Restaurant Talking Points

Great article in Nations Restaurant News talks about how restaurants are using email marketing.

Read here

Exciting news, I had a baby! Ok, my wife did most of the work but together we had a beautiful little girl named Alexis. Along with my wife and new baby, I also have a girl named Paris (3), a female cat, a female dog, and I’m pretty sure my 15 fish are females as well. With all of this estrogen in the household I try to keep a balance in my life by eating lunch with my male friends.

Recently, during these testosterone lunches, I’ve noticed a challenge that servers are having with the “Check and Farewell” stage of the service cycle. It is during this stage that our training materials focus on how to handle the entire payment process and steps to take to assist their guests during departure.

The challenge I’ve noticed during this stage has to do with how the servers are handling cash payments.

Myself, I rarely pay with cash. When I dine out I use a credit card. So when a friend of mine that I try and eat lunch with once a week started to pay with cash, I was very surprised at the frequency of what I was seeing, or more to the point, hearing. I was hearing servers asking their guest if they wanted their change back!

Let’s start by saying there are some questions that a server should never ask a guest. For instance, you should never ask a woman when the baby is due, unless you are absolutely, positively, 100% drop dead sure that she is pregnant. And even then…think twice That question asked to the wrong woman at the wrong time could lead to a tip percentage free fall.

Another question that should never be asked is “Do you need your change back”.

Why ask this question? What possible good can come from asking this question? If the guest doesn’t need any change back they will leave it on the table. If they do want their change back, some poor server just annoyed the guest right before they decide what to leave for a tip. A tip that the server had worked so hard to earn during the first 5 stages of the service cycle.

A better way for a server to handle this situation is by picking up the payment and informing the guest they’ll be right back with their change. It’s at this point the guest may give the server permission to keep the change, making the guest look like a hero and the server looking like a pro.

There are other things to watch out for during this stage of the service cycle like timing issues, making change that’s easy to tip with and working with comment cards. But make sure your wait staff training involves talk about how to handle cash payments and the returning of the change.

You also might want to go over a few questions that servers should never ask.

Jeff Hookham
CEO, 4 Remarkable Service
www.4remarkable.com