Becoming Twice As Fast Behind The Bar Requires Thought, Monitoring Task Times and Constant Innovation
Tachymeter
Most people know that Henry Ford invented the assembly line but what most people aren’t aware of is that Ford also relied on something called a tachymeter to bring that assembly line up to peak efficiency.
The tachymeter allows you to measure units per hour. It works for determining speed or quantity. For measuring quantity, you would use the chronograph to measure the duration of a single task, the hand’s position once stopped indicates the amount of similar tasks that can be performed per minute.
Thus if you measure how long it takes you to walk three steps to where your highball glasses are stored, plus how long it takes to pick one up, plus how long it takes to walk it to where the ice is, you’ll be able to determine how many times that task can be completed in one hour.
You can use a watch with a tachymeter to compute speed based on the amount of time it takes to complete any action, thus you can use it to calculate the number of particular tasks you can complete in a given amount of time.
How Is Cutting Time Down Important For Making More Money?
If your bar has 60 customers and each hour has 60 minutes then you have 1 minute (just 60 seconds) per hour to dedicate to each customer.
The average bartender can handle about 60 customers. But what if you could cut just 10 seconds from 3 or 4 tasks added together that you perform 20 times every hour? Ok, so that’s 20 times 10 seconds per hour. 20 x 10 = 300 seconds. 300 seconds is a whole 5 minutes and 5 minutes means you now have 5 more minutes, enough to serve 5 more customers and make 5 more tips per hour. Percentage wise 5 is 8.33333333333% of 60. So you have the potential to make 8 1/3% more tips for yourself, and deposit 8 1/3″ more money in the register.
By refining this process over and over in every single area of the bar you work at, depending upon how smart and creative you can be and how much control you have over where things can be re-arranged behind the bar, you will come closer and closer to to doubling how many customers you can handle at once.
Let’s say that once or twice a night you run out of something – like singles. Even after you’ve placed all your singles from your tips into the register you run out and it takes 5 minutes for the manager to get you more. Now your bar is experiencing problems and your timing is all screwed up. The solution is to bring in a few hundred dollar stacks of ones yourself. No waiting. 5 HUGE minutes saved.
Suddenly you’re extremely low on 5’s and 10’s. What do you do? Same 5 minute delay… but you’ve got a few hundred singles so you can still make change – BUT it takes seconds to accurately count 5 and 10 singles for every guest when they’re paying.
So the solution is this: Take and a few of your spare seconds in between customer requests to quickly paper-clip together stacks of 5 singles and 10 singles to create your own 5’s and 10’s. Then when someone pays for a soda with a $20, you grab a stack of 10 ones and a stack of 5 ones plus whatever change is left and you’re on your way to serving your next guest in seconds – no waiting.
Now you’ve got the idea. You don’t NEED a tachymeter on your watch, but you do need to see every opportunity you can to recognize where you can shave seconds off by moving the glasses you use most to the spot closest to your ice bins, putting an ice scoop on each side of each ice bin (so there’s always one close by, and two bartenders can work independently without waiting), by placing short shakes on each of your drink mixing mats, and add a few more mixing mats around the edge of the bar.
Site Author, David Jonathan Curtis: David Jonathan Curtis, a seasoned professional in his fifth decade of bartending and bar management, began his career in Midtown Manhattan, NY, tending and managing bars before diving into Manhattan’s bustling nightlife scene. Over the years, he has mastered high-volume, high-pressure bartending as the lead bartender in both iconic Midtown clubs and Wall Street bars, generating over $1,350,000.00 annually in personal drink sales. He has since extended his expertise to establishments in Georgia and now Tampa, Florida. David’s roles as a Bartending Instructor at the American Bartending School in Tampa, while maintaining a second job bartending, and his years experience of managing bars, and working as a Brand Ambassador along with his extensive professional library of over 1,000 bartending books, highlight his dedication to continually refining his craft. He holds a diploma in Bar Management and is BarSmarts certified by Pernod Ricard.
