With the whole team through implementation, we start building a structure that lasts.

Implementation gives breadth: everyone knows. Building gives depth: not everyone is equal any more, a hierarchy forms. Here the uniform team becomes a squad with role holders.

The manager picks a number of waiters and registers them through the system for Wine Leaders, a deeper and more advanced course that makes them the professional anchor of the shift, about 30 percent of the floor team. Bartenders count as part of that floor team and take the same track. Alongside them, the managers (restaurant, shift and bar) take the Wine Managers Certification. They are the ones who brief and decide what happens with the wine on the floor, so their certification is focused on the work of managing, and included in every package. That way the responsibility never rests on one person. Across the whole team, monthly refreshers open, and this is where the method meets the industry’s real challenge: turnover. A new waiter joins a structured track, a departing waiter does not take the knowledge with them, and the standard holds.

This is also where the full knowledge metric comes in. In the first stage we measured only progress: who finished. Now, with role holders on the team, the metric also weights the wine leaders' certification and the Wine Managers Certification, becoming a true picture of the team's knowledge depth against the bar we set together.

The first two stages, implementation and building, take about four months. At their end the knowledge metric hits the target, and the restaurant has a managed wine team. That's the core product, the bread and butter, and from here the method only opens up.