How to Deliver Quality and Service in Your Restaurant

When guests come to your restaurant, you should treat them as if they are friends visiting your home. Treating your guests with care and providing an exceptional place for them to enjoy a meal is probably the biggest reason they will come back to your restaurant again.

When customers come through your doors, they expect quality in every aspect of the restaurant and not just the food. Food is a given since they go out to eat. But keep in mind that guests are looking for a value in the things they see, taste and touch, and so providing them with exceptional quality will certainly leave a good taste in their mouths.

Memorable Service

Perhaps even more important than food quality is the service the customers experience from the time they walk in  the restaurant until the time they walk out the doors. Remember to treat the guest with the utmost care. Pamper them and make them feel special because in the end they won't remember what yuo told them, how good the food was, they will remember how you made them feel. That is the most powerful.

Andre Plessis
AP Consulting
Restaurant & Hospitality Consultant.

What is the Benefit of Providing Excellent Customer Service

According to the 2012 American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, two thirds of surveyed consumers are willing to spend more with a company they believe provides excellent customer service, and  consumers being surveyed confirmed they have spent more with a company as a result of superior customer service experiences ( Zappos, Amazon.com, Ritz Carlton, Apple).

So if customers are willing to spend more for superior customer service, shouldn’t businesses and organizations be willing to invest more to achieve it?

Andre Plessis
AP Consulting
Restaurant & Hospitalty Consulting

Your Restaurant Does NOT Have a Sales Problem

When sales are viewed as THE real problem, restaurateurs often automatically assume the solution is more marketing.

While marketing is certainly an important part of generating sales in most restaurants, a change in marketing is not the cure for every case of insufficient sales.

If your sales have been in decline, sure, a different marketing approach might help but it's likely, the situation has more to do with what you're doing or not doing in your restaurant every day and how you're being perceived by your dinners.

We live in a cause and effect world, if your sales are too low something is causing it, so before taking any action, I believe the best place to start is to first step back and objectively look at what's going on in your restaurant and in your local market. 

 

Also before you blame the economy look at your competition and see if business has declined there as well. If their business remains constant, that means there is something wrong with the way you conduct business.

First, consider the following questions:

• How's your food quality? Is it consistent?
• Is your service staff friendly and responsive?
• Does your staff engage in meaningful conversation with the guests?
• Does your wait staff create customer loyalty?
• Do you have a superior customer service organization? 
• Are you giving your customers exactly what they want? How do you know?
• How does your restaurant's value proposition and experience proposition compare to what your customers can get at your competitors?
• What are you customers saying about you? Check comment cards, Yelp and other review websites?

Andre Plessis
AP Consulting
Restaurant/Hospitality Consultant

Will You Greet Customers With an iPad?

Customers at some restaurants aren’t greeted by a waiter. Nor do they step up to a counter like in a fast-food restaurant.

Instead, each table is equipped with an iPad, from which customers can order their food with no human intervention, no contact with a staff member whatsoever.

Waiters just confirm orders with customers, bring the food from the kitchen when it’s ready, and are available to accept payment and help customers who need it. But customers can enter and leave the eatery with little interaction with a human being.
If this technology is widely adopted, it has the potential to drastically cut labor costs at many restaurants, and put many waiters out of work.

BUT, if as a restaurant you opt for that technoclogy, I predict that you will be out of business very fast as well, because when you have been in the restaurant industry for as long as I have, you understand that it's all about customer service.

 The iPad is not going to come around and see if everything is OK and if a customer likes your meal. It is not going to have a meaningful conversation with a customer and build a relationship to create customer loyalty. The iPad is as cold as marble, and in business or sales people do business with who they like the most.

You go to a restaurant for the food the first time, and you go for the service the second time.

Andre Plessis
AP Consulting
Hospitality/Restaurant Consulting

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/25/3253729/hello-my-name-is-ipad-and-ill.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/25/3253729/hello-my-name-is-ipad-and-ill.html#storylink=cpy

Anticipation Will Help You create a Memorable customer experience

Anticipation is the key ingredient to creating a memorable customer experience.  When a customer is met with the surprise and delight of having their unexpressed needs fulfilled, it creates a compelling emotional connection and keeps them coming back for more.

That’s why successful companies such as, Ritz-Carlton, Apple, Nordstrom, Disney, and Zappos make anticipation part of their customer experience commitment.

Anticipation creates a sense of urgency in employees and shifts people into a proactive state. When employees are looking for opportunities to deliver the extraordinary, customer experience is enhanced.
Every single customer interaction is an opportunity to create a defining moment in the relationship and a customer for life.

Andre Plessis
AP Consulting

Should You Provide Health Insurance to Your Employees

Employees newly required to have health insurance under the law may want to get it from their employer, With that in mind, employers may feel encouraged to offer coverage.


Don't forget about the tax benefits of providing healthcare.
The federal government makes tax credits available to most companies with fewer than 25 low-wage employees to help cover the cost of insurance. A tax credit of up to 35% of what a company pays for health benefits is available today, and that increases to 50% in 2014 for businesses that buy insurance through their state's online health insurance market. In California, 80% of small businesses are expected to qualify for a tax break.

Andre Plessis
AP Consulting

What is Great Service at a Restaurant

People will go to a restaurant for the food the first them, then they’ll go back for the service.

''What is great service anyway?''

Great service is not about flamboyant tuxedos, tableside pasta cooking, French service style, or about lifting silver domes off hot food plates in unison or clearing all plates at the same time. Rather, great service occurs when guests leave the restaurant convinced that someone went that extra mile to make them happy. It’s about having our server engage in meaningful conversation with the guests who treat them like royalties and truly care about them.

At restaurants, servers are wine and food consultants, not order takers. They are responsible for controlling the table by setting the pace and by anticipating all guests' needs before they arise. It has been said that anytime a guest needs to ask for something, you've make a mistake.

Andre Plessis
Restaurant & Hospitality Consulting
AP Consulting