🍸 TRL Weekly: Give “Bad” Service on Purpose

Your weekly lesson and tactical reminders inside.

November 10, 2024

Happy Sunday, future server/bartender millionaire.

In today’s lesson Brandon is teaching us when to give “bad” service on purpose.

Our Last Three Lessons:

You can read the rest of the past weekly lessons here.

Today at a Glance:

  • Weekly Lesson: Give “Bad” Service On Purpose

  • Tactical Reminders: Your Video Lessons

🍸 Weekly Lesson:
Give “Bad” Service On Purpose

This might sound counterproductive or extremely weird if you don’t open your eyes to it.

So please read this with an open mind.

What you are going to do is actually bring the guest less of the things that they need.

Like napkins, water pitchers, ketchup, sauce, etc.

I’m not saying to bring them an annoyingly small amount of these things, but stop bringing them A LOT with the intention of not going back.

Bringing a stack of napkins so you never have to go back is what we call “Cutting Corners”. This not only costs the restaurant more money because you are wasting napkins, but also is costing you money.

I’ll explain.

The more tasks you do for a table, the better it looks as a server (to a certain extent; and you can’t interrupt them every time).

So let's say the guests order 12 wings:

Most new servers might bring a BIG stack of napkins to avoid having to bring more.

Instead, you should bring an amount where you can actually be the hero and bring more in a few minutes when you see them start using them up.

The key here is to NEVER SAY ANYTHING about it.

Just do it silently and DON’T ask if they need more!

It should come across to them like “oh my god you read my mind”.

You can get creative and do this with so many little things. 

I joke about this, but honestly, I’m serious about it.

At my restaurant I would use the 2 oz ramekin for the dipping sauce that came with the calamari instead of the 4 oz.

For multiple reasons…

  1. If they only use 2 oz, it saves money.

  2. If I see them start using a good amount of it, I can be the hero and bring them more!

You have to be good at it, though.

Don’t wait too long to do it because… what you don’t want is the guest to have to start using less sauce than they would enjoy since they don’t have enough.

This is not easy to do!

I am hoping that since you signed up for this newsletter, that you are good enough and smart enough to understand this and pull it off.

Good luck and make some money!

🚀 Tactical Reminders:

  1. Brandon - How Are you? -

    Video Lesson: Click here.

  2. Jess - How Service Should Be -

    Video Lesson: Click here.

  3. Derek - Dropping Check -

    Video Lesson: Click here.

That’s all for week thirty three.

See you next week,

The Restaurant Launch Team