Tag Archives: increase sales

Skills Focus: Describing Dishes

Posted on July 24, 2011 by David Hayden| Leave a comment

 describing

Last week, the skills focus discussed how to get permission from to recommend food to your guests.  This is an incredibly important skill because it allows you to suggest the best items on your menu to your guests.  This week I am going to address how to make those recommendations more effective.  The key to this is describing the food in a way that paints a picture in the minds of your guests of what they will be receiving on their plate.  There are several ways to do this, but there are three that have proven to be most effective.

Three Ways To Describe A Dish

Each of these three methods has a value.  Most servers use the first method when they are starting out.  It is a solid format that conveys all of the necessary information.  With complex pasta dishes it is easy to start with the type of noodle, then vegetables, then the meat, and finally the sauce. This technique works for every meal because it simply requires reciting the components of a dish in a logical order.

The drawback of this method is that it often results in simply listing the ingredients.  While this conveys the information, it does not create an idea of flavor or a reason why the guest should want the dish.  I would compare it to the packaging on a jar of sauce.  People will look at the front for a description of the flavor or at the nutritional information to know about the quality of the product.  These are the parts of the label that sell dishes.  Unfortunately, the first method of describing dishes discussed in the post is more reminiscent to the list of ingredients on the back of the package.  While it is informative, it does not sell the item.

This is why I strongly advocate using the final two methods of describing dishes.  The second method is most useful when you are serving an item with a superior meat component.  Prime steaks, wild salmon, or Maine lobsters demand this sort of explanation.  It is also useful when describing food that is locally raised, organic, or notable for some other reason.  When you serve a premium product, it deserves this sort of descriptions.

The third method of describing dishes sells the flavor of the food.  It is most effective when the flavor of the sauce or the contrast of flavors is what you like about it.  This allows you to describe how the meal tastes.  It is often most effective because it allows you to convey your opinions about the dish to your guests.  When guests are able to see your excitement about a dish, they will be drawn to it as well.

Practicing all three methods of describing dishes will leave you comfortable using whichever will be the most effective for a particular item.  Once you have mastered all three techniques for describing dishes, you will easily be able to determine which on to use on a nightly special or new item.  This will save you time and make sure your descriptions are always top notch.  Next week we will look at the final component of making recommendations: using adjectives that sell food.

Tips2: Tips For Improving Your Tips is the new book from the author of The Hospitality Formula Network. It contains the 52 essential skills of the exceptional server. This book teaches the philosophy to turn average service into an exceptional guest experience that will rapidly increase your tips. This book shows how you can provide better customer service and dramatically improve your tips. Enter the coupon code “squared” to receive 20% off your copy today.

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How To Sell The “Add On”

Posted on March 31, 2011 by David Hayden| Leave a comment
add on

"Would a lobster tail make that burger more enjoyable?"

This is a topic that I have been debating writing about the “add on”  for a long time.  It is an incredibly important topic that can improve both the satisfaction of your guests and increase your income.  It is also one of the least popular topics amongst servers.  Managers often preach the benefits of selling the add on to increase the guest’s bill.  Servers who attempt to push these add on items are often met with rolling eyes from their guests.  This leads to servers often feeling like they are being told to do something that will only annoy their guests.  The result is servers not attempting to sell these items.

The reason for the problem is the approach that most servers take to selling these items.  Most restaurants recommend to their servers that they sell these items without giving them any training on how to do so.  As a result, most servers sell these items in a manner similar to what they have heard at drive thru windows.  The problem with this method is that guests have heard this same verbiage thousands of times.  “Would you like to add two apple pies for a dollar?” is the type of offer that guests have become accustomed to rejecting.  The negative reaction is based in a belief that the offer is made as a sales pitch.  This is too often an accurate assumption.

In order to sell the additional items, you must understand the logic by which they appeal to guests.  The guest is not interested in buying more, increasing the size of their bill, over eating, or increasing your tip.  Guests have grown completely accustomed to portion sizes being far greater than their appetite at most restaurants.  Trying to add more food to their meal makes them feel gluttonous and wasteful.  Asking them to “add” more to their meal is generally a wasted effort.

While guests do not want to increase the size of their meal, they do want to improve the quality of it.  This is your opportunity to add items to their meal.  Guests who are eating a burger on their lunch break are going to be more receptive to adding bacon to their burger than an entire bowl of soup as an extra course.  Offering additional toppings on a baked potato is more effective than trying to sell an appetizer.  The reason why is simple: it makes the meal they ordered better, instead of simply bigger.

Even when you offer the correct item, you still face a barrier from your guests.  Guests are faced with these offers so often that they often reject them without consideration.  To overcome this instinctive rejection, you must phrase the question differently.  The most important word to avoid is “add.”  When you ask the guest to “add” to a meal, they perceive you are asking them to make it bigger.  Instead, you must ask in a way that makes them feel you are offering to improve the quality of their meal.

The best phrase I have found to avoid triggering the automatic rejection and properly frame the offer is:

“Would _______ make your ________ more enjoyable?”

Using this phrase makes a very specific offer and avoids the generic feel of a question.  When you ask this question during the order taking process, you make it more a part of ordering than an additional sales attempt.  This also makes the guest stop and consider an answer to the question.  If you are offering the proper items, this will significantly increase the frequency with which your offer is accepted.

No one enjoys rejection.  Servers will often fail to offer items that would improve a guest’s meal out of fear of rejection.  When a guest rejects these “add ons” it is not a rejection of the server or the item, but rather a reaction to the overwhelming number of offers they receive.  When the server phrases the offer differently, they will find that they are received differently.  This does not mean the offer will never be rejected.  It does greatly increase the likelihood that it will be accepted and that the guest will appreciate the offer.

Tips2: Tips For Improving Your Tips is the new book from the author of The Hospitality Formula Network.  It contains the 52 essential skills of the exceptional server.  This book teaches the philosophy to turn average service into an exceptional guest experience that will rapidly increase your tips.  This book shows how you can provide better customer service and dramatically improve your tips.  Enter the coupon code “squared” to receive 20% off your copy today.

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Bringing It All Together

Posted on February 22, 2011 by David Hayden| 2 Comments

How to bring this to life

In the time that I have been writing this blog, I have provided a large number of tips on sales and describing food.  Each of the individual posts provides tools and guidelines to help you sell the food most likely to create happy and returning guests.  Used individually these techniques can help you increase the tips that you bring home.  Learning to integrate each of these skills into your serving routine can radically change the perception your guests have of you, your restaurant, and the value you bring to their meal.  These are not simple tricks, but rather components of a comprehensive philosophy towards serving and sales.

Today I am going to walk through my actual pitch to give you an example of how these sales techniques work together.  Instead of explaining each step, I will provide links back to the previous posts describing how each part of my pitch is specifically designed to inspire confidence in my recommendations and move guests towards buying.  I have been fine tuning this pitch for almost four years now.  Each and every line in it is there for a reason.  I am omitting portions of it that are specific to my restaurant, but including the same descriptions you would hear if you sat in my section. 

The Greet

Good Evening.  How is everyone tonight?  How can I start us off tonight?  I have a great wine list on the back of the menu.  Cocktails are made with fresh squeezed juices and shaken by hand.  This also means I make a mean cherry limeade.  What sounds good?

When delivering this greeting keep a few things in mind.  The first two sentences are followed by pauses to allow the guest to respond.  I will also give them a chance to ask how I am.  After that I follow up by using suggestive selling rather than selling suggestions.  Finally, I offer a specific non-alcoholic drink in a slightly humorous way.  The advantages of the cherry limeade line never cease to amaze me.  If the guests need a bit more time to consider the wine list or cocktail menu, I will offer to return with waters while assuring them that if they need any recommendations off the wine list I would be glad to help.  This sets me up to be able to describe glasses of wine on my return visit.

The Pitch

Would we care for some recommendations from this evening’s menu? 

The right hand side features all of your entrée options.  My pick this evening is going to me in the section marked “specialties”.  It is the fourth item down or next to the last in that section if you prefer.  It is the Mako Shark from Hilo, Hawaii.  What I like about the shark is that it’s texture and flavor are considerably different than other fish.  A shark’s only bones are in their jaw.  This means that rather than filleting it like most fish, and leaving that flaky texture, sharks are cut in what we call a steak cut.  This leads to a texture similar to the most tender chicken breast you have ever had and a flavor that is equally clean.  We lightly blacken it, which is more for flavor than for spice, before grilling it.  It is served over a bed of garlic mashed potatoes on top and finished with a roasted corn salsa on top.

That is a mouthful.  There are a few specific items to note on this description.  I lead off by offering recommendations rather than just launching into them.  I also guide the guest through the menu with me.  I start with the right half, then to the specialties section, then two different descriptions of the exact location, and finally to the name.  This keeps the guest moving through the menu with me.  This also allows them a bit of satisfaction of being able to locate it before I say the name.  I neutralize and fears of “fishy” taste or spiciness with my description.  I relate it to chicken which they are far more likely to be familiar with.  I briefly describe the presentation, but focus far more on the flavors.  No generic adjectives are used in the description, but rather all words clarify the mental picture the guest is creating.

The other item that I feel deserves mention is the most popular item on our menu.  It is found at the bottom of the right hand side, the next to the last item on that side.  It is the Sea Scallops that come to us from the Georges Bank.  These are sashimi grade and diver caught sea scallops.  We pan seer then and serve them over a risotto cake with sautéed spinach.  Finishing them off with a pesto oil at the base of the plate.  Not only are these the most popular item on our menu, but they are also the toughest to get someone to consider anything else if that is what they had the last time they came in.

This is a hybrid of a couple of the ways to describe dishes.  I preface the description by stating that they are sashimi grade and diver caught.  90% of my guests do not fully understand both of those terms.  They are taken as a sign of quality and overlooked.  The entire plate is described in this pitch.  The key to this pitch is the popularity factor.  I lead off by calling it the most popular before I even tell the guest what the dish is.  This makes them curious because popularity breeds popularity.  People who won’t trust your expert opinion will be eager to trust the opinions of others.  The key to selling popularity here is to not just say it is “the most popular”, but also reinforce it with some logic for saying so.

My actual pitch is much longer, but includes a number of explanations of menu features specific to my restaurant.  If there is any interest out there, I will include an audio version of this pitch for the curious.  There are many elements that go into creating a great pitch.  These excerpts highlight some of the ones I use.  I am also interested in reading yours.  Have a pitch you want me to take a look at?  hospitalityformula@gmail.com is available for pitch makeovers.

Tips2: Tips For Improving Your Tips is the new book from the author of The Hospitality Formula Network.  It contains the 52 essential skills of the exceptional server.  This book teaches the philosophy to turn average service into an exceptional guest experience that will rapidly increase your tips.  This book shows how you can provide better customer service and dramatically improve your tips.  Enter the coupon code “squared” to receive 20% off your copy today.

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The Lost Art Of Suggestive Selling

Posted on November 18, 2010 by David Hayden| 2 Comments

This will be relevant by the end of the post.

“Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way before it is understood.” –Anonymous

 

We as a society have really lost the power of subtlety.  It could be because we have lost the patience to unravel it.  We receive far more information on a daily basis than our ancestors a hundred years ago could even process.  Most of this information is not subtle.  It is blasted at us with bells and whistles to get our attention.  The news channels do not just report the news, they also tell us what to think about it.  Movies no longer imply that a couple is about to “make whoopee”, they show us the scenes in the trailer.  In a few generations we have gone from Marilyn Monroe standing over a vent to Britney Spears getting out of a limousine.

With all of these changes, we have forgotten what it means to be “suggestive.”  This is particularly true in restaurants.  A few decades ago, corporate restaurants determined that they wanted their servers to be sales people.  The also determined that they had no interest in paying for the training necessary to actually accomplish this.  Instead, they decided to teach their servers to use adjectives and “suggestive selling.”  One of the first posts on this blog was declaring my disdain for the overuse of adjectives.  I recently realized that I never discussed my equal dislike for the corporate restaurant incarnation of “suggestive selling.”

As with most great restaurant ideas of the last couple decades, this was based on “research.”  No one will ever accuse upper level restaurant managers of being scientists or sociologists.  When they set up this “research” they will generally have one group follow the protocol they want to introduce.  The other group will do nothing different.  When the first group produces results greater than the second, they view this as proof of success.  This result is then broadcast as fact and soon becomes conventional wisdom.  They seldom look for the actual mechanism that produces the result or how their hypothesis can be altered to produce greater results.

Before we go any further, I want to try an experiment of my own.  I will not claim it to be scientific, but I will use it for a point later on.  This is not a trick and there is no wrong answer.  In your mind, I want you to picture a glass of wine, a cocktail, and an appetizer.  Your first instinct is all that matters.  Try to remember for just a few minutes what each of those items are.  Is the wine red or white?  A particular varietal?  What appetizer and cocktail were your first responses?  Are these the ones that sound most appealing to you at this particular moment?  We will return to this point in a minute.

It is probably necessary for me to clarify what suggestive selling is and conversely what it is not.  Restaurants have inaccurately labeled any number of things as suggestive selling.  Suggestive selling is not asking a guest if they would like to add a salad or soup to their meal.  While it is making a suggestion, it is not suggestive selling.  Suggestive selling is using the power of suggestion to manifest an idea in the buyer’s mind of something they want.  People have a negative reflex towards being sold something.  They on the other hand will gladly buy something that they determined on their own that they wanted.  The art of suggestive selling is to create the idea in their mind while allowing them to take credit for the idea.

White Zinfandel, Margarita, and Chips and Salsa.  The law of averages tells me that because I picked the most common response to each of those categories I should have guessed one right for about a third of you.  Additionally, about one third of you would alter your answer because I guessed it.  Most of you I struck out on.  Let me follow up with another question.  Do any of you think my guesses are more appealing than the ones you had in your mind originally?

The commonly used statistic in restaurants is that suggesting a specific glass of wine, cocktail, or appetizer will increase the sales of that item by ten to twenty percent.  This is compared to walking up to a table and asking them, “what can I get you to drink?”  While I already discussed why the word “drink” kills sales.  I think there is a third option the “research” does not account for.  Using words that trigger a response in the minds of your guests.

When I asked you to think of those particular items earlier, you most likely picked the ones you liked most.  Just as the word “drink” produces an instinctive response, so do “wine”, “cocktail”, and “appetizer.”  While “drink” probably produces a reply of your favorite non-alcoholic beverage, the other words open up a new world of possibilities.  If when I said “cocktail” you started salivating for a Dewars and water, I would not produce the same results by recommending a top shelf margarita.  In fact a margarita was the opposite of what you were thinking and now I have labeled myself as someone who is trying to sell you something you do not want.

Suggestive selling is making subtle statements that lead people to decide on their own to buy things you want to sell.  It is not pushing particular items on them.  Letting the guest have the thought on their own makes them feel like they are in control.  It also prevents you from looking like a salesperson.  Oddly enough the mark of excellence as a server who sells is the guest not being aware that you are selling them anything.  A good server provides their guests with what they want.  A great server leads their guests to want things that they did not even know they wanted.

Other articles on how to sell more as a server:

I Make A Mean Cherry Limeade

Using Words That Sell

The Most Important Phrase You Are Not Using

Selling Away and Selling Up

How To Sell More Desserts

Tips2: Tips For Improving Your Tips is the new book from the author of The Hospitality Formula Network.  It contains the 52 essential skills of the exceptional server.  This book teaches the philosophy to turn average service into an exceptional guest experience that will rapidly increase your tips.  This book shows how you can provide better customer service and dramatically improve your tips.  Enter the coupon code “squared” to receive 20% off your copy today.

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On A Good Night

Posted on October 12, 2010 by tipsfortips| 10 Comments

On the great nights

(Note: I am enjoying the final day of my mini vacation.  Having a great trip.  Met my favorite musician and a personal hero yesterday.  Today I will be taking the scenic drive through the Ozark hills of Central Missouri.  This is a post I wrote a couple months ago.  Not my standard fare, but I hope you all enjoy it.)

Some nights I just love waiting tables.  They are the nights where everything goes right.  The guests are congenial and friendly.  You make connections with your tables and they are happy.  They take your recommendations and commend you on them afterwards.  It almost doesn’t seem like work.

It is almost like I am better looking.  My jokes are funnier.  I walk a little taller.  I scoff at the weeds.  I am a well-oiled machine.  I could juggle trays of martinis while shelling a lobster.  The women flirt.  How could they not, I am better looking tonight.

It’s not just me though.  The food seems to actually taste better.  The guests love it.  That can’t be the same special nobody liked three days ago.  The wine is pairing perfectly with it.  The bottles keep rolling out.  Other tables throughout the restaurant are staring into my section with envy.  I’m running a section like Frank Sinatra would work a room.  They might as well just put a velvet rope around my section.

Tonight was one of those nights.  Well maybe not as perfect as I described above, but it sure felt like it.  Those nights have been fewer lately.  One of the worst months I have had financially in a while.  Tonight wasn’t spectacular financially by any means, but I didn’t stop to worry about it.  I was having too much fun and it all worked out just fine.

I am contemplating what made tonight so much different than other nights.  Other nights can be the exact opposite.  Tables sometime just seem to drain you.  Otherwise kind and friendly people just speak to you in short curt statements.  It is clear you are just there to bring them their food.  You are a needless expense to the meal from whom they intend to get their money’s worth of labor out of.

I think the difference it that today I made some people happy.  Tables that would have been content with the mediocre service they expected gave me a chance to do it differently.  They trusted my recommendations.  I didn’t let them down.  They smiled at me and they also smiled more at each other.  I had a few couples that celebrated anniversaries.  Both young and old.  They enjoyed their meals and each other.  I saw couples that walked in with frowns and walked out with smiles and I played a part in that.

Waiting tables isn’t the world’s most glamorous job.  Sometimes people just don’t understand why I still do it.  What they don’t realize is that on nights like tonight, I have the greatest job on earth.  I got paid to make people happy.  There are people tonight who shared their special occasions with me and are glad they did.  There are couples who enjoyed their night out away from their kids.  There are young women on a girl’s night out who had more fun because I served them dinner.  If you can think of a better thing in the world to get paid for, then you can recruit me.

Not every night is like tonight, but the internet is filled with those stories.  Tonight the internet gets a good story.  I am just as tired and just as sore as I am after any other Saturday night, but tonight was a win.  I hope your night was as well.  If it wasn’t, I hope I brought you a little faith that it will be your turn soon.

Tips2: Tips For Improving Your Tips is the new book from the author of The Hospitality Formula Network.  It contains the 52 essential skills of the exceptional server.  This book teaches the philosophy to turn average service into an exceptional guest experience that will rapidly increase your tips.  This book shows how you can provide better customer service and dramatically improve your tips.  Enter the coupon code “squared” to receive 20% off your copy today.

People Who Read This Post Also Enjoyed:

Selling, Upselling, and Integrity (Tips Squared)

Learning Restaurant Spanish (Nouns) (Tips Squared)

The Upside of Dating Co-Workers (Restaurant Laughs)

Thank You Mister Robinson (The Manager’s Office)

Foodie Friday: Beef Made Easy (Part One) (Foodie Knowledge)

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