Food and Beverage Education and Training Basics

Provide employees with food and beverage service training to ensure customer safety and satisfaction

Providing all of your employees with comprehensive food and beverage service training is essential to ensuring that your restaurant will flourish. Customers who receive excellent service in a clean restaurant will continue to come back. Training your employees in these areas gives them all the tools they need to meet every customer's expectations.

Choosing a training program can be difficult. In some cases, you may want to check out a few and then create your own program from things you learned. Check out these food and beverage education and training basics to help you get started:

1. Make food safety a top priority.

2. Have your managers complete a food and beverage management course.

3. Teach employees to properly care for customers and food.

 

Find food and beverage courses that emphasize food safety

Food safety is a major consideration for restaurants. Ensuring that all of your employees, including managers, know how to handle food safely is vital to keeping your customers happy and healthy. When you are choosing a food and beverage course on food safety, find out if the course is FDA approved as these courses update course information when the FDA issues new regulations or suggestions.
Try: You can take an online course in food safety at Learn 2 Serve. This company offers FDA approved courses, including alcoholic beverage training courses. ServSafe offers online and in person alcohol and food hygiene training courses. By creating a user account on this website, you can access members only articles about the latest food safety news.

Provide comprehensive food and beverage manager training

The managers in your restaurant are your link to the customers and the employees. Providing a comprehensive food and beverage manager training program is necessary to ensure your management staff is able to cope with any situations that may arise in your restaurant, including unruly guests or questionable employee actions.
Try: Quantified Marketing Group offers information to help you find the most appropriate food and beverage management training courses. The articles also cover what to look for when choosing your management staff and how to work with the staff you hire. VirtualRestaurant.com offers numerous books to provide on the job food and beverage education and training for your management staff. This website offers books about handling customers who have had too many alcoholic drinks and books about dealing with food safety problems.

Ensure guest safety by using food and beverage service training courses

Every employee in your restaurant should have to successfully complete a food and beverage service training course prior to doing any work. This ensures that customers in your restaurant remain free from food borne illnesses. Many of these courses also teach customer service skills to help your employees treat customers in a professional manner.
Try: OSHA has information about specific employee training challenges for restaurants, including teen training programs. You can also find checklists and other printable materials on this website to help aid in your food and beverage service training. Safety Training Network offers numerous food and beverage training courses geared toward teaching employees basic safety techniques. Many of the food and beverage industry training courses have a free trial.

 

• Many food and beverage training courses offer certificates of completion. In some cases, these certificates may expire, which means your employees will have to take a refresher course and exam to get a new certificate. As your employees get certificates for completing courses, display the certificate in a prominent place in the restaurant for customers to see.

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