Question:
Dear Advice Guy,
We don’t serve a lot of wine by the bottle, maybe a bottle or two per night at most. I typically open it, pour the first glass, and leave the bottle on the table for the guests to serve themselves. I have a new manager who asked us to change to leaving the wine at the server station and pouring it for the guest. He says it’s a rule for proper service. I say it slows me down and is ridiculous at a more casual place like ours. What is proper?
– Server, gastropub
Answer:
Having clear service guidelines for your operation is always a good thing. It creates consistency and comfort for the guest, takes guesswork out of service, and ensures that the operation’s standards for hospitality are met.
But service guidelines are not necessarily transferrable operation to operation. They are situational depending on the concept. I agree that in some fine-dining restaurants, having wine poured by the server throughout the meal is a typical practice, or “proper” service for that concept. It creates an atmosphere of luxury for the guest, allows the server to have some control over pacing, and offers a more subtle way to touch a table to check how things are going than to ask, “How is everything?”
But “proper service” is situational. In my opinion, applying this same level of service to a gastropub would be stilted and cumbersome. Further, if you do not have the staffing or systems in place to deliver on regularly pouring the wine, you risk frustrating the empty-glassed guest and losing additional beverage sales.
My advice is for every restaurant to create their own guidelines of service, in collaboration with employees and informed by guest feedback, to be sure you are delivering the type of hospitality that works for your operation as well as the guest expectations. Then train everyone on these standards (including new managers) so there is no confusion. “Rules” for service are really guidelines—it is not that they are made to be broken but need to be aligned with the vibe you are creating in the restaurant.
More on wine service here.
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