In any industry, companies strive to hire employees who they can train to be knowledgeable about the company’s products and/or services. Unfortunately for the food and beverage service industry, a large percentage of employees are falling short in this category. Would it surprise you to know that over 70% of servers and bartenders can’t tell you what the main ingredient used to make Bourbon is? How about the fact that over 80% can’t tell you the difference between an ale and a lager? Here’s another one: Less than 5% can tell you why Champagne has bubbles? These examples were part of a 20-question quiz on beer, wine and distilled spirits used by Vino 101 in a recent survey of 500 foodservice employees in the Mid-Atlantic. If you are a restaurant or bar operator, the findings of this survey should be very disturbing.

The Hard Data

Vino 101, a provider of on-line beverage training sought to find out exactly how knowledgeable bar and restaurant employees were when it came to the actual products they were serving. As mentioned previously, 500 people were surveyed which consisted of a diverse cross-section of the industry. Servers and bartenders participated based on anonymity and were employed by family-style chains, taverns, nightclubs, and fine-dining restaurants. They were chosen at random to answer 20 questions that asked about basic facts regarding beer, wine, and liquor. The goal of the survey was not to “trick” people into getting the wrong answers; rather, the purpose was to get a general idea of how much these employees know about the basics of alcoholic beverages. Here are the results:

• The average score was 53%. That would be an ‘F’ on any high school or college exam.
• Only 13 people got every question correct. Keep in mind, these are non-specific questions regarding products that those surveyed work with every day. An example would be: “Is Budweiser an ale or lager?” This is a 50/50 question about a top-selling beer that only 62% of those surveyed got correct.
• Thankfully, no one got every question incorrect. The lowest score was 15%.
• Overall, people faired better on the wine questions than the beer or liquor questions.

Now what does this all mean? Quite honestly, it means that most of the employees in the foodservice industry know very little about the products they are recommending, selling, making and serving.

Get back to the basics

Now that we have established the problem, let’s explore some possible solutions. Of course, everything starts with the way employees are trained. If they are never introduced to a certain piece of knowledge, there is no way for them to understand that particular concept. So the most obvious solution would be to train them thoroughly on the entire drink program of the restaurant where they work. This seems simple enough, yet every time I talk to a restaurant manager and ask “Are your employees trained on beer, wine, and liquor?” their response is, “Of course.” Then I ask to see their training manual and all I can find about the bar is a list of brands they serve and the ingredients in their signature cocktails. How exactly is an employee supposed to know anything about a brand of gin if they have no idea how gin is made?

For me, the statistics of the Vino 101 survey yielded not-so-surprising results. The overriding goal here is to help establishments understand that the large majority of foodservice employees are under-trained when it comes to alcoholic beverages. In the face of this information, I recommend operators go out and do the research: find out what kind of beverage training is most appropriate for your establishment. However, before doing that, I strongly suggest you conduct a short internal quiz of your own about basic beverage knowledge with your employees. See where your employees are in terms of what they know about the bar. I think you will be very surprised at how little they know about something that comprises a large part of your revenue stream and their income. I see no reason why your employees should know everything about the food you serve, but very little about the drinks. It is all about the guest experience, and if anything is lacking, the guest suffers.

There are online training programs and other resources that will help you fill in the holes and give your employees a basic understanding of beer, wine, and liquor. You may also want to look into alcohol certification programs to make sure your employees are not only knowledgeable about drinks, but that the alcohol service you conduct is safe and responsible. Once you have addressed the full education of your employees, covering company processes, food and beverage, I can guarantee you will see the positive results- both in the revenue column as well as in the quality of the service your operation provides.