Blog Entries

The Customer is Always Right

Category: General Blogs

I dine out a fair amount. I love to try new things. That includes cuisine and drinks. But it was during a recent visit to an English pub in Clapham Junction (in the London borough of Wandsworth) that I realized how I’ve come to take customer service for granted and how very important it is.

I don’t think there has ever been a time when I’ve eaten at a restaurant and had an issue that wasn’t resolved in a professional and timely manner. That was until the second Sunday in March when my family and I went to eat lunch at a pub that is known for its wide range of rotating beers and fine malt whiskies and gins. The pub prides itself on serving quality cask-ale and has a Cask Marque seal of approval, which is an award given to pubs that meet stringent beer serving standards in areas such as temperature, appearance, aroma and taste.

On the pub’s website, it has information about a beer blog, tasting notes for its winter ales and information about a London Ale Trail. It looked like the perfect place to sample some British beers and have a nice lunch with friends and family. (And possibly write a column on my experience there.)

My high expectations for the afternoon were deflated very quickly.

Three of the six of us drank beer. One person knew exactly what he wanted. The other two needed some help—one was interested in a light, easy drinking beer, while the other wanted a dark style beer. Our waiter had no suggestions (other than a Carling) and couldn’t provide a beer list explaining that because the beers change daily, the pub did not have one.

(A chalkboard with what beers were on tap would have been a simple and easy solution for that.) “Ok, can you name some of the beers you have then?” We were met with a blank stare and a Guinness was ordered by default. I also would have had a beer, but without someone being able to tell me what the options were, I was put off and went with a soft drink.
Drinks aside, our food didn’t come out at the same time and when it finally did all come out (after about a 40-minute wait) it was cold.

Our waiter never came back to the table to check on us, no condiments were brought and an extra plate was forgotten along with a side order. You get the idea.

Words with the manager resulted in our drinks being taken off the bill and a fresh, hot bowl of fries. Later she would also take off one of our meals—reluctantly. Offering a simple “I’m sorry” and walking away with very little concern that customers were unhappy with the service.  

There is more to this story, but I realize this has become a bit of a rant. However, hopefully it’s one that can be learned from.

Here are a few tips.

Tip 1: Educate your staff on the drinks that your establishment has available and teach them how to make diners feel comfortable asking for a beer, in this case, that they may not know the name of. How? Make the wait staff experts in different beer styles and teach them how to pass that knowledge to the customer.

Tip 2: Learn how to upsell. Take a familiar beer and compare it to one at a higher price point to drive additional revenue.

Tip 3: A positive attitude can go a long way. Oh, and the customer is always right.

Hunting for the Northern Lights and Discovering Local Beer

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: beer

Skál! That’s how you say “cheers” in Iceland. But think of how a Viking would say it—that should be the delivery.

Over pints of Ölgeroin’s most popular beer, Engils Gull, two Scots, two Americans, an Australian and a Londoner learned that beer wasn’t legalized in Iceland until 1989. Yes, 1989.

One of the largest and oldest companies in Iceland, Ölgeroin (which means brewery in Icelandic) was founded in 1913 and today not only produces beer, but a number of other drink and food items.

I spent six days in Reykjavik, Iceland, last month with the main goal of seeing the Northern Lights. Mission accomplished on the last night of the trip—it was worth the wait.

In the meantime, the country has so much to offer in and around its capital city. Among them was the brewery tour at Ölgeroin Egill Skallagrímsson.

It turns out that Iceland also went through a Prohibition era of sorts that lasted 73 years. Our guide relayed that the people of Iceland voted in 1908 to ban all alcohol. The ban however, didn’t go into effect until the beginning of 1915.

Don’t think “Boardwalk Empire” though with underground bars and clubs and an Al Capone-type figure leading a squad of bootleggers. It wasn’t exactly like that in Iceland.

There was a partial repeal of the ban in 1933 when the country was threatened by Spain with a trade ultimatum. If Iceland didn’t begin importing Spanish wine, the Spanish would stop buying Iceland fish—the country’s largest export. So wine was allowed.

In 1935, the production of liquors was permitted and that was the first occasion where Iceland’s national drink called Brennivin, a schnapps-like spirit distilled from potatoes with 40 percent alcohol, became available.

Though beer was still outlawed, it was being brewed, just not for the locals. Ölgeroin was brewing beer for export, but in fact, beer like Polar Beer (a light golden lager with 4.7 percent ABV), was brewed for occupying armed forces during WWII and later to the American military base outside of Keflavík. Our guide told us that the “bootleggers” were also the taxi drivers who would have cases of beer in the trunk and sell it to their passengers.  

We got to sample Polar Beer as well as Egils Malt and Appelsín (a fizzy orange drink), which have become a traditional part of Icelandic Christmas celebrations. We also got to sample some selections from Ölgeroin’s microbrewery, Borg Brugghus, which was started in 2007. The microbrewery makes a selection of seasonal and limited-edition brews, many of which sell out soon after they hit the shelves, our guide informed us. They are numbered brews—we got to sample number 10, Snorri. It’s brewed from domestic barley and seasoned with Icelandic organic thyme that mixes a fruity nose with local wild herb flavors. The craft beers were lined up along the top shelf of the back bar in the tasting room of the Ölgeroin building, which it moved into in 2009. The building is one of the best warehouses in Iceland, the brewery proclaims.

The last thing we sampled that evening before hitting the town: a shot of Brennivin, often referred to as Black Death. Skál!

Distilling the Meaning

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: Distilled Spirits Co, DISCUS, spirits

Studying Studies

Category: General Blogs

I was both amused and a little bit frightened the other day—maybe bemused then?—to read widespread media reports about a study linking moderate alcohol consumption to higher risks of cancer.

Lowering the Bar

Category: General Blogs  |  Tags: beer, craft beer, bartending, customer service

So, a man walks into a bar. He wants to order a pint of fine craft beer so he motions to the bartender. The bartender walks past him, not making eye contact. A few minutes pass and he continues to motion the bartender. Again, no acknowledgment whatsoever. After a few more minutes pass, he finally gets the bartender’s attention. She shoots him a “What do you want?” look and he shouts his order above the noise in the crowded pub. She shouts back, “I can’t hear you,” and walks away. Waiting for the punchline? There isn’t one. This, sadly, is no joke. This sort of thing happens more often than it should. The man in the tale is yours truly. It happened last month.

Look, I get that it was crowded and crowds and noise can be overwhelming. But that’s no excuse for poor customer service. In less-crowded situations I’ve sat at the bar and managed to engage the barkeep a little more easily. This time I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to order so I asked for a little insight on one of the many artisanal brews on tap.

Me: What style is it?

Bartender: It’s like Bass.

Me: But it says it has an ABV of 9 percent. That’s a bit high for that style.

Bartender: Well, it’s the same color.

This pub prided itself on its vast selection of craft beers on draught. But it seems that management was more concerned with quantity over quality—the quantity of its taps versus the quality of a trained, informed serving staff.

We seem to hold wait staff in restaurants to much higher standards of human interaction than we do bar staff. What’s the reason for that? There isn’t one, at least there shouldn’t be one. Bartenders are salespeople, just as waiters and waitresses are. They’re there to get you to buy stuff and answer any questions you may have about that stuff so you can make a more informed purchasing decision. I’m not saying that these bars are the rule—but they’re not the exception either. They’re somewhere in the middle of the exception-rule continuum.

And that costs sales, regardless of how negligible that loss would be in the grand scheme of things. It’s certainly not something that the companies that own the brands and the wholesalers that distribute the brands the bar is supposed to be selling take lightly.  

The staff and the owners could argue, “Well, the place is packed, so we’re obviously doing something right. So back off!” But why would anyone ever want to take customer traffic for granted? Exactly how loyal are the customers that happen to be packing that bar on a given night? Maybe they just pushed their way into that particular place because all the other establishments in the neighborhood were even more crowded. And if the managers and staff are giving them no reason to come back, they won’t.

Here’s another thing to consider: social media. If someone has a bad experience in a pub, that place can expect an instantaneous, unflattering tweet or a rather damning review on Yelp.  

The joke may begin with the man (or woman) walking into a bar. But no one’s laughing when the woman (or man) walks out of the bar a few seconds later…and never comes back.