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Soda Clerk's Apron
Heavy shrunk material. cut, standing collar, white duck coat, fly front, a white duck skull cap and a white apron. This style of uniform has a dainty and rich attractiveness about it. There are many other styles used, to suit the varied tastes of the wearer, but the special style mentioned here has many advantages over the less desirable styles.
If you wish to invite the god or goddess of glittering success to dwell within the portals of your business palace, see to it that you make your establishment attractive through minute and exacting care and tolerate only neatly garbed salesmen behind the counter.
Twelve Rules for Regulating and Conducting the Soda Fountain. 1. The fountain should be completely iced by 8 a. m. The ice should be clean and free from all refuse matter and broken into pieces about the size of a cocoanut. Special pieces of ice should be provided for shaving purposes; also chipped ice for the bin in workboard. Immediately after fountain is iced syrups must be looked after. The dispenser, or man in charge of the fountain, should check off the syrups required before leaving the fountain at night and leave a written list for the porter or morning man. 2. The ice cream cabinet must be examined and cleaned. If the cabinet is built into the workboard, as it should be, the work is simplified. The cream should be carefully refrozen if necessary and thoroughly repacked. Stale cream, limpy, and generally unfit, must be thrown away, but a written report of all cream which it is found necessary to discard must be rendered to the management daily. 3. The fountain operator must be clean, neat and tidy, pleasant and smiling and never unduly familiar with customers, attentive to their wants at all times. Courtesy is a wonderful trade stimulator. Dispensers should always remember that one bad glass of soda water will do more injury than the profit on twenty good ones. 4. All syrups, as far as practical, should be made in concentrated form and stored in jugs or demijohns in the basement or other cool place, which should be as free from light as possible. Concentrated syrups require dilution with stock or simple syrup only and are ready for use. When ready for syrup the containers must be thoroughly cleansed with hot water, drenched with cold water, filled with syrup and returned to the fountain. 5. The apparatus for carbonating water must be carefully examined each day. Leaks, especially of gas, must be immediately remedied. Gas leaks are expensive and easily overlooked. A record of gas drums used must be kept. A 20-lb. drum of liquefied gas should produce 100 gallons of carbonated water by the rocking system and 200 gallons by the spray system carbonator. 6. The general cleaning day should be on Monday, when a thorough overhauling of everything must take place. Use plenty of water - it is cheap. The inside of the fountain should receive special attention. Keep the cooler space open for air circulation as long as possible. Work on cleaning day should commence earlier than usual. 7. An accurate inventory of all stock for the fountain, including syrup, extracts, fruit juices and all minor articles, should be taken at the commencement of each season by the management and placed on file. Weekly inventories should be taken and a balance made with the additions and purchases, thereby proving the actual consumption and expense of operation. 8. The workboard must be well cleaned. Paste preparations probably are best for copper work, and should be used in connection with coal oil, dipping the waste or cleaning cloth in the paste after the cloth is saturated with oil. Do not use ammonia in silver work, nor sapolio. Whiting in an impalpable powder or silicon will do the work. Make a liquid paste and then work will be facilitated. Onyx work should be washed with a sponge, warm water and pure soap, dried with soft cloth and polished with onyx polish. 9. Marble, onyx, silver, mirrors and woodwork must next be rapidly gone It should be thoroughly cleaned once a week and it will then require but little time each morning. over. 10. All connections pertaining to coolers and pipes must be examined and the leaks, if there be any, remedied. Draft arms should not drip. If found to be dripping, a new washer should be installed and the tension adjusted. The fountain operative should study until he thoroughly understands the mechanism of the draft arm. Open the fountain gas vent each morning until water sprays therefrom. This vents the excess and prevents an uneven delivery of water from the soda draft. 11. The proper drawing of soda water is a fine art and only men of inferior ability will be slovenly and careless about it; a young man of talent, one who is destined to get ahead in the world, will endeavor to make a success of this as well as of everything he may undertake. Whatever is worth doing well. Soda water must be drawn with great care, and thoroughly mixed, and every pains taken to please customers, whose tastes must be consulted in every respect. 12. Keep your fountain and all its surroundings absolutely clean and tasty. This proves in itself to every observer coming into your store that your business is well managed and indicates a tidy, careful merchant appreciating and meriting confidence and trade. A badly kept fountain indicates loose management. Good soda water generally means everything else good.
Fountain Decorations.
Change your fountain decorations often, trying to improve each time This attracts attention, and attention in business is another name for money. Dainty Accessories.
Fine china, silver plate and cut glass are as necessary at the soda counter as on the dining table. The effect of dainty richness, neatness, and order upon the appetite must be borne constantly in mind. All, even the poorest, appreciate luxury, particularly that which appertains to food and drink. The finest beverage loses its charm if indifferently served.