There is a perception that good food needs to be served in a prim and proper manner, almost with the warmth in the room removed and n expectation of maximum nervousness from the poor diners. Real hospitality is about making the show seemless, friendly and vibrant.…
Ingredients of a fine dining restaurant – Part 3 of 6 – The Wine
We can all agree on one thing, while it may be difficult to get the best quality food at home, we can certainly get the wine. More and more guests are becoming knowledgable about fine wines. There are plenty of courses out there, magazines and books for the willing pupil to dig into.…
Ingredients of a fine dining restaurant – Part 2 of 6 – The Food
We did originally describe this as being about whether the menu matched the food. At the risk of sounding obvious, the food needs to follow from the menu. Upto the point of the food being presented to the guest, expectation is building.…
Ingredients of a fine dining restaurant – Part 1 of 6 – The Menu
If a guide is going to pay a visit, they will want your PR effort to include a copy of your menu. Critics will narrow their choice down in the same manner and are probably even considering their pre-order on the train over.…
Ingredients of a fine dining restaurant – Introduction
This came up on an internet discussion and got me thinking, not only about the ingredients but the order of importance. Usually restaurants are first judged by the critics and the guides. Both do their research before visiting the venue and both have a logic in their walk through of the visit.…
Designing a great menu in 5 dimensions
Your menu is probably the most important sales tool you have in your hospitality armoury. Guest’s can have seen it several times before they give their order to the front of house staff. You start to plan on where you want to go with your significant other for dinner.…
Customer Service – The 4A approach
I like to think of myself as easy going, sometimes even described as a nice person. There are few things that really bother me, apart from … dishonesty and laziness. I can forgive some degree of incompetence, a bad day, minor rudeness but never something that is done to brush away or trivialise a situation.…
Calculating House Edge 201
A few weeks ago we covered basic probability and house edge. In this article, we are going to look at a chain of chances with or without memory.
A basic example of this is a betting proposition of 4 coins in a row.…
Anatomy of the professional complainer
Customers complain for a number of reasons; you did something wrong, they had a bad day, they are critics or they are after a freebie. If you did something wrong, fix it. The middle two can benefit from a little tender care.…
Recession – A lesson?
One thing we know about recessions is that weak businesses have suffered. Owing billions of unsafe money in a time when people further down the chain were losing their jobs nearly killed the banking industry. Credit disappeared as funds got tight and people had no money to spend or save, so credit got tighter and … it stayed that way for a couple of years.…