Customers Not Training Ground for Restaurant Servers
The hostess seats you with menus, a smile and states Judy, your server, will be right with you. In a few minutes Judy shows up wearing the obligatory badge saying she is a “trainee”. A nervous, but cheerful Judy looks a little harried and rushed. Human nature makes it difficult to relax and ask many questions about the menu, preparation or ingredients of the food outlined on the menu due to your compassion for Judy. Feeling pressure to make it easy for Judy, you order a dish you should have questioned. You get service in spurts. Judy forgot your water ordered early, left a side dish in the kitchen and the horseradish you wanted for the beef.
The scenario above sound familiar? It should, it is repeated at dozens of restaurants every day.
Unfortunately restaurateurs think notifying customers that their server is a “trainee” is enough to excuse shoddy, lackluster service. Some customers may take this in stride. Others may not appreciate the experience, particularly if it is their first visit to the restaurant. The customers who accept the ramshackle service may return, but how many either won’t see the trainee tag, don’t want to be a guinea pig or want what they deserve as a first time guest? Many may never make a second visit.
Restaurants continue to believe that delivery of their product is inconsequential to your long term marketing efforts. It’s part of marketing, just like advertising and brand building. If you fall down on one part of the marketing process, the rest of the effort was wasted. If the guest was referred to your restaurant by another visitor, what do you think will happen when the guest reports back to the referring party? A negative experience will not only keep the customer from returning, but how many people will the referring party send to the restaurant in the future?
Training restaurant servers needs to have a set of standards BEFORE the trainees ever visit a table on their own. Managers and owners need to establish minimum requirements before a server is eligible to take an order or wait on a table. Here are some guidelines for those standards;
- The trainees must be trained and tested on the menu, preparation and ingredients. The test should be comprehensive. The test should be as much of a training exercise as it is a reflection of their knowledge. The server must know who and when to ask questions when they encounter questions from guests they cannot answer.
- The trainee should know the POS system to the point of being able to effectively communicate customers’ requests to the kitchen. A manager should give test orders to the server with common modifications of dishes on the menu.
- Another server/trainer should work with the trainee until the experienced server can verify the trainee is ready to take a table.
- On the first day of the trainee’s eligibility for floor duty to take tables, they should get only one table every 45 minutes maximum. A manager should be assigned to carefully screen and watch the trainee’s orders, customer’s response and follow up with the server immediately after each table with corrections and advice. A visit to each table by the manager is a must.
Restaurateurs who don’t train their service personnel properly risk spending hundreds of dollars in employee turnover before finding a server who can meet their expectations with limited training time. Of course, the cost in bad experiences by customers will be much higher. Forget the “trainee” badges which give the impression you think you can excuse poor service.
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