Apart from technical skills needed for profitability and good customer patronage in a food and beverage sector, certain interpersonal skills play vital, significant roles.
Such skills relate to specific points of service, addressing customers, and dealing with incidents. This article focuses on interpersonal skills expected to be possessed by workers in a food and beverage center.
Understanding Interpersonal Skills in Food and Beverage Service
Interpersonal skills in food and beverage service center on interactions between customers and food and beverage service staff. All other interactions are secondary to, and the result of, the primary interaction of customers and staff.
This has implications for how customers are treated. Conversations between customers and staff override conversations between staff. When in conversation with customers, staff should not:
- Talk to other members of staff without first excusing themselves from the customer.
- Interrupt interactions between customers and staff, but should wait until there is a suitable moment to catch the attention of the other member of staff so that they may excuse themselves from the customer first.
- Serve customers while carrying on a conversation between themselves.
- Talk across a room, either to each other or to customers. Customers should always be made to feel cared for and not as though they are an intrusion into the operation.
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Interpersonal Skills for Specific Points of Service in Food and Beverage
The list below shows the interpersonal skills needed at particular points during the service:
1. Showing customers to their table: Always lead and walk with them at their pace.
2. Seating customers: Ladies first, descending in age, unless the host is a lady.
3. Handling coats/wraps: Handle with obvious care.
4. Handling menus/wine lists for customers: Offer the list the right way round for the customer and wait for the customer to take it.
5. Opening and placing a napkin: Open carefully, do not shake it like a duster, place it on the customer’s lap after saying “excuse me” to the customer.
6. Offering water or rolls: Say, for example, “Excuse me, sir/madam, may I offer you a bread roll?”
7. Offering accompaniments: Only offer them if they are at the table. Offering them when they are not at the table usually implies, “I will get them if they are really wanted!”
8. Serving and clearing: Always say “Excuse me” before serving or clearing and “thank you” after finishing with each customer.
9. Explaining food and beverage items: Use terms the customer understands, not technical terms such as turned vegetable or purée. Use terms that make the item sound attractive, such as casserole, not stew, creamed or puréed potatoes, not mashed. Do not use abbreviations, for example, “veg.”
10. MmTalking to customers: Only talk when standing next to them and looking at them.
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Addressing Customers Appropriately in Food and Beverage Service
“Sir” or “Madam” should be used when the customer’s name is unknown; otherwise, the customer should be referred to as “Mr. Smith” or “Miss Jones,” etc. First names should only be used in less formal operations and where the customer has explicitly indicated that this is acceptable.
If the customer has a title, appropriate use should be made of the correct form of address. Greetings such as “good morning” and “good evening” should be used upon receiving customers or when the member of staff first comes into contact with the customer, for example, when lounge service staff attend people already seated in the lounge.
Handling Incidents in Food and Beverage Operations
When an unforeseen incident arises, it must be addressed promptly and efficiently without causing more disturbance than necessary to other customers.
Quick action will often soothe an irate customer and ensure their return to the establishment. Complaints, of whatever nature, should be referred immediately to the supervisor.
Delay may cause confusion, and the situation may be wrongly interpreted if not dealt with straight away. In the case of accidents, a report of the incident must be kept and signed by those involved.
This article highlights the importance of interpersonal skills in food and beverage service operations. These skills have implications for how customers are treated.
Conversations between customers and staff override conversations between staff. When in conversation with customers, staff should not:
- Talk to other members of staff without first excusing themselves from the customer.
- Interrupt interactions between customers and staff, but should wait until there is a suitable moment to catch the attention of the other member of staff so that they may excuse themselves from the customer first.
- Serve customers while carrying on a conversation between themselves.
- Talk across a room, either to each other or to customers. Customers should always be made to feel cared for and not as though they are an intrusion into the operation.
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