Originally Posted by
BamaVol
<rant on> I eat at a lot of different restaurants (and drink at a lot of different bars). If I'm too far from the taps to read the handles, I ask the server to tell me what draft beers are available. They always start with Bud Light and list another 6 beers that taste exactly like it (i.e. no flavor) before they get to anything I would remotely consider putting in my mouth.
I wish I was responsible for training servers across the world. That would be one of my rules. Of course you have Bud Light and its clones. No one asks what's on tap because they want a Bud Light. Start with the outliers and stop wasting the customers' time.< rant off>
Hey, I'm a beer snob, too, but I have enough common sense to understand why servers do that.
They may be wasting your time, but the fact remains that Bud Lite is the top selling beer in the US, followed by Coors Lite, Bud, Miller Lite, Corona, Natural Lite, Busch Lite and Heineken. So apparently there are people who ask about beers and opt for a Bud Lite. Why don't you just ask the server what craft beers they have on top? Or ask them to skip the Bud, Miller, Coors and Busch products?
When you're put in charge of training servers worldwide, why don't you time the average length of the customer-server drink interaction when the server lists the best-selling beers first vs. the worst-selling beers first? And then see how long it takes your servers to quit/get you fired when you suggest they dramatically increase the average interaction time by taking longer than necessary to give the customer what he/she wants.
PS: That's why I love beer lists, but hate restaurants that keep them out of date. A few bars/restaurants in Chicago have started listing the "Next to be tapped" items and rubber stamping "sold out" over ones that are done. Keeps them from having to reprint the list frequently and reduces the amount of time a server has to spend taking drink orders.