5 Steps to Serve a Table

FICTIONAL CASE STUDY: 

Context: Seaside Grill is a popular restaurant with both locals and tourists due to its reputation for offering delicious seafood, a fun atmosphere and exceptional service.  Seaside Grill is expanding and will open two new restaurants soon. With the expansion, Seaside Grill will be hiring many new servers.  Seaside Grill wants to ensure that the same exceptional service is offered at all restaurants.

Challenges: Managers at Seaside Grill recently reported an increased number of complaints from mentor servers and questions from new servers regarding expectations when serving.  Managers have also noted a slight (10%) increase in guest complaints regarding service. To investigate further, a survey was given to all servers about sequence of service and best practice expectations. Survey results show that performance gap exists due to lack of knowledge of the basic steps to service and best practices that servers are expected to follow as outlined by the Seaside Grill Handbook.  Due to the lack of knowledge by mentor servers, skills of all servers are now lax and quality of service is regressing. Training of new hires is not uniform resulting in confusion and hindrance of server skills amongst new servers.  Recent hires say that knowledge of server expectations regarding steps to service and best practices before working live in the restaurant alongside a mentor server would be helpful to them in developing skills that meet expectations.  

Solutions: This training program’s purpose is to teach servers the basic steps to service and best practices used at Seaside Grill to ensure uniform service from all servers at Seaside Grill, provide uniform mentor-training of new servers and prepare newly hired servers for the next step of training which is to work with a mentor server live in the restaurant.