I am a food and beverage manager at a hotel with two bars.  Can you tell me some ways that we can increase our revenues?  We are obviously a little bit slower lately, but is there anything that we can do to help?

The selling area of a bartender’s service is always overlooked. These selling standards are extremely important to generating higher revenues. Bartenders can come across as uncaring and unfriendly if they just approach and ask guests, “What can I get for you?” They also will not sell much more than the minimum guest order. Most hotel bars are not like the bars or nightclubs that stand alone. People usually expect more from a hotel bar. The service of a bartender should be similar to that provided by servers to a table of guests that are eating. There are many selling standards that should be in place for each time a guest arrives at the bar. This includes practices such as offering your drink menu to guests whether they know what they want or not, providing a food menu, suggesting any specialty drinks, offering more beverages, and offering bar snacks. Each of these practices has its own effect and benefit on your bartender’s guest service as well as revenues. Here is a breakdown.

Providing Food or Drink Menus

Having a menu in front of a guest makes it more likely that he or she will order something in addition to their normal order. Something on your menu may catch their eye and the guest might try it, giving you more revenues. They may not have been extremely hungry at the time, but just hungry enough to order that shrimp cocktail appetizer. They would not have known about it if a menu was not given to them. This can be done by simply asking the guest if he or she will be eating and providing them with a menu regardless of their answer. It is surprising how few bartenders do this even if the guests are sitting next to other guests that are eating. You cannot wait for a guest to ask for a menu.

Suggesting Specialty Drinks

Most hotel bars have their own special drink creations. Usually, by placing these drinks on your menu, you feel that they are tasty and charge a premium for them. Why then, would bartenders not try to sell them? In addition to providing a menu upon greeting the guest, bartenders need to offer a specialty drink or two by name. Most guests have their own predetermined drinks, but may try certain things on a bartender’s suggestion and recommendation. Why let the guest order an $8 vodka tonic when you can attempt to pour them a $13 special martini. This makes the bar more revenues and the bartender higher tips.

Offering Bar Snacks

Offering bar snacks to the guests will show that you are being attentive to them. There has been many times where our mystery shoppers sit at the bar and watch other guests eat their bar snacks without being offered any. Yes, most guests will ask for them but why make your guests ask. Provide them along with every drink that is served. Bar snacks also make your guests a little thirstier and can make them order more drinks. It is a small cost to pay to make your guests stay at your bar longer and order more drinks.

Up-selling To Premium Liquor

Many bartenders will just pour the bar’s well liquor if a guest asks for a generic beverage such as a vodka tonic. It only takes an extra second to ask if the guest would like Grey Goose, Belvedere, or Ketel One. This provides a choice of premium vodkas to the guest, earning your bar those extra few dollars in revenue. Instead of making your well brands the standard, why not make your premiums the standard and your well brands a second choice? If the guest asks what other vodkas your bar has, then you can tell them all your brands. It is pretty uncommon for bar guests to ask directly for the cheapest vodka you have.

Offering a Second (or Third) Drink

Before the guest is finished with the beverage in front of them, make sure that your bartender is offering them another one.  By doing so, you are attempting to keep the guest there longer and ordering more drinks.  They may not have stayed but by asking if the guest wants another beverage frequently causes the guest to quickly finish up their current one and agree to another one.  Everyone knows why guests go to your bar, so you have got to keep them ordering before they think they have had enough.  Obviously, remember your TIPS training and do not overdo it.

To make sure that your bartenders are consistently hitting these selling standards, continue to do regular mystery shopping.  You will see your revenues start to climb up in no time.

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These methods can include:

Short-Changing – Stealing by not returning proper change to a guest. This happens as the guest can become less attentive as they become more intoxicated.

Overcharging – Charging more than necessary for a certain drink and stealing the difference. This usually happens when guests have no intention of seeing a receipt and the server quotes the drink price to them.

Substitutions – Charging for a requested premium liquor, but ordering a well brand from the bartender.

Representing Checks – Presenting the same check to two separate guests/transactions with the same order, then pocketing the cash from one or both transactions.

Fake Walk-Outs – Alleging that a party walked out, but pocketing the cash instead.

Altering Checks – Voiding or adding to checks. Usually goes hand in hand with representing checks.

With the following controls in place, you will curb the chance that your cocktail servers have to steal.

The main area to focus on when it comes to cocktail server internal controls is how the server orders and interacts with the bartender. A surprisingly large number of hotel bars allow servers to “call out” beverage orders to the bartender. This method of ordering presents a multitude of possible issues that no Food & Beverage manager or Controller wants to deal with. If your hotel bar is currently using this method, or even if you are doing it the right way, make sure that you follow these steps to do a self audit on your cocktail server internal controls.

1. Ensure that your cocktail servers have their own POS terminal, not behind the bar, to enter transactions.

2. Ensure that your cocktail servers are entering drinks into the POS terminal to order from the bartender. Your bartenders should not make any beverages for servers without an accompanying order printed from the bartender’s printer. This prevents the server from representing checks or not ringing up an order at all.

3. Have your cocktail server only pick up drinks in a sectioned off area of the bar and compare the beverages to the order receipt. This will prevent any mistakes resulting from taking the wrong drinks.

4. Have a spill/comp log. Any spills or comps must be logged and have a manager’s approval (if possible). Remember not to compromise a guest’s experience; seek manager’s approval after the new drink has been served.

5. Require your cocktail server to present a receipt to each guest when they are paying. This will prevent over-charging or short-changing.

6. Hold your bartender equally accountable. With the proper controls in place, it would make it extremely difficult for a cocktail server to steal if they are not in collusion with the bartender.

In addition to a lounge audit, other management practices can be helpful as well. Food and Beverage numbers should be looked at daily by an F&B manager. Consider determining your outlet’s average daily cash intake. If a day’s cash intake wavers from that average by a considerable amount, do some research and ask questions. This is not to accuse your employees of stealing, but to find out what caused the change for that day and to make your employees aware that you are looking at the numbers daily.

After you successfully cut off the ability of a cocktail server to steal from your bar, the only place for a determined thief to turn to is to your guests. With random mystery shopping of your lounge, you can also ensure that your hotel guests are not also being defrauded.