Jul 22

Jul 22 Serving 101: A Beginners Guide to the Thunderdome

Section 1: All The World’s A Stage

Serving is a real job. It can simultaneously be one of the most physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing jobs you can work and for usually unpredictable income. Will you make enough on a shift to just fill your gas tank or are you paying rent with what you take home 4 hours from now? Part of the appeal of the job is that uncertainty. You plan for the worst, hope for the best, and schmooze your ass off along the way. You’re a salesman, an independent contractor renting out space in a restaurant to carve out some cash for yourself. You’re a host, a tour guide, and a personality who knows food and drinks. Work that shit. This is a general guide; rules slide as you slip into different genres of establishment. Fine Dining will have more “ma’am” and “sir” and dive bars will have more “Get the f out of here Robert.”

Restaurants are the theatre of food and drinks. The menu is the star and you are the narrator and host of the show, walking them through the evening’s production. No matter what is happening behind the scenes, good or bad, the guest experience…the illusion of the night… depends on them not knowing about it unless absolutely necessary. Bartender cut his finger? Someone else needs to step up and make the drinks. You are slammed and the POS reset itself? Fill in those minutes with something else putting you in the weeds. Grease fire in the kitchen? Is it slowing down the food coming out of the kitchen? Is there anything you can do about it? Unless the fire department is in the dining room the guest really doesn’t need to know about it do they?

Be clean, be organized, and be yourself…sort of. Don’t reek of b.o. or anything you put on to cover your b.o. Guests should smell the food in the air and that’s it. Your uniform, whatever it is, should be clean and free of holes, rips, and grease stains. Your apron should be clean and the guests shouldn’t be able to smell your shoes walk up on them either. You will also develop what is called your “customer service face” or “server face” with a voice to match. Its okay, it’s normal. It’s just a slightly exaggerated version of yourself…imagine you are an actor and the role you are playing is “You, as a server”. If you aren’t normally a loud person there will be times you need to GET loud and you can slip that persona on to do it.

Example of Server Face. She is not that happy to be smelling those muffins.

Tools of the trade: Very simple. You need an apron to hold all your stuff. You need a server book. A real server book not a check presenter. It should have pockets for your cash and cc slips and see through slots for cheat sheets and specials and pictures of your cat. Beyond that you will have a platoon of pens, sometimes separated into “good pens” that glide just right and “customer pens” that you don’t care if they get stolen. Toss in a wine key and your kit is complete.

And don’t hand a customer this by mistake. You’re going to need that later.

Know Your Environment Where is everything? High chairs? Milk for coffee? More coffee filters? Employee crying area? Manager hiding area aka office? Most importantly, know your tables and seat numbers. Where is the “head of the table” for every table? How are the seats numbered, if they are? You might not be running your own food and drinks; your coworkers need to know where this stuff is going too. Also if you assign every item to the seat it belongs to splitting checks is a breeze.

Keep it clean…first indicators of a clean restaurant are bathrooms, door glass, and the floors. If those are dirty when a guest walks in, the whole place might as well be dirty. Then if they have to pass a bunch of dirty tables that no one is making an effort to clean on the way to their table, it can be very unappetizing. If you just got hit by the Red Hat Ladies and are undoing the carnage, I get it, but the environment in a dining room should always be clean, or getting back to being clean. Think about the last place you walked into and immediately stuck to the floor…ick, right? Don’t let your guests get that same feeling.

Know the menus. All of them. Food, drinks, desserts, kids, mocktails, buy a round, everything…if you don’t know a Pinot from a Pinto, ask or look them up, because it’s guaranteed if you don’t know something a customer will ask you about it. What items need mods? Type of eggs? Toast or biscuit? What items need temps or and what don’t? Steak yes, Smashburger no? What substitutions can be made and what questions will get a pan thrown at your head? Yes you can take the egg off the quail, but don’t DARE modify the halibut. Spirits…know them all backwards and forwards. I cannot stress this enough. Taste as much of what you sell as you can so you at least know what your own stock tastes like and you will be much more honest with your recommendations, both for and against. Guests really, really appreciate when you guide them in the right direction as much as when you guide them away from something you get a feeling they won’t like.

It’s been 20 years and I could still walk you through every item on this menu. And then ask if you want an Oyster Shooter or an Undercurrent to go with it. #Sullysforever

SUGGESTIVE UPSELL: This goes hand in hand with knowing your menus. If they order a Bloody Mary your next question should be “Would you like Grey Goose or Ketel One?” (Or whatever your premium vodka is) Offering a top shelf item, and adding desserts and coffee can be an extra $30-$50 on the check…know what you have and how to sell it. Does your place sell cappuccinos? French press? Shot of Bailey’s to Irish that up? You get it.

These drinks are pissed they were made with well vodka. Don’t piss off the drinks.

Know the POS Now how do you order all that stuff? Mods…is there a button for no cheese or do you type it in? How do you type it in? Is there a button for a big cube? Rocks on side? Anything you know that can shave precious seconds off of anything you do makes your entire night go smoother. What to do when the power or internet goes out? Do you have an offline mode? Does your manager need to force through every transaction? Do you have an offline kit with a knucklebuster and paper slips? Better to at least be aware of all of this before you are scrambling around one day with a flashlight in the dark, 10 open checks and no computer…and then realize the crash kit with the slider is totally out of date because cards don’t come with imprinted numbers anymore. Forgive us, the olds are still in charge of most of that upper level stuff at the corporate level.

Timing…so crucial. Knowing how long something takes to cook or be plated, how long a cocktail takes once the slowest bartender gets the ticket, or that a certain app takes 20 minutes on a good day are all important facts to know. Knowing how long things normally take helps you adjust when you have to add 30-50% longer ticket times to everything when the restaurant is slammed. It’s also the difference on a regular night between all of your courses coming out perfectly staggered and your guests getting their appetizer when they are halfway done with their entrée.

Be cool with the kitchen I don’t mean be flirty (but let’s be real…be flirty); offer the cooks some water when they are busy and cranking out food in a 120 degree kitchen. Tell them when guests loved their meals. These guys are busting their asses all day and a compliment on their cooking aka what they do for a living goes a long way. Also scrape and stack your plates in the dishpit properly…please.

You have been training for this your entire life.

Be cool with the hosts They can make your night or wreck it. Want to get triple sat all once or have to bus every one of your own tables? Go ahead, be a dick to the hosts. They control who gets how many guests, who those guests are, how quickly you can be resat, and when they can pump the brakes for two minutes so you can get separate checks to your 10 top…or not.

Be cool with the bar Don’t sandbag your drink orders! When you get triple sat, take an order and go ring it in, then go get the next order and so on and grab your drinks as they come up. The bartender can handle cocktails every few minutes just fine, 16 all at once when they have their own guests to deal with can be too much. Offer to get them ice, bus in empty cocktail glasses from around the bar, etc. Just be a team player when you can. Some people think this or tipping out more will get their drinks out faster and maybe in some places that’s true but in my experience a good bartender doesn’t have the luxury of choosing who gets fast ticket times and who doesn’t. They just pump out the service drinks as fast as they can so they can take care of their bar guests, so helping them out is a professional courtesy. Selfishly, if you are getting their ice, then they can stay back behind the bar and make your drinks…and then maybe give you a little sippy sip of something good as a thank-you.

Teamwork: Be cool with your coworkers. Do your sidework man. Run food and drinks. Help clear and reset others tables when you can. And keep your shit together. Everyone else is probably just as maxxed out as you, they don’t need to hear you breaking down because your girlfriend hasn’t texted you back in 10 minutes.

Communicate: Ask for help when you need it. If a customer has a question you can’t answer find someone who can. Don’t bullshit unless you are more than 80% confident in getting close to the right answer. Ask someone who knows, and now you will know too. Can’t get to a table just yet? Ask someone to greet them, send them water, get a drink order…something to start the clock. And if no one can, get over there and just be honest. Guests appreciate a peek behind the curtain if it helps to explain why things might appear to be off the rails.

You can’t solve every problem: When to get a manager. Ticket times are wicked long and the guest has asked about it more than once. Guests found foreign substance in their food (My sister found a piece of steel wool in her fried fish at an upscale restaurant in town. It was stuck to the fryer basket when the fish was dropped in it. Shit happens. Another place a customer found a plastic clothing tag in her mussels…I was the manager and had to explain the global ocean pollution crisis and that is just what’s in the water the mussels are living in) Guest needs to be cut off…always bring a manager AND the bartender in on this one! The bartender needs to know so the guest doesn’t say up yours to you and just go get a drink from the bar. Guest “didn’t like” their food or says it was prepared wrong or just gets argumentative in general. It’s not your job to argue with the guests. Let the salaried boss step in and let you go handle your other tables that aren’t being dickwads.

Bonus skill points: Crosstrain. The more you know how to do in a restaurant, the more knowledge you have, the better you are at everything else you do. I love cooking and serving in the same place because I know all of the info. Guest wants to know what’s in the crabcakes? I could write that recipe out because I made them yesterday. Is the beef stew Gluten Free? Nope I started it with a roux. Also hold on a sec, the kitchen is backed up, I’m going to go back and make your cheese plate real quick. I was once offered a job as a Bar Manager solely because on the day this guy was eating at the bar I was taking care of him and then jumping back into the kitchen to help pull them out of the weeds and then coming back out to him like no big deal. I ended up not pursuing the job because I thought I wasn’t qualified but imposter syndrome is something we will touch on in another article.

I’ll never be as good as these guys. That’s a server joke

Section 2: How To Do The Thing

A few things to begin: Remember, the bottom line here is you are trying to pay your car payment off of the guests’ experience. Be the chilliest and most capable version of yourself you can put together. I don’t care if you’re a ducked taped Frankenstein of Monster Energy drinks, Pall Mall’s and taco bell wrappers, take some Advil and put on a happy face. What the guests don’t know won’t affect your tip. Introduce yourself by name…a lot of servers are afraid of getting complaints but if the guests don’t know your name (or a good alias) they can’t give you a compliment either. Be personable, but not personal…What’s your favorite dish? The NY Strip. Where do you live? None of your business. Take time with your table, but know when to disappear as well, either for their sake or because you have food dying in the window and can hear the Chef calling your name through the dining room and you need to stop talking to this lady about her cat. Be ready for anything. Some tables will ask you a ton of questions, others will literally say 6 words “Water, Cobb Salad, no dressing” “Check”. Know how to tailor your approach to the guest’s needs and expectations. Yes, that means being psychic. The ESPN is always on.

1. Opening spiel…Again, introduce yourself by name! That is the first step in making them look at you like a human, not a robot. Use your name and make the connection. Then tell them anything they need to know up front, like if you have a special cocktail, a soup of the day, or if you are out of anything, now is the time. Then go with the flow…read your table! Do they need a minute to look over the menu? No problem. Did it take you a few minutes to get over there and they are ready to order? Absolutely get that order. Is a table full of frat guys shouting out drink orders over each other? Quiet them down by telling them “One at a time guys” like a bunch of toddlers and get the baby drinkers their juicy juice. This is your chance to make a good first impression with the people who are helping to pay your rent. Remember that.

2. Taking an order: The old “10 steps of service” broke this up into drinks, apps, entrées…yeah still do that but not every place has all those courses and honestly these days not everyone orders like that. Just communicate…listen to what they ask for and then try to find the best way of making that happen. If they order a bunch of apps at a two top and there’s no way it will all fit on the table ask if it’s okay to course it out. (They may still say just bring it all and plan on wolfing it down, you never know) If they are sitting at a 6 top with an acre of table space then let them feast. Know where the approach point of the table is! That’s where you and everyone else naturally approaches when you walk up to a table. Sometimes, like with a booth, there is no option. Sometimes it’s an ocean of 4-tops and you can go up from anywhere…most places like this use the “put your back to the kitchen” rule. i.e. if you stand in the dining room with your back to the kitchen and walk forward into a table that would be where your “approach point” is. So, walk up to the approach point, then start with the person to the left of this seat as “seat 1”. Then just go clockwise around the table “seat 2” etc. Everything you put in should be assigned to a seat for food runners AND to make splitting the checks off easier later. (Potential pitfall you can do nothing about…when everyone starts swapping seats for no reason at all. Just suck it up and remember people are idiots)

3. Write the Order: I count the guests, make a list, 1-10 or whatever starting with the guest to my left as Seat 1, and just go around the table. Column 1 is drinks, column 2 is food, leaving room in the margins for add-ons, notes on who is with who, etc. But it comes down to whatever works for you! I have seen all kinds of hieroglyphics in peoples note pads…lists, diagrams, literal sketch pictures of the tables…whatever helps you record that order and get it to the computer in the fastest amount of time is fine.

4. Enter the Order: Just remember when you get to the POS, power down about 5% (your brain, not the computer, and not the part putting in the order, the anxiety part that’s pumping you full of fight or flight chemicals because it just saw the hostess head towards your section again…hurry up and put this order in…but be calm about it). Look over your order. Get it right. You are communicating with the kitchen, the runners, and yourself an hour into the future. Get it right here and save yourself some trouble down the line. Handhelds: Lots of places are moving to these and in high volume businesses they make sense. But make sure you still give a good eye-to-eye greeting when you approach and only get the handheld out when actually ready to place an order. You don’t want to lose the personal connection because you walked up with your head in a screen.

5. Check Backs: When you drop off a meal give them enough time to take a bite or two and then circle back to make sure everyone is doing okay and are happy with their meals. If something is wrong…a steak at the wrong temperature, a cold dish, whatever…you have a chance to fix it. Sometimes you don’t want to interrupt but at least circle back so they have an opportunity to ask you over if something is amiss.

6. Be Attentive: Your guests should never want for anything. If a drink is emptied you should be right there asking if they would like another. If all my guests had their food and drink and were doing fine I would do slow laps around my section, checking on drink levels, water levels, empty plates to prebus, etc. Sometimes just being in the vicinity of a table will give them an opportunity to ask you for something they can’t do if you are in the back playing on your phone. A good server is both invisible and available. Be a ninja. It shouldn’t be hard, the uniform for half the servers in America seems to be all black, a lot of you are already halfway there.

7. Get in the Zone, remember the little things: This is part of the flow, the part where everything slows down a little bit because you are just that efficient and good at your job. There comes a time when you don’t even get in the weeds anymore and that’s because you always remember the little time saving details: Steak needs a knife, soup needs a spoon. Pre-set these on the table if a guest will need them. If a meal is going to come with hot sauce or malt vinegar (like fish and chips or a po’boy) and guests aren’t expected to get it themselves from a counter or station, make sure it’s on the table before their food arrives too. Shaving seconds off here and there takes minutes off the guest’s table time and lets you turn it that much faster. These are some of the tricks of professional servers…and in some places just the expectation.

8. Prebus/Bus your tables/clean and reset your own section: Always ask before taking a plate. There might be one fucking fry left and if it’s a good fry someone will want it. If no one has touched it in a little while you can ask, or if the napkin is on the plate you can ask…but ALWAYS ASK! Remember, the hosts can’t seat people at a dirty table. Take care of your section like you’re subcontracting a tiny part of the restaurant to run your own tiny business. Keep your floor clean; if there are windows get the fingerprints off, make sure the syrup is off the tables when you wipe, keep your tables clean and reset and you’ll be shocked to see how often you get sat. Think about your guest’s environment too, from their perspective. Even if a table isn’t in your section, your guests don’t need to see a table of dirty dishes just sitting there. It’s indicative of how we feel about our floor and our guests when we leave dirty stuff just sitting on a table instead of clearing it off right away, even if there aren’t any guests waiting to sit. If you prebus enough, there’s nothing left to bus. I had a host ask me if my 6 top even ate because there were no plates left on the table when he came over to clear them. Table was flipped in about 30 seconds.

9. Paying/Dropping the Check: Always auto-grat if it’s an option (many places will do this for large parties, check with your manager) never bet on a table “taking care of you” unless you know them. If you bet wrong, you are out all the time you spent on the large party and you left cash on the table. If you do autograt and they like you they can, and will, tip more, but if they don’t, at least you got your 20%. Different places have different rules about how they want the payment part of the guest experience to go and it can depend on the technology you are using. Some restaurants have systems where once the check is dropped the guest can pay from their phone and just get up and leave. With QR codes you enter your credit card number to start the bill and after a while of not using it, the system will automatically close their check (and add 20%). Learn how your business does this but remember to always make sure the guest knows how to close their check and if there is a gratuity included, and include a sincere thank you and goodbye. Just a “Thanks for coming in, see you next time!” goes a long way to securing that personal connection. Think about it, if you go out to eat and you don’t know the server, you might tip 20% but…you might think about it. If you go out and your server is Jenny, your friend you see all the time you will tip 30% without blinking an eye. As a server you have exactly the length of your guests visit to become their “friend” and get them to not even think of tipping you less than 25%.

10. Say Goodbye! Even after you’ve said your thank you’s, when you drop off the credit card slip/change, keep an eye out and say something like “Thanks again!” when the guest gets up and starts out. It’s an extra touch, but one that is always appreciated. Leaves them walking out with a nice glow, like these people actually give a shit.

11. RESET: The rush isn’t over until you’re ready for the next rush! You’ve prebussed, bussed, now get the tables wiped, reset and spot sweep the floor around (and under) the table to get those French fries up and you’re ready to do it again!

A few more things to remember:

Get to know your regulars! The more people you serve that you know the less anxiety you will have in general. It’s also a great feeling to be requested by friends or repeat guests. I had a night a few years ago serving on the patio where nearly every table was someone I knew or had waited on before and it was like I wasn’t even working; I was hosting a party for my friends. A bartender friend had brought some friends from out of town and they were asking about weed so I let them go out back and use my one-hitter (Hey I was a server at the time, not a manager) and she thanked me the next day for giving her friends the perfect Asheville experience.

Shields up: Toughen up quick…but keep it loose. There is a real balance you have to try to strike between caring enough to provide solid guest service, and maintaining enough of a boundary that you can let the occasional rotten guest experience slide off your back. Shake it off, you have two new tables sitting down and they need to get the “fresh to a new table” you and not the “just got called a jerk and got stiffed for not replacing a candle” face. Most importantly, remember what my old friend Annah used to say when a server was about to lose their shit on a problem table…”If you wait on them, them will leave.” Yeah. Just get through the night and count that money. You’re doing fine.

They are jealous: Anyone who says serving isn’t a real job sees you making in a weekend what they make in a week, or wishes they could work for 6 months and follow Phish around for the other 6. People who deride the job wouldn’t last 10 minutes doing what you do. A good server has to be fast, smart, quick on their feet and in their heads, know the menus, know the staff, know the guests or be able read them immediately, and layer all of that with local alcohol rules, house policies, covering Becky’s section because she’s out smoking with the dishwasher again, and having to tell Brad we don’t have any more Woodford…while this kid keeps putting cheerios in your apron…but I’ve seen a good server make anywhere from $400 to $1400 in a night (learn your wines if you want that kind of bread).

There are 30 Rums in this picture. A good restaurant with a well stocked bar is a perk in and of itself.

Professional Advice: You want to play in the big leagues? Be dependable, be professional, know your product (and your wines, ahem) and don’t let anything faze you. If a manager knows they can rely on you to just do your job, get the restaurant good reviews and take care of the guests, and not have to come by every five minutes and comp your mistakes…you can have whatever you want. Even a month off to follow a band around California. Remove your ego from the shift. Check it at the door and just go with the flow. Your ego can count the cash at the bar later. Hey, look at that. In four hours you made your car payment. Not bad for not being a real job.