Ken Burgin

Restaurant Training Quiz

How to Use a Trivia Quiz for Restaurant & Pub Training, or to Keep Customers Connected

A good Trivia Quiz is a great way to lift the spirits and stretch the brain, and in the time of Covid lockdowns, it’s also an excellent way to stay connected with customers, staff and friends.

Staff Training: I’ve had a lot of success with quizzes lately, using a Trivia Quiz to train staff in a new business product – an otherwise very dry subject. Technical details had to be learned, and there’s a limit to how much you can ‘teach’ adults when they’re not excited by a subject. It’s important to assess their knowledge because they need to give accurate information when customers ask a wide range of questions.

Sound familiar with some of your staff training? Teaching new staff about menu and wine knowledge, safety procedures, rules about attendance and behaviour, service procedures – topics that are hard to make interesting. Let’s remember the old saying ‘what we learn with pleasure, we never forget‘ – how can we bring some fun to the process? I find the best method is to mix serious questions with some light-hearted ones – from sport, general knowledge, Disney, Marvel and Harry Potter; about 80% serious and 20% fun.

Need to keep laid-off or working-at-home staff connected? A weekly trivia event can be just the ticket, mixing a little product knowledge in with a lot of light-hearted general knowledge, pop music and movie trivia. Ask people to take turns designing the questions – there’s a lot of hidden gaming talent!

Keep customers connected. If they’re not able to visit because of lockdowns or capacity restrictions – hold your regular evening event online, and let them continue their winning streak, bringing pub trivia to their lounge room or sofa. Choose the questions according to the demographic of your audience – you’ll find hundreds of examples for every topic just by Googling ‘trivia questions for…’

The system I use is the online system AhaSlides, where you create a Quiz or Survey presentation right on the web, writing the questions you want to ask. You can use it free for up to seven people, or for a small fee for more. It comes with dozens of pre-made Quizzes, Surveys and Training examples to practice with or use. Participants join on their phone, by scanning a QR code or following a link to cast their vote or send a live reaction – results are shown instantly online.

Managing a Queue: need to keep people entertained while they wait in line? Set up a Trivia Quiz and make it ‘self-paced’ – they can start it whenever they scan the QR Code you display. Here’s how to do this.

Surveys and Feedback: you can also use AhaSlides for more serious events – running live Surveys, or submitting Questions for a panel or trainer to answer. The results are instantly displayed on your slides as charts, or in any other interactive format of your choice like graphs or word clouds. No more awkward waits for shy people to share – everyone can be anonymous on their phone. You can also upload your Powerpoint presentation to show the slides in AhaSlides, and add some short quizzes after each section – ‘let’s check on who has been listening!’.

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