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Of course, the function of a bartender is to make drinks, but the bartender’s profession is in hospitality. If you patrons aren’t leaving happy, your pockets will end up empty. When it comes to increasing bartender tips, your restaurant customer service matters just as much as your drink skills.
It’s no surprise that making better tips as a bartender depends on your ability to entertain your customers.
Thanks to the wisdom of Reddit, here are some popular tips and bartender tricks for making better tips as a bartender via increasing the happiness of your guests.
“Making drinks is easy. Making people happy is an art.”
Treat Your Guests Like Guests
This might seem obvious, but this was the overarching sentiment of all the advice on Reddit. Even when they’re getting rowdy, your customers are your guests at the end of the day, and most bartenders on a variety of threads point to treating them as such as the way to great tips.
“Be a host. Shops have customers, bars have guests. Treat everyone as if they were invited to a party in your own home,” notes Reddit user DeadParrot21. The user continues by explaining that what makes bars stand out from drinking at home is the experience, and that’s what bartenders are really selling. “Making drinks is easy. Making people happy is an art,” they conclude.
Sharpen Your Speed in High Volume Environments
In some spots, quality time spent with your customers is what will earn you better tips, but in some places, like high volume clubs, it’s all a numbers game. When the music’s too loud for you to hold a conversation with them anyway, you’ve got to reduce your customers’ wait times in order to bring home the dough. In situations like this, one Reddit user puts it this way: “…you need to push out as many drinks as possible. You are looking to increase the volume as much as you can. All of the little tips add up over the course of the night.”
“Shops have customers, bars have guests. Treat everyone as if they were invited to a party in your own home.”
Reddit Bartender Tips
In order to pick up the pace, the same user advises mastering helping multiple customers at a time by making the drinks for one group while taking the orders of another, for example. Keeping all of your drink making supplies in arms reach as best you can is also advised—that way you won’t waste time running to the other end of the bar and back.
Listen and Pay Attention
If you’re on the other end of the volume spectrum, listening to your guests—I mean really listening—is the ticket. One Reddit user explains that bartenders can get better tips by “listening to the customers at the counter. Some of them have good stories, some have bad, [but] all you need to do is listen” to increase your cash at the end of the night.
If listening attentively isn’t your strong suit, there are other ways that you can show your guests that you’re paying attention to them. “Remember what people are drinking [and] ask, ‘same again?’ when they come to the bar. Try to use the customer’s name and smile,” advises Reddit user Dusty_Clock.
Give Free Drinks
Bartending Reddit
While not every place allows giving free drinks to customers, most do. If you work in a spot that’s O.K. with it, make the most of it. According to the Reddit user FreeSoloing, throwing in an occasional free drink and letting the guest know that the round is on you is the key. “It increases the customer’s experience and will make them more likely to come back. One free $5 drink can lead to making a customer a repeat customer [who] ends up spending [hundreds of dollars] at the bar [over time],” the user explains. FreeSoloing also adds that, even if the free drink doesn’t lead to repeat business, it’s likely to at least make them tip you the same amount that the drink cost.
Bartender Reddit Funny
Tell us, what are some of the tricks you use to make more tips at the bar?