Six Ways to Increase Your Tips in the Restaurant Business

Whether you are a working parent trying to put food on the table, or financing your college education, waiting on tables can seem to be a daunting task. For some, the money is not worth the stress that one has to deal with while serving. In most American restaurants, a server is paid a few dollars less than minimum wage and left to depend on guests to support their livelihood through their tips. To most people, this is not the American dream. Granted, waiting on tables may not be your idea of the perfect job, but it can prove very beneficial to those who pay attention to the details of their service. There are a lot of ways that you can maximize your income potential when serving guests at a restaurant. Here are seven of the most important practices that you should master in order to see your tips increase.

Number 1: Smile

The first detail to master is the way you present yourself to the world. Over 80 percent of a person’s perception of you comes from the interpretation of body language. This is important to grasp because the main factor in any guest’s experience is their perception on everything from the way the hostess talks to them at the front door to the way the server tells them goodbye at the end of their meal. Smiling is the best way to make a good first impression with your guest as well as creating an atmosphere at the table that will provide a good experience throughout their meal. Here is an important note to take; your smile must be real, because people can spot a fake. If you are the kind of person that has to think of a happy thought to form a genuine smile, by all means do it. Anything you have to do in order to let the guest know that they are in good hands is allowed (providing it is morally sound, that is). In review, smiling sets the stage for the rest of the meal. A person’s first impression is more often than not the most lasting; and since you only have about thirty minutes to an hour with this person, it is much easier to start off on the right foot than to have to work your way up from inadvertently displaying a bad attitude in the beginning. Remember, most of the time your tip depends on the guest’s perception of you and how you treat them, so serve them with a smile.

Number 2: Posture

This next tip is pretty much self explanatory, so I will not delve too deeply into the subject. This is, however, another important detail when it comes to guest perception. Let’s face it, if a person just wanted to eat steak or chicken, they could find it much cheaper at the local grocery store than what most restaurants are charging. The reason people are willing to pay so much for their meal is mainly for the experience while dining out. With this in mind, no one wants to see their server walk over to the table looking slouched over like they’re depressed. This can ruin a guest’s experience. Hold your head up, straighten your back. It not only looks better to the person you are serving, but it gives an image of confidence. Subconsciously, a person sees someone that has good posture as someone that knows what they are doing, and subsequently they will form a good opinion of that server early on in the game. Along with smiling, good display of your posture and the ability to hold yourself with confidence is something that will warm up the guest to the idea of leaving a good tip before they receive their bill.

Number 3: Make Eye Contact

This is a short and simple tip. Guests do not want to talk to someone who looks like their focus is on other things. Use yourself as an example. When you are talking to someone, what kind of perception will you have of that person if they never look at you? The guests are usually going to interpret this kind of behavior as someone who is not interested in meeting their dining needs. That kind of guest perception will definitely impact your tip.

Number 4: Be Knowledgeable

We have gone over some of the basics to prompt the best guest perception, now let’s go into the actual “meat” of the subject: How much you know about what you do. Our society has morphed into that of fast food and instant gratification. People need you to help them figure out what they want. In order to keep up with this challenge, it is imperative to know what you are talking about and understand the menu. Your guest perception will go down tremendously if you have to read the menu to them because you don’t know what goes in your beef stew. It is equally unacceptable for you to leave your table to ask another person for the necessary information. There are countless times where servers have gotten negative feedback because they needed to ask someone else. Guests usually say something like, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll just order this…” Study the menu, know what soups your restaurant offers on particular days, and know the ingredients of the drinks at the bar. All of these seemingly small issues will add up to a higher tip percentage on the bill.

Number 5: Be Honest

This is one of the most important pieces of advice that you could ever take. If you get nothing out of the rest of this article, keep this one: Be honest with your guest. Lying to cover up a mistake you’ve made is the next big mistake. A guest will be disappointed if you’ve made a mistake and tell them about it, but more so if you lie to them to cover it up. In my personal experience as a server, I’ve done everything from letting a person sit at their table too long before being greeted to forgetting to put an order into the computer for a half an hour, and the best responses I’ve ever had from guests is when I flat out tell them that it was my fault. Some people are good liars, some are not, but it is a fact that people can tell more often than not when a person is not being truthful with them (remember the whole body language issue?). No matter what the screw up, big or small, remember to be honest in your explanation. They will know that they can trust you, and even though you messed up once or twice that it is still in your interest to see that they are taken care of and that will reflect on the tip in the end.

Number 6: Make a personal connection and adapt to your guest

Here is another piece of advice that will help bring your tips up 5-10 percent more than normal. Something that guests love more than anything is to come into an establishment where they are familiar with the staff and vice versa. Every guest is a potential regular. What that means is that every person who comes through those doors and sits at your table to eat has the potential to come back again, and possibly ask for your table. It is up to you whether or not a guest will return. So, how do you make a person want to come back? Here’s a tip I got from my boss about a year ago: Make the guest feel like they’re eating at your house. This means learn their name, learn what kind of food they like to eat, and find out a little about who they are without being too intrusive. There is a lady that comes into our restaurant about twice a week and only likes to sit at a couple of the servers’ tables because she knows that we will give her good service. When she comes in, we have her drink ready for her almost before she is seated. We have a plate chilling in the cooler for whenever she’s ready for her dessert. We know her name, we know about what she does, and we talk to her like she’s family. She loves this type of treatment and usually tips over 20 percent of the bill because of it. If you learn who a person is, and show them that you are interested in more than just their money, they will respond positively. This can be very rewarding on a personal level as well as monetarily.

Robotic spiels are a thing of the past. Customers want real people to serve them and treat them like they are company at your home. People do not want to be sold to, they want to be catered to, and that is your business; catering to the guests’ needs and treating them like they are worth something no matter who they are. These are not miracle techniques that will make you extraordinarily rich, but if you take the time to use all six of these methods, you will no doubt begin to see a significant change in the way guests respond to you as well as in the way they tip you after their meal. Remember, what you put into your service is what you will get out of it.