Training is H-U-G-E! You have to be "sold out" on the quality of your food and your servers have to be "sold out" too! Coming from both food and sales backgrounds, I believe in positive reinforcement....incentives. I'd gladly pay out an extra $20 bucks a night to a server who moves lots of product...consistently! I just moved back to Calif from Arizona and guess what? The average server gets paid $2 bucks an hour! Think the servers will respond to an incentive? Heck yes!
Whatever you do, definitely train your staff to know what's great about the food and what goes into it. Upselling by pushing beverages and sides are important too.
Remember, it's all about the food!
-Chef Beorn
Quote:
Originally Posted by tjvance42
Training is very important. Train your servers how to sell and not just be order takers. Make sure your servers know which products provide the highest profit. It's your responsibility to train your servers how to sell these high profit items by making them familiar with the ingredients of these dishes or key words they can use to make the dish seem to be more appealing to your customers. It's as simple as, "that's my favorite dish on our menu". Have a contest and give $0.25 for each of the high profit dishes sold in a night, week or month.
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