When it comes to responsible alcohol service, most of the focus has been on serving techniques and identifying who should be served. But there’s another area where establishments can help avoid over-serving customers and that’s with marketing.
While it’s true that many broad “drink responsibly” marketing campaigns haven’t shown to be very effective, your individual establishment can make improvements with promoting alcohol to better maintain the safety of your guests (and reduce liability risks).
1. Be Aware of Younger Patrons
Especially true for establishments near schools or universities, you should aim to promote alcohol to patrons of a legal age. One way you can do this is avoiding advertising sweet, fruity drinks or using bright colors and modern language. Another way is to avoid having younger influencers or in-person promoters that have a young following or look too young. Bottom line, you don’t want to give the appearance that you’re marketing to minors.
2. Don’t Encourage Overdrinking
Certain events, like “all-you-can drink” specials or drinking contests that involve an unlimited amount of servings, can encourage people to overdrink. Promoting events like this with certain wording is banned overseas for a reason and it promotes an unsafe environment. Consider more appropriate events like trivia night or drink specials that limit patrons to a couple or few drinks per person. A big part of responsible alcohol service is avoiding over-serving customers and promotion plays a part in it.
3. Staff Appropriately
While large events with crowds are good for revenue, they require an appropriate number of staff to handle them—including alcohol servers. If you’re promoting an event with drinking and have a lot of customers requesting drinks from one or two bartenders, for example, it causes stress for your staff and can lead to mistakes. (Plus, it’s a lot more difficult for them to focus on responsible alcohol service techniques like avoiding service to minors and over-serving patrons.) As with all of these, if you’re going to promote alcohol, be prepared for it.
4. Train Your Servers
Finally, training your servers in responsible alcohol service goes a long way and you can even include some of what they’ll learn in your promotional materials. For example, if you have a poster on an event with drink specials, add disclaimers that IDs will be required or that there is a limit on the number of drinks. Don’t give potential patrons the idea that alcohol will be abundant and available to all. Remind guests that you have the right to refuse service.
If you’re interested in more techniques for serving alcohol responsibly, consider signing up for an alcohol server or alcohol seller certification from American Course Academy today.
