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Train Servers to Prevent Alcohol Sales to Minors
It’s against the law to sell alcohol to minors, but that won’t stop them from trying to purchase it at your restaurant. If they succeed, and your restaurant is caught selling to minors, you and your employees could face fines and potentially a loss of your liquor...
Featured Article
Train Servers to Prevent Alcohol Sales to Minors
It’s against the law to sell alcohol to minors, but that won’t stop them from trying to purchase it at your restaurant. If they succeed, and your restaurant is caught selling to minors, you and your employees could face fines and potentially a loss of your liquor...
Recent Articles
Boost Restaurant Sales with a Better System
Are you running pre-shift meetings, training your restaurant staff, tacking up specials, and talking about high-profit items until you're blue in the face. Are you worried that if you push your servers to sell any harder, your restaurant will become the food-industry...
How Technology in Restaurants is Changing the Guest Experience
Point. Click. Enjoy. Simple electronic interactions are what today’s restaurant guests crave. They want to eat out the same way they bank, travel, and shop -- with clicks, taps, and swipes. Apps for making reservations, placing to-go orders, and meal delivery are...
Four Phrases to Never Use with Guests
For service staff in the restaurant industry, there are four phrases to never use with guests. Pass these on to your servers:"I don't know." If you don't know, find out. Instead, say, "That's a good question. Let me check for you.""We can't do that." Instead, say,...
Improve Service with Mystery Shopping in Your Restaurant
Mystery shopping in your restaurant is a valuable tool for monitoring and evaluating service consistency. With so much going on at any given time, it's sometimes hard for managers to maintain an objective point of view. Obtaining a "floors-eye view" of your staff will...
5 Sales Mistakes Pros Make (How Are Your Servers Doing?)
If you want your servers to act as salespeople, you need to treat them – and train them – as salespeople. Here are five typical mistakes that salespeople in all industries make. How do your salespeople add up?Sales Mistake # 1: Allowing a prospect to lead the sales...
Hot Enough for Ya? (And Ice Breakers That Really Work)
Small talk is something not enough managers train their waitstaff on, yet it's very important to the guests' overall impressions of a restaurant. While it comes naturally to some servers, others jump right in to the specials and leave customers without even a “How are...
Server Performance Evaluations: Shift the Focus to Sales
So many performance evaluations read the same for every employee in an operation. And while certain basics definitely do apply, servers should also be evaluated as salespeople. By adding sales techniques into the evaluation process and sharing that evaluation with new...
Customer Loyalty by the Numbers
It’s no secret that improving customer loyalty provides a tremendous boost to profitability. But how do you get people who come in once a month to come in twice or three times? External-marketing devices – ads, offers, discounts and the like – get people in the door....
Increase Restaurant Sales with a Team Approach
Incentives, contests, and rewards are go-to strategies when you want to increase restaurant sales. Many operators tie them to either an overall increase in per-person check averages or an increase in sales of a particular menu item, such as increasing appetizer sales...
The Most Expensive Item in Your Restaurant
What's the most expensive item in your restaurant? An empty chair! There are two ways to fill those chairs -- bring in new customers or bring back existing customers. If you spend all your time focusing on new customers, it won't be long before you see more and more...
Appearance Standards for Restaurants: Grime Doesn’t Pay
How important are appearance standards in your restaurant? Put yourself in your guests’ shoes. Imagine you walk up to a restaurant and see trash in the parking lot, a burned out light bulb above the door, dirt in the foyer, and a promotional poster for an event that...
Server Sales Training: Timing Really Is Everything
Your servers might know how to sell, but it’s often just as important to know when to sell. And that goes for management, too. Server sales training is the key. One successful restaurant chain discovered its appetizer sales were falling dramatically. Management...
