Ending the Restaurant Failure Myth

Incorporate Role Play for a Winning Training Program

Incorporating role play into your training programs will help your guests receive an encore performance every time.

Role play is one of the most effective tools in the trainer's toolbox where participants can experience real life situations and "learn by doing". Role play can be used to train any level of company personnel including staff, managers, and even company executives.

Role play allows teams to experience real life situations in a simulated and controlled environment. When used to master a skill, role play builds confidence as the skill is practiced and coaching is administered by a trainer. For example, role playing a guest situation will allow teams to better understand how a guest feels. There are many roles that can be played such as a guest and service representative, a manager and team member, a service representative and kitchen team member or similar combinations.

As a head start, we have listed some suggested scenarios that will help you role play with your teams. 9. Two bus persons talking about personal issues while ignoring a guest's signal for service 10. Kitchen team member loudly demanding a server to pick up an order 11. Manager threatening a team member's job

If role play is designed properly and effectively executed, it can be very valuable to the success of any company.

Restaurant Training - Waitress ; Waiter Training Role Play Tips For Hospitality Education ; Learning

For the benefit of aspiring restaurateurs, restaurant investors, and the restaurant industry, it's time to set the record straight.

Banners and Signs Can Assist Your Restaurant

Developing a solid sales training program that focuses on suggestive selling and making sales training one of your top priorities is essential to driving your profit.

Training your wait staff to become top sales performers and making your dining room a profit center is essential to the growth of your restaurant, especially in a sluggish economy. Here are some key selling ideas and specific training strategies:

The Menu: A Server's Sales Brochure

A sales person can not sell properly unless they have obtained the necessary product knowledge. Being equipped with this knowledge builds our servers confidence to effectively sell to our customers."

Then, as ongoing refreshers, each server should attend pre-shift meetings that touch on core sales strategies. This is a good time to implement sales contests to drive sales motivation.

Up-selling and Making Add-On Sales

Sell the Benefits-tell the customer how they can benefit from a particular food/beverage item. (bottle of wine/champagne) • Customers with hearty appetites..."I'm starved." (large Captain's Platter) • Customers inviting your suggestions..."What do you suggest?" Teach your staff to refuse selling any alcohol to minors.

Restaurant Training - Waitress and Waiter Training to Fuel Sales for Hospitality and Food Service

If you own a restaurant, for example, there are many ways you can use banners and signs.

Use Banners and Signs to Promote Unique Events

For example, if you need signs to advertise the arrival of new menu items, consider short-term signs since they will be most cost-effective. Whatever the case may be, banners and signs offer numerous choices for restaurant owners who want to uphold a professional and effective image to their customers and employees.

Restaurant Service Improvement: Make An Effective Waitstaff Tip-Out System

One way is through personalizing service for each type of customer that comes to your business. The same holds true for business customers versus vacationers. It is never safe to think that your restaurant service staff will inherently understand these differences.

Here is an exercise to share with your service team. It lists various types of customers and ways to customize service for each customer category. During a pre-shift meeting or company training session, review this exercise with your restaurant service staff.

Customer Types and Service Suggestions:

Other customer types include customers dining alone (the solo customer), disabled customers, teenagers as customers, customers who are in a rush, first-time customers, and customers who dine in large groups/gatherings. Again, each different type of customer has "specific" service needs. Exceeding the needs of each customer with customized service takes a little extra time.

Restaurant Training - Waiter ; Waitress Training Tips For Customer Service - Hospitality Education

The "Tip-Out System" is an;important part of;a restaurant's dining room staff;success;for many different;reasons. Tips are the basic salary for most restaurant service employees, and must be;divided with utmost respect and care. It must remembered that an improper system can make or break a dining room service;staff to the point where employees may deliver poor service or;actually quit the job.

It all depends on the restaurant dining room service system, and on the;"desired level of customer service" ---so crucial for success.

Every restaurant is an enigma, so the tip-out system must fit the;restaurant's personality.

To physically perform the;tip-out revenue split, the waiters can place the;tip-out revenue;percentages for the receiving;dining room service employees;into envelopes.

The restaurant service tip-out system must always;be fair and balanced with very few complaints from the staff.

Restaurant Information: Developing Communication Skills

Training your team to adopt effective communication skills will add to your guests' overall experience.

• Maintain effective eye contact

Waitress and Waiter Training - Restaurant Training Tips for Superior Customer Service

An important skill that is vital to personnel that are employed in a food and beverage establishment is communication.; Effective communication is important as personnel interact with both guests and one another.; For a business entity such as a food and beverage establishment to be successful, honed communication skills are a must.

A well detailed restaurant SOP will establish how food and beverage establishment personnel should interact with guests.; A detailed restaurant training guide will elaborate on effective procedures to instill the necessary communication skills into personnel.; A restaurant manager will ensure that all of these components come together for the overall success of the operation.

Effective communication is the means in which information is conveyed between parties.; Food and beverage operations demand interactive relations with staff and guests.; As such, communication is an integral facet of day to day business.; Effective communication skills on the part of personnel will, in turn, translate into quality service that the guest will find pleasurable.; Happy guests mean return business and consistent revenue streams – a plus for every restaurant manager.

For food and beverage personnel, non-verbal communication skills are just as important as verbal skills.; What you don’t say can actually convey volumes of meaning.; Guests, in fact, take a variety of meaning from non-verbal communication cues.; A handshake, for example, can convey warmth and a sense of welcome when guests are greeted upon entry into a food and beverage establishment.