Creating Superstar Servers
5 Practical Tips To Improve Waitstaff 

What owner or operator of any of the million-plus restaurants, bars, lounges and nightclubs doing business in the United States today does not want to improve on his or her waitstaff?     In the hands-on field of hospitality, doing so is the surest method there is to improve service, create a positive environment that customers will appreciate and cut into the labor costs and the redundancy of having to constantly recruit and retrain new employees going out of the revolving door of the food and beverage trade.
    Can you say, “vacation,” “promotion” and “big fat raise?”
    It’s a no-brainer for any service-oriented business in which first impressions either can bring patrons back again and again or else send them permanently through the doors of the competitor down the street. And this is particularly true today.
As National Restaurant Association Chairman Ed Tinsley told attendees at “The Show” this year in Las Vegas, one of the biggest obstacles facing the industry in the 21st century is reconciling a jobs growth rate of 150 percent against a prime labor force of 16- to 24-year-olds –– the group making up half of the industry’s labor force –– that is not expected to grow at all.

Hard Day’s Night
There is a hard way and an easy way to improve on waitstaff who, day in and day out, come into contact with customers much more often than even the most outgoing owner or manager does.
    One way to go about it is to hire your brother-in-law or other individuals who make a favorable impression on you during an interview. It’s the hiring strategy endorsed by an overwhelming percentage of owners and operators today and one of the main reasons that employee turnover in the field consistently runs higher than a 1,000 percent and managers end up doing everyone’s job but their own.
I would much rather do it the easy way — by empowering other people to do most of the work for you.
    The bottom line is that every job has a personality and has requirements for the one who fills it. If you can identify those things and identify those same characteristics in applicants, you end up with a person in a job who fits it very well.
Here are some practical tips to improve your waitstaff:
    Hire Attitude, Not Knowledge. Lots of people hire on knowledge and experience. In the back of their mind, they think, ‘I am not going to have to spend a lot of time training them.’ In reality, knowledge is something that you have control over. You can teach them that. You cannot control their person or their past instability. Approach it that way, and you end up with much better quality employees. The quality of your venue –– the service, atmosphere and how well they get along –– all of these will improve dramatically.
    Empower Your Employees. If there is a problem in your establishment, it is not okay. Give employees the authority to solve it. If that means your employees need to make a decision, or do something not normally part of their job, then let them know that that is what you want them to do. They may make a mistake, but as an employer you need to get to the point where that is okay. As an owner and manager, you make mistakes, too. Who is to say their mistake is worse than yours? If you have hired the right people, they will have the right attitude and they will get better.
    Pay Higher Wages. In whatever hospitality setting I’ve worked, my average salary for employees was always higher, but labor costs overall were always lower. As manager of a Carrows restaurant, I consistently had the lowest labor cost percentage in the chain. At Carrows, we had 76 employees, and my newest employee had been with me five months.
    Make The Work Experience Fun. Bars do this. If you can make it fun, you will retain more people. My brother, who is also in the restaurant and hospitality industry, has a natural, fun aura that is obvious and easy. When I walk into my venue, everyone is quiet. I envy him that ability to form that instant bond. Yet my turnover rate was lower than his. You don’t have to be a fun person yourself.
    Just let them know it is okay for them to have fun. Walk outside the door of your business and come back inside as if you were an employee. Do they have a place to put their purses? Do you have a bulletin board where the employee of the week can get recognition? You need to evaluate how you rank on those.
    Invest in Training and Understand That Each Employee Is Different. Ninety-two percent of personnel failures are due to systems, not people. There are some employees that you can throw into a new job situation, and they thrive on challenge. Yet most employees are a little insecure. They wonder why you hired them and they may question whether should they have taken the job in the first place.
    If you don’t train them, they will feel negative. Your most important tool in keeping and improving your waitstaff is your training system.                                                  NCB

Terry Morey is senior vice president of marketing with AIMHire and has more than 32 years of combined human resource and foodservice experience. He has taught food cost control and has authored books in the fields of hiring, training and foodservice. Contact him at (888) 776-3484 or