It’s not always obvious, but getting your first gig as a waiter is the key to learning the craft of service. It’s the ultimate experimental sandbox to study people and their behaviour. And learn from the skill and wisdom of others.

The key element to being a good sommelier, one that is too often overlooked, is having a solid skills base as a waiter.  A lot of people want to be sommeliers before they’ve learnt how to be good waiters, and it doesn’t work like that.  It’s here you’ll learn the principles of good attentive service and how best to look after your guest. Whether anticipating their needs, reading when to approach the table, to linger and chat or just to back off. It’s all important. And you only get good at it by developing a practice.

I worked as a waiter and later as a restaurant manager, but always spent time learning about wine to build my knowledge whilst doing these jobs.  Sommelier roles only happened in top flight restaurants. There weren’t many places that could carry the extra cost of a specialised staff member like this. So you had to be an all-rounder. First building mastery of the floor in food and service, whilst also choosing to invest your own time learning whatever you could about wine.

It was only after about 10 years in the world of restaurants that I had the opportunity to work exclusively with wine. And I know that chance came as a result of having built that base of restaurant and customer service skills as a waiter.

I’m not suggesting that you don’t attempt to get a foot in the door somewhere in a sommelier role. But the point is that you have to be just as good, if not better than the other people you are working with on the floor. When I’m working with waiters interested in moving into working more with wine, I always remind them that they are nothing more than a fancy waiter. It helps to keep perspective grounded. 

Besides, both waiters and their managers love nothing more than a sommelier who can help them clear a table of 10 before they have to ask. Or sets up their table with bread and cutlery if they are getting slammed in their section.  I’ve come across plenty of folk who know lots about wine but are hopeless at contributing to the room when their wine-specific services aren’t needed. 

So whilst building up your wine knowledge is great, it’s not enough. If the floor team know you’ve got their back when they’re in the weeds, you’ll find they’ll return the favour to help you succeed too.

It’s all pretty simple – if you show up consistently and take care of each other, you’ll be in the best spot to show your guests a good time (and maybe even become a reasonable fancy waiter

If you want to ‘get’ wine, wash the dishes.

Washing dishes in a restaurant is hard yakka. But it’s a foot in the door. What you really want though, is a job on the floor as a waiter (the cooks and the chefs out there won’t agree, but that’s a story for another time). The Convention Centre I kicked off my working life at refused to promote me out of the kitchen to the glamorous looking world of banquet service.

So I took a strategic (if lateral) promotion to cleaning the public areas. After a stint sending myself cross-eyed watching the carpet pattern while vacuuming football field sized halls, and cleaning vomit up in toilets after high school formals, I knew I had to look elsewhere for more.

I shyly muddled through an interview process and scored a job at a pretty fancy local restaurant as trainee waiter.

But have you ever got what you think you wanted and then been absolutely terrified?

When you’re sitting down as the guest in any sort of restaurant or cafe, the whole thing looks a lot easier.

I thought I knew at least a bit about food (and by that time had a few drinks under my belt) – but this is all a lot harder than it looks. I could pronounce some of the stuff on the menu, but I was dead scared of having to do the specials in front of a customer because – I Just.Can’t.Remember.My.Lines.

Everyone else seems so skillful and effortless. Sophisticated and cool. I’m feeling like I’ve got two left feet. What if they ask a question and I don’t know the answer? I’ll look like an idiot.

The chefs and all the kitchen talk is confusing, and I’m not sure if they like me. Am I doing a good job? This is intense. I’m finding it hard. And I’m exhausted. But it’s also strangely…satisfying. Maybe even fun? I know it might sound like a tractor beam to a slow moving car crash – but you get to sit down and share a drink together at the end of the night. And a better meal than I could have cooked for myself at the time (I later learned that not all staff meals were going to be as good as what I got here).

But the pages in this wine list. Shit. How am I ever going to learn all that? The others seem to be able to rattle off chatty talking points about the flavours of grapes and some of the places they come from with the customers. It’s pretty magical to eavesdrop on these conversations. And whilst I’m curious, I’m also a bit terrified. There’s never been much drink at our house. Well, Dad occasionally drank beer, but Mum doesn’t touch the stuff.

I have no idea how I’m going to get a handle on this wine thing. Where do you even start?