Staff training mistakes 90% of bars & restaurants make

Staff training is in Beth Hussey's bones. She started figuring it out at her family's restaurant in the 80s, and it became a professional focus as she moved up the service industry ladder from busser (where her brother stuck her when she first started) to owner. All in all she's opened 17 full service restaurants in her career and has trained up the staff at each of them.

Next week Beth will walk us through the unique training approach she's honed over her career (and also talk about Shifty, the staff training app she created), but this week we went over what most—we're talking at least 90%—of bars and restaurants get wrong when training their staff.

Here's the typical staff training Beth sees bars and restaurants using:

• Step 1: A person is hired and told to report for their training shift.
• Step 2: The manager, who may have forgotten the new person was even coming, puts them with the best server/bartender who's on that night.
• [Interlude step]: That experienced server wonders what the hell they did to deserve having a shadower all night long.
• Step 3: The new person follows the server around all shift with no training materials or guidance.
• Step 4: Repeat step 3 as needed, maybe 2-3 more times.
• Step 5 (hard maybe): New staff are given a bunch of training materials to look at that are either useless or out-of-date

A lot of times that's it. After the third training night the person is just out on the floor. This was certainly the process at the bars and restaurants I've worked at.

In Beth's eyes there are a bunch of reasons this doesn't work, and they kind of fit into 4 categories:

1. It's not enough. After just a couple shadowing shifts there's no way that new server or bartender will know enough to give guests a great experience. They need more time and better materials to be truly service ready.
2. Related, but worth noting in its own point: there's very little focus on the menus in this training approach. Your people need to know the menu inside and out, and sending servers and bartenders out there without a deep knowledge of the menu is bad for everyone involved—your guests, you, and the new staff member. "Can I get that gluten free?" "Is the beef grass fed?" These are questions your customers will have, and it's not a good look when staff has to say "I dunno."
3. There's no consistency, and it continues a cycle of bad training. The new person just sees one subjective approach from one person who learned their subjective approach from another person's subjective approach, and so on. When there's no consistency, new servers and bartenders are unsure, which, again, isn't good for anyone involved. When in a new situation, everyone thrives with structure and specific instruction.
4. After the "formal" training period (if we can call it that), there's never any more training. Once you're trained, you're considered done. There's no ongoing training, no expectation that your servers need to stay on point, no formalized way to introduce changes or updates. This is short sighted and isn't realistic to the needs of the restaurant.

Check out the interview for more about Beth's history, an awesome anecdote about how her current restaurant, Hazel's, found its groove after almost failing, and more on why most staff training approaches can be so harmful:

👉 As I mentioned above, be sure to tune in next week to hear from Beth about how you should run your staff training.

Last week we looked at the most popular craft beers thus far in 2023. This week we swung the pendulum the other direction and pulled the most searched-for domestics thus far in 2023.

Here they are in descending order (most searched-for is at the top):

	Schlitz Pale Lager · 4.6% · San Antonio, TX
	Busch Light Apple Fruit Beer · 4.1% · St. Louis, MO
	Michelob Lager Pale Lager · 5.0% · St. Louis, MO
	Hamm's Premium Lager · 4.7% · Milwaukee, WI
	Miller Genuine Draft (MGD) Pale Lager · 4.6% · Milwaukee, WI
	Miller Lite Pony Bottles Pale Lager · 4.2% · Milwaukee, WI
	Old Milwaukee Pale Lager · 4.9% · San Antonio, TX
	Blatz Pale Lager · 4.9% · San Antonio, TX
	Bud Light Lager · 4.2% · St. Louis, MO
	Natural Light Naturdays Pilsner · 4.2% · St. Louis, MO

The takehome

Undoubtedly Miller Lite, Bud Light, etc. are more popular than these, but folks know you can get them everywhere, so there's no need to search for them.

Not so with these, which is why folks search for them. If you carried these, you'd likely snag some additional incremental customers: there are a lot of people out there looking for the domestics on this list, just like craft beer drinkers look for the specific crafts they like.

Note: this list is based on pageviews to beer pages on BeerMenus.com.

• You can now get an Athletic Brewing NA on domestic JetBlue flights. JetBlue is the first US airline to offer an NA beer in its beverage service. And while it might be NA, it's not cheaper: it's priced at $9/can, just like the normal beers JetBlue offers.
• Pennsylvania's Liquor Control Board is holding a lottery for some very rare bottles of whiskey. They do this is to "more equitably distribute limited-availability, high-demand products." This intent is especially noteworthy this year, after Oregon officials used their clout to secure bottles like these for themselves and were subsequently fired.
• A NY state proposal allowing Sunday morning wine and spirits sales is making its way to Governor Kathy Hochul's desk.
• And on the big company consolidation front, Darden, the New-York-Stock-Exchange-listed behemoth that owns Olive Garden and other chains bought Ruth's Hospitality Group, which owns Ruth's Chris. In every industry the big keep on getting bigger.