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Games servers play

CHARLESTON S.C. Peter Pierce’s servers didn’t have to tell him last year that his preshift lineups had grown stale. The manager of Slightly North of Broad — or SNOB — said their blank expressions told the whole story.

“You’d see that glaze form over their eyes,” says general manager Pierce, referring to the pre-shift review of specials and service strategies. “You can’t skip lineup; it’s necessary. But when you do lineup five or six times a week, it can get mundane.”

So Pierce challenged his servers to come up with some fresh ideas that would make the nightly ritual fun, increase server knowledge and boost overall teamwork. Their answer: play games.

To improve the staff’s wine and spirits smarts, server Melanie Davison created a scaled-down knockoff of Jeopardy, the TV trivia game. Once each week, she develops five categories with three questions each centered on food, wine, spirits or the history of SNOB. Questions are valued at 100, 200 and 500 points, with harder questions earning more points. At the restaurant’s chef’s table, the eight-server group is divided into two teams of four, and they take individual turns choosing and answering questions. Davison, dubbed “Alex” by her peers, controls the board, reads the questions and allows 20 seconds per answer.

“I make the questions so they move from a large idea to a smaller one,” Davison says. “A category might be based on, say, Bordeaux, and questions might include a winery, a specific wine and a specific grape.”

She also reverses the theme by asking servers to identify which items on a list don’t belong, such as a particular varietal not from the themed region.

In lieu of standard side work, Davison spends about two hours coming up with each game’s questions -- much more time than her peers spend changing light bulbs or cleaning windows. But she calls the work “a labor of love."

"I enjoy teaching people, she says. "I enjoy wines, so it keeps me researching. There’s always a new vineyard, always new wine.”

Pierce simply loves her labor because his staff is learning and they look forward to the weekly contest. He says his servers are very competitive and want to win, despite the small rewards, such as chocolates or a bottle of wine.

“Melanie’s fantastic at coming up with the questions and leading the game,” says Pierce, who admits that he’s sometimes stumped by her questions. “She doesn’t make [the servers] feel bad if they give a wrong answer. She’ll say, ‘Good try, but you’re close,’ or ‘I like your answer, but it’s wrong.’”

Pierce also wanted to increase teamwork and cooperation among the front-of-the-house staff without resorting to a preshift browbeating. He eventually rolled out a task-centered bingo game to spark some competition.

Server pairs are assigned to roam the dining room looking to help others with predefined tasks, such as bringing ice to the bartender, helping at the hostess stand or bussing tables. Once a task is accomplished, the pair checks it off the list to “cover” a box on a bingo sheet posted in the kitchen. Each team uses a different colored marker to track their progress.

“Sometimes they have to set three tables or pull out chairs for guests three times,” Pierce says. “Other times they have to clear plates from the bar or mention our cooking store, Charleston Cooks, three times in a shift. It’s always changing.”

Having each team perform each task multiple times forces the group to focus on those needs throughout the entire shift, Pierce says. “That way you don’t have the bartender flooded with ice at the beginning and empty at the end, or everybody standing around the hostess stand.”

Since the games began about a year ago, Pierce says they’ve more than accomplished his goals of improved education and staff collaboration. And as a property of Maverick Southern Kitchens, a multiunit restaurant company, SNOB’s success has caught the attention of its sister restaurants.

“Managers from some of our other restaurants have come to see [Jeopardy] because they’ve heard how well it’s worked here,” Pierce says. “It’s night and day to see what they’ve learned and want to learn. [With bingo], it’s almost like they’re little kids who don’t know they’re helping. They really get into it.”

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