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• Service
• Branding
• Silent Selling
• Sales
• Organization
• Metrics

Hiring Superstars for your Craft Beverage Business

Be a Superstar. Hire a Superstar. Give Superstar Service.

Research shows that the most successful tasting room/tap room managers exhibit the following behavioral traits:

• Move at a rapid pace with sense of priority & urgency
• Delegate responsibility with close follow-up
• Comfortable with numbers but are more team / people oriented than analytical
• Are persuasive & firm, yet supportive & diplomatic

If you’re leading with success, you’ll need a successful team behind you. So what behavioral traits do you need your front-line team members to have? Here are some tips on hiring superstars:

Hiring Tasting Room / Tap Room Superstars

First consider your company’s unique culture. What fits your brand? Do your team members need to have a formal, elegant demeanor? Or should they be approachable, flexible and folksy? Do they need to juggle large crowds? The perfect employee would be very different for each of these scenarios. Having a clear picture of your specific cultural needs will help you find the right employees who will enjoy and excel in the job.

Next, consider their qualifications from three additional angles: knowledge, skills, and behavioral traits. While certain knowledge can be taught and skills can be practiced, basic traits like work pace, customer service heart, facility with details, curiosity and warmth are part of a person’s natural behavior profile and aren’t easily changed. Make sure you know the difference for your position.

Taking the time to understand the requirements of your frontline positions – going beyond required knowledge and skills to include both cultural fit and desired behavior style – will ultimately pay off in the form of engaged, successful employees, happier customers and, of course, more DTC sales.

Fully staffed? Make room for superstars!

Are you ever really fully staffed? If the right person – super salesperson and great fit for your brand – came along, wouldn’t you make room?

For most businesses, this is binary. You are either recruiting, or you are not. Smart businesses are constantly recruiting – either to add to their staff or to top-grade their current team – and raising the bar. But if you are not in this continual recruiting mode, which superstars are you missing? If you are “fully staffed,” are you actively reaching out and finding those who may not be looking for a new job? If you’re not looking to improve your team, how will you improve it?

Build this discipline of continual recruiting and keep moving your consumer direct business forward.

Staffing Up? Justifying more labor hours.

This conversation is a constant struggle between too many frontline mangers and hospitality executives. To be able to deliver a knock-your-socks-off, WOW guest experience requires a little over staffing. Maximizing sales and new club member sign-ups does too. But no one wants to over staff, to pay too much in labor costs. And nothing drives management crazier than seeing staff standing around twiddling their thumbs.

So how can you identify your labor sweet spot and justify staffing up to it?

Let your tasting room / tap room metrics pave the way. If you are tracking the following metrics on a daily basis you will have enough to information to defend your case:

• Tasting Room/Tap Room Traffic (subtotaled by consumer and trade)
• Craft Beverage (Wine, beer, spirits, etc.) Sales Dollars
• Craft Beverage Sales Orders
• New Club Member Sign-Ups (if applicable)
• Number of Staff Members Working
• Number of Labor Hours

With these inputs you can calculate the following ratios:

• Order Conversion Rate (% of total orders / consumer traffic)
• Average Order Value (total sales / total orders)
• Club Conversion Rate (% of new members / non-club consumer traffic)
• Service Level (total number of visitors / labor hours)
• Sales Labor Rate (% of total labor dollars / total sales dollars)

They key here is to understand at what Service Level are your sales and club sign-ups optimized. These rates usually look better during slower times than on busy weekend. Too many wineries and tap rooms just accept lower success rates during busy times as something that can’t be avoided. They may be staffing up for increased traffic, but not enough. Watch these ratios closely and find ways to minimize performance dips by staffing up. Justifying your labor hours is all in the numbers – these metrics will show that having the right, trained extra staff members on hand more than pays for itself. You can’t afford not to find your sweet spot.

Be a Superstar. Hire a Superstar. Give Superstar Service.

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photo credits: JD Hancock