Have you ever gone out to dinner and had the server from Hell!
I mean, you go to a relatively nice place to eat, maybe with your spouse or on a date. You know you’re going to drop at least $200 or more for dinner. (While that may not seem like a lot of money to you, for most of us, it is.)
You go to the restaurant, get seated, and you sit. You sit. And you sit. Finally, after a while, you have a server approach you only to say, I’ll be with you in a moment! Finally, your server comes back and has this negative attitude, as though you are an inconvenience to him or her for being there.
The drinks take a long time to arrive, and one of them is wrong. The appetizer is cold. Your meal takes nearly 45 minutes to come out and your server, never once, stops by to explain what and why. Tables that arrived after you are already being served and you don’t know why!
Does any of this sound like a meal you have experienced it in the past? Recently?
So where has hospitality gone? While I’m not saying every experience is this way, I am saying it happens more often than not, and we all know it! But what gets done about it? Who is responsible for making sure these experiences don’t happen again?
You are — the owner or operator or manager.
If you are not setting the expectations of how your guests are to be treated, then you are not providing the knowledge and education to your team for effective hospitality service. But more than this, you are creating a negative atmosphere in your restaurant, which is costing you money!
Wonder why your restaurant is not as full as it once was?
Look at Yelp and review the comments people are leaving. We live in an age where technology surrounds us and word of mouth is much faster than it ever was. I manage a restaurant where I saw a guest actually on Yelp, writing a review of her experience before she finished dessert! Thankfully, it was a good one!
So if you are not teaching your team the steps of service and providing expectations of them and how they serve your guests, you are costing your business money! Take the time, find out how to provide the knowledge of hospitality to your guests and share it with your team.
