There’s a famous saying that goes: “There’s nothing certain except for death and taxes.” In reality, they should add a third item to this list: work. Unless you are fortunate enough to be the progeny of Jay Z and Beyoncé, LeBron James, Oprah, or someone else with enough money to allow the next 5 generations of their family to live comfortably, you are most likely going to spend a good chunk of time at work for the bulk of your life.
And this is OK. Work is a fact of life for most of us. We all need to make money to fund our lives and support our families. Hopefully you are able to earn a living at a job that you enjoy. But even if you are one of the lucky ones who likes their job, it’s unlikely that you enjoy every aspect of it.
It’s called work for a reason. It’s certainly less glamorous than skiing a powder day, seeing your favorite band rock out live, or being a Cleveland Browns fan this past weekend watching your team win for the first time since Barak Obama was president. That’s just a reality that we all must accept.
The restaurant industry offers people a way to make good money in a fun environment. That being said, not everything you’ll do during your shift will be fun. There’s a lot of hard work involved in making a restaurant run smoothly, and not all of it is glamorous. Let’s take side-work as an example.
Bartenders and servers are incentivized by tipping to provide excellent customer service, but they don’t have the same incentive to invest a lot of energy into cleanliness and preparedness. Great customer service equates to more money for your staff. Side-work, however, isn’t as easily seen as benefiting your employees’ bottom line. And these tasks are also really boring.
But they matter.
If you go into the bathroom of a restaurant of and it’s disgustingly filthy, you may be more inclined to wonder about the cleanliness of the kitchen and how your food is being prepared. Conversely, when you see a bar that is very clean and has sparkling bottles, it creates a more professional atmosphere and gives your customers more confidence that their food and drinks will taste great. While it’s one of the more mundane aspects of the job, side-work is still extremely important.
Side-work is basically a “pay it forward” type of task. Your employees are taking care of items that will set the next shift up for success. This is important, and your entire staff wins when this is done well. Everyone benefits by showing up for work with everything prepped and ready to go.
Conversely, it can create a toxic environment when things aren’t set up properly when you show up for work. After all, why should you put in the effort to set your coworkers up for success when they don’t return the favor?
Let’s take a look at a common example. A customer asks for a box to take home the rest of his meal. If the server goes to grab a box, but finds that there are none left, that server will be frustrated. More importantly, it will be obvious that the server who took the last box didn’t feel like restocking them. Instead, that person said, “Screw it. The next person will have to deal with it.”
This becomes a circular cycle because each time the “screw it” attitude rears its ugly head, it increases the likelihood that other staff members will follow suit. When bartenders show up for a shift to find that everything is in disarray and nothing was prepped for them, they are less likely to take the time to do things like cut extra limes at the end of their shift so that the next bartender will be set up for success.
Having a side-work checklist ensures that your staff clearly understands what needs to be done and what is expected of them. These guidelines also ensure that staff who come from other establishments will internalize the unique processes associated with your bar. Every bar does things in their own way, so it’s likely that side-work at your bar is done differently than it was at the last establishment a particular employee worked at.
One of our clients is a high-volume sushi restaurant in Denver – their weekly sales are often higher than many of our other clients’ monthly sales. The owner of this restaurant has made cleanliness and organization a top priority for the staff. It’s not surprising that this establishment has an accountability score of 98%, which is about 5% higher than our average client score in 2017. There is definitely a correlation between these two items.
Improving cleanliness and the way your staff approaches tasks such as side-work is an easy way to start changing your culture and improving your bar’s standards. Ultimately, this can eventually carry over to the way your staff follows standards for how drinks are poured and comp tabs are used. When this change occurs, you will see a significant boost in your profit margin.
Ultimately, everything that occurs at your restaurant is a reflection of ownership and management. If something isn’t being done correctly, the question you must ask is, “What do the owners and managers need to do to fix the problem?” This isn’t suggesting that your managers will scrub the kitchen; rather, they need to put a framework in place to ensure the rest of your staff completes these tasks.
The first step in improving this process involves setting clear expectations. Your managers need to discuss these expectations with your staff and write them down so that there is a clear record of what needs to be done and who is expected to perform each task. This can even be as detailed as assigning a specific side-work task to each server station.
Setting clear side-work guidelines also provides you with something to measure your staff’s performance against. Instead of your manager saying that a particular employee is “lazy” or “isn’t doing a good job,” you will be able to identify specific tasks that your staff aren’t completing. You can then re-frame the conversation by asking your employee: “These are the five side-work tasks you were responsible for. Why hasn’t this task been completed?” By having clear guidelines, you’ll be able to measure your staff’s performance and identify opportunities for improvement.
There are certain things you can do to streamline the side-work tasks at your bar:
Bar-i has created a side-work template to help you make this process more efficient. We encourage you to click on the link below to access our side-work checklist.
There are certain things you should keep in mind when using our side-work checklist:
If you’d like to learn more about how Bar-i can help you streamline your operations and maximize profits, please contact us today to schedule a free consultation. We serve clients nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.