How Waiters, Servers and Bartenders Can Get Better Shifts + Great Side Hustles for Hospitality Workers

How Can Waiters and Servers Get Better Shifts?

1. Understand your managers’ personalities, moods, attitudes, NEEDS and history. #1 Concern should be how much are you selling. Make being a sales leader one of your goals as a server and constantly look for ways to sell more and higher priced items on the menu.

How to Get More Shifts, a Better Schedule and Great Side Jobs for Waiters and Bartenders This is why spieling the features is important to get guests in the food mood. As for your managers… Get to know them if they will let you. Pretend they are your friend and treat them as one.

2. Offer to take other people’s worst shifts if you really need the money, but ideally shoot for shifts that are still some type of good deal for you. Then you can ask to take one of their weekend shifts later and make it sound like you’re doing them a favor giving them a weekend night off. Also, you could later ask for them to switch a weekend night shift for one of your day shifts or lesser earning shifts.

3. Be a team player at work during the busiest times. People will remember you helping them unconsciously, and then you can start advertising that you will pick up some of their weekend night shifts (or better shifts) to give them a break to let them enjoy the weekend.

4. Know your customers’ drink orders when they come in (repeat guests). Your guest will eventually start talking about you with your manager when your manager comes around. Being in demand and making guests comfortable is how restaurants get people drunk, and that’s where they make their money.

5. Maximize the value of your time.

a. If you are in a terrible situation, no amount of politicking will advance your interests. Sometimes it’s best to move on and find a new restaurant. Knowing the location and typical customer influx during certain hours and days will provide you with the information how and why the money flows through the restaurant, and will help you weigh your pros and cons before making a jump to another job.

b. Come up with a side hustle during the day.

We hope you enjoyed:

How Waiters, Servers and Bartenders Can Get More Shifts, a Better Schedule and Side Gigs for More Money

Tips for Making More Tips Waiting, Serving or Bartending – SE Asia Edition

Today’s Make More Cash Money Tips Key to Victory:

* The guest’s space is sacred like the air space over an airport.

make more tips serving or bartending

7 Great Ideas for Waiters and Bartenders to Make More Tips

—–> Do not place things down on the table and push or bump into the guest, food, plates, or say excuse me if you absolutely have to

—–> Never set something down near your guest with your elbow facing your guest, you should always set things down with your arm curving/bending away from them.

—–> During order taking, do not stand and hover over the guest. Drop menus, advise guest on “specials” (features), either bring water or ask if they’d like something to drink to start out with, and then go stand away from them, occasionally glancing to see when they are ready to order.

—–> When it’s time to pay, drop the check or bill and step back a few feet, don’t wait for them to put the money into the check presenter. When you drop the check back off with change, always leave an amount of change (if cash) that has easily tippable amounts, not a large bill and a few ones.

—–> Depending on your restaurant’s procedures, bring all the food out at once, and not plate by plate. The kitchen should be cooking things all at once anyway.

—–> Try not to directly hand the guest anything. If you have to hand the guest something, make sure you hand things to them respectfully. No creepy hover hands left behind. No handing things to people at eye level coming straight in at their face. Gently and respectfully, if at all.

Also read: positive nonverbal communication techniques

—–> Always be the first to say hello and thank you as the guest is leaving. Always simulate thinking “what does the guest need right now” without asking them. Drink refills without having to be asked goes a long way when it’s tip time.

Serving and Bartending Tips Learned in South East Asia, of All Places

For a complete video course on how to make more tips for restaurant servers, bartenders, or anyone with a tip jar, check out the video masterclass for serving and making tips on this site.

Great Day Jobs for Waiters, Servers and Bartenders

waiters can make more money by walking dogs One of the most common problems waiters and bartenders face and are often vocal about, is the fact they aren’t getting enough hours at work. Every single restaurant and catering job I ever worked brought on an onslaught of gossip and everyday chit chat where employees complained that they weren’t getting enough good shifts at work, or weren’t getting enough shifts at all.

It’s hard to blame the restaurant or your manager for this. It’s much easier to blame random circumstance or the economy for lack of revenue in restaurants, and these days, the average middle class consumer which the typical server/bartender depends upon for tip revenue and therefore their paycheck, is as tapped out financially as the waiter hoping and praying they’ll walk through their establishment’s door and sit in their section.

How to Make More Money as a Server or Bartender

Sure, you could attempt to go get another restaurant gig, or an office job (boring!!!!) like I did when I was actively serving in the restaurant business, or “the industry”, as many like to refer to it. Then, you’ll have 2 similar jobs with likely similar schedules competing for your time- a great way to stress yourself out and make you under-perform at all your jobs collectively.

Instead of spreading yourself thin, you could use the fact that as a waiter, server or bartender, you have a somewhat “odd” schedule, meaning that while most people are getting off of their 9-to-5 job, you’re just now going into work.

This means taking advantage of the fact that you have free time during the weekdays from 9 am to 4 pm, and helping people who are at work, by walking their dog.

How Much Money a Dog Walker Can Make

Many dog walkers can charge between $20 and $30 per walk for a 30 minute – 1 hr session. Now imagine you can pull off 2 – 3 dog walks a day, 3 days a week. That could amount to an extra $180/week for you. That means an extra $720/month!

What that could mean for many of you reading this is being able to buy a new car, or finally pay your rent without having to hold your breath for the last week of the month hoping for a miracle.

Why Else Restaurant Servers Make Great Dog Walkers

As a restaurant server, you have a 6th sense for customer service. By the time you’ve waited tables for even 3 months, you have more customer service experience than 99% of the planet. You already know how to talk to people, and your empathy for dealing with humanity is on an entirely different level than the average person holding down a job.

You can apply this 6th sense to getting dog walking customers, but it’s also going to pay off if you already like dogs too. Dogs listen and respond very well to me personally. This is because I truly enjoy and respect dogs and cats. I understand that while we’re different, we still have sophisticated intelligence and feelings. We are more similar than we think. And just like a guest in your restaurant or bar looking at you as a leader because you know how to anticipate their needs and make them feel special, dogs are the exact same way.

Help! I have no idea where to start with this whole dog walking gig!

One thing many restaurant servers and bartenders can have a hard time with is finding business on their own. No problem, because this is a new skill just like serving guests at one time was for you. But while you develop your own way to get leads for scooping up extra money in your off-time from the restaurant from potential dog walking customers, you can get your feet wet by simply signing up for a service like Rover.com or Wag! which are kind of like the Uber of dog walking/sitting.

Read my Rover.com review here

Of course, you won’t want to be completely reliant on Rover or Wag! for your business, just like you don’t want to be completely reliant on your restaurant/bar for your entire income, especially not these days. And that’s why I created this special guide called “Move Over, Rover!” that shows you how to sign up and get business immediately from Rover and Wag! while creating your own independent dog walking or dog sitting business that attracts customers outside of the online dog walking/sitting apps that most dog sitters and walkers lazily become reliant upon, and then complain about not being able to get enough customers!

Get out there and make more money!

🙂