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Looking to elevate your cocktail game, streamline your bar operations, or simply unlock the secrets of the perfect pour? You've come to the right place!
At Überbartools™, we're passionate about all things bar-related, and we're dedicated to sharing our knowledge and insights with you.
CANDOR OR CANDY
Checking in with your customers is a valuable part of the business cycle. Through surveys, social media, or even word of mouth, it is important to gather feedback properly… and ask for it correctly.
We’ve all likely been surveyed incorrectly before, asked to weight in even though the questions provided were so leading or sugar-coated that it was impossible to generate honest feedback.
Though these types of prompts can certainly produce ego-boosting results, they ignore general areas of concern — the very aspect that makes asking for customer response wholly beneficial.
Without uncovering points to focus and improve on, any survey losses its true insight, the type of information your staff needs to know in order to learn and progress.
Asking customers for help requires the implication that we intend to respect their time by ensuring their answers always lead to a payoff, be it improved service, an enhanced product or a better experience ahead.
Asking the no-holds-barred questions, especially publically, takes guts – but becoming vulnerable, stirring the dust, and opening up to the hard truths will lead to the benefits customers ultimately desire.
Ask how you can better your business, not what a favourite product or experience was, opt for candor over candy!
Candor is that ability to look honestly at your business’s reflection, to see not only areas of light, but also those that shadows cast across the mirror of your customer’s involvement.
Hospitality is about learning and delivering quickly, even if that means sometimes uncovering areas of your business that you would rather hide - it is much better to jump off a cliff and unpack a parachute on the way down then it is to unexpectedly fall later.
The Rule of Thumb - The Power of 3
Our lives are consumed by the number 3!
We win, loose, judge, consider, select, discard, all based on this number!
Some examples:
3 is also crucial to a bar business as it’s the key to growing, winning and operating profitably!
When one considers the impact of the power of 3, the thought changes to “drinks philosophy”! Don’t worry this is not a conversation about the pros and cons of Pre or Post prohibition style drinks , it’s an understanding based on building a model inclusive of supporting engineering process and metrics.
The Bar Rule of Thumb…
There’s a direct relationship between guests spend, individual drinks sold and contribution margin towards a venues costs.
A great guide to understanding in easy terms the impact… consider overhead and expenses in terms of 3 drinks sold to one guest.
Remember a drink purchased by one customer, and then repeated, may not always mean a bar is making a profit.
Each Rule of Thumb has its own drill down with arising impact:
A One drink Philosophy
The focus is on SPEED! Quality, consistency, possibly service may take second or third place as it’s all about VOLUME. Being brilliant at getting it out quick is key as guest churn is high! This business may be characterised by consequences such as rising wastage, lack of care and possibly high staff turnover! If this game is not won through unbelievable costs controls, process and execution, it’s easy to just tread water! Let’s face it whose in business just to pay wages!
A Two drink Philosophy
The focus changes from slinging it out to looking at ways to drive profitable revenue opportunity, by encouraging the guest(s) to stay longer/spend more. Quality, consistency, guest experience becomes something to focus on. Less money can be spent on driving the numbers, more emphasis on customer retention. As spend per guest rises, the contribution margin required to cover remaining venue costs gets closer and closer to break-even.
A Three drink Philosophy
The focus here is detail: heightened guest experience, service levels, quality, perception of value, consistency. Greater investment can be made on the bells and whistles encouraging guest retention, larger spend! Supporting processes and activities will be built around engineering this business outcome, with rising profits to show for the effort.
Defining what your business is or aspires to be; measure by the Bar Rule of Thumb, it’ll change the way your business runs!
To your success!
The ProGrip™... Learning from Bartender Injury to Help Others
Innovation is the spinning core which centers the Über™ world, powering ideas such as our ProGrip™ handle; a solution for eliminating bartender injury, muddling drinks.
The ProGrip™ illustrates how in the space of 10 years, human centered design is now entrenched in the workplace; critical to improving working lives!
When the ProGrip™ was conceived, we hadn’t understood that bartenders weren't alone in pain... baristas, chefs, handymen, the elderly had their own painful stories of discomfort and frustration!
Unfortunately, we never heard these sounds, they were drowned out by the noise of complacency assuring us: “oh, that’s the way it’s always been, so don’t worry about that!”
Deflated, we retreated to our cone of silence, to create space for our eventual Ü(reka) moment.
Funnily enough the story unfolded by accident, in my mother’s kitchen... in between deeply breathing sautéing onions smells with the aromas of simmering fresh herbs.
In the days and months that drifted by… glimpses and insights revealed hidden paths felled by questions asked… you know the type of thoughts, no one thinks about, unless of course, you can’t perform that task at all!
Sam and l began to look at a gazillion hand tools, understanding the design with arising mandated motions… rotation (stirring) and compression (pounding) and directional (extension) movements; each action impacting on speed, efficiency and most importantly the body: fingers, hands, wrists, elbows and shoulders; depending on task.
In many instances the unifying single task implied by all tool design: the user must form a fist to hold or grip the tool!
The ProGrip™’s unique handle alters a relevant tools center of engagement, transforming a vicelike grip into one anchored by a thumb via an insertion point (hole in the handle)... the arising engagement between user and tool thereby changes, with the body’s natural response conforming to a relaxed state (less tension).
Once the relationship of user/tool changes, then so does the relationship of the body to that tool.
The ProGrip™ Relationship
A fantastic example of this is watching a barista holding a tamper (THE COFFEE MUDDLER).
A tamper is squat and cumbersome, contorting a user’s fingers, hands and wrist into prolonged and very uncomfortable positions... the result, huge issues of RSI affecting wrist, elbow and shoulder. Go talk to any barista... they all know someone who has a problem if it’s not themselves!
Changing focus from hand grip to that of a thumb pivot alters grip strength, muscular stresses, wrist position/angle relative to the hand, body and tool.
During 2015 Uber™ will be undertaking more human centred design research to allow us to re-imagine a sway of tools whose times has come!
Who would have thought observing bartenders suffer whilst muddling drinks… would lead to something good!
Pat.US & Other Markets: 8,814,423 B2
Does Innovation Lead to Greater Trust?
Innovation is broadly defined as: something newly introduced... a new method or device.
Über’s own innovation process emanates from a deep desire to make a difference; helping people achieve better outcomes!
Fears, frustrations, pain and loss are strong motivators to encourage quest seekers to go off and discover new ways of helping people do things!
Arising outcomes can be measured via health and safety benefits, speed and efficiency improvements, aesthetics, consistency, ease of use etc.
Consider crowd-funding vehicles such as Kickstarter, as the perfect platform requiring us to believe and then go off and do something, like commit!
Ultimately the movement from “nothing to doing” comes down to crossing a bridge… the white space between which innovation and relationship live… we call that trust!
Über's Top 12 Checklist
Here’s Über’s TOP 12 bullet proof questions to anchor your due diligence/checklist when evaluating any new product and service which is promised or expected to assist, power, control, transform and run YOUR business!
Too often it’s the failure to ask the right questions leaving you, over-promised and under delivered, ultimately creating frustration and disappointment! Apply these tests, ask these questions you’ll never go wrong!
Staying in control from the get go... you're guaranteed a better chance of ending up with the results you want and expect!
Good luck!
The Big Bang... 6 Top Tips
The greatest transitioning of bar talent from “tender” to “keeper” is exploding across the planet!
In galactic terms, this is our Big Bang moment, a perfect expanding universe of opportunity!
On the other hand, science warns us: nothing expands forever... at some point, the opposite will occur... it’s called The Big Crunch!
So here’s 6 top tips to help Crunch the numbers, so you‘ll never get Crunched!:
- Finance Person... get one pronto to help with financial plans, budgets, projections. Work out your earliest break-even point and focus daily, weekly and monthly on hitting those numbers.
- Keep costs to a minimum... only spend when you must...always keep your powder dry for another day/time.
- Don’t over invest... whether that’s stock, staff or stuff... always ask the question is this a “must have” or a luxury “nice to have”... base this on your budget/prevailing profitability.
- Work 20% of the things that generates 80% of sales, income, opportunity... everything else leave or delegate.
- Measure everything... including your drinks, staff performance, customer satisfaction levels etc... what’s not measured, is not focused on, what’s not focused on, never happens, this is the Black Hole... sucking everything in its way!
- Metrics... put in place important financial barometers... i.e. costs of goods sold, avg. hourly rates, hours worked, spend per guest, bartender sales. These form part of your biz dash board, knowing at a glance where you are, helps make course corrections, if needed!
Owning your own bar is richly rewarding not to mention empowering... just as a cocktail needs to be consistent i.e. properly portioned and balanced, so a business requires the perfect balance of measures to create the best results!