🍸 TRL Weekly: Server Skills Pt. 1

Your weekly lesson and tactical reminders inside.

September 01, 2024

Happy Sunday, future server/bartender millionaire.

In today’s lesson Brandon teaches us part one of Server Skills.

Our Last Three Lessons:

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

Today at a Glance:

  • Weekly Lesson: Server Skills

  • Tactical Reminders: Your Video Lessons

🍸 Weekly Lesson:
Server Skills Part One

These server skills might not be as fun as an upselling, but boy do they make you a lot more money.

This is mostly going to get your tip % up, but keep in mind, better service makes your sales game stronger.

When a server is giving bad service, it makes it much harder to sell an upsell.

For example, a guest is sitting with empty water and still waiting for the drink they ordered because the server forgot.

The server goes over and starts pitching them on the ribeye special.

All the guest is thinking about is their drinks.

When you leave the table, they whisper, “Do you see how they are trying to sell us the expensive stuff?”.

So let's get into some skills.

There are a ton, but I’ll cover 2 important ones.

SKILL #1: AWARENESS

This is arguably the most important skill, but it is very hard to teach.

The reason it is hard to teach is because YOU actually have to be the one to start noticing everything!

Without me there next to you, I can’t really help spot things out for you, but I can give you some pointers.

Awareness could be:

  • Noticing they pushed a drink away that's still ¾ full so you ask if they didn’t like it or what happened. 

  • Bringing more napkins right before they run out.

  • Bring more bread right when they run out.

  • Filling up their water (or bringing a bigger glass) because they didn’t order another drink.

  • Cleaning up the water spots on the table.

  • Noticing when they are finished.

  • Bringing ANYTHING 7 seconds before they ask or want it.

SKILL #2: KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge = Confidence.

When you know every question the guest could ever ask and what the answer is, you start walking with a certain ‘swag’.

This ‘swag’ is because you actually start to enjoy being asked questions.

To get to that point much faster, I teach servers to ask 3-5 questions before and after their shift (go to the chef, bartender, lead server, and/or manager and split it up)!

These questions help you prevent having to ask questions during the shift.

These are 2 skills that you can begin working on immediately.

Next week will have 2 more skills for you to work on.

🚀 Tactical Reminders:

  1. Selling Drinks - Selling Cocktails -

    Video Lesson: Click here.

  2. Phrases that bug me - Jess - Notes for Verbiage (Condiments) -

    Lesson: Click here.

  3. Getting a Desert Order!- Derek - Desert Orders. -

    Video Lesson: Click here.

That’s all for week twenty three.

See you next week,

The Restaurant Launch Team