Training & Certifications

If you're selling alcohol, most states require all staff members taking orders or serving alcohol be trained and certified by the state. Every state alcohol commission regulations, concerns and guidelines. This section discusses the reasons why you must require your serving staff to be trained and certified, and gives examples of penalties for both an employee and owner if a server gets caught violating the rules. In many states they are classified as felonies, fines are high and you may be suspended from selling alcohol.

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orders & upselling

How you take orders for beverages, separately or as part of a complete meal, can have an impact on profitability. Beverage ordering and upselling is psychology and "profitcology". This section presents details for profit minded order taking and upselling strategies that should help you achieve maximum profit from all beverage sales.

 

Tracking alcohol

We hope you've seen an example of a heavy-handed server walking around a nice restaurant refilling wine glasses for customers. Have you ever wondered how they, or better yet the restaurant is managing those pours or orders? Have you also noticed that you may get a bigger pour if the server knows you tip well?  Alcohol is a high-profit item. But how do you track your cost and profit? Or, do you just figure over-pours are just part of your model and don't care about extra expenses? This section discusses tracking alcohol by volume, weight and devices, the pros and cons and suggestions for monitoring staff.

 

serving sizes

This section discusses common serving sizes for non-alcohol and alcohol-based beverages. We discuss different methodologies, suggestions and perceptions from customers on the various serving sizes. We provide suggestions on how to present certain drinks to customers to achieve the best results. We also discuss the pros and cons of offering one size vs multiple sizes of beverages.

 

bottles & draft

In a day and age when there are so many small craft and local breweries, here are some of the big questions you should be asking: How many should I offer? What types? Should I mix majors with micros? And, if I don't have room for a big beer cooler, pipes, and the handles, can I offer one or two, and offer bottles or cans?  And which one of those should I offer? In this section, we talk trends and suggested solutions that are geared towards PROFITABILITY - not trying to be everything to everyone. 

 

leased soda machines

Beverage suppliers sell you soda syrup but they also provide you with equipment to serve these beverages - with certain caveats. There are also some really cool machines out now that are self-contained. If you lease a soda machine from a supplier, they will probably require you to provide your own ice machine. In this section, we discuss various ways of getting equipment included. We also discuss different lease options and terms and conditions that you will want to look for in the documents.

 

soda/ice Machine Locations

Soda and Ice machines can make a lot of noise and interfere with the customer experience in your restaurant. They can also create both a wet and sticky mess. In this section, we address different options and suggestions for locating these machines that will help with customer access, staff cleaning and supply replenishment.