Reading Guest Signals for Bar Owners: Boost Sales Through Body Language

Are you missing out on sales because you can't read your guests' buying signals?

Many bars struggle with training staff to recognize buying signals and engagement opportunities, leading to missed sales and lower guest satisfaction

In today’s episode:

• Master the psychology of guest interactions to naturally increase sales
• Create an environment where guests feel truly understood and valued
• Transform casual customers into repeat business through better engagement

Discover how understanding subtle guest cues can transform your bar's atmosphere and boost your bottom line.

Learn More:
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Bar Business Nation Facebook Group
The Bar Business Podcast Website
Chris' Book 'How to Make Top-Shelf Profits in the Bar Business'

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A podcast for bar, pub, tavern, nightclub, and restaurant owners, managers, and hospitality professionals, covering essential topics like bar inventory, marketing strategies, restaurant financials, and hospitality profits to help increase b...

Transcript

Chris Schneider (00:01.262)
Today, discover how understanding subtle guest cues can increase drink sales. Learn the psychology between guest-staff interactions that drive repeat business. And master the art of creating moments that encourage natural upselling.

Today we are exploring how to understand body language and social cues to transform your bar's atmosphere and boost your bottom line. Many bar owners focus on menu design and pricing, but miss the powerful impact of reading and responding to guest signals. The challenge most bars face is training staff to recognize buying signals and engagement opportunities without appearing pushy or insincere. This leads to missed sales opportunities and lower guest satisfaction.

By understanding the psychology of hospitality interactions, you can create an environment where guests naturally spend more while feeling more valued.

Now that was all just kind of a mouthful that I read off right there because I wrote it and it sounded good. But guest interactions are hugely important and oftentimes we focus on steps of service, but not quality of service. And so we focus on being robots, order takers. And we train our staff to follow a very specific set of standards rather than

teaching them how to read and interpret the guest in a way that is going to drive sales. And this topic actually came from a conversation I was having with a client of mine. And we were talking about guest interaction and employee training and all of that. And I realized after talking for an hour that my best advice was ask more questions and flirt more.

Chris Schneider (01:54.722)
Now, obviously, I don't mean flirt with your employees and your staff. That would be bad. But what I do mean is you have to engage in a back and forth. You need a repertoire. You need to engage people on multiple levels. And that requires understanding psychology and reading body language in order to be effective.

So first point I want to talk about today is reading guest buying signals. So too often if you go into Yelp for almost any bar I've ever worked with, looked at, read Yelp Google reviews for, you will see people say, well,

Chris Schneider (02:34.742)
I had an empty drink or I wanted another drink and they didn't fill it or I asked for more time to make a decision and then they didn't come back for 15 minutes. So if you're not recognizing when your guest wants to purchase something, you're losing revenue. Bottom line, you're providing a bad guest experience. You're going to get bad online reviews, but you're also losing revenue. So we need to pay attention to our guests and we need to look for the little social cues.

If someone sets a glass to the side, obviously that's a buying signal.

Chris Schneider (03:08.376)
We also need to look at social cues of the guests themselves. So we need to think about this person in front of us. How are they presenting themselves?

Generally speaking, and this is not always true, but someone that comes in looking a little bit more higher end in their appearance, I'm going to try to push more higher end items on. Maybe they go for it, maybe they don't. It doesn't mean I'm not going to push a guy that comes in that clearly is a painter and was painting houses all day and normally was a Budweiser to go to craft beer, because I've done that before. It works.

But I'm going to read that person and look at how they're presenting themselves to determine what I can sell to them best, what I think they might enjoy. And then one thing that every person that works in your front of house should be trained on is to understand timing of their check-ins based on body language. I don't know about you guys, but I'm a single guy. I go on dates.

And I will tell you right now there is nothing worse on a date, especially a first date, than a server that is either checking in too much so I can't get a good conversation going or a server that's not checking in enough. So if it's awkward, mean, come on, let's get a bill and let me get out of here. So you need to watch your team. And you need to train your team on how body language works and how to recognize.

when people are uncomfortable, how to recognize when people are potentially looking for the check or just want to be left alone for a second and talk. And generally you can read the vibe between two people pretty well. You know, if they seem kind of standoffish and they're looking around, they probably want something. If they're leaned into each other talking, you probably want to leave them alone. So understand guest signals and understand how that's going to impact.

Chris Schneider (05:17.304)
how you need to serve that guest. Not your general steps of service, but customizing those steps of service based upon the signals you're reading from the guest.

Now the second thing you should do is create engagement opportunities. And so engagement opportunities involves making sure your staff is visible, but not intrusive.

Obviously when we're talking engagement opportunities, it's different when we're talking guest to guest versus guest to team. Guest to team, we want to be visible. We don't want to be intrusive. We want to be there when we see those signals that we were just talking about. But also you want to encourage guest to guest interaction. You want to create those engagement opportunities. Now, a lot of times that can just come from your bar design. If you watch Bar Rescue, you will hear Jon Taffer refer to what he calls butt funnels, which is just

small spaces to get into and off of a dance floor that requires people to get close together so that they bump into each other and therefore create an interaction. Now, obviously that's more appropriate in some bar environments than others. But you need to create in your layout, if you can, engagement opportunities for you guys. The other thing that is important when we're talking about engagement opportunities and

really interacting with guests and trying to get guests to interact with each other is you need to look at appropriate personal space management. So when we talk about personal space, now obviously in a loud club and a loud bar at one in the morning, you're going to be in people's intimate space. Intimate space is generally defined as within two feet of someone. But short of that, you really don't want to be in their intimate space because most people get freaked out by it. They're a little put off by it.

Chris Schneider (07:10.478)
And that's especially true.

For someone who's a guy getting in the space of women, that's never going to work.

Chris Schneider (07:22.478)
And it's probably true the other way around as well. I mean, that can work a little bit. The guys are a little bit less worried about that, but you want to give people their personal space. So generally speaking, like I said, anything less than two feet is considered intimate space. Anything that two to four foot range is considered, you know, personal, but not too bad. And then you look at like four, four to 12 feet is social space. So you want to always, when you're interacting with your guests, being that two to four foot range.

Any closer, it's freaky. Any further, it's hard to communicate in a bar, but you need to watch how you're interacting in space. And you also need to train your staff not only to see the nonverbal cues in the body language of guests, but to watch their own body language, right? Things like not putting your hands in pockets, not crossing your legs, not tapping your feet, not bouncing around. Now the bouncing around can be hard. have ADHD. I bounce around like a crazy person.

I'll probably know I have ADHD from how I speak into the microphone and how I get energetic and sometimes just ramble. But you need to make sure that not only can your staff read the signals from your guests, but that your staff knows how to interact with the guest. Now, one final point before I let you go for the day, converting signals into sales. This is what this is all about. So we create the engagement opportunities. We watch the body language and now we have to convert that into sales.

We have to look at staff and train them for appropriate offerings. If you offer say a dessert or an upsell, watch people's faces. Watch how they interact.

If you get positive signals, continue. If you don't, lay off. Like literally have a conversation rather than running through a protocol with your guests. Now when I say don't have a protocol, I mean don't just read a script. Obviously you need some protocols involved in what that service should look like, but it does not need to be scripted like you're going through a drive-through at McDonald's.

Chris Schneider (09:32.522)
Also look at ways to implement subtle suggestive selling techniques. And a lot of this can be related to reading the situation going on. So for instance, if you know people are on a date, know, first, second, third date, especially if they seem a little awkward. At the end of the dinner, maybe you say, hey, how about a dessert for you two to share? It's going to...

Intrigue them because as long as they're having a good time, it's going to build intimacy in their evening and it's an easy sell for you. So look for subtle suggestive selling techniques that are going to play into the situation you've determined unraveling in front of you.

So understanding guest psychology and body language is about more than just selling drinks and food. It's about creating an environment where guests feel understood and valued. That's the whole purpose of this, is to make sure your guests feel like they're getting special service aimed at them by being able to understand their body language.

by mastering signals from people. And this is hard, this takes time, this takes research. I'm not saying this is easy. The whole purpose of this episode is just to try to get you to go figure it out a little bit more and give you some ideas on where to start. But when you do that, your staff will increase sales while building stronger guest relationships, leading to both higher check averages and increased repeat business.