Extensive cocktail knowledge and superior drink mixing skills - these are two qualities almost everyone will think of when they picture a good bartender. After all, a significant part of your role is providing a service to your customers. But they also want to see you as more than someone making and serving them drinks. Customers want to see a friendly personality and helpful team member.
Here are even more qualities of a good bartender which can set you apart from the rest.
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1. Patience When Faced With Lots of Orders
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2. Organisation to Ensure Swift Service
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3. Teamwork to Create an Efficient Work Environment
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4. Confidence in Serving and Engaging with Customers
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5. An Eagerness to Learn New Tips and Tricks
1. Patience When Faced With Lots of Customers
As a bartender, you’ll get lots of people demanding your attention and wanting to buy drinks and snacks. They might have a really long and confusing order or they might not be sure about what kind of drinks they would like so will be coming to you, seeking your knowledge and recommendations.
It’s your job to help customers by serving them the right drinks and providing them with options to help them figure out what they want to order.
Although this can be frustrating, especially when it’s particularly busy at the bar, it’s important to stay calm and patient with them while they decide.
This keeps your customers happy - which is ultimately your main priority. Knowing how to deliver great customer service will serve you well throughout your bartending career, as people appreciate, and sometimes return as a result of, feeling valued and listened to.
2. Organisation to Ensure Swift Service
Peak times can become overwhelming, with lots of customers to keep track of and several drinks to make at once, so it’s important you feel prepared. To be the best bartender, you need to know who made which orders, keep the bar area clean and safe and quickly restock when the bottles behind the bar begin to get low.
If you keep both yourself and your bar area organised, it will make shifts much easier for you. It will also benefit your customer service at the same time, as you won’t need to waste valuable time trying to find specific items, leaving the bar to get more of a particular drink from the stockroom or double-checking what a customer ordered.
3. Teamwork to Create an Efficient Work Environment
Being willing to listen to others and acknowledging their ideas is an essential quality of effective bartending and benefits both parties. It may help your coworkers feel respected and listened to and you may learn from their insights.
Getting more people involved will also spread the workload and make shifts easier for everyone. There may be times when there are a lot of you behind the bar at once. So, it’s important to get along with your coworkers and learn how to work together to keep the bar efficient.
Developing your leadership skills and interpersonal skills, by getting to know your coworkers and creating a strong team spirit, is important. Regardless of whether you want to develop your skills, train new staff or work towards a managerial role, leadership and interpersonal skills will provide you with essential techniques which you can apply throughout your career.
4. Friendliness and Confidence in Serving and Engaging with Customers
In bar work, customers are the number one priority. So as well as looking smart and stylish, you should be friendly, approachable and confident.
These three personality traits are important in delivering fantastic customer service.
After all, customers trust you to deliver a drink they’ll enjoy at a standard they expect. This means they need to see that you know what you’re doing and you’re comfortable doing it. If you have confidence in your work, it’s more likely that your customers will have confidence in you.
5. An Eagerness to Learn New Things
One of the amazing things about having a career in bartending is that you’re always learning. Whether it’s discovering new ways of communicating with customers or expanding your skills in cocktail creations, there will always be new knowledge to discover and new abilities to acquire. The more you learn, the quicker you may be able to enter bigger, more senior roles.
To be prepared for these, it’s crucial that you’re open to new opportunities and you stay ambitious in your bartending education. Keep practising bartending techniques and observe and learn from your coworkers.
Want to Read More About How to Succeed as a Bartender?
These are just five of the many crucial qualities which will help you find success as an excellent bartender. But that’s not all you need to know. We’ve put together a guide which goes through five easy steps you can follow for success in bartending.
Ready to find out what else you can do to further your career? Click the link below for your free copy.