Stully: food, beer and hospitality

(I’m not going to be “rah rah” for tipping culture, but I think it brings out differences in service that are worth mentioning).

Last year I had a small consulting project where I worked with a tasting room at a Dutch brewery that needed a new set of eyes and a bit of energy to help it reach its real potential. It was a nice, big, inviting space, and the brewery had solid product and great branding. Outside of adjusting the look/feel of the physical space, I also needed to sort of re-train and motivate staff to elevate their service game a bit….vs. what they were doing which was just waiting behind the bar for people to make orders. Every once in a while they would get out from behind the bar and touch tables and interact with guests, but only when the amount of empty glasses/dishes became unsightly, and often when someone from upper management or ownership was in the building. Long story short, nobody was “selling”, they were merely pouring.

If this was a bar I managed back home the first response would be a “beer training” meeting with employees where we’d not only go over the ins and outs of the product we serve but how to sell it. I made it very clear to my staff that part of my salary was a monthly revenue-based bonus, and that the more beer they sold, the more money I made, and the more money the business made. But this was an easy conversation because my staff made an average of 18-22% on tips, so if they could sell another 100 bucks worth of beer in a night, they were almost guaranteed another 20 bucks in their pocket. In this scenario the customers are happy with more attentive service, employees are happy with an extra couple bucks in their pocket, I’m happy with a good night of revenue, and owners are happy as well. (We can have plenty of discussions about tipping culture in the US, this is just an immediate, simple observation).

The entire time I was trying to motivate the Dutch employees with similar beer knowledge and sales techniques, I could only think about how while this would likely have a positive effect on the business, the average employee wouldn’t see any benefit from it. As I said above, employees back home are a bit more attentive to new sales techniques because it puts money in their pockets as well. Here in The Netherlands….not so much. They might see a small uptick in tips, but it’s not to the tune of an extra 20+ euros a shift or so like I’d see back home. I honestly had no idea I’d actually be able to motivate these workers (now or in the future) to give that extra 15-20% effort that I know for a fact would drive revenue for the business. Seriously, what was the benefit for them, especially in a place that is not eager to get rid of staff unless it’s completely necessary?

(look up things about motivating horeca staff in the Netherlands without tips)

I tried to work with upper management so their tasting room manager could have revenue targets where maybe they (or even employees) get a bonus if they hit or exceed an agreed upon number. Something, literally anything to help motivate them to raise the bar in terms of service/experience in the tasting room. It didn’t totally fall on deaf ears, but the general feel to the conversation was “meh”. Even after a year with the new manager and a drastic improvement in revenue, they were still lukewarm to the idea. From a pure business perspective, I didn’t get it. Why would you not want to motivate your manager to keep driving revenue?

I’ve also read things from Dutch hospitality experts and the discussions about getting their staff to go the extra mile just comes from a place of “rah rah” corporate “doesn’t it feel great to do a good job” bullshit. I’ll be honest in saying that I like to do a good job, and the reason I’ve spent so much time in hospitality is that I sincerely enjoy taking care of people, but it’s soooo much better when you can *ALSO* attach a value to that. It’s very satisfying to get a $40 tip on a $100 tab because you know the guest was more than happy to reward you for what they saw as a top notch experience.