26 Degrees in the Shade . . .

Write It Down Before You Lose It – Bar Restaurant – Spain

Want to Lose Profit?

Bar Restaurant – Spain

After 24 years running my own Bar restaurant on the Costa del Sol, Spain, if I have learned one thing that is more important than anything else, it is this:

Every single time you serve a drink, a portion of garlic bread or say a pizza,

write it down on the customers bill immediately.

And

Train your staff from their very first day to stick rigidly to this system. The system is not only for security, as I talked about in an earlier post.

During my first two years here on the Costa del Sol, Spain, I lost count of how many times I remembered something that should have gone onto a customers bill, after they had paid and left my restaurant and then it was too late to do anything about it.

It’s not a nice feeling to have say cooked a pizza served it washed up and then realize that due to my own lack of a system, I have let the customer leave without paying for it and probably, that meant that I’d made zero profit on that table.

For the following 22 years I have written (and my staff too) every drink every food item down as soon as it is ordered never mind served.

In twenty four years I have never had a customer return to my bar restaurant to pay for something I had forgotten to charge them for.

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Does Always Telling the Truth Lose You Customers – Bar Restaurant

Sometimes You Must Lie to Survive – Bar Restaurant

Running a Bar Restaurant on the Costa Del Sol is a business and in business if you always tell the truth you’ll go bust!

It’s unfortunate that that is how life is, but it’s what you have to do.

Here’s an example of a typical dialogue that might occur between you and a customer who is unhappy about her daughter’s degree of liberty or the type of friends she is keeping:

Customer: Hi Graham! Was my daughter in last night?

Me: Yes! She popped in for a while. She was looking lovely.

Customer: Who was she with?

(Now she was with Sion, but you know that if you tell mum that, she’ll go straight back to her daughter and tell her and You’ll be stuck smack bang, right in the middle of a domestic. Here’s what you have to say in order to keep the peace:)

Me: Oh! she was with a group and I was really rushed off my feet and didn’t really notice who they were.

OK you haven’t scored a great hit with the young lady’s Mum, but you have diplomatically kept yourself impartial and importantly, you wont lose either the Mother or the daughter as customers in your bar restaurant.

As soon as you’ve made your diplomatic reply, change the subject or excuse yourself by saying something along the following lines:

Oooops! I’ve got something in the oven, must rush!

In such situations it’s better for business if you keep your answers short and vague.