This staff training system actually works

Beth Hussey has opened 17 full service restaurants in her career and has trained the staff every time. Do the math and you realize she's trained thousands of people. Impressive stuff.

She took that experience and knowledge and created a staff training app called Shifty, the secrets of which she shared with us in an interview:

1. Give everyone 5 training shifts: 3 training/shadowing shifts where they follow around a server/bartender and 2 shifts where they're in the kitchen/learning the food (if applicable).
2. For each shift, provide a sheet of paper with very detailed rules and expectations: when should they get there, what to wear, what they'll be doing, and so on. Leave nothing up in the air.
3. Make a checklist of everything they should learn during each shift.
4. The shadowed person then takes that checklist and moves through it with the new server.
5. At the end of each shift, give the new server their instruction sheet for the next training shift plus a homework assignment: make flashcards about the things they learned during their first shift.
6. The flashcards come from a list you make, where you tell them exactly what to write on each side. Do 10-20 flashcards per shift, w/ a max of 5 words on any one side.
7. The flashcards should cover everything you need them to know to successfully operate on the floor: policies, culture-related tuff, technical menu info, etc.
8. Assign these flashcard-making homework assignments after each training shift.
9. At the end of training have a face-to-face meeting with the new employee where you quiz them on their flashcards. Do it just like you would in school: put the ones they got right in one pile and the ones they got wrong in another.
10. After running that exercise, you'll be able to ascertain if they're ready. If they are, great! If not, you know exactly where they're struggling—that pile of flashcards they got wrong—so you can continue training them with a focus on those items.

Creating a system like this from scratch is a lot of work, and that's why Beth created Shifty, an app-based bar and restaurant staff training platform that already has this process built out inside of it. You can customize to your bar/restaurant, but the heavy lifting is all done for you.

Check out the interview for more details about staff training and about the psychology behind Shifty:

If you're interested in Shifty for your business, head over to the the website or send Beth and email at beth@shiftyinc.com.

Why?

For a beer drinker there isn’t much worse than getting excited about a beer you’re going to order, ordering it, then being told it’s no longer available.

You’re disappointed, and instead of straight-up joy, you’re starting the night off with a bad experience.

(The experience isn’t much better for the bartender—I know from experience.)

Depending on how out-of-date your menu is and how many folks come in, you could be providing dozens of folks a bad start to their visit.

You should avoid this experience, even if updating a menu is a pain in the ass (though it doesn’t have to be—more on that below).

How?

You can do this manually. How you implement it depends on what works for your team, but it could look like this:

• Create an editable menu doc in Google Docs, Word, Powerpoint, or whatever
• Make sure everyone has access to the doc and knows how to update it
• Make updating the menu part of the opening checklist and/or shift change checklist

It certainly takes some time, but if you avoid just a few bad customer experiences, that time is well worth it.

• Taxes frozen on liquor in UK. British households have enjoyed a freeze on liquor taxes since last fall. It was due to expire in August, but the freeze was just extended until 2025. The hope is that by that time inflation—which is worse there than here in the US—will tame a bit.
• I'll have the pancakes. Do you want a fajita chicken wrap? Dine Brands Inc., owner of Applebees and IHOP, announced they'd be debuting dual-branded locations of the restaurants where BOH would be shared and FOH would be "blended." Bizarre, but they've tried it overseas and I guess it's worked.
• Fireball nips reign continues in PA. For the third straight year, 50ml bottles of Fireball (aka nips) were the highest selling spirit in PA. Nips of New Amsterdam came in second and one liter bottles of Titos came in third. Go birds.
• Pernod Ricard makes moves in China. Reuters had an interesting article about how western spirits companies are trying to break into China's liquor market. Traditionally the game plan was just high end luxury lines, but now they're aiming to crack into the middle class.