With
festival season upon us, we can all look forward to the upcoming festivities
and increased patronage to our breweries. With this
increase in fests and fun, we may also expect an increase in hiccupy, wobbly
customers who have over imbibed, and inversely decrease our fun (it’s science). Read my advice below, as both a brewery
owner and brewery insurance and risk management consultant, on how to handle
conflict resolution with intoxicated patrons. And I hope to see you at your
brewery or mine soon!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’ve had the pleasure to work with 20+
breweries across Colorado and surrounding states over the past five years or
so. Usually a pleasure, anyway… some of you guys smell weird. Anyway, most of
my start-up clients have leaned on my experience as a brewer for advice when it
comes to operations, licensing, beer quality (best part of the job), and, of
course, risk management.
It’s always been fun to share what I’ve
learned as an operator within the industry and a consultant to the industry.
I’ve never really considered myself a very good teacher, but I’ve really come
to enjoy this role.
One of the topics that has never come up in
any of the conversations with the folks that brew the finest beverage on the planet has been that of conflict
resolution. Specifically, resolving conflicts with intoxicated customers. The
fact that this conversation has never come up didn’t occur to me until I
started getting ready to interview taproom servers for our new brewery, Goldspot.
Obviously, the best way to resolve this situation is to have well-trained servers
that can identify your friends that may have reached their limit. But that’s
not always possible. Sometimes things are out of your control. You can have the
best trained staff in the world, but if someone comes in having been
over-served somewhere else, or they have a penchant for looking all cool on the
outside while on the inside they’re a wobbly mess, you need to know how to take
care of that person.
So, as I’ve been interviewing the awesome
candidates that will hope to be presenting our liquid art to your flavor hole,
the most important and telling question that I’ve asked these folks is this: How do you resolve conflicts?
I’ve
compiled a short list of some of the answers that I’ve received, along with
some stuff that I’ve compiled over the past few months as I build my own server
training program.
1. If possible, don’t work
alone/schedule a single staff person for late-night/closing
shifts. That stupid adage that
your parents used to throw at you when you were
begging to stay out ‘til the
wee small hours of the morning is pretty accurate. Not
everyone who’s out
enjoying a drink after 10:00 PM is looking to get crunk. But when I
look at
loss reports for my clients or prospective clients, most of the liability
issues
involving intoxicated customers will happen after 10:00.
Some of us are better at
resolving conflict than others. Logic holds that if you’ve got
more than one
person working, you’ve got a better chance of having someone there
who can
successfully make the situation go away. Also, if one person is handling up
on
an unwanted situation you still have another person to make sure that everyone
else is being taken care of properly.
I also had an interviewee
tell me that the bar he works at has been robbed three times
since he has been
there. All three times is was when there was a lone worker closing
down the
shop. Depending on where you’re located this might be a concern.
2. Address the person you’re
concerned about directly. If they’re with a group of
folks that are otherwise being respectful,
directly tell that individual that you won’t be
serving them any more alcohol
that night and that you’d be happy to get them some
water or coffee (or Italian
soda if you’re slinging suds at one of those fancy breweries).
If they’re with a group,
that group will usually take the initiative to make sure that their
friend
stays cool and doesn’t cause any problems. From what I’ve seen, that party
usually settles up and leaves pretty quickly.
3. Be friendly when you
approach them. Another old adage that came from Grandma
(so therefore not near as dumb
as the stuff my dad told me) is that you catch more
flies with honey than
vinegar. If you try to end a confrontation by being confrontational,
there’s a
better chance that someone’s going to end up in a headlock than if you’re
nice.
Don’t confuse being nice
with being a pushover, however. You need to be confident
when you address them.
Know that you are completely within your rights to make sure
that you, your
clients, employees, and business are protected.
4. When in doubt, ask for
help. If
your beer is good, you’ve probably got several people
in your taproom. If your
beer is good, some of those folks are probably regulars. If your
beer is good,
those regulars probably love you and want you to continue serving them
your
goodness in a glass. Those people are your allies and are usually more than
happy to lend a hand.
I had an interviewee tell
me that one of his favorite moves is to tell the offender that
he’s surrounded
by people that like him (the bartender) more, and that if the offender
continues to be belligerent and hiccuppy, then he won’t be able to pay them any
attention. The guy that told me this is also 6’3” and weighs in at about 250
lbs, so he
can get away with talking this way. He also said that is his second
to last move before
calling a cab and sending them on their way.
5. Make sure they have a safe
ride home.
Empower your employees to pay for cabs.
My employees will totally have the
power to pull a $20 out of the drawer and hand to a
cabby to get home. One
brewery owner that I spoke to has Über loaded on the
brewery iPad, and will
arrange rides for customers that way.
If they’ve got a sober
friend who’s going to take them home, get that person’s contact
info and make
sure that you document what happened. If anything happens after they
leave your
establishment, you want documentation that you took the proper steps to
help
them get home safely.
As a server of alcohol, it’s your
responsibility to intervene if someone is getting out of hand. Luckily, this
kind of situation is the exception and not the rule. Just remember to keep your
calm, be confident, and be respectful. And, if you’re not 6’3” and 250 lbs and
the situation is beyond your control, ask for help!
~Matt
Matt
Hughes
Pure
Risk Solutions
Office: 303-834-1001 | Mobile: 303.350.0287 |
500
Briggs St., Ste. 200, P.O. Box 1274, Erie, CO 80516
About Matt
Matt is the owner of Gold
Spot brewery and an insurance and risk management consultant who has been a
part of Colorado's craft brewing industry for close to a decade. He uses his
unique expertise in both the craft brewing industry and commercial insurance
world to help breweries across the country understand the risks they face,
while running his own production brewery and taproom.
