Bar Towels Are an Essential Tool for Any Restaurant Worker. Here Are Our 5 Favorite Uses for the Humble Bar Towel.
Many pieces of equipment and gear make working in a restaurant possible. Good shoes, properly maintained knives, blenders, and more make the restaurant world go round. But we shouldn’t forget one of the most important and humblest tools of all: bar towels.
Here’s a rundown of what makes bar towels essential to each restaurant position:
1. Bartenders: The Bar Towel Hello.
One of the best ways to greet a new customer at the bar is to give them a quick wipe of their area. It doesn’t matter if the bar is already clean (it should be, but that’s another article). The quick greet and wipe establish the relationship. You’re the bartender and will take care of your guests. I used a separate dry towel just for this purpose rather than showing my new customer the dirty bleach towel.
2. Servers: Dusting off the empty seats
After wiping down tables, the chairs invariably end up with crumbs. When my section was slow I’d walk through and dust the crumbs off the chairs. It was the perfect ‘look busy while nothing’s happening so I don’t have to polish glasses or check bathrooms’ kind of task. When guests started to arrive, my section always looked on point and ready.
3. Bussers & Runners: Carrying hot plates
Bar towels are even more central to the support staff. Bussers and Runners are charged with keeping everything in motion – including the scorching hot plates that the Chef likes to put into the window with little warning. Bar towels are the only protection (other than time, habituation, and indifference to physical comfort) when following the 6-top with hot plates.
4. Line Cooks: Everything
To a cook, bar towels are basically God. You might think I’m exaggerating, but Bar Towels is up there with Ba’al regarding credible false deities. Wipe off a work surface? Bar Towel. Need something to grab a hot pan out of the oven? Bar Towel. Want to leave a welt on the new guy’s forearm? Bar Towel.
5. Managers: All of the above + Bribery
The managers get to know the towel in all its glory, using it for nearly all of the above tasks. The manager, however, is also in charge of keeping the linen costs down, which means doling out the towels. I used to have a couple of hidden stashes I could access in cases of emergency. If I needed something done, I could always grab a couple of extra towels and exchange them for a favor.
