Chapter 2 Staff Attributes, skills and knowledge

2.4 Essential technical skills
There are six essential technical food and beverage skills.

Watch a video on how to handle the plates and dishes

2.5 Interpersonal Skills
Each food and beverage establishment has external customers, those to whom the services are intended to and internal customers, those who bring the service to the external customers. In other words, internal customers are the personnel of the organization. The customer is impressed to the maximum when he/she witnesses the effective interpersonal skills and workflow among the internal customers.
Communication
Define what is communication
Communication is exchange of information by speaking, writing, seeing and/or some other channel. Channel is the medium over which the message is carried. Encoder; Decoder
Main types of communication
Face to face
Telephone
Written
Ask the students to define them
Dealing with Customers
The starting point for all good interpersonal skills is good manners: saying ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘I beg your pardon’; being pleasant to people; showing that you care about what they want and apologising for anything that has been unsatisfactory, such as having to wait.
When addressing customers, ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ should be used when the customer’s name is not known. If the name is known, then the customer should be referred to as ‘Mr Smith’ or ‘Miss Jones’, etc. First names should only be used in less formal operations and where the customer has explicitly indicated that this is acceptable. If the customer has a title, then appropriate use should be made of the correct form of address (for further information on forms of address, see Section 11.4, p.360).
Dealing with customers during service
- Showing customers to their table: always lead and walk with them at their pace.
- Seating customers: ladies first, descending in age unless the host is a lady.
- Handling coats/wraps: handle with obvious care.
- Handing menus/wine lists to customers: offer the list the right way round, open for the
customer and wait for the customer to take it.
- Opening and placing a napkin: open carefully, do not shake it like a duster, place it on
the customer’s lap after saying ‘excuse me’ to the customer.
- Talking to customers: only talk when standing next to them and looking at them.
- Offering water or rolls: say, for example, ‘Excuse me Sir/Madam, may I offer you a bread roll?’
- Explaining food and beverage items: use terms the customer understands, not technical terms such as turned vegetable or pane. Use terms that make the item sound attractive such as casserole not stew, creamed or purée potatoes not mashed. Do not use abbreviations, for example, ‘veg’.
- Being culturally aware: meeting the needs of customers from other cultures will affect the ways in which staff interact with them (see note on cultural awareness in Section 2.2, p.27).
In addition staff need to be aware of the dietary requirements of the various religious faiths
(see Section 4.4, p.104.)
- Serving and clearing: always say ‘Excuse me’ before serving or clearing and ‘Thank you’
after you have finished with each customer.
- Offering accompaniments: only offer them if you have them at the table. Offering them
when they are not at the table usually means ‘I will get them if you really want them!’