At The Palm restaurants, servers form six-person teams to compete for gift certificates and other prizes for selling specials or scoring high on mystery shoppers reports

"We said a restaurant has to sell x-number of flatbreads to even become eligible for the prize," explains Tim Murphy, director of operations support. "That automatically increased sales."

Murphy grouped the restaurants by unit volume to keep competition fair. Then for the next 11 days he randomly picked eligible restaurants from each of the three groups and gave gift certificates to the servers who had sold the most Wild Flatbreads that day.

Sales at the Minneapolis-based chain jumped by 54 percent over the first two months of the items' rollout. "It was a huge success," Murphy says. Wild Flatbreads are now a permanent menu item and incentives play a larger role in the later stages of a rollout, he adds.

Running sales contests is business as usual at chains throughout the country—or should be, says consultant and former general manager Jeffrey Summers of Dallas-based Restaurant Coaching Solutions. "I believe in incentivizing high performance on an ongoing basis," he says.

Operators who use contests say the benefits are obvious: boosting morale, making work fun, and increasing productivity and product knowledge.

"On the whole, people like competing against one another," declares Debbie Fox, vice president of training for Washington, D.C.-based Palm Restaurants. Fox, who oversees the company's sales contests, won many as a waitress at The Palm.

"Besides adding to sales, contests elevate product knowledge and service skills," says Paul Paz, founder of WaitersWorld.com and a veteran waiter at the Stanford's Restaurant in Lake Oswego, Ore., one of 10 Stanford's operated by parent Restaurants Unlimited. "We usually always have something going on."

At Sanford's Restaurant in Lake Oswego, Ore, servers Paul Paz, Laurie Lang and Rick Roe compete for "golden tickets," affording a shot at monthly incentives.

Daily or weekly prizes don't have to be large or costly. Ted Door, founder and president of two-unit Double D's Sourdough Pizza in Westminster, Colo., prefers handing out $10 each night to employees with the highest per-person average. He has tried other incentives like bonuses but figures cash works best, he adds. Plus, the POS system allows servers to keep track of their performance. "Employees are running for the phones a lot faster, and they are up-selling when on the phone," he says.

Murphy and Fox encourage GMs to use vendor gifts—tickets to sporting events, for example—and trade-outs with movie theaters or other businesses as incentives. Fox recalls a manager who arranged with a car dealer for a contest winner to drive a convertible for a weekend. Kat Cole, vice president of training for Atlanta-based Hooters of America, likes the idea of buying lunch for a winning server. She says letting winners write their schedules for a week is also a desirable prize.

The manager's labor can serve as an inexpensive prize, suggests former Rock Bottom training executive Tim Kirkland, author of The Renegade Server. He recalls a manager who washed winners' cars every Saturday morning and another who did sidework for servers as a contest incentive. "It's a good idea for the manager to take a hit once in a while," he offers.

Kirkland, now a Denver-based consultant, reminds operators not to forget back-of-the-house workers, who may be resentful because they have to cook the items servers have been incentivized on. "Giving them phone cards, especially for your immigrant staff, is awesome," he says.

Selling Wild Flatbreads earned 33 servers at Buffalo Wild Wings $250 gift certificates

Although many operators think of contests as pitting one server against another, some restaurants pit teams against other teams. At The Palm, for example, managers devise teams of five or six employees (including back-of-the-house) of various skill levels. Fox says that teams in the Washington, D.C., unit competed to see which could sell the most wine per check. The incentive: dinner one night that was cooked and served by the management staff.

Contests and incentives are only two parts of the equation. Recognition is the final piece. Some companies make a big showing; for instance, Hooters names a Hooters Girl of the year. "They are rock stars," Cole says. "We give them tons of prizes, and they get lots of exposure."

"Recognition needs to be public. Get everyone together, and make a big production of it," says Summers, advising managers not to forget the award. "Six months later it better come up in her performance appraisal."

Small productions can also be effective. Denver-based trainer and consultant Susie Ross recommends combining recognition with best practices during preshift meetings. "Ask [winners], 'What have you said at the table to make customers jump on it?' Really good servers are willing to share."

Ross also thinks it's effective for managers to encourage successful servers to talk about low points during contests, which may show less-skilled servers how to adapt a sales pitch.

Buffalo Wild Wings managers, who are encouraged to run local contests, may devote a significant portion of preshift time to role-playing. "If we have a contest selling appetizers, we're asking staff, 'How do you approach a table without sounding like a robot?'" Murphy says. "We really try to coach servers that [suggestive selling] can be a guest-experience enhancement."

That would not surprise LeFranc, who says that contest trends are pointing toward building customer relationships. "What [operators] are beginning to do is train waiters to be more sensitive to economic environment, and in turn they're steering guests toward value items to get them to come back rather than sell them," LeFranc says.

He cites fine-dining restaurants that give servers business cards that carry a bounce-back coupon on one side. "Contests are being redirected to create more intimate relationships and establish frequency. Whoever gets most customers back gets the prize," he says.

Cole recalls competing in similar contests 14 years ago as an 18-year-old Hooters Girl. "I had a very creative manager," says Cole, recalling Bonnie Rhinehardt, now a divisional vice president for the company. "She had contests where we had to find a guest with size 13 shoes or one who looked most like Garth Brooks. They were all about building atmosphere and connecting to the community."