5 tips for handling angry guests

Josh Hurst has encountered his share of angry guests throughout his time at Pies & Pints, a beer and pizza chain with locations in the midwest, interior east, and south.

In the last few years everybody's stress level has ratcheted up to new heights, and that's made handling angry guests even more challenging (and in some cases more common, especially around the holidays).

Throughout this time, Josh and his team have relied on the same 5-step process to deal with customers. Here it is:

1. Recognize that guests are angry for a reason. It's not your job or the job of your team to determine whether or not that anger is justified. You just need to understand they're upset and for them that feeling is real. (This can be hard.)
2. Remove defensiveness by apologizing before you do anything else. A genuine "I'm sorry this happened" can go a super long way—for Josh and his team, a sincere apology turns the situation in a positive direction about 75% of the time. (Prior to Covid this % was higher.)
3. Ask the guest an important question: what can we do to make things right? It's sometimes helpful to position this as something you're asking not just for their sake, but also for everyone who comes through the door after them.
4. Follow through on what they request. Give them a new pizza on the house. Discount their meal. Provide a gift certificate for a future visit. It's almost certainly worth it, since they'll be more likely to return.
5. Figure out what went wrong on your side. Put in as much effort as you need to figure out what happened—sometimes Josh will spend several hours figuring out what went wrong in a single case. And when you figure it out, use the situation as a teaching opportunity (not a punitive one).

Check out the interview clips for more from Josh about angry guests, including how Covid has affected complaints (e.g. oddly, scams have become more common!):

❓ Why?

Because some QR Menu flows suck and actually make things worse for customers.

Here are the 3 biggest offenders of a bad post-scan QR Menu experience:

1. Customers are brought to a PDF. Hands down this one's the worst. PDFs are hard for customers to deal with because in order to enlarge the menu (almost always necessary on a phone), they have to pinch to zoom.
2. The menu doesn't include item descriptions. It's tough to stay on top of website content, so businesses just include item names rather than researching, vetting, and pasting in item descriptions.
3. The menu doesn't include all items. Similar to the last one, but even more egregious.

❓ How to do better?

You could create and stay on top of a manual QR Menu experience, though that would involve a lot of website work and time.

'Tis the season!

We were curious which Christmas beers consumers are looking for this year, so we dug into the data to understand two things:

• What Christmas beers are most popular so far this year?
• How does this year compare to last year?

Takehome: Unlike last year, when this comparison yielded two almost identical lists, we do see some new beers this year. Of course, Great Lake Christmas Ale held onto the top spot, but it's cool seeing some others climb the ranks.

Here are the lists, in descending order (#1 at the top).

2023

	Great Lakes Christmas Ale Spiced Beer · 7.5% · Cleveland, OH
	Shiner Holiday Cheer Dunkelweizen · 5.4% · Shiner, TX
	Leinenkugel's Cranberry Ginger Shandy Shandy · 4.2% · Chippewa Falls, WI
	Sam Adams Old Fezziwig Spiced Beer · 5.6% · Boston, MA
	Highland Cold Mountain Winter Ale Spiced Beer · 5.2% · Asheville, NC

2022

	Great Lakes Christmas Ale Spiced Beer · 7.5% · Cleveland, OH
	Tröegs Mad Elf Belgian Strong Ale · 11.0% · Hershey, PA
	Breckenridge Christmas Ale Winter Warmer · 7.1% · Littleton, CO
	Bell's Christmas Ale Scottish Ale · 5.5% · Comstock, MI
	St. Bernardus Christmas Ale Quadrupel · 10.0% · Watou, Belgium

Where's the data from? Pageviews to each beer's page on BeerMenus.com. Data is from the last 30 days (11/8/23 through 12/7/23) and from the same date range last year.

• Axios reports that Diageo, the distilling and brewing conglomerate, is looking to divest of its entire beer portfolio besides Guinness. That means Smithwick's and Harp could have new owners.
• The BBC published a short video that goes over the history of how women used to be the ones doing the brewing, even though it's now male-dominated industry. A nice, tidy history lesson you can also get on the back of a New Glarus Two Women Lager. But you can only get that if you live in Wisconsin.
• Starting next year, Californians will be able to get refunds on liquor and wine bottles...and also boxed wine containers.
• And finally, tomorrow Miller High Life will be selling a limited number of 2.5-foot tabletop neon trees meant that are infused with—wait for it—the smell of sweet tobacco. Why? It's meant to evoke the smell of your favorite dive bar.