CHAPTER
19

Fostering a Culture of Hospitality

In This Chapter

• Why making friends in the first 60 days is important
• Understanding the contemporary culture of hospitality
• Tailoring the steps of service to your restaurant
• Dealing with unexpected difficulties

The opening days and months of your restaurant are the most important. You’re new in town and you want to make new friends. Just as in life, people will like your restaurant more if you treat them well. The restaurant business is actually as much about hospitality as it is about food.

In this chapter, we’ll talk about contemporary standards of hospitality. We’ll show you how you can easily adapt the steps of service to your restaurant. Managing a friendly and efficient staff takes a lot of practice.

No one writes off a new restaurant because it has a high food cost. But if the service is indifferent or the food comes out of the kitchen too slowly, they might decide to pass on it. It’s hard to win someone back after they’ve formed a negative opinion. Refining the economics can be addressed over the first several months to arrive at optimum performance if they aren’t outrageously off the mark.

Getting your early guests to become advocates of your restaurant requires making them feel good about being there. Ultimately, you’re cultivating a relationship with your guests, with the meal experience as the centerpiece.

The Basics of Hospitality

Restaurants aren’t just in the food business; they’re in the hospitality business. Chef-owners and foodies sometimes forget this. People go out to restaurants at night for a range of reasons. A patron could be an out-of-town visitor on business, who needs a quiet dinner by himself or who simply wants to chat about the city with the bartender. Guests could be a group of women getting together for a girls’ night out away from husbands, or a family celebrating a birthday. Perhaps they’re a discreet couple looking to have a romantic dinner to celebrate something special. Each of these groups has different needs.

Read Your Guests

You should ask your staff to read the guests and treat them accordingly. A business lunch will have a different, more formal tone, and the people at the table may not know each other well. It’s especially important that the server determine and connect with the diner who is hosting the meal. It’s he or she who will let the table know what to expect, whether wine will be ordered, and if they will order appetizers and entrées.

SMART MOVE

Many of your customers come to your restaurant to enjoy the hospitality engendered by the design. At home, they might live in clutter and chaos, but your restaurant—whether your concept dictates that it be cushy, cool, serene, or bustling—makes them step outside their ordinary lives and feel like they’re living well.

Contemporary Culture of Hospitality

Restaurant culture has changed a lot over the last 25 years. Those old and stuffy days of being looked down upon by the staff are long gone. No award-winning meal is worth eating if you have to put up with arrogance. At the same time, our super-friendly, relaxed culture has led to a decline in standards of service. The well-intentioned “Hi, my name is Joni and I’ll be your server” is cheesy in an independent restaurant.

The goal of your restaurant should be friendly and efficient service that exceeds customer expectations. Choose your FOH staff for their friendliness, skills, and experience. Good FOH people also have poise. You want them to build confidence in the guest from the moment the guest steps in the door. Your staff should recognize that they are brand ambassadors.

Hospitality Begins with the Host

Your host or hostess must make eye contact with customers and smile at them as they enter the door. That welcoming eye contact and smile, that initial connection, builds confidence. Your guests immediately know they’ll be taken care of.

The second step in hospitality is efficiency. The hostess’s quick communication with the manager enables her to lead the party to their table, or if there is a wait, to suggest they wait at the bar. The hostess should never apologize for the lack of tables. She must always present it in a positive way: “We’re having a busy night. I could seat you at the bar right now, or you could have a drink at the bar and a table in the dining room will be ready in about 15 minutes or so.”

The hostess should always offer choices to guests. It gives them the illusion of power. Making the guest feel in charge is the goal, but don’t ever let the guest actually be in charge

Listening and being observant is the basis of hospitality. For example, is the candle on the guests’ table lit? You’ll get a lot of points for lighting it.

Size up your guests; who is the host of their group? You need to align your forces with them to make their night a success. Learn about your customers by watching and listening like a keen salesperson, anticipating their needs and quickly bringing anything they need.

Hospitality is the little things. It’s helping a guest with an umbrella, hailing a cab, taking an interest in their children as they’re leaving—these are the touches your guests will remember long after the memory of truffle risotto has faded. Making your guests realize you care and you’re glad they’re in your house is key to your success.

Teamwork and Hospitality

Many events need to connect in order to give the guest a great experience. Your staff needs to practice its moves during afternoon training. The goal is a seamless ensemble performance. The staff needs to interact in shorthand—a look, a gesture, a nod of the head—that lets one another know which guests need what now.

POTENTIAL PITFALL

Don’t forget that training is ongoing. It’s not something you do before you open your restaurant and then forget about. New staff will need to be integrated. Continue to practice mock service with the team to help build upon their knowledge.

Some high-end restaurants have taught their staff posture, bearing, and acting techniques. For the beginning restaurateur, the best you can do is to remind everyone to stand up straight and practice a calm demeanor. The calmness of a server and the assuredness of a manager are key in maintaining confidence in the guests. Have your staff role-play difficult guest situations during training. They should practice listening to the complaining customer and coordinate all of their forces to fix the problem.

Tailoring the Steps of Service

The steps of service should be genuine. Sure, you’ve rehearsed them many times—but now the curtain has risen. When it comes to the actual performance, there shouldn’t be a sense of a rehearsed script imposed with a patient smile. An impatient server provokes nervousness and/or hostility in a guest. Here’s a list of things waiters should never do with or in front of your guests:

• Talk about themselves.
• Mention their personal dietary restrictions.
• Sit down at the table with a guest, even if tired or invited to do so. When your customers know your staff is tired, it’s hard for them to relax.
• Lean on an empty chair, a wall, a doorway, or any other person or structure while on duty or especially when speaking to the guest. They should always stand up straight.
• Text or talk on a cellphone on the floor. Staff should refrain from using cellphones in the kitchen unless it’s an emergency.
• Turn the lights on when a guest is finishing dining.
• Ask a guest about a low tip.
• Follow a guest out onto the street.

Dealing with Difficulties

A difficult moment is just one single moment in one day. It’s dinner … it’s not life. It’s a good idea to remind your staff to put that moment in perspective. They must realize that they’re entertaining and illuminating a moment in their customer’s day. When customers leave your restaurant, you want them to feel satisfied and uplifted.

But you can’t change your guests’ lives, fix their marriages, or make them taller. Your staff is creating a moment, so they should make it count. When your customer craves that moment again, it transcends the food and becomes about the way you made them feel being in your restaurant, which is what matters most.

The same goes for your staff. This is just one day in their lives. They’ve got to keep a calm demeanor despite the irritations. Most of all, they’ve got to keep personal issues parked until after work. People can be unpleasant. Customers and waiters can behave inappropriately, but the good outweighs the bad. Encourage your team to defer to the customer, and blow off steam with the team later. Try to find the humor and the humanity in each situation.

It’s the same with your staff; sometimes you hire a bad employee. It might be a manager with lots of experience but a negative attitude or a bad temper. It could be a waiter who argues with a customer, turns on the lights on guests in the dining room, or makes a guest cry. That person is a detriment to your business.

You need to know about the bad behavior, which means you need good communication with your entire staff. In addition, you need to get rid of that toxic staff member. Your employee manual and the job description he signed when hired both state that he must uphold the restaurant’s high standards of hospitality and respect for guests and staff. Document his failure to meet those standards, and get him out of your restaurant.

Tracking Comps

Comps are part of the restaurant business. They must be tracked carefully to ensure they are not abused.

DEFINITION

The term comps is restaurant-speak for complimentary items, which can be free drinks, appetizers, and meals given to customers.

Too often comps are wasted gestures. They’re best used as recognition, such as if you want to acknowledge a good regular customer. If a guest just spent a lot at dinner, you might send an after-dinner gesture to acknowledge your appreciation. You can acknowledge a regular by sending the chef’s new appetizer to the table, or by delivering an after-dinner drink. Sending over a little bottle of Moscato d’Asti at the end of an Italian meal is so much more impressive and less expensive than, say, having the waiter ask the table what they would like as a free drink. That seems so cold and obligatory.

Dessert is too expensive to comp, yet many people do because it’s at the end of the meal. Give guests an after-dinner digestive, such as a limoncello, instead.

Giving a buyback allowance to the bartenders allows them to be generous to regulars, and help create new ones, but it’s all rung up and allocated in the budget. Buying their spouse a drink is allowed, as long as it’s rung as well. Fellow industry chefs and managers expect to be comped, and it’s reciprocal. None of them get out much, so they’re unlikely to become regulars.

Points of Service

These are the points of service Jody developed and adapted to his restaurants, depending on the concept. He’s known for having high wrap-around costs. Jody likes to give things to his guests. At Lolita Cocina and Tequila Bar, he served guests complimentary smoking grapefruit granitas with a splash of tequila. It started the evening off with the message that this isn’t your ordinary Mexican restaurant. Bringing your customers a gift relaxes them. That act of hospitality is also a marketing device—it gets people talking.

Jody’s points of service have 38 steps and lots of notes. Depending on your concept, your steps of service could be simpler or more detailed. Your concept is the prism.

DEFINITION

The steps of service are the blueprint for how your FOH staff will treat guests, from initial eye contact to final goodbye. You can adapt the steps of service according to your restaurant’s concept.

The Steps of Service

1. The guests arrive and are greeted warmly and enthusiastically by the host/hostess.
2. The host/hostess confirms the seating arrangements.
3. The host/hostess leads the guests at a pace that is comfortable for them and never rushes ahead.
4. The host/hostess shows the guests to their table and pulls out chairs for the guests. (At least one chair should be pulled out to indicate the party should be seated.)
5. The host/hostess places menus in the hands of the seated guests.
6. The host/hostess completes the process of placing the table by leaning in and making eye contact with the guests and saying in a sincere tone, “It’s nice to have you with us.”
7. A copy of any special requests is given to the server, who follows up immediately.
8. The server greets guests, carrying warm bread. The server makes eye contact with the guests with a “Good evening. May I bring you a craft beer or cocktail from our bar?” The customers should use this opportunity to familiarize themselves with the menu.

   Note: Servers should never touch customers or squat by the table.

   Note: Anytime a table has more than eight guests, a server is required to get a helper to take the drink and food order from opposite sides to avoid painful waiting by the guests.

9. The server should try hard to figure out who is the host/hostess of the table and align himself or herself with that person.
10. The server repeats the drink order back as long as it doesn’t seem too cumbersome.
11. After repeating the order, the server asks, “May I bring a bottle of water for the table?” followed by “Sparkling or still?”

    Note: Mineral water is to be replenished without asking up until the entrées have been served. At that point, the server should ask the table’s host, “May I bring another bottle of water for the table?” Never refer to tap water as anything other than iced water.

    Iced water: no garnish

    Still water: lemon

    Sparkling water: lime

12. The server uses one of three predetermined signals to command the busboy to bring the water of choice to the table. The busboy is the person assigned to bring water to the table.
13. The server immediately brings the order to the POS. He should never stop at another table to take another order. However, he may pass by to clear and assess his station en route to the POS terminal. (Every pass through the restaurant should be meaningful.)

    Note: Orders must be written down and repeated back to the table in y our menu terms. Servers should look for acknowledgment and eye contact from the guests before the order is placed in the POS. Once the complete order is entered into the POS, the server must audit the screen before they fire any food to ensure everything is entered correctly.

14. The busboy immediately approaches the table and pours water. He only asks which guest gets what if more than one type of water has been chosen.

    Note: If six or more people are at the table, the server should suggest a shared appetizer to help shift the table as a group into the order process.

    If they order too much food, feel free to mention this to them as it will be viewed as gracious. If they order too little, servers should try selling side dishes to round out the table.

    Every waiter should be able to sell a second round of drinks to all the customers.

    Servers should never refer to a quantity of anything consumed. Don’t say, “May I bring you another/second/third glass of wine?” Simply say, “ May I bring you a glass of merlot?” (or whatever they’re drinking) or “May I refresh your drink?” This is a hard habit to break.

    Remember servers should never sound as if they aren’t sure the food is good or cooked correctly. They should only ask, “Is there anything else I may bring you?”

    Servers should only recommend items they sincerely believe in, yet never say anything negative about a menu item when asked. Always find something good to say about every item. Don’t say, “I’m not sure, I don’t eat pork.” Instead say, “My guests who have ordered it have really enjoyed it.”

15. Servers fire the dishes as they want them to appear. They need to be aware of the kitchen flow and ticket times. For example, if there are no tickets in the window and the server fires food, he will get it very quickly. If the window is backed up, he should fire your dishes a bit earlier.
16. The server marks the table with appropriate service pieces, such as silverware, steak knives, lobster crackers, etc. and notes the time. Position numbers that indicate the placement of each guest at each specific table number will be used, unless it’s an order “for the table” (seat 0).
17. The server/runner delivers the first courses, announcing the dishes in your menu terms, setting them in front of the guests by their position numbers.

    Note: Announcing the dish is a proud statement. Don’t mumble the name of the dish to patrons.

    Note: if the menu is served family-style, the runner shouldn’t announce the dish until it’s set on the table. Otherwise, the person who ordered the dish thinks they are supposed to claim it and the rest of the table will feel awkward about digging in to have a try. All the guests will be waiting while one person has a large plate of food sitting in front of them.

18. The server must check back with the table within 3 to 5 minutes to check on appetizers, if any additional items are required, to refresh beverages, and to pre-bus the table. Afterwards, servers should cross off items at table on a dupe pad (order pads are called dupe pads in reference to the pre-POS days when order pads had carbon sheets to create copies) to check for any missing items.
19. Bus staff then clear and restock the tables.
20. It’s the server’s responsibility to reconcile what has been delivered to their table with what was ordered. He should know at all times what appetizers or entrées still need to be delivered.
21. When a table is enjoying a bottle of wine, the server should attempt to pour off the balance of the first bottle prior to the entrée being served. Or sell another cocktail, beer, etc., as the case may be. The gap between the course break of the appetizer and entrée is the best time to sell a second bottle of wine or round of drinks to the host of table.
22. The table is cleared and marked with clean silverware. Servers should also clear the plate “landing area,” creating room for when the entrées are delivered to the table.
23. The server notes the time. Should a gap of more than 7 to 10 minutes occur between the clearing of the first course and the service of the second course, the server should notify the dining room manager.
24. The server or runner delivers the second courses, announcing each dish by the menu terms, and sets them in front of the guest according to position numbers.
25. Whenever possible, the server should be present when entrées are being delivered. If not, the server should check back with the table within 3 to 5 minutes to ensure that service is correct and ask if there is anything else he or she can bring to the table.
26. Once all guests have finished eating, the table can be cleared. It’s only acceptable to remove one or more guest dishes before everyone is finished if the guest has pushed the plates aside, stacked them, or specifically requested they be removed.
27. The table should be reset with the coffee service set up and a teaspoon in front of each guest by the server. The goal is to remove everything after the entrées are finished.
28. The server presents the dessert menu to each guest and suggests a dessert and after-dinner coffee by name: “Lia’s desserts are not to be missed.” They should act proud when delivering the dessert menu.
29. When dessert is ordered, the server must write down and ring the order in the computer immediately.
30. The server delivers the coffee/drink order.
31. The server delivers the dessert order.
32. If no dessert is requested, the server collects the teaspoons and coffee service, and asks the table’s host if there’s anything else she can get for them. She then prints up the check and waits for a cue from the host to present it to table. Upon placing the check, the server is to make eye contact and give a sincere thank-you while telling them she will be back for the check when the guests are ready. The server should present the check holder in such a manner (squared off in the corner of square tables) so that she can detect when it has been picked up and avoid checking back before anyone has had a chance to review it.
33. The server then processes the check.
34. The server presents the check back to the table, formally thanking the host by name if a credit card was used. (Guests should be thanked using Mr. or Ms. and their last name, unless they’ve introduced themselves by their first name.).
35. Unless a server is specifically told to keep the change, all cash transactions must be paid and cash returned in the check holder to the table. (Customers don’t like feeling uncertain about whether they’re receiving change.)
36. The server must retrieve the credit card voucher, if a credit card was used, before guests leave the building.
37. Guests are again thanked as they leave and invited to return: “Please come back and see us again.”
38. The server makes sure the chairs are pushed in before anything else takes place. The team then resets the table.

Here are some additional ideas to remember:

• Always say, “Thank you, good night” to departing guests as they pass you, even if they were not your guests. Every employee of the restaurant should say goodbye, “Have a great night” or “Enjoy the rest of your evening,” to guests as they pass by.
• The only phrase to use at the table when checking to see if plates, glasses, etc. can be cleared is “May I?” There is nothing offensive, rushed, or presumptuous about that sentence. It can be utilized for pouring more wine, water, etc.
• The goal isn’t formality, but efficiency and friendliness. Think of yourself as hosts at a dinner party. Speak to your guests as if you’re happy they are there, just as you would your friends.
• Read your guests! Four men having a business dinner will need different attention/service than a couple on their first date, a ‘meet the parents’ table, and so on.

Always Meet and Exceed Expectations

The goal in your restaurant is to meet and exceed customer expectations. This begins with the owner. A restaurateur must have an instinct for taking care of and pleasing people. Your ability to care for and manage your staff and employees will create an environment in which staff will want to work and customers will want to dine.