Train your staff to earn guest trust

When Alicia Rogers was serving at age 20, a table asked her what White Zinfandel they served. She froze—she had no idea. In that instant the guest lost trust in her.

That's obviously not an ideal feeling for anybody involved.

After that experience she knew she needed to know more to be an effective server and thus establish guest trust, so she started developing some tricks and strategies to make sure that'd be the case.

Here are some of those tips and strategies that Alicia—now a manager—teaches at her bar:

• List specials in a separate section on the menu, and instruct servers and bartenders to literally point guests to that section when they drop menus.
• Commit to memory a couple kinds of each common beer style so you can quickly answer when somebody asks "what IPAs do you have?"
• If that’s too much, use the rule of 3. Be able to name 1. a beer that recently tapped, 2. a beer that’s selling well, and 3. a beer you like. This proves to customers that you know your stuff.
• Keep a whiteboard in the server station where you can list things that are new, remind servers about specials, or anything else.
• Hold a staff meeting when the cocktail menu turns over so you can go over it, provide tasters, etc.
• If a customer’s having trouble, ask them what they like when they go to other restaurants. If they’re able to describe it, you'll hopefully connect the dots to something similar on your menu.

Check out the interview clip for more info and background from Alicia:

In the survey we ran over the last few weeks we asked about two buckets of things:

• Media diet
• What topics would be most helpful to get advice about

The media diet isn't too digestible for this format, and I don't want to blow up anyone's spot—though it was interesting to see how broad readers' interests are.

But the advice topics results are a lot more quantifiable and at least as interesting. The top 5 (there was a pretty big drop off after that) are in the image above, but in case you don't have images enabled here they are:

1. Staying ahead of trends (57%)
2. Staffing (32%)
3. Marketing (27%)
4. Pricing (26%)
5. Making social media worth it (25%)
6. Cultivating regulars (24%)

(You could choose 3 things from a list of ~20.)

As we plan new content for the year, most everything will come from this list.

And thanks once again for those of you who filled out the survey. It was very helpful, and in some cases I'll follow up personally to schedule interviews. And the 6 folks who won gift cards should have received them earlier today. Hope the scratchers you buy bring you many returns!

Why it works

Customers can order more quickly, meaning your bartenders can serve more customers, faster.

How it works

• On their own, without the help of the bartender, your customers can read your full-info Print Menu (includes beer descriptions, ABV, etc.) to hone in on what to order.
• Then they can step up, look at the TV Menu, and just say “I”ll have a number 4” to the bartender.

The interaction is finished and significant time saved—no asking what's on tap, no samples, no back-and-forth about what to order.

This time savings can add up quickly on a busy night, and the more time saved means the more folks served per hour. And that means more sales.

David Hayden of multi-state chain Up-Down says this phenomenon "works out to thousands of additional dollars on a Friday or Saturday night."

How can I do it at my business?

You could do this manually. Google the beers you have, copy the info you need, drop the info into your Print Menu doc and your editable TV Menu, then adjust the design as necessary.

• Ontario pulls all American liquor from shelves in response to Trump's tariffs. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario made the move after the tariffs went into effect on Tuesday. “Our in-store teams can help customers find alternative products from our extensive selection of products from Ontario, Canada, and around the world," the Board said in a statement.
• Speaking of tariffs, Constellation Brands is expected to have a tough go of it if they stay in effect. If they do, the stock market class out there predicts its going to be a much rougher 2025 for Constellation than its great 2024. As you might recall, Constellation's Modelo actually overtook Bud Light for the top-selling beer over the last year or so. If it costs 25% more, it's doubtful that'll remain the case.
• Top beer city in the US? Grand Rapids, MI. For the 5th straight year. Definitely not a shocker there. Some of the other cities on the top ten list: Denver, Milwaukee, Portland, OR, Asheville, and Pittsburgh. The last surprised me—I know there are some great breweries there, but I wouldn't think of it in the same breath as those others. Gotta reevaluate, I guess.