My Staff Meal

This is a sample of a service training manual that I wrote and it also nicely sums up my philosophy of service:

Restaurant Consulting

From the moment a guest arrives at the restaurant, we have an opportunity to make a good impression or a bad one.  As a general rule, guests arrive planning to have a good time.  Consider it a well of good will.  To best understand it, imagine these two scenarios:

In the first, the guest arrives, is greeted warmly by the valet.  A smiling host quickly locates their reservation.  They are led to a table with sparkling glassware and crisp, fresh linen.  The server greets them promptly and is able to recommend a reasonably priced glass of wine they've never tried before.  It's delicious, as is the charred octopus they begin their meal with.  The entrees arrive and one is a little underdone.  The server quickly returns it to the kitchen where it is re-fired and brought back to the table by the manager.  The likelihood is that the experience has been so good so far that the guest brushes off the delay as a minor inconvenience and leaves likely to return again soon.

In the second, the guests arrive and wait for the valet who brusquely thrusts the valet ticket at them and zooms off with the car.  They come in and wait for the hostess to finish telling the bartender about her date the night before, and then fumbles about before finally locating their reservation.  They are led to a table where one of the place settings is missing a knife and there are a few crumbs on the chair.  The waiter comes promptly but has little to offer in the way of recommendations.  The wine they choose is good, but the glass it comes in is spotted.  They order starters but due to the waiter's lack of knowledge their selections are a little richer than they'd like.  Now the entrees arrive and, as before, one is underdone.  After a minute or two of trying to get the waiter's attention they are finally able to get it back to the kitchen.  By the time the manager brings the food back to the table he/she is likely to encounter a very unhappy guest, a guest whose reaction may even seem a little over the top.  But it wasn't the one thing, or even any major thing.  It was a series of small missteps that added up to a big problem.  The restaurant is not likely to be a destination any time soon.

Now, nothing horrible happened.  Each negative experience, unfortunately, happens in almost every restaurant almost every day.  The cumulative effect, however, is to leave the guest feeling uncared for and cheated - both of the time and they committed to your care for the evening.