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🍸 TRL Weekly: Fix Your Verbiage
Your weekly lesson and tactical reminders inside.
Happy Sunday, future server/bartender millionaire.
In today’s lesson Brandon is teaching us how to fix our verbiage.
Our Last Three Lessons:
Sell 2nd And 3rd Drinks - Read More.
The Silent Killer - Read More.
Service > Hospitality - Read More.
You can read the rest of the past weekly lessons here.
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Today at a Glance:
Weekly Lesson: How To Fix Your Verbiage
Tactical Reminders: Your Video Lessons + Announcement
🍸 Weekly Lesson:
How To Fix Your Verbiage
Verbiage is an ongoing issue that most servers don’t even realize they have.
Most of the phrases we are saying imply things that we should NEVER be implying.
For example, “are you ready to order?” is implying that YOU (the server) is ready for them to order, so they better be ready.
This is why the guest will sometimes say that they are ready, when they are most certainly NOT ready.
Then they start asking you questions about items that are clearly described well on the menu.
THIS IS YOUR FAULT. YOU RUSHED THEM.
Instead you should ask:
“What questions do you have for me?”
“What may I describe?”
The verbiage list goes on and on and on.
I will list 10 (not all) of our key changes that I want you all to make IMMEDIATELY.
EXAMPLES:
“Are you ready to order?” change to “What may I describe for you?”
“No Worries / No Problem” change to “Of course!”
When a guest says “sorry” - “It is okay / No problem” change to “don’t be sorry!”
“Did you need a box” change to “may I box/wrap that for you?”
“Did you save room for dessert?” change to “What are we thinking, a tres leches, chocolate cake, espresso martinis or maybe something to go?”
“Did you need more water?” change to JUST GET THEM WATER
“Did you need anything else?” change to “what else may I bring you”
“Did you want another drink?” change to “same thing or something different?”
“Did you want an appetizer?” change to “what are we thinking (list 3-10 apps)?”
“Did everything come out OKAY?” change to “How is dinner? OR What are we thinking?”
There are hundreds and hundreds of verbiage changes that you should be looking to make on top of these common ones.
When you are making your own verbiage changes you should be trying to do 2 things:
Make it more polished.
If you are unsure what that means, just try to think of what most servers would say, and make it slightly better while being authentic to what you would normally say to your family.
You should be trying to shorten everything you say. Remove any words that don’t really matter to save yourself time.
For example, this could be changing “Margarita, did you want to do that with cazadores?” to “Margarita, cazadores, casamigos or patrón?”.
As you can see, one is much more efficient than the other. I listed three tequilas for them to pick from in less words than some servers would list one.
I also want you to stop asking guests “what flavor did you want?” and instead, just start listing the flavors!
They are going to ask you to do it anyway. Save yourself a few seconds by cutting straight to the chase.
🚀 Tactical Reminders:
Verbiage - Stop saying “no worries”.
Video: Click here.
Mirroring Skit - Guest cuts off server, this is how to play it off.
Video Lesson: Click here.
Auction Food - Jess Auctioning off food:
Video Lesson: Click here.
That’s all for week forty five.
See you next week,
The Restaurant Launch Team