Don’t They Want My Business?
By David Scott Peters
As I have mentioned many times in the past, my wife Susan and I do our very best to go to independent restaurants when we go out to eat, but the problem is that most independents make it very difficult for us to do that. One of the biggest problems we encounter is service. It is often terrible or non-existent.
Case in point: In January of 2006, I wrote an article entitled “Five Fatal – Yet Avoidable – Service Errors,” after a visit to an independent Italian restaurant just a few miles away from our house. We loved their food, but hated their service.
I mean, it was bad.
We made that our last visit to that restaurant… or so I thought.
After a two-year hiatus, we journeyed back just a few nights ago for Sue’s birthday dinner. We figured we’d give it a try. Since the last time we visited, they had expanded their dining room and probably doubled their seating. Their food was just as good as we remembered it. But guess what…
Their service was basically still the same… BAD!
And as I looked around the restaurant and saw that there were only four tables on a Sunday night and they had four servers on the floor… I wanted to grab the owner and say, “TRAINING! START TRAINING YOUR PEOPLE!” My family dines out at least three times a week. We visit many of our favorite restaurants at least once a month. This, plus the fact that our average purchase there would be about $40, they drove away about $960 minimum through bad service over the last two years of our absence.
You might say to yourself that’s not a lot of money until you start to think how many other people are staying away for the same reason and how much money is that worth?
So take a look at your dining room. Is it full? Do you see a lot of new or familiar faces? If the answer is no… do you have a training system in place to ensure your guests are getting great service to go with your great food?
David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in systems for independent restaurant owners. He is known as the SMART Systems guy who can walk into any restaurant in the United Stated and find you $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door … Guaranteed! Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more.
