Front of House Service Training

Transcript

Trainer: So when it comes to orders, once the customers have given you your order, you have confirmed it and put it through on the POS system, that will go through to the kitchen, and the chefs will start preparing the order.

From there, you will collect it from the pass and bring it over to the table. You just want to make sure when you’re putting your order into the POS system, that you’ve double-checked all of the allergens and all of the dietary restrictions to make sure that nothing is getting missed.

When it comes to splitting bills, there’s a couple ways that you can do it. Sometimes you can do split debit payments, or people will want to split with cash. When I worked at the airport, it was very common for people to want to pay with the rest of their cash that they have and then put the rest onto their card. The easiest way to do this is just collecting the cash, inputting the amount of cash put in, and then paying the rest through on their debit card on the debit machine.

When it comes to refunds, sometimes it’s easier to just push it through on the machine. I always recommend just giving a cash refund where possible, or you can also go through the system, find their docket, and do the refund through there.

When you’re given notes, when you’re given bills from a customer, you always want to make sure that you receive them. When you’re counting the money, leave the bills on the top of the counter so that you know what bills that they have given you already. Sometimes you may have a situation where a customer will give you a bill and say, “No, I gave you a different amount of bill.” So just keeping them on the counter, make sure that you ensure the amount that they gave you. I will leave the bills on the table, collect the amount of change that they need, and I will hand it to them, and I will count it out. So if it was $64.50, I would hand them three $20 bills. Two, four, $60, five, and here’s $0.50, so that they know that they’re getting the full total.

When it comes to tipping etiquette, some places will pool their tips. Some people will just say that you can keep the tips that are given directly to you, but that’ll just be depending on where you’re working. Some places just don’t accept tips. But it just really depends on what establishment you’re working at and what rules they have.

During busy shifts, I always recommend having set specific roles for all of your team members so that when it gets busy, everyone knows where they need to be and what they need to be doing. For example, in the cafe that I worked at, it was a bar and a cafe, so we always had someone that was able to do the bar and do the till. And then we also had someone that was able to do coffees, take the coffees to the table, and then we also had someone that was available to run the food from the kitchen to the tables and clear the tables as well to make sure that we had a steady workflow. Some days you might have extra people, which is fantastic. We always need extra hands for dishes. But it’s always good to make sure that everyone knows what they’re supposed to be doing before it gets busy, before the chaos starts.

Another important role of the person that is going to be working on the floor is to be constantly watching the people around you, making sure, “Oh, does that person need a refill on their drink? Oh, that baby just dropped their knife on the floor or their fork on the floor. We need to go and deal with that.” So that you can make sure that things are running and flowing efficiently and making sure that no one is missing out. Because it’s a bad feeling when you can see someone waving in the back corner and you haven’t seen them for a minute. So it’s always good to just keep an eye out and make sure that no one is missing anything on their tables.