The Yin & Yang of Sales, pt.1
There are two parts to your front of house financial puzzle, and each part’s contribution often eludes business owners. Of course, the first part is your staff and your active sales. The second part is the financial design and execution of your beverage program. Together, these parts can build a robust business with unlimited long-term growth. But each part can also hide untold losses with the power to cripple your business on any timeline.
Beverage Sales & Hidden Loss
As we’ve said, sales are the active edge of your financial model. Your staff engages guests, they sell your products and hopefully build positive guest relationships in the process. Great. Your veterans and best performers are good at making the most of each guest and understand the nuance of guest experience, sales, and tips. But what about the rest of your team?
Most service styles begin with beverage sales. Beverages are the first engagement and set the tone for how your staff will direct sales for the duration. Additionally, guests order drinks throughout their experience, whereas they typically only order food once or twice. Because beverages establish spending attitude and present the greatest volume of sales opportunities. And the difference between hidden loss and sales growth is all about this opportunity.
As with other industries, the greatest investment poses the greatest loss. In this case, the loss is greatest for bars and restaurants that collect spirits or focus on more elaborate cocktail programs. The short of it is: the front of house staff has to know what is on the menu and, more importantly, how to sell it. Otherwise, they aren’t taking advantage of those opportunities. The drinks your staff aren’t selling, the opportunities they aren’t engaging are costing you money. This money you aren’t making is your greatest underestimated weakness.
Beverage Training
All of this stems from the style of engagement and whether you direct service to drive sales. Whether we are building beverage training programs for you, or you’re doing it in house, you have to center the existing sales opportunities in your service style. The opportunities are there whether your staff is taking them or not.
We teach our teams to start service with earnest questions—don’t accept simple, rote choices—and an approachable series of options. Then pick up the thread with a knowledgeable follow up. This way they make beverage engagement easy and accessible, and a central conversational thread throughout a guest’s experience. Some simple investment in the staff’s beverage fluency makes this process all the more natural and germane, and creates windows for higher volume and more diverse sales (in terms of menu and price point).
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