Floor service from set-up to the bill

1. Walk the room as a guest: lights, music level, temperature, toilets, menus clean and current, specials written up.
2. Stations stocked: cutlery rolls, napkins, condiments, water jugs, dockets, pens, card terminal charged and paired.
3. Tables: level, wiped, laid the same way every time. Reserved cards out with names and times.
4. Pre-shift briefing, five minutes: covers booked, allergies flagged, 86'd items, the dish and the drink to push, who is on which section.
5. Check the till: floats counted, prices match the menu, tips policy notice visible.

Danny Meyer's Setting the Table draws the line that every good floor runs on: service is the technical delivery of the product (the right dish, on time, at the right temperature); hospitality is how the guest feels while it happens. Service is a monologue; hospitality is a dialogue. His hiring rule is to look for the '51 percenters': people whose emotional skills (warmth, optimism, curiosity, empathy, self-awareness, integrity) outweigh their technical ones, because technique can be taught and warmth mostly can't. In practice: learn names, notice what a regular drinks, remember the allergy without being told twice, and never let a guest feel they are an interruption. Meyer calls it collecting the dots and connecting them.

1. Greet within one minute, even if only to say you'll be straight over.
2. Water and menus; ask about allergies at every table (see the allergens course).
3. Drinks order first, back within five minutes with the drinks and ready for the food order.
4. Repeat the order back. Mark the docket with seat numbers so plates land without asking 'who's the fish?'
5. Check back within two bites, not two minutes: 'How is everything?' is only useful if you wait for the answer.
6. Clear together, offer dessert and coffee with a specific suggestion, not 'anything else?'
7. Read the table: when they stop talking to each other and look around, they want the bill.

• Bring it when it's asked for, or when the table is clearly finished, never before. Itemised, face down or in a folder, with a pen. Say what it is: 'Whenever you're ready.' Then leave.
• Check it before it goes out. A wrong bill is the last thing the guest remembers.
• Bring the card terminal to the table; never take a card away. If the terminal asks about a tip, say so plainly and let the guest decide. Pre-selected or defaulted tips are not acceptable practice and in a dispute the WRC will ask how the tip was presented.
• Splitting: offer it before they ask ('together or separately?'). Most tills split by seat if you marked the docket.
• Service charges: if the bill says 'service charge', the law says that money goes to staff like a tip (Tips Act 2022).
• Thank them by name if you have it, and mean the goodbye. The last thirty seconds set the review.

The Payment of Wages (Amendment) (Tips and Gratuities) Act 2022 applies to pubs, restaurants, cafés and takeaways. Employers must: distribute electronic tips (card and app) to workers fairly and transparently; never use tips to make up wages; treat any mandatory service charge as a tip for staff; display a notice prominently telling customers how card tips, cash tips and service charges are handled; and give each worker a written statement of total tips in the period and their share. The Workplace Relations Commission enforces it. If your venue has no tips notice at the till, it is breaking the law today.

Meyer's phrase is 'writing a great last chapter': the mistake is not the story, the recovery is. Apologise once, fix it fast, and add something unasked (the dessert, the coffee, the round). Tell the manager every time, not to get anyone in trouble but so the kitchen can stop the next one. Never argue a fault on a plate or a glass in front of other tables. A guest who had a problem solved well comes back more often than one who had no problem.