"These step-by-step guides on a specific management subject range from finding a great site for your new restaurant to how to train your wait staff and literally everything in between. They are easy and fast -to-read, easy to understand and will take the mystery out of the subject. The information is "boiled down" to the essence. They are filled to the brim with up to date and pertinent information."

The demand for a skilled waitstaff has never been greater. The Waiter and Waitress Training Manual can help the reader to develop the consummate service skills required to capture repeat business and handle all phases of the job efficiently. This expanded edition reflects current customer preferences and restaurant practices.

A head server at a renowned NYC restaurant dishes out stories and trade secrets from the world of fine dining in this behind-the-scenes memoir. While recent college grad Phoebe Damrosch was figuring out what to do with her life, she supported herself by working as a waiter. Before long she was a captain at the legendary four-star restaurant Per Se, the culinary creation of master chef Thomas Keller. Service Included is the story of her experiences there: her obsession with food, her love affair with a sommelier, and her observations of the highly competitive and frenetic world of fine dining. Along the way, she provides insider dining tips, such as: Never ask your waiter what else he or she does. Never send something back after eating most of it. Never make gagging noises when hearing the specials—someone else at the table might like to order one.

Welcome to Waiters' World is a step-by-step guide to successfully waiting tables. Joël Hoachuck, who has been in the restaurant industry around the world for over 30 years, has written this guide in hopes of sharing his knowledge with the Waiters' of the World. The guide begins by covering both the psychological and ethical aspects of the waiters' interactions with customers and their coworkers. It moves into the techniques required to efficiently wait tables, showing you the tools of the trade through clear illustrations. Welcome to Waiters' World also provides an easy-to-understand overview of wine service, finishing up with a glossary of restaurant lingo and its definitions. You can then test your knowledge with a final quiz. Mastering the techniques detailed in this book will result in the waiter having confidence, maximizing sales, increasing their income and excelling at their job. Restaurant owners and managers will find this handbook to be an extremely beneficial tool, saving hours of on-site training. Everything a manager teaches is contained in this guide, including important techniques and tips that are often overlooked. The resulting professional service will be apparent, creating memorable experiences that make your guests come back for more. If your restaurant is ready to provide top notch service, or you are a waiter who wants to be at the top of your game, this book is for you!

Compelling fiction starts with characters who have well-crafted layers that make them memorable, relatable, and fascinating. But trying to convey those layers often results in bulky descriptions that cause readers to skim. Occupations, though, can cover a lot of characterization ground, revealing personality traits, abilities, passions, and motivations. Dig deeper, and a career can hint at past trauma, fears, and even the character’s efforts to run from—or make up for—the past. Select a job that packs a powerful punch. Inside The Occupation Thesaurus, you’ll find: * Informative profiles on popular and unusual jobs to help you write them with authority * Believable conflict scenarios for each occupation, giving you unlimited possibilities for adding tension at the story and scene level * Advice for twisting the stereotypes often associated with these professions * Instruction on how to use jobs to characterize, support story structure, reinforce theme, and more * An in-depth study on how emotional wounds and basic human needs may influence a character’s choice of occupation * A brainstorming tool to organize the various aspects of your character’s personality so you can come up with the best careers for them Choose a profession for your character that brings more to the table than just a paycheck. With over 120 entries in a user-friendly format, The Occupation Thesaurus is an entire job fair for writers.

Hilarious tales from the trenches of food service from the popular blog—perfect for fans of David Sedaris, Anthony Bourdain, Erma Bombeck and Mo Rocca. For all those disenchanted current and former food service employees, Darron Cardosa (a.k.a. The Bitchy Waiter) has your back. Based on his popular blog, this riotous book is full of waitstaff horror stories—plus heartwarming tales—from three decades in the industry. Cardosa knows you want your beer cold (“You want a cold beer? Thank you for clarifying so I didn’t bring you the one that just came out of the oven”). And while he may hate children (“I know the kid at Table Eight is trouble the moment he rolls into the restaurant in his fancy stroller”), he will at least consider owning up to his mistakes: “Do I take the steak from the floor, citing the “three-second rule,” and put it in the to-go box and carry it back to the woman?” From crazy customers to out-of-control egos, these acerbic tales offer a hilarious glimpse into what really goes on in that fancy restaurant—and inside the mind of a server. Praise for The Bitchy Waiter “Cardosa does for wait staff what Anthony Bourdain did for kitchens: he exposes the ugly side of food service from the perspective of those working on the front lines. And he puts the potential restaurant customer on notice that someone is watching and recording their bad behavior.” —Shelf Awareness