1. Bartender Workflow
Bartender workflow is phenomenal in Charlotte. Their multitasking abilities and willingness to execute a uniform sequence of service demonstrate excellent standard operating procedures and intuitive environmental awareness. Without exception, new customers receive immediate greeting and menu regardless of task at hand.
This two-step sequence acknowledges arrival by establishing superior customer touch point. This technique is polar opposite of Knoxville’s step one, step two, step three, step four compartmentalization.
Straw Handling
Server and bartender stir straw handling is brilliant. They instinctively grasp stir straws with a napkin acting as a barrier between their hand and straws. This is an excellent demonstration of environmental awareness. This level of attention to detail does not exist in other locations.
Duplicity Between Bartender Server Roles
My bartender last night is serving this afternoon. She walks behind the bar to make change, serve craft beer and have a conversation. I witnessed an identical episode occur in Memphis. Bartenders need to bartend. Servers need to serve. Current role duplicity lends itself to abuse.
Bartenders demonstrate tremendous chemistry, teamwork and communication. This demonstration enables phenomenal workflow, seamless drink distribution, debris free dry bar tops and successful bar operations.
2. Communication Pipeline
The communication pipeline in Charlotte is excellent. Managers are active participants in both bar and restaurant operations. They command attention and are communication conduits behind the bar, across the service well and on the floor.
Bartender communication is light years ahead of Jackson, Memphis, Birmingham and Knoxville.
The chemistry among bartenders elevates their level of communication. Their proactive approach to bartending, drink production and anticipation prior to customer arrival facilitates conversations not just linear communication. The communication pipeline in Charlotte is multi-directional. Managers, bartenders and servers are participants not just information recipients. No one person or position is responsible for information distribution. Ongoing conversation delivers nonstop information while teamwork is taking place.
For example, Friday at 1:55pm, Chandler asks a server to stand behind the bar while she goes to the kitchen. This is the first time, in five weeks, I’ve witnessed a bartender request someone to stand behind the bar prior to departure. Bartenders, at every other location, walk off the bar with no recourse or repercussion. They leave and customer service ends until they return.
- Jackson, Memphis, Knoxville = No communication + No oversight = No customer service
- Birmingham and Charlotte = Communication + Oversight = Excellent Customer Service
Another example, Chandler gets tied up in service while a server delivers my food. From the service well, she recognizes new customers approaching the bar. She calls out for the sever to greet the new customers and drop a menu. This recognition demonstrates forethought, pro activity and superior customer service skills.
These microscopic lines of communication are the difference between ordinary subpar service taking place in Memphis, Jackson and Knoxville and the extra ordinary customer experience taking place in Charlotte.
3. Service Well Operations
Service well operations are amazing in Charlotte. The island service station is an excellent design feature. Unlike other locations, the Charlotte service well island provides a left side wall. By default, this wall is a customer deterrent. It’s physically impossible to look left and take an order. This wall is a customer buffer enabling service well bartenders to focus on service. Purposeful or a not it’s a brilliant design feature enabling a service well to become a cockpit.
Service Well Printers
Placing bartender and server printers, side by side, against the wall does not achieve maximum efficiency. Repositioning the server printer to the right side of the service would yield a ten-fold increase in workflow.
Current printer configuration forces the service well bartender to laterally slide left then right every time a ticket prints. This slide consists of two maybe three steps left to tear a ticket then equal steps right to return to where they were already standing. Reducing six steps, per service well ticket, will drastically increase workflow and drink production.
3. Management Oversight
Charlotte demonstrates the most comprehensive companywide management oversight. Trevor is an impact player. He establishes power by positioning himself in the crow’s nest garnering the greatest vantage point to monitor the entire restaurant at once. This position enables him to welcome guests upon entry, oversee bar operations, reset chairs, centrally conduct employee conversations within natural traffic lanes and say goodbye to departing customers.
He is the first manager I’ve witnessed running figure eights and proactively walking behind the bar to update TV programming prior to kickoff. In other locations, managers are oblivious to TV’s remaining off for hours if not days much less kick off times.
5. Design Impediments to Service
Draft Tower
At what point do you build out one draft tower instead of two draft towers? Charlotte’s race track design is too small for two draft towers. It devours valuable bar space. The island service well design provides enough wall space for an (L) draft tower design. A wall mounted (L) draft tower can feature up to fourteen handles and will solve the least desirable bar seating problem.
Relocating and redesigning a wall mounted (L) draft tower will create equal value among all bar seats. It removes a bar top impediment so no seat is less desirable than any other seat.
- Sixteen handles are too many choices
- Fourteen handles might be too many choices
- Ten to twelve might be optimum amount choices
- Optimum choices do not prevent loss leaders among handles
Regardless of the total number of handles, all handles should be regionally centric not national. Why dedicate tap handles to national brands like Blue Moon, Stella and Dos X? National beer distribution should be allocated towards bottle line. Regionally specific tap handles will attract discerning craft drinkers. National handles do very little for craft beer programs.
Total Number of Tables
Increasing the total number of tables increases cocktail volume. More tables create more seats. More seats create more customers. Pairing more customers with excellent handcrafted cocktails substantially increases drink demand.
Effectively answering the demand requires dual service well distribution. Charlotte has single service well distribution. Charlotte’s drink volume requires an excellent service well bartender. In lieu of excellence, demand requires two bartenders working together in service. Two bartenders in service equals two bartender backs facing 100% of seated bar customers.
The feasibility of increasing customer counts while employing single service well drink distribution systems, within racetrack or horseshoe bar designs, is very grim.
Drink distribution problems are the unintended consequence of increasing tables, seating and customer counts. More seats, within a single service well system, thrust the entire restaurants drink production onto one bartender. Unable to answer the demand, single service well systems require two bartenders for distribution.
Unfortunately, XYZ Bar service wells are not designed for two bartenders.
Lacking width, Memphis, Jackson and Knoxville service wells become a literal train wreck. When drink demand exceeds the ability of one bartender to manufacture drinks, in a timely fashion, two bartenders answer the demand by forcing themselves into a one-person workspace.
Impaired scheduling and cutting mid bartender early, cause Memphis, Jackson and Knoxville service wells to become a customer service nightmare. Two service well bartenders turn their backs towards 100%
- Seated bar customers
- Standing bar customers
- New customers approaching the bar
Horse shoe and race track designs make it simultaneously impossible for two bartenders residing in service to render customer service at the bar. Although executed in Memphis, Jackson and Knoxville, they are simply robbing Peter to pay Paul causing drink service to suffer.
Lock and Key Storage Cabinets
Why depart from above head open face storage? Lock and key are cumbersome. Key ring has multiple keys. Bartenders are having difficult time opening doors. I do not consider open face liquor storage a risk management issue. Lock and key cabinets are not a theft deterrent.
People who steal will steal and those who do not will not – Preston Rideout
In lieu of shotgun bar designs, with back bar bottle risers, open face liquor storage in horseshoe and race track designs serve as bottle risers. It’s the perfect vantage point to showcase product line. Otherwise, neither seated, standing or new customers approaching the bar have an opportunity to preview liquor bottles prior to placing an order.
- Sprite can 12oz case cost $22.42
- Jack Daniels 750ml costs $19.42
The sprite cans are left unsecured in open face storage. Jack Daniels is secured. I witnessed multiple Charlotte employees drinking sprite, coke and diet coke. You are losing between 12 and 18 cans per day. If bartenders are not ringing spills they are not ringing in employee cans. The likelihood of losing a Jack Daniels bottle per day is negligible when compared to employee soda can consumption.
Also, I consider open face storage and chicken wire part of the XYZ Bar concept.
Available Bar Seating
Similar to other locations, making available bar seating determination can be challenging in Charlotte. The challenge occurs between 8pm and 9:15pm. It coincides with seated bar customer departure and table wait seating.
Although a seat is empty, departed customer debris remains on the bar. Customers unable to get bartender attention resort to asking customers next to the empty chair if the seat is taken. Mirroring two mid wells and zone bartending will mitigate this problem. Working back to back, tow bartenders zone bartending can cover 100% of any bar design.
Maximum Seating Capacity
Achieving maximum seating capacity creates a human shield. Seated bar customers become an impenetrable phalanx. Unable to penetrate this phalanx, standing customers begin forming an additional wall behind seated customers.
Seated customers impede standing customers from placing drink orders. Standing customers are forced to reach over, around, above or beside seated customers to place drink orders. The proximity between seated and standing customers creates a negative experience for both customers. This sequence of events happened to me and it was awkward.
- Female customer asks for a drink menu = over my shoulder
- Customer and bartender have craft beer conversation = between me and another customer
- Female customer receives drink menu but requests another copy for her 3 friends
- Female customer places four drink orders = over my shoulder
- Bartender request four ID’s = between me and another customer
- Four females show four ID’s = over my shoulder and between me and another customer
- Bartender checks four ID’s = over my shoulder and between me and another customer
- Bartender delivers multiple drinks = in front of me
- One female distributes three drinks to friends = over my shoulder
- Four drinks paid for individually = between me and another customer
- Bartender conducts four transactions = between me and another customer
- Two females sign two credit card slips = between me and another customer
Posters and Handbills
Above bar banners, handbills and posters come across commercially chainlike. The $100-dollar bill with graffiti top hat and mustache has no local affiliation. It’s contextually out of place. The Space Fabe poster is from a 2012 Memphis Halloween event. This wall is valuable real estate and should be geared towards city centric bands and events not generic space filling wall paper.
Hostess Stand XYZ Bar Shirt Baskets
Why not allocate XYZ Bar shirt basket space for XYZ Bar to go order baskets space? Hostess stand to go order retrieval would alleviate companywide bar congestion and customer confusion. The ability to walk in, pay and walk out within seconds would elevate customer service.
Twenty Liter Square Bucket Mix Distribution
Please stop using square twenty liter buckets to prepare and distribute mix. Use cylinder twenty liter buckets with a spout. A spout will expedite preparation and distribution.
Cash Handling, Spills and Risk Management
Cash Handling is similar to every other location. Multiple hands conducting multiple transactions, in the same cash register, equals no accountability. Hard to imagine there are no over under cash due fluctuations. If you don’t have fluctuations, you have serious cash handling problems. Clean sales reports equal cash handling cover-ups. On Thursday at 7:33pm, I witnessed a suspect cash transaction.
- Bartender hit no sale
- Opened the cash drawer
- Removed $10
- Hand delivered $10 to a server
- Never placed any money in the register
As for Risk Management issues, I watched a wine door actually break off its hinges and hit the female bartender in the head and shoulder while she was standing on the top step of two-foot ladder. Excellent workplace hazard. You are lucky she didn’t fall off the ladder and hurt herself.
7. Cocktail Production, Consistency, Speed and Specials
Apple Infused Margarita
- Chandler makes apple infused margarita but it’s not a company-wide XYZ Bar cocktail
- Apple infused margarita excellent flavor balance with hint of tequila
- The apple taste is amazingly fresh, powerful but not overpowering
- Apples taste like they were harvested this morning and crushed prior to drink production
Chandler is self -taught mixologist. She actually bakes ingredients, in the kitchen, then coats with sugar for crystallization. She is already thinking about holiday cocktails, with crushed candy cane rims, 65 days prior to Christmas. Although she only has one year of bartending experience, she is better than 99% of bartenders in other locations. She has bar management aspirations but is an excellent candidate for your mixology program. Harnessing her spark will fuel your hand crafted cocktail line.
New Drink Red Tape
Tremendous flexibility is excellent. Flexibility prevents XYZ Bar from becoming chain like but where is the executive oversight? Executive not management oversight. I’ve discussed management oversight, in each audit, but never executive oversight. Several bartenders mentioned the multiple layers of XYZ Bar bureaucracy required for new product or cocktail approval.
We need to cut through this new drink red tape. A system where by Bill, Al or Stan tastes, verifies quality then sets in motion companywide distribution needs to be in place.
Chandler’s apple infused margarita
- Is amazing
- Can be monetized
- Needs a distribution conduit
This drink is on par if not better than the cocktail I tasted in Birmingham. These drinks are Bill’s vision in a glass. Executive level recognition is necessary for company wide distribution. With no system in place, this drink will remain in Charlotte and never be tasted across the nation.
Consistency and Pour Testing
I ordered a Bloody Maria on Saturday afternoon. It was prepared by short pouring mix and over pouring tequila. After shaking and straining, the Bloody Maria was four inches short of the glass. Rather than remaking the drink, the bartender chose to top of the drink by floating two inches of roses lime juice making the drink disgusting.
Short pouring mix, over pouring liquor and floating to increase drink volume is contrary to consistency. It demonstrates bad decision making and no pour testing. The bartender is 50% at fault for not to remaking the drink. XYZ Bar is 50% at fault for not pour testing and providing better training. Pour testing and better training are key to implementing companywide cocktail preparation and distribution standards.
Cocktail Eye Appeal
Friday night, I witnessed a female customer order a margarita. Without hesitation, prior to receiving a drink menu, the she said, “I want the pink one.” Cocktail eye appeal has the power to render a drink menu obsolete. Instead of ordering off the menu, she looked across the bar and ordered a drink based on color. Customers buy with their eyes.
As discussed in the Birmingham audit, I believe your cocktail program should consist of five house drinks and five featured drinks. Drink selection begins with taste but garnish, rim flair, glassware and color need to be considered.
Glassware Straw Consistency
XYZ Bar cocktails prepared in pint glassware
- Receive a hand delivered plastic wrap straw in some locations
- Are prepared with long black straw inside the drink in some locations
Unless mandated by the health department, I strongly suggest abandoning hand delivered plastic wrap straws. Cocktail pint glassware production should include straw insertion.
XYZ Bar cocktails prepared in cocktail glassware
- Receive no stir straw in some locations
- Receive one stir straw in some locations
- Receive two stir straw in some locations
All cocktails prepared in cocktail glassware should always receive two stir straws
- No stir straw forces females to drink from the glassware rim then reapply lipstick
- One stir straw makes it impossible to sip and difficult to stir cocktails
- Two stir straw are perfect for sipping, stirring and prevent lipstick reapplication
10,000 Facebook Likes Drink Special
What is 10,000 likes on Facebook drink special trigger? A bartender delivered a ticket to the couple sitting next to me then requested Facebook likes by saying, “Like us on Facebook.. 10,000 likes will trigger a new dink special.” It was odd and caught me off guard. I do not understand the correlation between receiving 10,000 likes and a new drink special.
Requesting a Facebook like is commercially chain like and comes across as needy. Social media is best achieved organically. Icon door stickers, great tasting handcrafted cocktails with eye appeal, birthday patron sparklers and colorful plate presentations are the best conduits for social media engagement.
8. Beverage Handling, Cleanliness and Sanitation
- Bartenders receive an A+ in glass handling
- Bartenders receive an A+ in cleanliness
- Bartenders receive an A in bar top cleanliness
- Bartenders receive an A in sanitation
9. Customer Touch Points and Line of Sight
Customer touch points in Charlotte are amazing. For example, Harper’s customer greeting, menu explanation and personal introduction are awesome! His delivery is amazing and well received by customers. His demeanor, positive body language and voice inflection achieve authenticity. He neither speaks “To” or “At” customers. He makes statements, asks questions then renders service while engaging customers in knowledge based conversation. His menu placement and bar top positioning are perfect!
Customer and bartender line of sight are amazing. The bar top is dry, free and clear of all debris. The back bar is identical to the bar top. Everything is operationally purposeful and fluid.
10 Actual Operating Procedures and Sequence of Service
Charlotte demonstrates more standard operating procedures and uniform service sequences than all other locations combined.
