How-to: train staff to handle bad customers w/ de-escalation

Darian Everding manages London Underground, a craft beer and whisk(e)y bar in Ames, IA.

Along with so many others in the industry, Darian has seen more angry, disruptive customers than before the pandemic. Ours is an era of rage, a recent article from the New York Times wrote, and the data bears that claim out: London Underground has had to ban more customers in the last year than in all of the previous five years combined.

So how do you teach staff to deal with these situations? The answer for Darian is communicating with staff and using de-escalation training. Here are the take homes from our conversation:

• Sometimes staff don't bring up difficult customers because they feel like it's their problem, not the business's. That's not true, of course. If one staff member has had trouble with a particular customer, then others usually have as well. So the key is to get staff feeling safe about sharing.
• Communicate regularly about problem customers with staff. This is how you get staff feeling safe enough to share. If you use a team messaging app like Crew or Slack, create a channel about difficult customers. If you have regular staff meetings, make time in each of those meetings to ask staff if there's been any trouble. If you don't currently have a space to discuss this stuff, then make one.
• Consider being on call for staff if they run into a situation they can't deal with. You'll sometimes have to go to the bar at 10pm on a Friday, which sucks, but what would suck more is your staff feeling like you don't have their back or having a dangerous situation arise.
• Hold de-escalation training with staff. In a majority of 1-on-1 meetings with staff this year, Darian's staff has independently asked for more practice with de-escalation training. They want it, so Darian provides it.
• But what is de-escalation training? This isn't a technical definition, but de-escalation is a set of skills you use to slow a situation down so that it doesn't escalate into violence or danger.
• What resources does Darian use? Darian recommends checking out Safe Bars, Right To Be and Healthy Pour.

The interview clips from this discussion aren't long (about 15 minutes total) and are very insightful. Do yourself—and your staff—a favor and watch them. And if you have any follow up questions please just reply to this email and I can get you in touch with Darian.

Sure looks like it.

BeerMenus tracks the beers that are most commonly added to menus. Over the last week, the beers that are being added most vs. the week before tended to be IPAs—seven of the top ten were IPAs.

Here's the full list:

Week-over-week percent increase in getting added to a menu: (IPAs and DIPAs are in bold):

1. Founders All Day: 550% increase
2. Yuengling Traditional Lager: 300% increase
3. Downeast Blackberry Cider: 300% increase
4. Noon Whistle Gummy Vortex: 233% increase
5. Elysian Space Dust: 225% increase
6. Sloop Juice Bomb: 200% increase
7. WeldWerks Juicy Bits: 175% increase
8. Maine Lunch: 157% increase
9. Other Half Green City: 150% increase
10. Great Lakes Conway's Irish Ale: 140% increase

• On April 1, Canada's federal beer tax is increasing by 6.3%, the biggest increase in 40 years, and the McKenzie Brothers have been recruited to fight it with radio ads. Here's the ad, and here's a some background on the McKenzie Brothers. It's always nice to link to something involving Rick Moranis.
• The head of Oregon's state liquor agency resigned amid a scandal for using his position and influence to access and purchase rare bourbons like Pappy Van Winkle. Other senior officials got the goods the same way, but have not yet resigned.
• Is California's craft beer market—one of the most robust in the world—headed for a downturn?
• Archaeologists discovered the remains of a 5000 year old tavern and a beer recipe.
• 🐊 Only in Florida: a 40 year old man being actively investigated for a DUI on a public road cracked open a beer in his passenger seat while police waited for backup (he was too drunk to stand).