For any restaurateur to maintain long-term prosperity and sustain the competition, you'll have to provide more than just food and culinary experience to your guests.
There is no doubt that cooking great food is important, nonetheless it is expected from every diners who spend their hard-earned money. But if you choose to provide great culinary experience to diners you are no different than everyone else.
There are great chefs all around the country that went to great schools and have also learned from the very best. So no matter where diners go, they'll get the same, a great meal. But if your only focus is food, you won't be able to grow and sustain the increasing competition. There is no doubt that you'll be in business for a while and striving. As soon as you open your restaurant the bloggers and the press will rave about your new restaurant, and your chef creative menu. Diners will come and check you out. But is your cuisine enough to impress the guests, so they want to come back?
Keep in mind that after a while other restaurants will open with new ideas, new concepts, new menus, new decors and atmosphere. If you have failed to create customer loyalty, you are simply inviting diners to continue their culinary journey and try various cuisine all around town. When you understand hospitality you know that people need much more than just a great cuisine to be attached to your brand.
So how do you grow your clientele? Your most powerful weapon to sustain the increasing competition, is to hire a fabulous front line staff that will engage the guests with meaningful conversations. When your staff engage with the guests they add to the culinary experience and provide a delightful dining experience.
Only when your staff deliver a memorable dining experience, you have built a defense against the increasing competition, because those guests will become loyal and your advocate. They will in fact speak highly of you. What could be more powerful than their free advertsing and word of mouth?
Professional waiters know perfectly that when they live a restaurant establishment, their loyal customers will leave as well. Those guests won't be taken care of by their favorite waiter, and when they come back to your establishment they will in fact be highly disappointed as their expectations are high.
So what are you doing to sustain the competition? How do you train, educate and retain your best employees who are totally engaged and invested in your business? What benefits do you offer your employees? Do you offer more than a paycheck? How do you compared with your competition when it comes to providing benefits to your employees? Do you treat your workers as just workers or as partners? How do you value, and reward your employees?
If you study the most successful organizations in the country such as Marriott, Disney, Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons etc.. they have achieved their status and have created huge profit because they value their employees, give them great benefits, educate them, and teach them what hospitality is all about. There is no secret; if you want to keep on striving you'll have to do more than just giving a paycheck to your employees.
If your success is not their success, but yours only, employees won't be able to connect with you and it is just a matter of time for you to see your business decline and possibly vanish at some point.
Andre Plessis
Restaurant & Hospitality Consultant
Customer Service Expert
Tel: 310-266-9463
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