The Most Important Bartender Skills and Qualities to Look For

Employee turnover in the bar and restaurant industry can be detrimental to the successful operations of an establishment. When you lose an employee, it takes time to find, hire, and train the new employee so they can fit in and be successful.

One of the hardest positions to hire for is the bartender role. Several qualities and skills are desired and required for this position. As you search for the new bartender, either now or in the future, go through our list of the top bartender skills and qualities to look for in a potential candidate, to ensure you’ve found the right person for the job.

Good Memory

Even the smallest bar menu requires a bartender to have a great memory to remember how to make all the drinks. During a busy night, you can’t afford to have a bartender that is slow and holding up the process for customers. Also, a good memory can help a bartender recognize regulars as well.

Calm Under Pressure

Getting rattled easily is not a good quality to have when it comes to being a bartender. Even on less busy nights, so many things can go wrong, and probably will. Being able to remain calm, process the situation, and react appropriately is the key, and that goes for any position in the restaurant as well. With so many moving pieces happening at once behind the bar, a good bartender is able to handle various situations that they are thrown into. Also, being able to multitask is of great significance for the role.

Friendly/Outgoing

Interacting with people is a main component of the job, and being able to connect with people should be a given for any bartender. Being social, outgoing, and friendly are traits that will help a bartender be successful, sell more drinks, and keep customers happy. Keep in mind that being friendly and outgoing are very important, the underlying job of a bartender is to sell drinks. Having a salesperson’s mentality can be a great beneficial trait to have.

Consistency

Building off of the good memory aspect to remember all the drinks, consistency in the techniques to make those drinks is key, too. This relates to being accurate with measurements, specific cocktail techniques, and just consistency with their personable service as well. Customers tend to know when things aren’t the same as the last time they visited, whether that’s food, drinks or service, and it’s very important to have your employees be consistent across all facets of their jobs.

Cleanliness

Keeping the bar, utensils, and drinkware clean before, during, and after a shift is extremely important. A messy workstation leads to mistakes, accidents and even in severe cases, health code violations. While making drinks may not be as big of a health risk as cooking raw meat, there still is a certain level of cleanliness that should be required.

Trustworthy

On any given shift, your next bartenders will be in charge of handling multiple tabs and amounts of cash. It is important that you are able to trust your employees when it comes to handling the money of your restaurant. It is very easy for bartenders to give out free drinks, pocket all the cash for the drinks and conveniently not enter those transactions into the POS system. Having a well-operating bar inventory management system can help keep track of the number of drinks served and comparing to the inventory. While this responsibility often falls back on the bartender, this area of your bar’s operations can be high-risk.

Hiring the right employees isn’t always an easy task, and sometimes the wrong employees get hired. Glimpse provides bars and restaurants with indisputable audits that highlight food and beverage transactions, which are improperly recorded at the Point of Sale or not recorded at all. These reports are backed up by time-stamped images that will help you resolve infractions quickly and rectify employee behavior. Trust but verify – Glimpse verifies so you can trust! To see how Glimpse can help, visit our website to schedule your free demo, today!