Guest.
“Tend to guests in a way which makes them feel Famous”
The first interaction with a guest occurs at the moment of their arrival - which also becomes a prime opportunity to begin building an exceptional relationship. A smile, eye contact, and a greeting are your strongest tools when building a positive first impression with the stranger that just happened to cross the threshold.
Hospitality as a trade has been around since the Ancient Greeks, who left behind the term Philoxenia, meaning “Love for a Stranger.” This word captures one of the most basic and inseparable human needs “to be loved and to love.”
When you work with people, your aim is to give strangers the most valuable thing you possess. A loving gesture in the form of a smile, of your time, of your willingness to satisfy their needs and especially in the form of your full and undisturbed attention. The goal is to welcome them not as strangers, but as friends and guests. Just as if they were simply visiting you at home. When you think of an ideal example of what hosting and therefore hospitality is, imagine the cosy comfort of your grandmother’s home.
From the instant you walk through the threshold of her home, her only, selfless and above all, honest aim is your utmost satisfaction. No matter what her physical or economic situation is, she tries to give you everything she has. She cooks and bakes whatever she can think of, packing food for you to take home, making a perfect cup of tea, coffee, and lemonade for you to sip on while she offers portions larger than life. All she offers up is filled with a limitless love only she can gift and grant you. As her guests, you choose to respect her rules because after all it is her home, and you being a visitor want to receive all the hospitality she gives without giving offence in return.
Respect, order, and goals are paramount, yet you need to keep in mind that humans are sentient beings. When you serve, do it with honesty, use your heart and be open to personalise a customer’s experience into something truly sacred and unique that could occur only between you and them. Or don’t that’s up to you. However, if you create an artificial, well performed and practised ruse, sooner or later the guest will call your bluff and their confidence in your relationship will falter and break. Sincerity towards a customer is crucial, yet being honest to yourself is as, if not more, important. If your heart doesn’t play a part in what you do and say, don’t do it.
Trust is the most solid and crucial pillar of your relationship with the guest on which you can build the entire course of their visit - visits. With it, you can offer a much better feeling of comfort. When trust is well established you can suggest and sell the products of your choice and, most importantly, create an evening full of unforgettable experiences under your direct influence. Let us not forget, however, that building trust is difficult and time-consuming, yet due to it being fragile, one misstep can tumble the tower you spent so long to construct.
You must become a beacon of credibility and reliability from the moment a guest decides to interact with you. Which is only possible if your self-confidence and preparation allow you to believe in what you say and trust in how you perform.
The biggest reward is meeting new people. You never know who and what awaits you on any given day, and how it will affect your life in turn. Be prepared to serve, to become impartial and to be there with them and for them in that given moment. Because, perhaps no one in their life cares about them, gives them their attention or love.
Listen, perceive, and respond. Establishing a bond in the environment of a bar is faster compared to those we build in our regular lives. That is precisely why you shouldn’t neglect emotions, or a hint. It’s the little things that really matter. Even if a crowd of people rolls in through the door, focus on one at a time as if it were just them that stepped through the threshold. You may never see that guest again, but your job is to use all your mental capabilities to establish a bond with this complete stranger, to build trust. Those little things are precisely what your guests will take away with them when they depart from your bar.
The essence of flawless Hospitality is:
Responding to a need, before the guests even realise they have it.
