If I was the CEO of a large restaurant chain or any customer based business

 

As many of you may know, I spent a great number of years in the restaurant business (about 30).

 

Now I spend a good amount of time in any given month as a patron of the restaurant business. Several things about some of the trends I see really bother me. Most of these apply to any business that depends upon repeat customer business to survive. In a lot of restaurants I go to anymore, the service absolutely sucks. Couple bad service with long wait times, and cold food and then blame the economy when sales are down? Things like Slow service, dirty floors, servers that use "honey, buddy, you guys" and slang like crazy, the Las Vegas card dealers that deliver your food ("OK, Who had the shrimp?"), and there are 6 of you at the table and two of you ordered shrimp, bathrooms that have lists in them saying they have been checked and they are filthy and I could go on and on and on.

 

It really bugs me that there isn't a cashier on the planet that can make change when handed $5.01 if the bill is $4.61 without a calculator. I mean there are bad customers too, but who cares!

 

We chose you and we can go somewhere else. I make that decision every single day just like everybody else and it usually starts with " Lets see, the last time I was there....."

 

I think If I were in charge of a chain of restaurants, I would take about half the marketing money they spend on silly nonsense like Movie tie -ins, window clings and cute signs and put it back into the restaurants. I think the bang for the buck would be tremendous. Why ? Every chain in America is screaming about "same store sales" right now (A financial measurement that indicates how well a chain is growing customers and sales , year over year ) and bemoaning the fact that the economy is bad, sales are slow, stores are closing , franchising is very slow and so forth and so on. I think they ought to go and eat a few times in their own restaurants. The sad fact is, in a lot of cases, sales are down because the prices are too high, prices were raised because the sales are down, and quite frankly the service given to customers is the primary reason. If It were up to me and I were the boss, I'd fire the Marketing VP, lay off half the R & D staff (we don't need blue cheese topping on a hamburger) and begin a radical movement toward fundamentals.

 

Here is an interesting article about Customer Service http://answrtek.com/service.htm

 

Here are 10 Suggestions I have to turn it around:

 

1. Every restaurant has a "so many steps" to good service training program. 
• Here is a radical thought. Use it. Religiously.
• and then, ding, ding, ding, ding, Expect your managers to know it.
• Ask your servers to explain it to you, watch them work and see if they follow it. Make it the most important thing a server has to know and pound it in their head that they have to do the job the way you expect them to.
• I've watched training go on in restaurants for years both as a supervisor and as a customer and I can't tell you how many times I have heard "This is the way you are supposed to do it, BUT, this is the way I do it." Hell, just burn the money in the till don't bother to give it to marketing because it will not help anyway.
• See if the silverware comes before the food, and if the salad comes before the entree.
• Why is it if I order a glass of milk anywhere in America (except for a friggin waffle house), the server will have to be reminded twice to bring it to the table? What in the heck is so hard about milk?
2. Servers are salespeople, teach them to actually sell, heck maybe even teach them your menu.
• I've been asked literally hundreds of times "You guys don't want desert do you?"
• If there is a special, you should not have to be in a $50 a plate restaurant to be able to actually expect the server to be able to answer questions about it.
• I can't tell you how many times I've asked about an ingredient in food only to be told "I don't know, let me check". You don't know if there is cabbage or carrots in your salads? You've served literally hundreds of them this week and you don't know?
• If I ask a server "What is the soup today" and they don't know, trust me , If I am your customer I will not understand this and I will not be happy.
3. Atmosphere is created by the people who work in the front of the house, not by your ding dong policies.
• It is not cute or desirable to be able to hear your server complain loudly to another employee about their personal life, the manager, the silly uniform you make them wear or how unfair it is they could not take a break in the middle of the rush hour.
• Last week I actually saw a young man, who was obviously a newer manager in a restaurant, yell loudly at a server from the kitchen area, to "Get her butt back here and get her food delivered". I walked back there asked the young man if he was the manager and he said yes, then I said " I am your customer, I do not want to hear this crap, Please take this silliness into the back room". He actually said" I didn't think you could hear me". Nobody has that policy in their manual, I know, but has anyone ever explained the laws of physics to this guy? Sound travels to customers at the same rate it does to employees and we hate it, even if he is near the Passover or behind the server station, when he yells. We don't like our conversation interrupted by your business. I was actually closer to him than the server was.
• I asked for Hot French fries once after just being served cold ones (in a fast food restaurant), the cashier said "Do you have a receipt?", I said "No I'll do you one better, I have the crappy cold fries you just handed me !", She actually said "I can't do anything without a receipt". Since the manager was only 15 feet away on the cook line, I just walked back to him (and you would have thought I had crossed into enemy lines during a war because I went behind the counter), handed the manager the cold fries and said " I would like to look at your policy manual that says you can serve me cold crappy fries, but won't let a cashier replace them with fresh hot ones , even if she was the dingbat that handed them to me 2 minutes earlier, and didn't give me receipt in the first place." I them told him I would have been glad to provide a receipt if his cashier wasn't wadding them up and throwing them in the trash behind the counter. He went over and handed me hot fries, embarrassed as all get out, apologized all over his self
4. If you have a "Please wait to be seated" sign at the front door, please have someone up there doing this job all the time.
• And if there is a choice in the matter, train them and follow up with them to make sure they understand the job.
• Please don't put your newest hire on the door, who doesn't have a clue about your business to answer the "How long" question.
• I don't mind waiting a reasonable amount of time, just don't lie to me or make me wait 5 minutes for somebody to acknowledge that a customer is standing near the sign and wants to spend money in your restaurant. It'll just piss me off and I'll go somewhere else.
5. Teach and expect management to follow up on the silly work you all make servers do before they go home.
• What servers are interested in doing once they have stopped waiting on tables and collecting their tips is in getting the hell out of dodge. If you expect anything else, you have to make sure it is done right.
• Nothing irks a customer more than sitting down to eat at a sticky table, or unrolling silver ware that is bent , dirty or is missing one the things that is supposed to be in there. If rolled silver ware is supposed to have a spoon in it, How do I stir my coffee if you leave out the spoon, because the dishwasher doesn't have it washed yet?
• If the menus are supposed to be clean or the salt and pepper shakers are supposed to be full, go look at them and make sure they are. The concept here is called "Trust but verify". Customers expect basic things to be non-issues. Nobody wants to go to your bathroom and not have soap or paper towels (or TP) to use , why should the salt shaker not be clean and not stuck to the table. While you are at it, DRY THE TABLE. I hate sitting at a table only to find out after I put my arms on it that it is wet. This should be a no-brainer if you ask me, But I can't tell you how many times I've went behind your server stations and grabbed a handful of your expensive napkins to bring back to my table and dry it off.
6. Every customer know the food we get served won't look like the menu pictures. It never has and never will.
• It would be nice though to not have eggs swimming in motor oil, hash browns that are not limp and greasy, hamburger buns without finger holes in them, tomatoes that do not have the stem still in the middle , lettuce in salads that isn't frozen or brown and coffee that was actually made this week.
• A local ice cream chain in my town has these "Waffle" looking containers they serve deserts in. It was great at first. Two weeks later, they forget the words fresh, crisp, appealing and appetizing when they kept them until they sold all of them before they made more of them. If is supposed to be hot, put a thermometer in it and see if it is. Hot food served hot, Cold food served cold. What a concept.
• Please Mr. CEO, go and look at the raw food you are serving to America. I reject it every time, but you would be surprised at some of the junk people bring to me that they think I will actually eat. I don't care if you work at McDonalds, the French fries should be served hot. I mean for crying out loud they cook for 2-3 minutes in a deep fryer at 350 degrees (or so) ! The funny thing is most servers I run into think I am being picky and even the ones that consider me a regular will roll their eyes, or make a smart ass comment about how I am just too picky. Huh?
• In the food business they call this " It's not old till its sold or old and growing mold".
7. I can spot a the difference between a one owner franchise restaurant from a company owned one in 3 seconds flat.
• In most cases, the one owner one will have (among other things) :
• Employees with poor hygiene and ratty uniforms.
• Nametags with cute employee names like "PimpDog" or "The Man" instead of Bill or John.
• Notes hanging everywhere telling employees what they will be fired for next.
• Damaged dining room furniture, chairs, menus and blinds and carpets with grease trails going back to wherever employees walk.
• I wonder why this is? Like deep throat said "Follow the money".
• The fact is though, I should not be able to tell the difference in who owns it.
• I know a franchise owner in Chattanooga TN. In her 6 stores , they always look better than any company restaurants ever did. I wonder why this is ?
8. Marketing is supposed to make me want to come into your restaurant and eat there, It is not designed to make me sick .
• If the marketing pictures are old, sun faded, torn and worn out what does this say about your restaurant?
• I don't care how convenient it is, Please don't market to me by hanging a food picture banner on your dumpster gate. Its disgusting.
• Most of the time, nobody ever goes out and looks the condition of the dumpster or the back door where the mounds of trash get taken out and it is gross and disgusting anyway. There is usually spilled grease, food everywhere and open dumpster doors with flies everywhere anyway. Why would you want associate your brand name with the trash in the first place? This is especially true if it is a busy fast food restaurant.
• The trash has to be taken out as it is created and it should not be the last job of the day , before the dishwasher goes home. See #5.
• If you can see a black trail of grease that goes from a restaurants back door to the dumpster area or the sidewalk at the back door looks like it has a special black non-slip coating , this is an accurate indicator of what the back of the restaurant that you can't see looks like if you are a guest/customer.
9. I don't care who helps me, I really don't
• Hundreds of times I've asked someone passing my table " Hey can you hand me a napkin?" Hundreds of times I've been told "I'll tell your server".
• How stupid a response is that?
• I usually just get up and get it myself and ignore the looks and stares I get from your people at this point, because I am walking where no mere customer should be allowed to tread.
• The point is that everybody who works in a restaurant should be trained to handle mundane customer concerns. The server doesn't own the table just because I am the one who is tipping her. This makes me nuts. Anybody can pick up a napkin, and anybody can deliver it. Get over it.
10. Please take a look at your actual employees before you allow them to serve me
• It is not cute to be able to see the butt crack of a young server girl , because although she has on the right color slacks, they are too small for her to wear to work and when she bends over her underwear is exposed. She probably thinks this will lead to bigger tips (and it may, who knows), but is this the image you are striving for? I also do not care how cool the cook thinks he is, If I can see his boxer shorts, then you are serving crap and your image is crap as well.
• If you have a uniform standard, spend the money to get it right and expect it to stay that way. Then, every once in a while instead of a meeting in an office, go to lunch at one of your stores and see what the public sees. If a person works full time for you, they need a full compliment of uniforms.
• How would like to have only two shirts in your closet you can wear to work and have to wash a shirt every day in order to be the CEO. You would not do it and it is stupid when you managers do this to their staff in order to "save money". You are not saving money, you are killing your image.
• It doesn't matter how much money you spend on marketing or TV commercials, if the server who waits on me has a ratty-ass worn out shirt on with a grease slicked apron while wiping down the table you want me to set at with a dirty discolored and stained towel.
• It is amazing to me how many owners do not understand that the image of a business is created by the staff and is maintained by marketing and not the other way around. I mean If you are picking a new uniform, and you don't employ a staff that looks like the ones at Hooters, then put it on people who look like the ones that work for you and see what it will look like, when it is worn 4 times a week for 6 months and washed 30 times.

All of this seems like common sense to me and most of it probably is, however one question comes to mind when evaluating your customers, their experience and your business.

 

When is the last time you went into a restaurant and had too much good service, the restaurant was too clean, and the food was too hot?

 

If this stuff isn't right first, then don't blame the economy when your sales are down. Go look in the mirror.

 

Here is an interesting article about Customer Service http://answrtek.com/service.htm

 

Thankx- bigmike

 

posted from "The Rant from bigmike" at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/