Author: tanyabirch

Beer is not just grains, hops, yeast, and water.  Beer is love and friendship, technology and magic, identity and language, arguments and duels, music and fashion, conservativism and revolution, history and the future.  In beer you can follow the rise of civilization, feel the character of nations, and witness the renaissance of our food culture.  Because beer is not just a liquid.  Beer is people.”

Garrett Oliver, Brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery, in a foreword he wrote for the National Geographic Atlas of Beer. Book Written by Nancy Hoalst-Pullen and Mark Patterson.

There’s a multitude of people in beer, ranging from packaging technicians to quality control experts to our brewers who make and produce the beer. But another important, often overlooked, people component is your service staff.  

Your service teams represent the face of your brewery, the people who have the opportunity to make a memorable, immediate impact on how your company will be perceived. Your service teams are the people who lead your company in its efforts toward generating repeat business and, consequently, generating profitability.

So how do you ensure you recruit the best team who will accurately showcase your taproom with the enthusiasm and passion it deserves?

Ask interview questions that give you the opportunity to truly get to know your candidate.  Take the time to fully understand why they applied. Was it just because they needed a job, or were they attracted to you because of what your brewpub has to offer? How will you test their knowledge level about beer styles and beer ingredients? Design the interview questions appropriately to get to know your candidates beyond the surface. Questions like “How many hours can you work?” won’t be enough to help you dig deeper. Instead, consider questions like, “What’s your dream job?”, “Why do you want to work for our brewpub vs. the other competitors/brewpubs in our region?” and “Tell me about the best guest experience you’ve crafted and the most frustrating/challenging one you’ve faced.”

Gain the perspective of others on your team.

In this industry, it’s easy to develop a short-term perspective and focus on the need to bring in a body when you’re short-handed in staff. But you’ll never improve your chance of hiring great people if there’s only one person involved in the hiring decision. If you’re a small business, that second or third perspective doesn’t have to come from another manager. Maybe it’s one of your lead servers who your regular guests gravitate towards, someone who exemplifies your brewpub’s culture.

Write it down.  Outline your hiring process before you start hiring.  Ensure that all Brewpub Managers know the guidelines and expectations. This will never be a one-fits-all approach. Your brewpub’s geographic region will be largely dependent on how in-depth it is, but writing it down and following it shows you’re invested in it and committed to its success.

Maintain a quality focus. Quality control measures are just as important in hiring people as they are in making beer. 

Get creative in your hiring approach and target your job postings to attract those who are searching for a way in to the industry. Remember our business is unique. We’re not only a restaurant serving food. The employees who I hired as bartenders for a new taproom operation I ran in Charlotte last year weren’t just those who had service industry backgrounds. They were artists, teachers, healthcare professionals, and students pursuing their master’s degrees, with one central thing in common – their love for the craft beer industry. Where can you place job ads or printed postings in your community that will generate interest from the people you want to attract?

Hire for “optimistic warmth.”Danny Meyer, owner of Union Square Hospitality group in New York City, is known as a leader in his approach to service and hospitality standards. He defines optimistic warmth as genuine kindness, thoughtfulness, and a sense that the glass is always at least half full.  It only takes one negative attitude to infect the rest of the team and bring down morale. Your mission in hiring should be to ensure you stay as far away as you can from those negative attitudes, and instead hire for optimistic warmth and positivity.

Hire with employee retention in mind.  According to the National Restaurant Association (2016 assessment), the average turnover rate in the hospitality sector was 70%. It’s no surprise that many employees are in the service industry temporarily. Maybe they’re working at your brewpub because they’re still searching for their next career or direction. Consider ways you can attract the right people who are interested in pursuing other avenues in this industry long term through offering small perks and benefits, like giving them the option to attend an online training course about hospitality, or offering them the opportunity to get reimbursed for passing the first level of the Cicerone program – a cost of $70. That’s a small cost to spend compared to the cost of continuously training new employees.

Bottom line: Hiring the right staff should be a well-designed process with buy-in from your management team and ownership. Think through the process, write it down, and follow it. Whether you have 5 employees or 500, if you are committed to its success, your brewpub will reap the benefits.

Note: I originally wrote this article for the Brewer’s Association New Brewer magazine. A similar version to the one you see above was published in their November 2018 issue.