A Catering Service involves more than just transportation and food delivery. The word service includes people and, in fact, in this activity, the people who attend the guests are a key element for the success (or the opposite) of an event.
The waiters' service is so important that companies dedicated to social or corporate events follow some basic steps to have an adequate waiters' staff.
What are the characteristics of a good waiter?
1.- Attitude
The most important thing, more than experience, because everything can be learned with time and a good teacher, is the ATTITUDE of service. Smile and endure, because sometimes you have to have a lot of patience, but keep calm and be tolerant.
The good waiter is the one who always serves with a smile, who is kind, patient and empathetic with customers.
2.- Experience
There are different tasks for a waiter.
In general, the work in a cocktail bar differentiates between bartenders who pass trays of food and those who pass trays of drinks. The former can be done by anyone and the latter requires more experience.
To attend a table service or set up a beverage bar, it is important to have experience.
Work peaks are inevitable and the waiter must know how to maintain a positive attitude despite the stresses that occur in this business.
It is also important to know the appetizers or dishes offered to the diner, and better yet to know how to indicate their allergens if asked.
3.- Appearance
Here we include characteristics that go beyond appearance. It is very important to be "washed and ironed", to wear the uniform.
You have to be committed to the job, arriving at the appointed time, performing the tasks that your superior has asked you to do prior to the service, picking up after it..., in short, good waiters are those who are agile, proactive and decisive, polite and respectful on a personal level.
And if, in addition, they know languages, they will never be short of work.
Selection and Training of Waiters and Waitresses
For companies that offer catering with waiter service, it is vital to have a more or less large and more or less stable staff to avoid many problems at the time of services.
Throughout the year, resumes and recommendations for work as a waiter are sent to the Human Resources department. From there, a file is opened and they are tested. If you have no previous experience, it is better to do it in a large event so that it is not too noticeable if the candidate is not worth it. The event's maître d' will keep an eye on the new candidate and then pass his or her report to HR.
From here, if the report is favorable, you will be called more frequently and you will be trained on site. In this way, inexperienced waiters can end up working at weddings and events as managers.
We have had, and continue to have, several college student waiters and waitresses who want to earn some extra money and have become real experts in events.
The normal thing is that this type of waiter, at the end of his studies, dedicates himself to what he has studied and leaves us, but we believe that it is good to "replenish" the staff every year with new students because they take the job very seriously, they need it but they know that it is temporary and they do not get burned out, therefore they have a good attitude and generally have a smile on their face.
In the same way, there are novice waiters who end up working in the hospitality industry and can even reach positions of great responsibility within our company and become great professionals. In Artigot Catering we have several who have been promoted and of whom we are very proud.
They, in turn, will train the new batches of waiters and thus, with selection and continuous training, we cover the needs in the events and weddings that we carry out with our own waiters on staff, moving more than 200 waiters a year.
How could we not worry about it!
