New Listing Vintage 'Bartender' Cocktail (4 PIECE) Set with stand. Time left 6d left. 0 bids +$8.00 shipping. Watch; S p o n s o r e d. Twosome' Bartender Set In Original Box. Or Best Offer +$6.70 shipping. Watch; S p o n s o r e d. VTG CHARLEY WEAVER Battery Operated Bartender w Box ROSKO Toys. Free hand pouring: This method is a subjective form of pouring in which the bottle with the pourer is turned upside down at full force. The bartender counts in his/her head one, two, three at his/her practiced pace to get an ounce or whatever is the standard measure. However, this is not an accurate method and hence not recommended. Bartenderadalah sama denga salesman dimana maju dan mundurnya suatu bar tergantung dari bartender. Seorang bartender yang bertugas malamharus menyediakan waktu untuk istirahat di waktu siang. Jika menghadapi tamu, bartender harus selalu tersenyum supaya tamu merasa senang.
Here are 3 common traits about the bar business:
1) Customer complaints.
2) High staff turnover.
3) Losing cash due to theft or malpractice.
Good news: all 3 of these can be remedied with proper training.
And nowhere is this more pronounced than bartending – one of the roles with the highest levels of responsibility, exposure to customers, and influence on your bottom line.
So in this article, we’re going to present 11 tips for better bartender training.
By the time you finish reading, you’re going to have a blueprint for onboarding new hires who understand your rules and processes.
In turn, this can help you improve customer service, grow revenue, and retain your key employees for a longer time.
Let’s dive in.
Why is bartender training so important?
Before we dive into specific tips, let’s revisit why bartender training must be done right.
The average staff turnover rate in bars and restaurants stands at 75%. This means that for every 10 employees you have, you can expect only 2 or 3 to be there the next year.
This is a nightmare from a management point of view because you constantly have to hire and train new people.
In addition, the average loss from spillage, over-pouring and giveaways is approximately 6 ounces per liter. That’s about 18% lost revenue, not to mention the impact on your pour cost.
This is why having a solid bartender training process is crucial for your operations and profitability.
Are You Confident Your Bartenders Are Recording All Drinks?
The 11-point checklist for better bartender training
Now that the value of training is clear, how can you make sure every new bartender hire has the maximum chances of success? This is what we’ll cover next.
1. Start with the right foundation
Bartender training is useless if you make the wrong hire from the get-go.
If you want to make the most of your staff onboarding and training programs, make sure you have a solid hiring process first. This should include one or more channels to attract candidates, shortlist the best ones, and reliably predict their performance.
So how do you go about this?
When it comes to channels for attracting candidates, there are staffing agencies and websites like Indeed that can refer candidates to you. Other sources include Facebook groups and referrals from your existing employees.
In terms of shortlisting, you can design questionnaires that let you standardize the selection process and compare everyone based on the same set of principles – even before you meet them for an interview.
Lastly, having a trial day or week can help you see how people perform on the job and predict how they will fit in with a high degree of certainty.
Combining these elements will help you set the right foundation for training and onboarding your new bartender hires.
2. Introduce the employee handbook
Once you have someone on board and ready to start, it’s time to introduce them to the employee handbook.
This should outline your workplace policies, code of conduct, and other general rules in your establishment.
In addition, the employee handbook may include role-specific guidelines about customer service, handling cash, and any other related details.
If you don’t have an employee handbook, you can download a free template here.
3. Technical skills
It’s true that qualities such as being trustworthy, friendly, and dedicated are more important but you can’t provide good customer service if the technical skills are lacking.
And sometimes, your new hires might not have that much experience or you might be promoting someone from another area of your bar or restaurant.
In this situation, make sure to go through the technical aspects of bartending such as accurate pouring, cocktail recipes, and the different tools to use on the job.
This is also a great time to learn where everything is behind the bar and practice. Shadowing an existing bartender is a good way to speed up this process.
These elements will help your new hire understand how you do things on both a theoretical and practical level.
Tip:If you don’t have the capacity or the internal know-how to provide technical training, consider outsourcing this to a third-party training provider.
This is best done in person so searching for “bartender training in [your state]” on Google should give you several local centers that train bartenders.
You might also consider online training to get the theoretical aspects right with companies like the PBSO Bartending School.
4. Bartender jargon
Similar to above, if you’re hiring someone without much experience as a bartender, make sure you go through the terminology commonly used behind the bar and among the rest of your team.
This will help avoid any misunderstanding between your staff and speed up customer service.
5. Your POS and other systems
Technology now plays an important role in running a bar so you’ll need to go through the various systems you use with your new hires.
One obvious place to start is your POS system but you might also be using specialized inventory or table management software.
Covering these systems will ensure smooth operation, accurate sales data, and better customer experience.
6. Sales training
While bartenders are not strictly salespeople, they can make a huge difference to your revenue when properly trained.
If you want to maximize every sales opportunity in your bar, make sure to train your bartenders on things like:
- Drinks history and background.
- Good food and drink combinations.
- Listening to and “reading” the customer.
Ultimately, proper sales training can increase your average order value while amplifying the customer experience with knowledge on the different items you serve (and some charisma).
Tip: There’s no need for sophisticated sales tactics here. Instead, explaining how extra revenue impacts their earnings and learning the menu inside and out will go a long way towards improving your bartender sales skills.
7. Purchasing and inventory management
If you let bartenders handle things like inventory management and purchasing, you should also cover this area ahead of time.
Your inventory process will typically involve counting stock, keeping records of spillage, and any software you use for this.
On the other hand, purchasing will involve contact numbers of suppliers, minimum order quantities, best sellers, and other relevant information.
8. Health & Safety training
Before you can officially complete your training, make sure your new hire knows about health and safety regulations in your city, as well as handling emergencies in your venue.
For example, make sure they understand the fire safety code and know how to handle incidents such as work-related injuries.
You can download a sample health code checklist here.
9. The quiz
Once your new bartender has the theoretical information and perhaps some practical experience too, it’s a good idea to test their knowledge with a short quiz.
This should cover all of the aspects above and any specific rules in your establishment.
For example, you can test technical knowledge using cocktail recipes, drink history, and background.
Or you can use a sample menu without any prices where the person doing the test has to fill them in.
Whatever you decide to test, the biggest value here is that your new hire will recall the information they learned and therefore solidify their understanding and confidence.
You can design a questionnaire-style test using tools like Google Forms or Typeform. Or simply print off an Excel spreadsheet if you prefer to keep it simple.
10. Role-playing
The theory is just one half of the equation but before letting people off to work with customers, make sure they can handle a simulated situation.
You can organize short role play with other employees or yourself, making sure your new hire knows where everything is, how to make certain drinks, and upsell effectively.
This can happen before you open or at a set day of the week when you’re closed.
11. Stand back and monitor progress
There’s no real way to learn how to deal with the pressure of a busy bar unless you start doing it.
So that’s why an important part of your training should be live work with actual customers. It might not be the absolute busiest time but your new hires should get exposure to customers as soon as possible.
Conclusion
Solid bartender training is important if you want to provide good customer service and maximize revenue in your bar.
And this process starts with hiring – attracting the best candidates will make everything else easier and more effective.
Once you have the right people on board, it’s time to run through your key policies – from customer service and handling cash to essential health and safety regulations.
This will ensure every bartender you hire is equipped with the knowledge and skills to delight your customers and enjoy their work.
Do you want to learn more about bar operations management? Then check out The Essential Guide to Bar Management.
The Essential Guide to Bar Management
Key strategies and tactics to run a successful bar in 2020
Clear and documented Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are important for any small business. Bars and restaurants are no exception here.
Among other things, SOPs allow you to:
- Train and onboard new employees.
- Reduce mistakes and improve customer service.
- Boost staff morale and happiness as they perform their duties better.
Ultimately, improvements in your SOPs add up to better customer service and increased revenue.
On the other hand, repeatability and standardization reduce costs. So these seemingly dull documents can be the difference between success and struggling to turn a profit.
In this article, we’re going to guide you through creating SOPs for your bar or restaurant.
We’ll start with the key procedures – the cornerstone operations in any establishment.
Next, we’ll look at more specific procedures that happen behind the scenes or less frequently compared to daily operations.
Sop Bartender Hotel
Lastly, we’re going to suggest a few tools to start and improve your documentation over time.
Ready? Let’s go.
Table of Contents
Start with the Key SOPs in Your Bar
Do you know about the “Big rocks first” strategy by Stephen Covey?
The main premise here is that starting with bigger and more important projects first is a smart move. If you prioritize the nitty-gritty tasks, you risk missing the big picture and reducing your capacity to complete big projects.
If we apply this concept to creating your SOPs, starting your documentation with your key procedures will make everything else easier later on.
And you don’t have to get these main operations perfect the first time – they will be a work in progress handled by you and your team in the long run.
Opening and Closing Procedures
Your daily opening and closing procedures provide the framework for everything else that happens in between.
Some of the opening procedures to document include:
- Property check: how to perform a quick inspection of the main stock and equipment used throughout the day. This is ideally documented in a checklist format and includes things like reviewing stock levels for best sellers and inspecting key equipment like beer taps.
- Cash check: documenting the available cash in tills and making sure there’s enough to give as change and handle daily transactions.
- Cleanliness: checking hygiene standards are met across the bar and tables, ensuring menus and cutlery are in place.
On the other hand, some of the key closing procedures include:
- Balancing the cash drawer: you can learn about balancing a bar or restaurant cash register here.
- Storing perishable items: keeping things like garnishes and food properly stored to ensure they are fresh for the next day.
- Surveillance and locking: turning on the alarm system and making sure the venue is secure.
These are just some of the key opening and closing procedures to start documenting. For a more exhaustive list, check out this article.
Customer Service Procedures
The customer service procedures include everything from the first interaction with a potential customer (which could be over the phone or online) to the time you see them out and even reply to their review on a platform like TripAdvisor or Yelp.
There are several key stages here and documenting each will help your business standardize and deliver high-quality service day in and day out. In fact, you can divide your ops manual based on the natural customer journey. For example:
- Meet and greet customers.
- Taking the order.
- Preparing and delivering the order.
- Checking in to see if everything is fine.
- Bringing the check and taking payment.
- Seeing customers out.
In turn, each of these stages has a set of best practices that you can define. For example:
- Your standard ordering process could include asking if drinks were chosen, suggesting a suitable snack that goes with the drink, confirming the order, and entering it in the POS system.
- Next, you would have a recipe book and target serving time to fulfill each order.
- A policy for checking in within 2 minutes of delivering the order.
And so on.
The specific rules and best practices will depend mostly upon your overall concept and what you deem is most important from a service perspective.
However, having a documented manual that everyone can refer to will get you far towards improving customer service.
If you want to learn more about the topic and get specific best practices, check out this article.
Are You Confident Your Bartenders Are Recording All Drinks?
Move to Weekly, Monthly and One-off Procedures
Once you have documented your key daily procedures, it’s time to look into less frequent activities like inventory, hiring, and purchasing.
Inventory management
Similar to building out your ops manual, taking inventory is one of those tedious but important activities that often get neglected across bars and restaurants.
However, documenting your process and teaching your key employees how to do inventory will often be the difference between a thriving establishment and barely breaking even.
When it comes to inventory, you should take the time to document each step in the exact order it was performed first because much of the value is derived from consistency. In addition, you should perform inventory checks at set intervals, such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
If you take inventory in a different way each time, you are not going to reap the benefits such as better planning and increased margins.
For an easy way to get started with this process, check out our dedicated article about bar inventory management.
Hiring and Onboarding Employees
As staff turnover in the hospitality industry is high, you will need a repeatable system for hiring, onboarding and continuously training employees.
A good place to start is documenting the responsibilities of every role, from bartenders to servers and chefs.
This will help you quickly put out job posts and build your training manual for each position. Basically, the main duties will become the outline for your employee training and onboarding.
It’s also a good idea to note down typical job boards you use and document your hiring stages – such as initial application, phone interview, live interview and test week.
Having fixed questions and a process behind all this will help you find and compare the best employees. In turn, this will reduce your turnover rate, improve service, and your overall business.
If you want quick tips for hiring great bar and restaurant employees, check out this article.
Marketing Procedures
While you should be promoting your bar or restaurant daily, this activity is often left behind due to hectic nights and burnout.
Having a repeatable process for marketing will make promotion efforts easier since the game plan is already laid out.
Sop Waiters Restoran
Your documentation about marketing should include things like:
- Your objectives, such as revenue and profits per quarter.
- Your projects for achieving these goals.
- Login details for your different social media pages and marketing tools.
- Examples of successful promotions.
- Budget for advertising.
Contoh Sop Bartender
If you’d like to get some inspiration for your marketing, check out these 10 strategies to win more customers.
Purchasing and Suppliers
Another frequent process to document is around purchasing decisions.
This includes supplier contacts, any discount they offer, the usual quantities you purchase, brands, sizes, and other details related to buying stock and equipment.
As new orders are often placed after inventory checks, you can combine your documentation for both processes to make them easier to manage.
Recommended reading: 22 Essential Tools and Equipment Every Bar Should Have
Emergencies
Lastly, it’s a good idea to document SOPs for emergencies such as accidental fire, conflicts between customers, and injuries.
This will ensure your key employees know what to do and potentially avoid serious consequences for your business and/or patrons.
Improve documentation over time
Sop Bartender
Once your SOPs are in place, select a few people in charge of maintaining and improving them over time, ideally one for each area like Kitchen, Bar, and Admin.
Things will inevitably change and so continuously improving your SOPs is required to keep your documentation up-to-date. The simple act of maintaining these will also solidify understanding and your managers are more likely to enforce guidelines.
So stay with an open mind, be ready to switch policies, and don’t get stuck on a particular point or process – you will be able to make improvements as your normal operations are going.
To make this whole process easier, we’d recommend digital tools that are easy to update and available on multiple devices like mobile phones and tablets. Our best picks include:
- Google Docs or MS Word – if you want to keep things simple.
- Notion – if you prefer a more visual approach.
- Process Street – for maximum structure but higher maintenance.
Conclusion
Considering the importance of SOPs for bars and restaurants, you can’t afford to neglect this area of operations.
So if you don’t have an ops manual yet, consider starting now with the key SOPs and then gradually improve your documentation.
Once you have your principles and guidelines laid out in written form, you will be able to spot gaps in your process, fix them, and build the foundation for a stronger business overall.
The Essential Guide to Bar Management
Sap Bartender Integration
Key strategies and tactics to run a successful bar in 2020