As a restaurant owner, you need to care for the comfort and relaxation of all your guests. At the same time, you need to provide your customers with top-notch service and an excellent selection of meals that will make them return for more. Consumers carry numerous expectations when they come out for a fine dining experience. Your job as a restaurant owner is to fulfill them and clearly understand what your consumers look for in a restaurant.
Therefore, while serving delicious meals, don’t forget to provide tasty alcoholic beverages that will complete the experience. The right drink complements the meal, so if you want to keep your consumers satisfied with your establishment, learn the etiquette of serving alcohol. For this reason, here are some techniques your employees can look into:
- Understand You Have A Legal Obligation
Suppose you’re serving alcohol in your establishment. In that case, you have a legal responsibility to ensure that you and your employees follow all the state-mandated laws. This is because every state has specific guidelines for dealing and working with alcohol. Unless you adhere to that framework, you can get sued. Before you can hand out beverages, you must ensure all your consumers can legally drink. Second, access only the finest quality beverages.
You cannot skimp out on hygiene and must ensure that you wipe down their glasses and mind how much alcohol you hand out to prevent the customer from getting drunk. The ideal way to deal with this situation is by asking your employees to look into an RBS certificate and carefully learn how to serve and store alcohol. This saves you from trouble with the law and helps maintain your restraints standards.
- Know How To Blend and Mix Cocktails
Your consumers are looking for a good time at your establishment. You can amplify that experience by providing them with delicious cocktails. Mixing drinks is an art. The bartender needs the exact measurements that can yield a tasty outcome. If they haphazardly and arbitrarily mix beverages, they’ll create a horrible blend of flavors that may taste bitter. Hence, make sure bartenders have experience and knowledge of working with shakers and creating drinks in the cocktail bar.
- Ensure The Server Provides Drinks After the Guests Sit
Services are timed. When a customer walks into your joint, you should give them a few minutes to settle down before you send over a server. If you take too long or send the waiter too early, it will annoy your consumers and dampen their experience from the get-go. Drinks are always served long before the food goes out. So the server needs to be proactive in providing a light refreshment. Light refreshment to wet their whistle but not get drunk or feel the beverage overpower their senses and rob them of the experience or ability to enjoy the food that your restaurant is known for.
As soon as your consumers finish their first round of drinks, you need to roll out their meals and upgrade their beverages to more hearty drinks. A good drink and a well-cooked meal enhance each other’s flavor leaving delicious aftermath behind.
- Set Out Fine Dining Guidelines
There is a specific way of serving drinks that your staff has to follow. In a restaurant, drinking is a refined art, so your waiting staff should know how to provide consumers with their beverages elegantly. As a general rule of thumb, when a server needs to place the glass on the table, they should always hold the glassware from the bottom. Putting their fingers near the rim of the glass is a significant health violation and can aggravate the consumer. If the glassware has a handle or stems, it’s preferable to grasp the beverage from there and give it to your customers. In a formal setting, the guest of honor gets their drink first, and then women are served drinks first.
The waiting staff should hand over the glass from the guest’s right-hand side and then move according to the seating arrangement. If the drink is cold or wet, place a coaster under it. This prevents the tablecloth from getting damp and leaving behind stains, which messes up the table’s look. Empty glasses should never be left on the table. Either the staff should remove the glass or refills the drink based on the guest’s preference. While filling, if the server can’t reach the glass, they should ask the customer to push it forward. Your employee should replace the glass with a fresh one for drinks like soda or juice.
- Keep A Healthy Stock Of Beverages
Alcohol can get expensive. Depending on where you get your bottles, a good chunk of your budget may be spent on procuring a range of champagnes, wines, rums, beer, and so on. But as a restaurant, it is a good idea to have a healthy collection of alcohol. The more variety you have, the better for your consumers. Look into hiring a bartender so they can create cocktails and mixed beverages that have unique flavor profiles. This will also encourage your consumers to have a meal at your restaurant since you’ll be known for the drinks available for your customers to enjoy.
Final Thoughts
Alcohol is part of a great dining experience. These beverages can help bring out the taste and delicacy of the food, which consumers may enjoy thoroughly. As a restaurant owner, you need to focus on consumer satisfaction. To achieve this incredible feat, you will need the help of your staff. To connect with your consumers, you need to give them a memorable experience at your restaurant. So when it comes to handing out and serving drinks, ensure you have a framework of etiquette that can refine how consumers enjoy their beverage.
Your staff should immediately take the consumer’s orders and arrange for the first round of drinks. Afterward, for the meal course, ensure the drink they pick complements their meal. Your staff should be careful while refilling and moving the glass around. They may create a mess if they are not trained to clear the table and give the consumer new glassware.
Finally, stock your store with all types of alcohol to give your consumers variety. These factors will work collectively to give your consumers the experience that will keep them coming back for more.