A standard your newest server can deliver on a Saturday night.
Taught once, the standard breaks down in the same steps of service every time: the greet that comes late, the check-back that never comes two bites in, the course that arrives before anyone has told the table what is coming.
The certification test-out is where a server proves the standard. A certified manager who has not trained that server sits as a guest, times every step from the greet to dessert, changes an order midway, sends a dish back and keeps asking until the server runs out of answers.
Trainers put forward only the servers they would work beside on tomorrow’s shift, and the certifier’s signature puts the restaurant’s name behind that server. The result is pass or retake, and a pass moves the server up the ladder toward trainer.
Every manager reviews two servers a shift against about twenty-five behaviors, from a greet inside forty-five seconds to pre-bussing without interrupting the table, and goes over the notes with each server after the shift.
Tell us what’s breaking.
Bring your steps of service and the last mystery shops.
Book a call with Jon (opens in a new tab)Start with an install
The install builds the steps of service, the training path and the server reviews for one concept. This engagement adds a read of the bar’s ticket times, guest recognition, the private-event standard and kitchen station certification.
A standard slips by manager before it slips by unit.
Observation and guest scores get tracked by manager as well as by unit. When the team holds the standard on one manager’s shifts and loses it on another’s, the coaching starts with that manager.
When a whole unit’s scores slide, the director of operations spends that week’s visit on it, with an action plan by position that names who does what and by when.
The steps a mystery shop finds missed become that month’s pre-shift topics, one step opening each pre-shift, and the next month’s shop shows whether they held. Managers name that step when they see it done on the shift and coach it when they see it missed.
Example scope of work
Examples of what the scope can include; yours is written to the problem you bring.
The standard
- Service audit on live shifts: the steps of service timed at the table, and bar ticket times read check by check, before any standard is rewritten.
- Service values written as behaviors: the named values every position is hired, trained, reviewed and certified against, taught one a day in training.
- Steps of service in three parts: the start, the middle and the finish, each step a behavior with a time standard, from marking the table to presenting the check.
- Table-card system for the greet: the host leaves a card at the table’s edge until someone greets the table, and the first team member to pass takes the greet, so no guest waits on the server whose section it is.
- Observation form for manager reviews: each reviewed server scored on the behaviors and read against the same shift’s check average, beverage sales, comps and voids.
- Large-party and private-event standard: an event order complete enough for a new manager to run, locked ahead, with each server’s part in the set, the service and the breakdown written on it.
- Guest recognition from table conversations: what managers learn noted on the guest’s reservation profile, and the thank-you cards written from it, each reviewed by the GM.
Certification
- Training and certification by position: host, server, bartender and support trained day by day by certified trainers, certified at a test-out, up to certified trainer.
- Kitchen station certification: a station manual and a certifying chef’s sign-off for each critical station before a cook works it alone.
- Trainer coverage by position: certified trainers counted against each position’s headcount, so thin coverage shows before the next hiring wave.
How it runs: a standing weekly call with your managers, and time on site where the work needs it.
Fees are set by the scope and the value of the outcome, agreed before the work starts, with any time on site built in, never by the hour, the day or the visit.
The order of the work
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 01 | Your managers write the standard with us, from what the live-shift audits found |
| 02 | One unit runs it before the rest see it |
| 03 | Each manager is observed coaching before they certify anyone |
| 04 | Done when the observation score holds without us |
If this is the problem, bring it.
The call works out where the fix starts.
Book a call with Jon (opens in a new tab)Further reading
Cutting labor cost without cutting the standardCommon questions
Is this a one-time training rollout or an ongoing engagement?
Will veteran staff resist being certified against a new standard?
Won’t scripted standards make service feel robotic?
Who runs it
RANGE was founded by Jon Peck, who spent twenty years running multi-unit restaurant groups: eight brands built and scaled, twelve openings across six concepts in three years, and more than $100 million of annual P&L owned.