I am opening a brewpub/wine bar this summer, and we have been going round and round over what kind of service we should offer as far as waitstaff goes. Things are changing in the industry so much, and we are struggling with how much counter service we should have compared to table service with servers. I have lots of questions, respect this board’s opinions greatly - and would like to know - what would you do?
Some quicky points to make -
We will be brewing five beers in house (mainly Bavarian styled lagers) and serving 5 more beers from various German and Czech Republic breweries. 10 beers total, all ‘old world’ in style. No IPA’s will be served.
8 wines by the glass, all $6.00 per glass, mainly Italian & French Midi country wines. 40-50 wines by the bottle, all under $40 with (again) an emphasis on Euro country wines with a smattering of California’s basic varietals (Zin/Cab etc).
The menu is split 50/50. We will have Smoked Bratwurst, currywurst, Landjaeger, our famous polish sausage sandwich (split with a pickle spear, swiss cheese, mustard on home made Caraway Rye bread), pickled eggs on the bar (served on a bed of stick pretzels) as well as peanuts in the shell, hard pretzels and pub pizzas made for us by a pizzeria in Northern Minnesota -
The pub has a 20 foot bar with 12 bar stools, and another 21 four top tables - close to 100 capacity.
The other half of the menu is country pate & duck terrine plates (from d’Artagnan in New Jersey) and assorted cheese plates.
So, it’s not a serious menu - just a fun pub menu.
As far as employees go, my initial thought is to have every employee do everything. Be able to tend bar, wait on tables, make all the sandwiches and produce the pate and cheese plates. Kind of like a starting basketball team with 5 guards. But I am getting pressure from the inside to go all counter service. I feel that with the extensive wine program, I am going to need servers because that brings in a different demographic than the beer lovers.
And here are my questions -
What do you want when you walk into a wine bar and sit at a table?
Does it annoy you to have to go up to the bar to order drinks? Food?
Does price make a difference? $6.00 wines by the glass is a bargain price, but what if we were serving $12.00 glasses of wine?
If we do have counter service, would you tip the bartender, even though you are doing all the work?
Sounds great - good luck with it! I’m sure the music as well as the food, beer, and wine will be great.
I see why you’re pondering the questions you are and asking opinions. This is nothing you haven’t thought of but the general rule-of-thumb would be table service at the four tops but I think price does matter and given the reasonable cost you can get away with a cafeteria approach. The only insight I have is to make sure that your model is obvious and clear to the customers - I resent a local brewpub for allowing me to sit and wait for (nonexistent) table service. I’d have had no issue ordering and picking up at the bar but wish someone had had the good graces to tell me to do that.
Very difficult for anyone in most parts of the US to address these questions as the audience may be very different.
For what it’s worth, most small craft breweries here in Southern California are order at the counter. People don’t expect table service much for food. In some I’ve been to you get an order number on a card and someone finds your table with your order. At some they give you one of those square receives that light up:vibrate when your food is ready for you to pick up at a counter. Most, though, don’t do the same with beer. Beer is order at the bar and pick up right then.
Wine bars, on the other hand tend to be more full service here. Maybe that’s because most decent wine here is twice or more your $6 glass price.
It’s worth noting that most of the brew pubs do offer some wine selections, but the focus is totally on the beer. Also it’s worth saying that, where I am, craft beer is really a complex almost arty thing often brewed with additions of fruit, herbs, and other flavors. One brewery we went to recently had 25 offerings, with perhaps 75% in that ‘lots of flavors’ category.
You’ll sell more typically with waitstaff, but you gotta be able to find waitstaff ( and pay them). Am I annoyed? Not if I understand the deal going in.
$6 is a bargain. You have some fudge up to maybe $9, imo.
yes, people tip bartenders for minimal work
Your staffing plan to have general servers might be a bad idea. You’ll have more people in the till, you’ll have a lot of wasted motion on a busy night and a lack of accountability. I don’t know your workflow/space, but You don’t want people crossing paths on Friday or Saturday night. My advice is to start with stations and crosstrain later.
Minnesota has a hundred beer tap rooms, and not one offers wine (a couple offer food). And, there is not one decent wine bar in the state (It’s still 1977 in Minnesota). Because I have over 40 years in the fine wine industry, we have jumped through a dozen hoops to get wine/food and a brewpub license. Our beers tend to attract an older crowd anyways (mainly because of the history of our label - Minnesota’s first beer dating back to 1848), so the wine and food fits that demographic more.
Since we have a menu that is easy to serve, I want to have two servers/kitchen people on during busy hours. One server can handle 15 tables with some side help,
Chris, you know how much wine by the glass is overpriced in the state of Minnesota. I can pour some pretty wonderful wines for $6 a glass. Trebbiano, Montepulciano, Garnacha, Ugni Blanc, Midi Sauvignon Blanc, and they all will fall in the normal wine bar markup. I want that to be one of our legacies; affordable wine by the glass. Now I will always have a couple special selections in the $8-$10 range by the glass as well, but we are sticking to the 4 whites and 4 reds by the glass for $6 each -
And you are right, we are going to have bartenders and wait staff separate to start and cross train -
Sounds so much like a place I’d like to go with friends … and I’d be so happy if we could just settle into a table and have waitstaff serve. I think the pop up and get more from the bar is more of a younger demographic style (more whole place becomes a party to mingle?) I know we order more when servers come by “one more?” so often leads to sure so easily.
Yeah, wine is a rip-off here. It’s bizarre how you can get world class beers everywhere and mostly wine programs are almost always ignored. Who is your rep for your wines? Sounds like Stefano Foligna’s style???
And count on 75+% credit cards in your pro forma and with your service plan. This surprised me.
Depending on your POS you can augment your counter service with a wandering server using a wireless handheld. I liked that idea as a way to make the “second beer/glass of wine” easier for the guest. Our system just didn’t support it.
If your aiming at young crowd then pay as you go bar service is fine but for older demo ie 40+ then table service is important. Another consideration is if your expecting tables to turn quickly or not, if im buying multiple rounds then i expect to use a cc and have table service, one drink turns bar is fine
We have a ton of wine bars in NY with food service. The customers are largely NYers… and I am a customer… not ITB… so take my advice for what it is worth.
Ordering at the bar at quieter times is no big deal… bringing their own wine back to the 4 tops also no big deal. But if I order food at the bar I want it delivered to the table (so the prep person can run it out??)
The beer snobbery would turn me off, FWIW. While I like Belgians and the like just fine, “No IPA served here” is anti-snob-snobbery and I probably wouldn’t go. Why can’t you have one “guest” rotating tap and serve a local beer and allow it occasionally be IPAs, or other “mainstream” beers? You wouldn’t be “compromising” your clearly Euro-centric bent, but would give people the ability to drink what they’d like. It’s only one tap, after all, and it’s more welcoming. Right or wrong for your palate, LOTS of people like IPAs.
1.) I’d like to be welcomed by someone, even a passing server, and told, “Sit anywhere you like…” so I don’t linger waiting for a host to seat us. Also, tables can be close and should be able to be easily move to accommodate larger groups that want to sit together.
2.) I like to be served. Having to order at a the bar makes it feel like a tavern or bar and less like a brewpub. If you’re serving food especially, I think there should be table service.
3.) If you’re a beer-first place, I’d sell cheaper wine. If you’re a wine bar with a few beers, I’d have no problem seeing higher prices wines.
4.) Of course I’d tip the bartender - just like any other restaurant employee that serves me.
I was a bartender for many years, and I agree with Chris above. I did not want ANYONE behind my bar unless it was another bartender. If I am responsible for the till, I don’t want everyone to have access.
Also, as far as the food is concerned, I think it is a bad idea also to have everyone preparing food. A server can do sidework/prepare salads/assemble a cheese plate, but anything more than that would turn into a clusterf*ck. A restaurant/bar should strive for consistency, and everyone doing everything would muck that up. Let people do what they are best at.
There are a lot of bars out here without servers, and that is fine, but it kind of depends on how large your space is, and also how much food you anticipate serving. If you have a larger table come in, having to pick up their own food could become cumbersome. Also, yes, you can up your sales with servers.
This market (Minnesota), is a bit behind the times craft beer wise. Your average pub has 75% of their tap handles dedicated to IPA’s, and you would be absolutely shocked to see SO many beer bars that don’t have a single lager on tap. On top of that, there are well over 100 craft brewers in the State of Minnesota, and maybe two that concentrate on Lagers.
While we wouldn’t exactly put a sign up that says “No IPA’s served here”, it is a running joke at beer festivals when the lines in front of our booth get bigger and bigger as the patrons can’t find a single beer they like out of the 50+ beer booths at a typical beer festival ("…everything’s so bitter!"). We are going with a Bavarian theme, with a few kinky things thrown in (Rauchbier, Roggenbier), but staying strictly lager.
AND LINDA - Thanks for the input. I know what you mean, but we aren’t serving hard liquor, just beer and wine, so bartender/servers are easier to find. We will have one designated kitchen person doing the cheese, pate plates and sandwiches. So it’s just the front of the house that needs the dual people.
Only thing I would add Thomas is I traveled for work for 20 years and places like this are where I liked to eat. One thing that always turned me off was sitting at a table and having to go to the bar to order both drinks and food. Most every bar did not have a “space” for this. I always felt as though I was trying to get in between two bar patrons and I always felt I had to wait while the bartender served those at the bar.
doing that multiple times in a trip, for a drink or two and a food choice, then again to pay was not my favorite.
