Don’t Drink Your Profits
Bar Restaurant in Spain
When you and your staff are working you need to drink, but make sure that you are not drinking your profits away.
If you drink alcoholic drinks and you allow your bar staff to do the same over a week it comes to a lot of money and simply stated, is really bad business.
Here’s how we get around the problem
Drink the odd alcoholic drink when you are invited by a customer, but make sure it’s a weak G&T or a shandy or something similar. You don’t want to get drunk whilst you are running a business.
Staff: We don’t allow our staff to drink alcohol whilst they are working.
They are at work and getting paid for it. We do allow them to accept a weak alcoholic drink if a persistent customer insists, but we make it clear that it must be a Tinto de Verano or a small shandy.
Drinks for Ourselves and Our Staff
We drink mineral water and sometimes Fanta or Coke and if we were to use the small 33cl bottles, it would mount up over time, so we buy the big 2L bottles from the cash and carry and we use these solely for staff
If you follow these tips, you’ll make a lot more profit and be sober enough to run your business well.
Communicate Your Business Ideas to Your Clients
When running a business it is very important to communicate whatever you are planning to do within your business in the immediate future to your clients.
I personally just imagine that I’m the client and then ask myself.” What sort of activities would I like my host to inform me about in advance?”
e.g. Here are some of the things that annoy me as a client when I am not kept in touch with scheduled of forthcoming events:
- Arriving at one of my favourite bars for breakfast and finding it closed with not even a note advising when normal service is to be reinstated. (If you’re going to take an impromptu day/week off, your regulars will really appreciate the fact if you tell them personally in advance and they’ll be there on your doorstep the day you reopen. Apart from regulars there will be prospective clients who are staying in your area and would like to try your bar, if you leave a neat well presented note stuck on the inside of your main window announcing when you will be resuming normal service, the chances are that they will come to see you when you return.)
- Finding out that a raffle has been held (usually for charity) and that I was not offered a chance to participate.
- Finding out too late that a coach trip to a site of interest has been arranged and that it is sold out.
At the end of the day like most things, it boils down to common sense. Customers like to feel included not excluded. Another way of putting it is that people are easily offended.
If you keep all your clients informed as to your forthcoming events schedule, either by putting up neat notices on the walls /windows or by telling them directly, they will be very appreciative of your thought and effort and your turn over will increase accordingly.
