

But you get the point Read books , get all these different things . Now , a lot of the folks in the industry and I will say this , are not looking to go back to college to learn more , and I get that . And frankly , if you own a bar , you probably don't have time to do college right . So there's there's .

While I fully support the idea of going and getting a degree in hospitality management , if you want to be in the field , I think it's great , especially if you're early in your career . If you're going to college and you know this is what you want to do , it's some of the best education you can get .

But once you already own a bar and say you used to be a lawyer , you used to be a banker , you used to own a car lot whatever you did before this , you don't have time to go get another degree and you probably don't want it . However , look at community colleges for specific things you want to learn more about .

The American Hotel and Lodging Association works with the NRA . They have some great educational books and things out there and there are a lot of colleges and four-year institutions and community colleges in the United States that are working off of those textbooks and those programs .

It's a good way to get an academic base on a subject you might not know as well . You know you can if you're wondering about menus , you can take a course on menu development . If you want to know more about accounting and bookkeeping , you can take courses on accounting . Now , the one risk here is and this is absolutely true academia is not real world .

So I do teach at a community college . If you came to my community college and took the accounting class I teach , it is way different than if I made a similar length course for bar owners on accounting .

And it's different because in academia I have to teach people about generally accepting accounting principles and income statements versus profit and losses , which they're the same thing , but academia calls them income statements and everybody in the real world calls them profit , unless we're talking about C-Corps and giant publicly traded companies .

So you're going to get an academic viewpoint . The academic viewpoint doesn't always square with the real world , but at the same time , you want to know more about accounting than you already know . It could be a great way to learn it , same with marketing or menu design or with a lot of community colleges .

They have active cooking kitchen classes so you can learn some basics of cooking . If you don't have a food background and you have a food menu and your kitchen isn't quite doing what you need it to do . Maybe you need to go get some knowledge and expand your understanding of working in a kitchen and how to prepare food .

So don't completely discount the idea of using a community college or a four-year institution as a non-degree student to go and gain additional knowledge . Degree student to go and gain additional knowledge Frankly , if you can get it from podcasts and books and YouTube videos and all of that , that's probably a cheaper and more real , world-related way to do it .

But if you just have a topic that you're like you know what , I'm freaking clueless on this and I need to understand it a college could be a good option to gain that knowledge .

Now let's talk about something crazy you can do for your team that helps them with their education and increases their loyalty and increases your ability to get great additional servers and to hire people for your book . And this is an idea . I will tell you this is not my idea .

If you listen to the episode where I had Sean Finter on a while back , he said that . So it's not my idea . You can go listen to the episode , listen to him describe it if you would like , but the idea here is to have suppliers of yours give talks to your team and people that aren't suppliers of yours give talks

to you . So say , once a month on , like a Saturday afternoon , have a team meeting where you just have someone present something , and it doesn't necessarily have to be a mandatory meeting . This can be totally optional . And one thing that Sean threw out there that I thought was just crazy smart and kind of blew me away that I'd never heard anyone say it .

If you have , say , the third Saturday of every month from three to four , we're going to have this educational time for our team , but you can fit 30 people in there . You could have 10 people sign up to work at other bars and restaurants , come to your place , take this little course over whatever it may be , or listen to this talk .

So it's a way to work on your recruiting pipeline . Give your team a really cool benefit they're not used to , and increase their knowledge so they can better serve your guests , or increase their knowledge so that they can have a better life for themselves . So I said speakers from our industry or other industries . Let me define this a little .

From our industry , what I would look for is your liquor reps , right , they want to sell product . They want your servers to know the product . Have them come in and do tasting . Have them come in , say it's fall now , but say we're talking six months from now . It's spring and it's starting to get warm .

I guess if you're in Australia , it's starting to get warm now . So this is super tip for those of you that live in the Southern Hemisphere . But you're getting into spring and people really want good , sweet-style wines and so you're going to talk German wines .

You're going to talk Rieslings and the differences between Cabernet and Auslese and Spätlese and how long that means grapes are on the vine and the differences in acidity and the difference in the sugar content of those grapes .

Have one of your suppliers come in and do a German wine tasting and go through Riesling and all the different ways the Riesling grape can be bottled depending upon the amount of residual sugar and the sugar in the grape when they pick it right , because there's actually two different pieces there for German wine .

Have somebody come in and give that talk to your staff . Maybe you only have one German wine or two German wines on the list , but this is going to increase their knowledge .

It's going to help them learn more about wine in general , and it's something , frankly , your suppliers will probably do for free and for fun , because they get to promote their wines to your staff . Your staff is now better trained on their wine and so presumably your staff is going to sell more of their wine .

So use people like suppliers , and you can use food suppliers too . Right , if you're bringing in new food products or you know you have new bread , let's say that you're going to use . And you have all these different buns and stuff . You could have somebody from the bakery come in and say , yeah , we bake them fresh every morning . This is how we do it .

Blah , blah , blah . Give your servers that story to tell your guests about that part of your product . The other thing you can do is bring in people that have nothing to do with the food and beverage industry but will help your servers in the long run .

So ideas for that you can have someone that works on like personal coaching coming in and talking about time management , stress management , all sorts of life skills , and there are a lot of people out there nowadays that do these types of things , and most of them you know .

Just like I say every week hey , if you want to talk for a half hour schedule , a free strategy session . Let me get to know you , let's see if there's a way I can help your business and justify you paying me , and if there is great , maybe we can work something out .

There are plenty of people on the personal life coaching side that do things like that as well , who can talk about a whole host of different things that matter . Like I said , time management , different organization skills any life skills can be useful for people to know . You can also look at other types of experts in other industries .

So say , have somebody come in one month and talk about real estate . What is it like buying a house in your area ? Where are the good locations to potentially think of buying a house ? If you're renting , what should you look out for ? What areas should you avoid ? What can you do to get a mortgage ? And so maybe that's a real estate person .

But maybe also bringing a banker to talk about home loan , because if you're a server and you need to get a home loan , that can be tricky , sometimes with proving income , with tips and all sorts of different pieces . So by bringing those experts in , not only will your team be better able to run their life outside the bar . They'll have more information .

They'll be able to run their life outside the bar . They'll have more information , they'll be able to plan better about their life and , hopefully , have a better experience working for you . Another example is you could bring in a financial plan to talk stocks and retirement and why you should set up an IRA , how to do it , what to do those sorts of things .

And the other thing , too , that I would look at and I would seriously , if you have a bar , I would do this is bring in someone that can speak to sexual harassment . Bring in somebody that can speak to alcoholism . Bring in experts that can speak to the dark sides of the industry that we all want to ignore .

Because I will tell you right now I have a close friend that was a professor of mine in college , who spent years researching sexual harassment in the hospitality industry , specifically bars and restaurants . I have a friend who runs a nonprofit with a lot of focus on sexual harassment as well , and in our industry it's bad .

We need to teach people how to deal with that . We need to give people ways to report things , and bringing in a speaker that can speak to it , that can help educate us , is a wonderful way to do that , especially when it comes into not just reducing sexual harassment say in our bar or in our restaurant , among teammates In a bar giving people booze .

There are a lot of guys that are doing things they shouldn't be to women in bars and obviously you know a lot of times we'll talk about . You have to find ways to prevent roofing and all that , absolutely true .

But you also have to find ways to deal with and prevent , to the extent that you can , the guy sitting at the bar slapping some girl's butt while she walks . To the extent that you can , the guy sitting at the bar slapping some girl's butt while she walks to the bathroom . Like you don't want any of that going on .

So when you can bring in people that can speak to sexual harassment , can speak to some of the darker sides of our industry and help your team with tools and ways to cope and ways to avoid those issues , you are winning Across the board . You are winning .

So hopefully that helps you guys get some ideas together for where you can educate yourself , your team , and how you can provide education on things even beyond the products you sell , because , again , if you do this , you're going to improve your team experience .

You're going to improve your guest experience , which means , at the end of the day , you're going to improve your bottom line . Now , before we go today , some listener questions . So remember if you have a question for the show , whenever I do solo episodes , so when I don't have a guest , I'm answering your questions .

If you go on the show notes , right on top it says text the show . Click there , send in a question , we will answer it on the air . Now , also as a reminder , if you click that , I cannot respond , so you will get an answer on the air when we do our next solo episode .

If you would like to speak with me directly , email me , shoot me a message on the website , schedule a strategy session . But just know that if you send a question for this part of the show , I can't respond , but you will get an answer on the next episode . That is just me talking . So two questions for today .

The first question is we print our menus in-house because they change quite a bit . We use Cardstock and put them in a menu cover . Do you have any recommendations for what printer we should use ? So here's the thing guys Always printed my own menus .

I paid for someone to do it once and then I had to change it and there was a typo and I got pissed and after that I printed my own menus in-house for years and I would just print them on cardstock and laminate them and for the type of bars I had , that worked perfectly .

I didn't need any fancy covers , I didn't need any leatherette or anything like that . I could just print a piece of paper front and back , laminate it and I was good to go . So I have done this quite a bit .

First thing I will say is the only good way to print menus for bars and restaurants is to use laser printers , and that is especially true if you're using a different type of paper . So I like to use cardstock and laminate it .

A lot of people use cardstock and put them in a cover , as the question or the person who asked the question said they do , and some people print on like waterproof paper , kind of that vinyl that you'll see in a lot of corporate restaurants , and you can actually print directly onto that If

you do . Sometimes it requires a specific printer . I believe laser printers will print on that 99% of the time , but laser printers are going to give you better print quality , they're faster and they're cheaper to operate Within . Laser printers are going to give you better print quality . They're faster and they're cheaper to operate Within . Laser printers .

I've used both Brother and HP . I know a lot of people that swear by my Brother printers . I think they're great . Personally , my favorite printer I ever used was a BA Gold Laser HP combo unit . I think I spent like $700 on it , like a decade ago . It was a really freaking expensive printer 700 bucks on it , like a decade ago .

It was a really freaking expensive printer , but I printed thousands of menus on that over probably five or six years , so it held up . I didn't have any issues with it . So I would say you definitely want a laser printer and go either Brother or HP when it comes to printing your menus .

Now we had a second question how do you win the battle with fruit flies ? I have tried so many things and they are still here . Fruit flies I feel like if you're in a place that gets warm , are always an issue and , quite frankly , they're pretty gross right , and I don't know that there is a bar that ever has avoided fruit flies .

Every bar I've always worked in , any bar I've ever worked in , I should say has had an issue with fruit flies at one point or another . So the first thing I'm going to say is there are two ways I've found that help prevent them .

Again , I don't think you can stop them altogether , but there are two things you can do that's going to cut down on their ability to exist quite a bit , exist quite a bit . The first one is every bottle of alcohol that has a pourer needs a cover for the pourer , and there are different types of covers you can buy for pourers .

I've seen places you put saran wrap over all the pourers at the end of the night . But A we never want to serve a customer a drink with a fruit fly in the bottle , because that's just freaking gross . If you pour somebody a fruit fly in their drink , not cool .

And B if there's a way for a fruit fly to get into a bottle of booze that has sugar in it think things like Frangelico or Vermouth or anything that is sweetened they will find a way in . So you'll want to cover all of those .

Now the other thing you want to do is you want to have plugs for all of your draft lines and you want to plug them up every night . Otherwise those fruit flies are going to fly into your draft lines and lay eggs in there and have fun drinking up all that beer in the lines , and you're going to pour people draft beer with fruit flies Again not cool .

So first step to get rid of fruit flies cover your porous pouts , cover your draft lines , plug those up . Then the other big thing when it comes to prevention is cleanliness . Right , fruit flies do a lot better in a dirty environment than a clean environment , and so make sure all your counters are wiped down multiple times a day .

Make sure you don't have sticky stuff staying on the floor , because they will get in that legs and can breathe , especially if it's like under a cooler . So clean your floors every single day . If you spill something , take the time to wipe it up before you move on . But even more important than your floors and your counters , clean your drain lines .

It is amazing what will grow in a drain line and particularly ice bin . Drain lines are always horrendous , so take time to clean your drain lines . Now , if it's like an ice bin , where it's just a rubber tube , or a lot of kegerators will have the same situation where you just have a rubber tube coming out that's going into a drain in the floor .

Those will grow the nastiest . So make sure if they're clogged at all or if you have low flow out your drain line .

I always use 6 co2 canisters like it would hook up to the keg boxes and I had a hose on those and I would just blow it out and usually enough force you can blow any massive livery looking substance that's stuck in a drain line out of it . The other thing you can do with your drains bleach , hot water . Those work great .

Now , hot water sometimes will kill fruit flies , their eggs , rather , will sometimes kill them , but not always . Bleach will kill adult fruit flies but not eggs . So just putting bleach down your drains is not going to cover it . And then there are two other things you can do Now .

These are really , once you have an infestation and you're trying to keep it down , one of the best ways is fans . Fruit flies are tiny and air moves them around all along .

So if you have a fan that's going to blow over the area where the fruit flies are congregating , like over your sinks , over your taps , over your bottles , that fan is going to prevent fruit flies from getting into those things , from laying eggs there and all sorts .

It's basically going to make them decide to go somewhere else , or they'll get blown into the wall and , I don't know , die of head trauma . But anywhere where you don't have fruit flies , just have box fans Set up , box fans pointed directly at it while you're closed . That will help immensely .

And then the final thing that I would do to try to take care of fruit flies is old school vinegar traps . So I used to do this all the time . I would take just a little bowl . I would pour an inch , inch and a half of vinegar in it , and then there are two ways that you can go from there .

You can take a piece of saran wrap , cellophane , put it over the top so that it's nice and tight , and take a toothpick and poke holes . The fruit flies will go through the holes but won't come back out . Or you can just put a couple drops of dish soap on top of the vinegar . That breaks the surface tension .

So a lot of times the flies will land on the vinegar and then just sink and , uh , stay in the vinegar . A lot of times I did both , so I would take the cellophane in the vinegar .

A lot of times I did both , so I would salivate over the vinegar , poke holes in it and have dish soap in there , just double making sure that they get in my trap and they don't get out . So before I go , I just want to re-hit on the three key takeaways from today's episode . First of all , your guests are happier when you have stories to tell .

So make sure your team has stories and your team has stories and your team builds stories through additional education and training . Second key takeaway you work better as an owner when you know more . Seek out as much information as you can from as many sources as you can .

Find those sources that work best for you , that speak to you the best , and listen to them all the time . Dig in and compare the way that people present information . It'll improve your knowledge more than you can imagine if you just spend a couple hours a week focused on trying to learn things .

And our third key takeaway if you can find ways to provide your team with training that is abnormal and give them speakers that will energize them and give them life skills that are applicable outside of your bar especially if you allow folks from other bars and restaurants to join in on those as well , you're going to increase your team satisfaction .

They are going to be happier . They are going to be more successful . They are going to be happier , they are going to be more successful and because you are known as a bar that provides your employees with something like that , you're going to create an amazing pipeline of a players for your establishment . That about wraps it up for today .

If you enjoyed today's insights , make sure you like , subscribe and leave a review . If you are ready to take your bar to the next level , schedule a strategy session with me by clicking the link in the show notes below . Until next time , have a great day and we will talk again later .