Lack Of Employee Training Can Ruin An Otherwise Excellent Business

I visited a restaurant this afternoon that I had been wanting to try out. They have an outside garden set-up for relaxed eating and I like that, especially on such a beautiful day. The restaurant features their own microbrewery and they serve up about 18 or so house beers. I had no insight about any of them as they were not common brands. So, I asked the waitress a few direct questions about the various brews only to get a giggle and a remark that she really doesn’t drink beer and she doesn’t know anything about them. We were left on our own to guess what we would like.

It gets worse.

We reviewed the menu and frankly, while delighted with the selections, my wife and I are the type of diners that ask questions in deciding what our selection will be and are really looking for opinions, advice, information and a bit of “consultation” about what will make us the happiest based on our likes and dislikes. It’s a typical conversation I would have with any waitress at any restaurant I would ever go to. To my shock and dismay, our waitress giggled again (I hate the giggle. Why hadn’t her parents taught her how to communicate I wondered.) and told us she didn’t know anything about the food other than the two specials as the management had let her taste them and they were great. That was it. That was all the help, insight, information or direction I was going to get. Once again, we were on our own.

The point is, this was a training issue. Clearly the management had no training program whatsoever and no understanding of what the waitress’s job is. This turned a potentially terrific experience into a laugh and a joke. The food was great but the waitress experience so inferior that the entire experience was marred. How simple it would be to teach the waitress about the different beers even if she did not drink. How easy to allow the waitress to taste the food so she can a speak from firsthand experience and have basic knowledge and information about the dishes so she could help (yes, help) the customers make the best choice possible for them. Is this too advanced? Is this not obvious?

How well is your staff trained? Ask yourself that question and then introduce a training program to upgrade your staff’s presentation. Get it done. It is critically important; the interface with your customers must be top-notch.